Novgorodians at the origins of Russian lexicography

Abstract

The article provides facts indicating that the Novgorodians took important steps in the formation and development of Russian lexicography. The facts are gleaned from works on the history of the Russian literary language and the history of Russian lexicography. Two episodes from different eras are analyzed in detail. The first episode is associated with the creation of the first text-based dictionaries of incomprehensible words, with which the Novgorod scribes accompanied the manuscripts they copied, in particular, “Novgorodskaya Kormchaya” of 1282. It was noted that such dictionaries included Church Slavonic and foreign words, while both common words and proper names were interpreted. It is shown that this type of glossaries was typical for medieval Europe with references to works on German-Latin glossaries. The second episode refers to the lexicography of the 18th century, when dictionaries were already published and numbered in dozens. The paper considers the transformation of the famous German-Latin lexicon of Weismann, whose “russification” was led by the Novgorod nobleman Vasily Evdokimovich Adodurov. The data on the biography of Adodurov are given, explaining his participation in the creation of the Russian version of Weismann's Lexicon, who was considered one of the most educated people of the era, his ability in foreign languages was combined with successful studies in mathematics, he became the first Russian associate in mathematics. It is noted that in addition to Russian interpretations in a trilingual dictionary, he prepared a grammatical sketch of the Russian language in German, which was the first experience in describing Russian grammar. The conclusions show that both of these episodes are important for the development of Russian lexicography, they can be interpreted as the prehistory of the type of dictionaries that are now called dictionaries of foreign words.