Slovník slovenských nárečí (review)

1 56Reviews Slovník slovenskych nárect. [Dictionary of Slovak Dialects.] Ivor Ripka and others. Computerization: Vladimir Benko and others. Vol. 1, A-K. N.p.: Veda, 1994. Pp. 993. No price available. From 1968 to 1984 Slovak linguists succeeded in publishing the Slovak Linguistic Atlas.1 Copious material was collected in the preparation of this work through questionnaires, field trips to the respective dialectal areas, and excerption of dialectal texts. This material was so extensive that the whole of it could not be used in cartographic representation. Slovník slovenskych nárecí is a differential dictionary that presents features that differentiate dialects revealed in the Slovak Linguistic Atlas and identify them as different from the standard language, insofar as such features appear in lexical units. Therefore, the meaning of the headwords is represented mainly by giving their equivalents in Standard Slovak. If necessary, descriptive explanations are supplied in addition to the equivalents, or in some cases, in their stead, if there are no appropriate equivalents. Slovak dialects belong to three basic groups, geographically distributed and designated — Western, Central, and Eastern. (The standard language is based on the central dialects.) If a word or one of its senses appears in all the regional groups, it is labeled as pandialectal. If it is present in the majority of the dialects or one or two groups, it is labeled by the designation of the group(s). So for instance, ceresniar 1 'who grows and sells cherries' is labeled as pandialectal, but sense 2 'cherry thief is labeled as belonging to the dialect of Trnava, in the Western group. Ceresnica 1 'cherry liqueur' is labeled as Central, whereas ceresnica 2 'a sort of medicinal herb' is labeled as belonging to the dialect of Prievidza in the Central group. Entries contain not only such labels and definitions but also a wealth of contextual examples. The provenience of each is indicated down to the village in which it was encountered , if possible. If such a village is not well known, the county in which it is located is indicated. Naturally, this degree of detail requires some information about the geography of Slovakia, which is supplied by two maps, one on the front endpaper and one on the back endpaper. The latter map gives the location of the counties of Slovakia, designated by the abbreviations of the names of the administrative centers given in the general list of abbreviations. The first map gives the location and the boundaries of the individual dialects and their three basic groups. Interpreting these maps requires special information too, because there are territories left unlabeled in various peripheral areas of SIo1J . Stole and others, Atlas slovenskéhojazyka, Vol. 1, Vokalismus a konsonantizmus . Two issues. Bratislava: Vydavatelstvo SAV 1968; J. Stole, Atlas slovenského jazyka, Vol. 2, Flexia. Two issues. Bratislava: Veda, 1981; F. Buffa, Atlas slovensk éhojazyka, Vol. 3, Tvorenie slov [word formation]. Bratislava: Veda, 1978; A. Habovstiak, Atlas slovenskéhojazyka, Vol. 4, Lexika. Two issues. Bratislava: Veda, 1984. Reviews1 57 vakia, though the boundary lines themselves are drawn. These are the areas in which several minority languages are spoken — Polish in the northwestern and northern areas, Ruthenian in the northeast, and Hungarian in the south. Characteristic of the microstructure of the entry is the inclusion of "bound collocations," which are those whose meaning is deducible from the meanings of the constituents, and "phraseologized" bound collocations, i.e., those whose meaning is not deducible from the meanings of the constituents. The first are preceded by a rhombus-shaped bullet, the second by a round bullet. The headword is followed by its variants, if any exist. Most of them are cross-referenced, e.g., dúzni, whose variant dlzny'having a debt', can be found in its place in the alphabetical sequence. There are, however, some deviations from this principle, e.g., dlustvo, variant of dlzstvo, is not cross-referenced at all. This latter entry is also interesting in that the form of the headword, dlzstvo, is not attested; it seems to be used only to get its only variant, dlustvo, into the series of other words connected with 'debt', whose headwords have the form dlz-. In the same entry for dlzstvo...