The Institute for Bulgarian Language ‘Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin’
The Institute for Bulgarian Language ‘Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin’ was established on 15th May 1942 to function as a Bulgarian Dictionary Service (BDS) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS). In 1947 the BDS grew into the Institute for Bulgarian Dictionary, and in 1949 – into the Institute for Bulgarian Language.
The Institute for Bulgarian Language at BAS is a national research centre for the study and description of the Bulgarian language: its contemporary state, history, dialectal diversity and its relations with other languages.
The Institute pursues the following goals:
– developing fundamental and applied research work about the Bulgarian language in accordance with national and European priorities;
– study, description, preservation and spreading of the Bulgarian language as a vehicle of the cultural and historical heritage;
– development of Bulgarian language resources and technologies;
– supporting the study of Bulgarian language at various levels.
In the formation of the Institute for Bulgarian Language participate eminent linguists – members of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and long-time university professors: Academician Stoyan Romanski, Academician Vladimir Georgiev, Academician Stefan Mladenov, corresponding member Lyubomir Andreychin, corresponding member Kiril Mirchev, corresponding member Ivan Lekov, Prof. Stoyko Stoykov. They made an outstanding service in organizing and conducting the Institute’s scientific work in the following research areas: Bulgarian lexicology and lexicography, contemporary Bulgarian language, Balkan linguistics and etymology, Old Bulgarian language and history of Bulgarian language, dialectology. The career path of a great number of their students and famous Bulgarian linguists is closely intertwined with the IBL: Academician Valentin Stankov, Academician Ivan Duridanov, corresponding member Dora Ivanova-Mircheva, corresponding member Emiliya Pernishka, corresponding member Mariya Popova, corresponding member Todor Boyadzhiev, Prof. Yordan Zaimov, Prof. Svetomir Ivanchev, Prof. Kristalina Cholakova, Prof. Yordan Penchev, Prof. Todor Todorov and many others. Director of the Institute for Bulgarian Language from 1976 to 1977 is prof. Svetomir Ivanchev. Successors in chronological order are: Academician Valentin Stankov (1977 – 1979), corresponding member Prof. Dora Ivanova-Mircheva (1979 – 1989), corresponding member Prof. Todor Boyadzhiev (1989 – 1992), Assoc. Prof. Stoyan Zherev, PhD (1992 – 1994), Assoc. Prof. Yuliya Baltova (1995 – 2002), Prof. Vasil Raynov (2003 – 2011).
Since the day it was established, the Institute has prioritized the following research areas: academic dictionaries of Bulgarian language; Bulgarian historical and cultural linguistic heritage; theoretical linguistic research and in recent times; electronic language resources and language technologies.
Dictionary of Bulgarian Language
Academician Stoyan Romanksi was the head of the Bulgarian Dictionary Service (1942 – 1951) and the first director of IBL. Academician Stoyan Romanski, as well as the rest of the famous linguists, who provided the original impetus towards the development of the Institute, was a scientist with an encyclopedic knowledge, interests and achievements in areas such as: Old Bulgarian, comparative grammar of Slavic languages, General and Slavic linguistics, and ethnography. Academician Stoyan Romanski also headed the IBL Department of the Bulgarian Dictionary for several years in succession (1951 – 1958). Its successor today is the Department of Bulgarian Lexicology and Lexicography.
The numerous dictionaries compiled at the Institute meet contemporary needs of quality, professionally-developed reference books about the meaning, forms, use and origin of Bulgarian words. The main lexicographical publication of the Department of Bulgarian Lexicology and Lexicography is the Dictionary of Bulgarian Language (DBL). The multi-volume DBL is the largest and most representative monolingual explanatory dictionary: it traces the Bulgarian lexical system status from the beginning of the XIXth century to the present day. 15 volumes with letters A – R, totalling 119,229 headwords, were published from 1977 until 2017. DBL chief editors have been
Prof. Kristalina Cholakova (eight volumes), Prof. Vesa Kyuvlieva-Mishaykova (two volumes), corresponding member Emiliya Pernishka (four volumes), Prof. Liliya Krumova-Tsvetkova (four volumes), Prof. Maria Choroleeva (four volumes), Prof. Ivan Kasabov (one volume), Assoc. Prof.
Yuliya Baltova (one volume).
The included in the Dictionary lexical units represent the stylistical and functional diversity of the Bulgarian language (standard literary vocabulary, spoken vocabulary, dialectic words, terms, old words, new words, forein words etc.). The different lexical units are accompanied by information about the spelling of the different forms, grammatical characteristics of the main form and notes that charactarises the stylistic, terminological, historical, dialectic or the slang use of the given word. The system of meanings that are connected to a particular lexical unit is presented in detail, enough examples are added that picture the meaning in a appropriate way. The dictionary offers a lot of examples that ilustrate the use of the corresponding meaning and contains a rich system of phraseologisms, synonyms and antonyms. Since 2014 DBL has been available online and in 2016 the third volume of the Dictionary of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian was added to enable the search of words beginning with letters A to Я.
Ever since it was established, the Department of Bulgarian Lexicology and Lexicography researches the lexical richness of the Bulgarian language, theoretical questions from the field of bulgarian lexicology and lexicography are being developed and also different types of dictionaries: defining, synonymic, antonymic, of the forein words, of the new words, etc. A big theoretical achievement is the three volume work „Българска лексикология и фразеология“ (Bulgarian lexicology and phraseology), an summarizing research, that describes the lexical and phraseological system of the Bulgarian language.
Terminological dictionaries
Research work at the Department of Bulgarian Terminology and Terminography is closely related to lexicographic research. The Department was established in 1993 by corresponding member Maria Popova and back then it was called Bulgarian Terminology Service. The Department conducts theoretical research work into general and Bulgarian terminology, and compiles a variety of terminological dictionaries. So far the following dictionaries have been published: “Terminological Dictionary of Natural Sciences”, “Terminological Dictionary of the Humanities” and “Terminological and Encyclopedic Dictionary of Socio-political Sciences”. These dictionaries list major terms and certain names related to the natural sciences: biology, physics, chemistry, geography and astronomy; the humanities and social sciences: Bulgarian language, literature, philosophy, logic, psychology, art, music, history, politics, law and ethics. Dictionary entries are encyclopedic in nature and provide information about the meaning of the term in the respective field and in many cases a degree of knowledge about the object designated by the term. In the cases of synonymy between terms, a reference is given to one of the synonyms, which is described in detail. The relation between generic and species terms is also outlined, as well as between terms used to represent a whole and its related constituent parts. The theoretical framework for terminological description has been summarized in the study “Theory of Terminology”.
Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary
The main credit for putting etymological issues on the Institute for Bulgarian Language linguistic research agenda goes to Academician Vladimir Georgiev – founder the Department of Bulgarian Etymology and Onomastics and he is one of the first authors, compilers and editors of one of the most notable achievements of IBL – the multi-volume Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary.
Academician Vladimir Georgiev was Director of the IBL (1951–1957), Deputy Chairman of BAS (1959–1972) and also Vice-Rector and Rector of Sofia University. Academician Vladimir Georgiev is a scientist with encyclopedic knowledge, wide area of research interest and author of studies that shaped the development of Bulgarian linguistic studies in research areas such as general linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, comparative-historical linguistics and bulgarian etymology. He is the founder of the Linguistique Balkanique Journal, the printed periodical of IBL ‘Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin’; from 1959 to 1986 he was the journal’s editor-in-chief. In 2014, after a 20-year pause, the IBL revived the Academician Vladimir Georgiev Fund Award for research work in linguistics in recognition of the eminent researcher’s desire and the donation he made.
The multi-volume Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary explains the origin of Bulgarian words and sheds light over the relations between the Bulgarian language and other Balkan, Slavic and Indo-European languages. Within the period between 1971 and 2017 eight volumes were published, letter Ф included. The following researchers have been editors of the multi-volume dictionary: Academician Vladimir Georgiev (four volumes), Academician Ivan Duridanov, Assoc. Prof. Maria Racheva (two volumes), Prof. Todor. At. Todorov (three volumes), Prof. Ludwig Selimski (one volume), Assoc. Prof. Lilyana Dimitrova-Todorova (one volume).
The dictionary entries of the multi-volume Bulgarian Etymological dictionary have a complex structure; they list the meanings of the headword, its recorded phonetic and morphological variants in Bulgarian dialects and the rest of the Slavic languages, how the word made its way into the bulgarian language if it is a loanword, as well as different interpretations of word origin and meanings. The dictionary includes standard and dialect words, with dialect words featuring both in the headword list and the list of recorded variants of a given word. In addition, the dictionary contains information about the variety of word meanings in various dialects.
The dictionary describes for the first time the etymology of a large number of words, standard and dialect ones, which is of vital importance not only for Bulgarian linguistic studies but for the etymological research into other Balkan, Slavic and Indo-European languages. The rich information provided by the dictionary can serve not only as the basis for thorough linguistic analysis, but can also be practically applied to the teaching of Bulgarian. Since 2017 the first seven volumes of the Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary have been made available as e-books by the IBL.
Research work at the Department of Bulgarian Etymology since the very beginning is focused on the challenging task of describing the origin of bulgarian words, which entails the development of relevant research methodology. The research focus of the Department of Bulgarian Etymology is closely related to the research objectives of the Department of Applied Onomastics which continues the work of Prof. Yordan Zaimov, an specialist on Bulgarian, Balkan and Slavic etymology and onomastics. The Department of Applied Onomastics studies the history of various types of proper names in Bulgarian language (personal, toponyms, hydronyms, etc.), their transformation in the course of their use and the process of borrowing of such words from other languages.
Old Bulgarian Dictionary
In 1951 corresponding member Kiril Mirchev (a researcher of vast knowledge and achievements in multiple fields: Old Bulgarian, history of Bulgarian language, bulgarian dialectology, and history of bulgarian dialects, research into and publishing of bulgarian historical written records) establishes the History of Bulgarian Language Department. A major achievement of the department is the two-volume Old Bulgarian Dictionary – a bilingual and monolingual dictionary of vocabulary found in classical Glagolitic and Cyrillic written records. Dictionary entries list word meanings, illustrative examples of use, grammatical characteristics, Latin plant and animal species names – these enrich the dictionary entry structure in a way similar to monolingual explanatory dictionaries. At the end of the dictionary entry the modern Bulgarian counterparts – standard or dialect – of Old Bulgarian words are provided; dialect words are likewise marked in this way the dictionary mimics the bilingual ones.
The two-volume Old Bulgarian Dictionary has been available as an IBL e-book since 2015.
The History of Bulgarian Language Department conducts research related to the lexicographic description of Bulgarian within the period from the Bulgarian Middle Ages up to the Revival. The department prepares manuscripts from different historical periods for publication; these come along with linguistic analysis tracing the development of Bulgarian at various levels: orthographic, phonetic, morphological and lexical. In 2014 the collective work of the Department – Dictionary of Literary Bulgarian Based on the Vernacular of the 17th century (based on a text from the Tihonravov damascene) received the Academician Vladimir Georgiev Fund Award for linguistic research.
Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects
Prof. Stoiko Stoikov is the founder of Bulgarian dialectology and of the Department of Bulgarian Dialectology and Linguistic Geography (initially called Department of Bulgarian Dialectology with Linguistic Atlas) at the IBL. He was the Department’s first director (1952 – 1969). Prof. Stoikov developed a comprehensive program for research into Bulgarian dialects, the centerpiece of which is the comparison with both Old Bulgarian and contemporary Bulgarian standard language. To represent and compare data from the whole language territory where Bulgarian was and is spoken, material has been collected over the course of more than 30 years from over 2 400 towns and villages. The matherials were recorded on 7 539 maps and are presented in 11 atlases, 6 of which have been published. The result of the analysis, comparison and summation of the information contained in the dialect maps is the Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects. A Summative Volume. Vol. 1 Phonetics. Accentology. Lexis. Vol. 2 Morphology. The Atlas represents the system of the Bulgarian language on a dialect level on the basis of field material and written records collected from over 2 300 towns and villages. The summative volume of the Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects contains 503 dialect maps, commentaries, lists and their indexes; these reflect the specificities of the phonetic, accent, lexical and morphological system of Bulgarian dialects which illustrate the unity of Bulgarian in the history of its development and its contemporary status. The atlas is an essential source for phonetic, morphological, and lexical level comparative studies between Bulgarian dialects and Old Bulgarian, Bulgarian dialects and contemporary standard Bulgarian, Bulgarian dialects and the rest of the Slavic languages and their dialects; it also offers ample ground for the study of the unity of Bulgarian as a successor of Old Bulgarian and its contemporary status.
In 2015 A Map of the Dialectal Division of Bulgarian was made available on the Internet. It lists the main dialect regions belonging to the Bulgarian language territory and represents Bulgarian dialects graphically and via short texts and authentic audio samples. The IBL is also distributing the two-volume Atlas of Bulgarian Dialects. A Summative Volume. Vol. 1 Phonetics. Accentology. Lexis. Vol. 2 Morphology in an e-book format since 2016.
The scientific research projects of The Department of Bulgarian Dialectology and Linguistic Geography are focused on studying the Bulgarian language on a dialect level, which includes analysis and comparison of Bulgarian dialects both in relation to the unity of the Bulgarian language in its development and contemporary functioning and in relation to the dialects of the rest of the Slavic and European languages.
Closely related to the study of dialects are the ethno-linguistic studies. The IBL Department of Entho-linguistics was established in 2008 as the successor of the Department of Ethno-linguistic and Cultural Studies of Bulgarian founded by corresponding member Todor Boyadzhiev. The ethno-linguistic research objectives are focused upon the linguistic description of phenomenons of the traditional bulgarian culture and the way different social groups perceive the world, and its related processes of conceptualization and lexicalization. The Ethno-linguistic Dictionary of the Spiritual Culture of the Bulgarian People includes dialect vocabulary from the whole Bulgarian language territory and provides encyclopedic information about traditional Bulgarian customs, rituals and beliefs.
Contemporary Bulgarian Language Grammar
One of the founders of contemporary Bulgarian grammar is corresponding member Luybomir Andreychin, who established and headed the Modern Bulgarian Language Department (1951 – 1975) and was also director of IBL (1957 – 1975). Corresponding member Lyubomir Andreychin’s systematically researches questions related to standard Bulgarian language resulted in not only significant theoretical contributions which are applicable to contemporary descriptions of Bulgarian; but he also developed a further strand of the Institute’s activity about the popularisation of the correct use of the language. In his honour in 2004, the Institute for Bulgarian Language was renamed IBL Prof. Luybomir Andreychin.
In 1953 corresponding member Lyubomir Andreychin establishes the Language Consultation Service which continues to operate to this day; its main area of activity being the provision of expert advice on spelling, punctuation, grammar and pronunciation questions. From 2013 to the language helpline were added other channels of communication: the IBL introduced the Internet Language Enquiries Handbook and the Facebook page Language Enquiries. Corresponding member Lyubomir Andreychin establishes the Bulgarian Language Journal in 1951 as the printed periodical of the IBL Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin, whose editor-in-chief he was until 1975.
The research work of corresponding member Lyubomir Andreychin also influenced the major spelling IBL dictionaries: Spelling Dictionary of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian, New Spelling Dictionary of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian, Official Spelling Dictionary of Bulgarian, Official Spelling Dictionary of Bulgarian. Verbs. These reference books represent the main principles and rules of contemporary standard Bulgarian spelling and punctuation, the spelling of words belonging to the active lexicon of Bulgarian and the spelling of selected word forms which provide information about the spelling of all paradigm forms.
Academician Valentin Stankov was responsible editor of two of the above-mentioned dictionaries from 1983 and 2002; he also took part in the compilation of the three-volume academic Grammar of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian.
The academic Grammar of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian is the first grammar which offers a comprehensive description of the phonetic, morphological and syntactic structure of the Bulgarian language studying rich illustrative material and follows grammatical traditions established so far.
The Academic Grammar uses universally accepted concepts and terminology and avoids controversial issues and also narrowly specialized terms. The phonetic structure of the contemporary standard Bulgarian language is represented from the point of interrelated articulation characteristics, acoustic characteristics and linguistic function of speech sounds. Lexico-grammatical categories are interpreted as a union of form, meaning and use; those forms are listed which illustrate the meaning of a given lexico-grammatical category, defines its meaning and finally attention is paid to its use. Abstract generalizations – the syntax rules are formulated on the basis of specific language material, even though with them general principles are described which apply to a variety of syntactic structure. The description of Bulgarian grammar is made by contemporary theoretical analysis. For instance, the outline of defining relative clauses includes the division of relative clauses into restrictive and non-restrictive clauses depending on their specific semantic characteristics.
The Modern Bulgarian Language Department describes the grammatical system of contemporary standard Bulgarian, researches the establishing and development of the new standard Bulgarian, studies written practices, and codifies contemporary standard Bulgarian written norms of spelling and punctuation.
Issues of language theory and practice are studied from a general angle at the General and Contrastive Linguistics Department. After a series of transformations the department became the successor of the Department of the Contrastive Study of Bulgarian with other languages, established and headed by corresponding member Ivan Lekov (1954 – 1978), and the Group for Statistical and Applied Linguistics at the Modern Bulgarian Department which later grew into the Department of General, Applied and Mathematical Linguistics. The research studies in general and contrastive linguistics published by IBL are a substantial number, and their contribution to Bulgarian linguistics is significant; some of these are: ‘Text Pragmatics’, ‘The Fate of Turkish Loanwords in Bulgarian Language and Culture’, etc.
Language Resources for computational language processing
Prof. Yordan Penchev founded the Department of Computational Modelling of Bulgarian in 1994 which was later renamed Department of Computational Linguistics. Prof. Yordan Penchev worked in the field of generative grammar and laid the foundations of the description of the structure of the Bulgarian language by means of formal methods relevant to computational processing.
The Department of Computational Linguistics develops the Bulgarian WordNet – lexical-semantic network which combines the qualities of well-known lexicographic resources: it contains definitions and examples like the traditional dictionaries, but in addition to that, groups words denoting concepts in synonymous sets; the synonymous sets are grouped in a conceptual network which reflects the conceptual system in the human thinking. The synonymous sets are part of different semantic relations, the characteristics of which derive from the universal properties that exist between phenomena, events, conditions and features. The Bulgarian synonymous sets (121 282 synonymous sets, 83 522 of which have been created or proofread and made additions to by experts; the rest have been automatically added) contain 255 092 lexical units which are part of 254 450 relations. The Bulgarian synonymous sets are connected to their translation equivalents in the Princeton WordNet, which the Bulgarian WordNet mirrors, and via English the sets are connected to the rest of the languages (over 70 in number), for which such a resource has been developed.
Since 2014 the Institute for Bulgarian Language has made the tremendous lexicographic variety of resources created by the associates of the Institute, freely available on the Internet. In addition to opportunities to look up words in different dictionaries, the Dictionary Portal LexIt provides integrated access to the IBL dictionaries online. These dictionaries are Grammatical Dictionary of Bulgarian providing information about the base form and its related word forms, as well as their grammatical characteristics; the multi-volume Dictionary of Bulgarian Language, Infolex – an electronic database of dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, new words and phraseologisms, two consecutive editions of the Dictionary of new words and meanings. Another supported resource is the Bulgarian Linguistics electronic library which contains the studies of researchers from the Institute for Bulgarian Language ‘Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin’ belonging to the fields of history of language, etymology and Bulgarian dialectology.
The IBL develops electronic language resources – monolingual and multilingual dictionaries, monolingual and parallel corpora, language processing programs, as well as language resources targeted at teaching Bulgarian language.
Тhe Institute of Bulgarian Language ‘Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin’ researches the functioning of the grammatical system and the lexicon of contemporary standard Bulgarian language. Written practices and codify spelling and punctuation norms are studied. Another research target is the development processes and the current status of Bulgarian lexis, as well as the lexicographic outline of the main Bulgarian lexicon. The researches in the fields of lexicology, history of language, dialectology, ethno-linguistics, onomastics, etc. contribute to the elucidation of questions about the roots of Slavic language unity and the explication of the relations of the Bulgarian language and Bulgarian people with other languages and people – Slavic, Balkan, Indo-European and non-Indo-European. The lexicographic output of the IBL is aimed at meeting the needs of the current society for quality and professionally-developed reference sources of information about the meaning, word forms and origin of Bulgarian lexis. A substantial part of the research work at the Institute is the comprehensive study of the historical development of Bulgarian. Researchers study and publish written records dating back to the period between 9th – 10th and 19th century; researches are also conducted into historical dialectology, and the new Bulgarian dialects. Etymological and onomastic research work is carried out as well. The main research object at the IBL is the language of the Bulgarians which has a crucial role in forming and preserving the bulgarian national identity. Bulgarian linguistic studies research in the field of lexicology, history of language, dialectology, etymology, onomastics, ethnolinguistics, and contrastive studies of Bulgarian and other languages, linguistic theory issues, etc. contributes to the research of the European and global cultural diversity and makes the richness and properties of the Bulgarian language known.
Svetla Koeva,
Director of the Institute for Bulgarian Language ‘Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin’
15 May 2020
