Remarks on Ju. D. Apresjan’s lexicographic terminology: leksema and vokabula from a multilingual perspective

This paper discusses the Russian terms vokabula and leksema, as well as related concepts introduced to lexicography and semantics by a group of Moscow-based researchers led by Jurij D. Apresjan (commonly known as the Moscow Semantic School) and by Igor Mel’čuk (the author of the Meaning ⇔ Text Theory and, alongside Aleksander Zholkovsky, the primary proponent of the Explanatory-Combinatorial Dictionary). The Russian term leksema and its equivalents in other languages (Eng. lexeme, Fr. lexème, Ger. Lexem, Sp. lexema) are firmly anchored in Apresjan’s and Mel’čuk’s lexicographic theory and practice and have been widely accepted by the international lexicographic community. In contrast, the Russian term vokabula has not even been accepted by Russian lexicographers, let alone the international lexicographic community. This paper explores the reasons behind this discrepancy, which can be attributed to the nature of the lexical parallels in Russian and other languages (Eng. vocable, Fr. vocable, Ger. Vokabel, Sp. vocablo). Related issues in this paper include the widely used Russian term slovarnaja statʹja (Eng. dictionary entry, Fr. article de dictionnaire, Ger. Wörterbuchartikel, Sp. artículo lexicográfico) and the Russian term lemma (Eng. lemma, Fr. lemme, Ger. Lemma, Sp. lema), as well as the German term Stichwort (Eng. keyword), the former in the context of computational linguistics and the latter in the context of general lexicography. As a result, we propose names for Apresjan’s and Mel’čuk’s term vokabula in German (namely, Stichwort or Lemma) and English (namely, keyword or lemma).