WORDS WITH MEANINGS THAT DIFFER FROM THEIR CURRENT USAGE
WORDS WITH MEANINGS THAT DIFFER FROM THEIR CURRENT USAGE

Summary/Abstract: The study focuses on the Dicționarul Limbii Române as a primary source, elaborated by August Treboniu Laurian and Ion C. Massim, which conserves numerous words with meanings that differ from their current usage. The research follows the evolution of these words in the early Romanian press of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis focuses on the investigation of digital newspaper periodicals corpora available through the Arcanum platform, completed with resources such as the digitalized collections of BCU Iași and the DLR Corpus (Solirom). The early press offers significant advantages for the diachronic study of language, enabling the identification of the first attestations, the precise dating of occurrences and the observation of the regional distribution of lexical forms, as well as the role of the press in disseminating the lexical innovations and semantical changes. The corpus analyzed includes publications from the main historical Romanian provinces (Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania), revealing both the conservation of Latinizing forms in the Transylvanian space and the stabilization of the norm in the Wallachian press towards the end the of the 19th century. Data validation is achieved by cross-referencing with the attestations offered by DLR, which allows for a comparison of the first lexicographical attestations with the ones identified in the press of that age. By correlating information stemming from The First Dictionary of the Romanian Academy, Arcanum and DLR, the research contributes to reconstructing the evolution of some lexical forms that are no longer in use, highlighting the interaction between lexicography, usage and public discourse in the dynamics of the Romanian language.

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