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

Tilmann Reuther

doi:10.31261/NEO.2025.37.18

Published: 2025-12-31

Vol. 37 (2025)

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

Tilmann Reuther

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.31261/NEO.2025.37.18

Abstract

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).

Keywords:

linguistic terminology , lexicography , lexical parallels , Russian , English , French , German , Spanish

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Reuther, T. (2025). Remarks on Ju. D. Apresjan’s lexicographic terminology: leksema and vokabula from a multilingual perspective. Neophilologica, 37, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.31261/NEO.2025.37.18

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

References

Alonso Ramos, M. (2004). Las construcciones con verbo de apoyo. Visor Libros, Madrid.
Google Scholar

Apresjan, Ju. (1986). Integralʹnoe opisanie jazyka i tolkovyj slovarʹ. Voprosy jazykoznanija, 2, 57–70.
Google Scholar

Apresjan, Ju. (2009). Ponjatijnyj apparat sistemnoj leksikografii, In Ju. Apresjan, Issledovanija po semantike i leksikografii. Tom 1. Paradigmatika (p. 486–552). Jazyki slavjanskix kulʹtur, Moskva.
Google Scholar

Apresjan, Ju. (2014). Ob aktivnom slovare russkogo jazyka. In Ju. Apresjan (Ed.), Aktivnyj slovarʹ russkogo jazyka. Tom 1. A-B (pp. 5–36). Jazyki slavjanskoj kulʹtury, Moskva.
Google Scholar

Dubichynskyj, V., & Reuther, T. (2020). Leksygrafuvannja leksyčnyx parallelej/Lexikografie lexikalischer Parallelen. Teoretyčni poležennja ta ukrajinsʹko-nimecʹkyj slovnyk. Monografija / Theoretische Grundlagen und ukrainisch-deutsches Wörterbuch. Monografie. Peter Lang, Berlin.
Google Scholar

Greenberg, M. L., Grenoble, L. A., & others (Eds.). (2020–). Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online. Leiden & Boston: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/2589-6229
Google Scholar

Haspelmath, M. (2023). Defining the word. Word, Vol. 69, No. 3, 283–297, https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2023.2237272
Google Scholar

Katamba, F. (1993). Morphology. Macmillan, London.
Google Scholar

Kempgen, S. (1981). “Wortarten” als klassifikatorisches Problem der deskriptiven Grammatik. Historische und systematische Untersuchung am Beispiel des Russischen. Otto Sagner, München.
Google Scholar

Laskowski, R. (1984). Podstawowe pojęcia morfologii. In R. Grzegorczykowa et al., Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, vol. I: Morfologia (pp. 9–57). Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa.
Google Scholar

Laskowski, R. (1987). On the concept of the lexeme. Scando-Slavica, 33, 169–178.
Google Scholar

Laskowski, R. (1998). Zagadnienia ogólne morfologii. In R. Grzegorczykowa et al., Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, vol. I: Morfologia. (pp. 27–86). Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (1974). Opyt teorii lingvističeskix modelej “Smysl ⇔ Tekst”. Nauka, Moskva.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (1993). Cours de morphologie générale (théorique et descriptive). Vol. 1. Introduction et Première partie: Le mot. Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal – CNRS, Montréal.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (1995a). Countability vs. non-countability of nouns in Russian and their lexicographic description. In I. Mel’čuk, Russkij jazyk v modeli “Smysl ⇔ Tekst” (pp. 125–133). Jazyki russkoj kulʹtury – Wiener Slawistischer Almanach.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (1995b). La combinatoire des numéraux du type DVOE en russe contemporain. In I. Mel’čuk, Russkij jazyk v modeli “Smysl ⇔ Tekst” (pp. 383–422). Jazyki russkoj kulʹtury – Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Moskva – Wien.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (1995c). Slovoobrazovanie v lingvističeskix modeljax tipa Smysl-Tekst (predvaritelʹnye zamečanija). In I. Mel’čuk. Russkij jazyk v modeli “Smysl ⇔ Tekst” (p. 475–504). Jazyki russkoj kulʹtury – Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Moskva – Wien.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (1997). Kurs obščej morfologii. Tom I. Častʹ 1: Vvedenie. Slovo. Jazyki russkoj kulʹtury, Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Moskva – Wien.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I. (2006). Aspects of the theory of morphology. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin–New York.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I., et al. (1984, 1988, 1992, 1999). Dictionnaire explicatif et combinatoire du français contemporain: Recherches lexico-sémantiques (I–IV). Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, Montréal.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I., Clas, A., & Polguère, A. (1995). Introduction à la lexicologie explicative et combinatoire. Éditions Duculot, Louvain-la-Neuve.
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I., & Reuther, T. (2020). Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary. In M. L. Greenberg, L. A. Grenoble et al. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online. Brill https://doi.org/10.1163/2589-6229
Google Scholar

Mel’čuk, I., & Zholkovsky, A. (1995). An explanatory combinatorial dictionary of modern Russian. In I. Mel’čuk, Russkij jazyk v modeli “Smysl ⇔ Tekst” (pp. 17–54). Jazyki russkoj kulʹtury – Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Moskva–Wien.
Google Scholar

Plungjan, V. (2000). Obščaja morfologija: Vvedenie v problematiku. URSS, Moskva.
Google Scholar

Pottier, B. (1991). La lexie: une mise au point necessaire. In A. Zampolli (Ed.), Computational lexicology and lexicography. Special issue dedicated to Bernard Quemada. Giardini, Pisa.
Google Scholar

Reformatskij, A. (1967). Vvedenie z jazykovedenie. 4-e izdanie. Prosveščenie, Moskva.
Google Scholar

Spencer, A., & Wiemer, B. (2020) Lexeme. In M. L. Greenberg, L. A. Grenoble et al. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online. Brill, Leiden, Boston.
Google Scholar

Zaliznjak, A. (1967). Russkoe imennoe slovoizmenenie. Nauka, Moskva.
Google Scholar

Vol. 37 (2025)
Published: 2026-06-12

ISSN: 0208-5550

eISSN: 2353-088X

10.31261/NEO

Publisher

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Licence CC

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Submit

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

Abstract

Keywords:

Tilmann Reuther

Information