The Contribution of Oroslav Caf to Resian Lexicography

Abstract

To judge by the Resian lexical items in Pleteršnik for which Oroslav Caf is credited, it may be said that his contribution to Resian lexicography is considerable. This goes for the sheer amount of the items, adding up to more than 300, and for their choice, as many of them are not known from other sources.

Linguistic evidence strongly suggests that the dialect material originates from a native speaker of the Bila/San Giorgio variety of Resian. The standardisation of ù as û can easiest be explained as stemming from a dialect in which ū and ù have merged, like in the Bila reflex ǖ. This evidence is corroborated by historical evidence brought forward by Matičetov. In about one third of the cases no modern attestations could be obtained for Caf’s lexical items. Apart from the item vozíca ‘der Schiebkarren’, confirmed as ûzica by Baudouin de Courtenay, these items are not found in other sources either. This means that they could be of limited use for further linguistic analysis, as the ‘‘filtering’’ by Pleteršnik, who standardised the forms for the purposes of his dictionary, and Caf, who was prone to etymologise in his dialect transcriptions, may have obscured the actual underlying dialect form.