Murko’s Lexicology as a Synthesis of Linguistics and Ethnology

Abstract

Matija Murko was a Slavic philologist in the broadest sense, having interested himself in cultural phenomena and problems of the entire Slavic world. Moreover, he was a ranking linguist active also in the field of Slavic ethnology. Because of his wide-ranging expertise, his linguistic and ethnological activity can be evaluated from the perspective of lexicology. However, he rarely used the term lexicology or lexicography explicitly, e.g., his article in the 1937 Belićev zbornik, “Glagol knaditi,” was followed by the subtitle “Prilog leksikografiji i proučavanju narodne epike.”

Matija Murko primarily as a linguist who in his articles mostly employed examples from Slavic folk verse to treat: a. linguistic (mostly etymological), dialectological, as well as certain orthographic solutions of his two mentors, F. Miklošič and V. Jagić, as well as V. Oblak, J. Kollár, and K. Štrekelj, e.g., “Prvi usporeрivaći sanskrita sa slovenskim jezicima” (1897), “Kollárova vzájemnost slovanská” (1893), “Eine Jacob Grimm fälschlich zugeschriebene Rezension serbischer Volkslieder” (1904); b. the presentation and evaluation of the dictionary work of V. Karadžić, A. Murko, and F. Miklošič; c. the connection of Slovene terminology and linguistic genre to language policy, e.g., in his articles “Slovenski jezik v Jugoslaviji” (1922), “Jméno ‘Jugoslavija”‘ (1929); d. the study of the appropriateness of the use of Slovene and Slavonic lexicon in Slovene, Croatian, and Serbian folk verse, e.g., in his article “Tragom naše narodne epike” (1931), “Zgodovinski podatki o slovenskih narodnih pesmih” (1937). To this category belong his treatments, including etymologies, of Slovene lexicon in the presentation of material culture, e.g., in his article on the Slovene house.