„Words and Things”. In Memoriam N.A. Ursu (1926 – 2016)

Abstract

The former part of the present article includes a description made by N.A. Ursu, a specialist from Iasi (deceased in May 2016, at the age of 90), from his perspective of a researcher and the head of "Alexandru Philippide" Romanian Philology Institute, the Branch of the Romanian Academy in Iasi. As regards the
latter part of this paper, special attention is devoted to the analysis of N. A. Ursu’s major contributions regarding the modernization of the Romanian language lexicon during the period 1760-1860, in his monographs „The Formation of the Romanian Scientific Terminolog”y (1962) and „The Lexical Loan in the Modernization of the Romanian Literary Language” (1760 - 1860) in four volumes (2004-2011), published
in collaboration with his wife, Despina Ursu. The great innovation in approaching this topic is the fact that the so-called “neologization” of the Romanian scientific lexicon is studied from the perspective of "Words and Things" based on about 800 source texts of that age, including translations from different language cultures, made in all Romanian provinces. The borrowing of a word used to name a certain notion is analyzed in parallel with the making of linguistic calculations, ad-hoc semantisation of some words from the common lexicon of Daco Romanian, respectively with the use of other equivalence processes. Starting from the collection of words and forms included in the two monographs, "onomastic groups" are
presented for the concepts: «cavitate» („cavity”), «rect» („rectum”), «urticarieª („Hives”), «a vaccina» („to vaccinate”) etc.