Från målspråk till källspråk - Vaasan yliopisto

Abstract
ACTA WASAENSIA 9
Romppanen, Birgitta (2001). Från målspråk till källspråk – Utvecklingen av den finsksvenska
och den enspråkiga finska ordboken (From target language to source language. The
evolution of the Finnish-Swedish dictionaries and the monolingual dictionaries in Finnish).
Acta Wasaensia No. 91, 365 p.
Research on the bilingual lexicography of Finnish-Swedish and Swedish-Finnish dictionaries
is of relatively recent date, even though dictionaries that have included Finnish and Swedish
have been produced since the 1630s. As developments in bilingual and multilingual
lexicography are taking place today at an ever increasing pace with the advent of the electronic
dictionaries, a description of the evolution that lies behind them is not without value.
In the introductory section of my thesis I present the background to my research and the
premises on which it is based, including an analysis of the current research situation in
Finland and Sweden, and I also indicate a number of reasons for the lack of interest in
research in this area.
In my thesis I survey the general language Finnish-Swedish and Swedish-Finnish
dictionaries and the monolingual Finnish dictionaries that have been published in various
editions during the period 1637–1998. I have then chosen to focus my study on the Finnish-
Swedish and the Finnish dictionaries. Using a diachronic perspective, I describe and analyse
the emergence of the bilingual Finnish-Swedish lexicographical tradition, where Finnish was
the target language during the period before 1745 and the source language between 1745 and
1998, by examining the lexicographical structure and material in Finnish-Swedish
dictionaries published in mini, pocket, desk or reference editions up until 1998 and also in
electronic dictionaries up until 1999.
In order to trace the development of this process, I have made individual analyses of the
structure of entries for a number of substantives, verbs and adjectives used as headwords in
the first editions and revised editions of Finnish-Swedish dictionaries published during the
period. This analysis focuses on the perspective of the target groups and users, mainly from
the point of view of their linguistic competence.
In the concluding discussion, I present a survey of the various developmental phases I have
been able to distinguish and sketch future areas of research in Finnish-Swedish lexicography.
The appendices contain a list of the printed and manuscript dictionaries from between
1637–1826 that contain Finnish as a source or target language as well as Finnish-Swedish
and Swedish-Finnish dictionaries from 1827–1998.
Birgitta Romppanen, University of Vaasa, Department of Modern Finnish and Translation,
P.O. Box 700, FIN–65101 Vaasa, Finland.
Keywords: lexicography, bilingual lexicography, dictionary, dictionary research, dictionary
function, practical lexicography, dictionary production.