The Croatian-Glagolitic Animalistic Lexicon (HAL)

The aim of this project is to thoroughly research, list and organize Croatian Glagolitic animalistic data into dictionary entries, as well as to compile an electronic version of HAL. This lexicon is extremely valuable for Croatian historical lexicography and Slavic lexicography in general, as no book specifically dealing with this subject has ever been published in Croatia.

In Croatian lexicography, there is a specialized zoonyms dictionary by Miroslav Hirtz, a Croatian zoologist and travel writer, which, unlike our lexicon, focuses exclusively on folk zoonymic terminology. At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, various zoonyms dictionaries/lexicons were published in the wider Slavic area, which in a certain way gave rise to the idea of creating a Croatian animalistic lexicon, given the extraordinary richness of the Croatian zoological linguistic and traditional heritage.

The documented and described animal terms with descriptive textual examples will contribute to the many future comparative studies of Croatian zoonymic terminology with those of other Slavic redactions. In addition to contributing to a more detailed study of the Croatian zoonymic lexicon, this professional lexicon will greatly help in identifying older animal terminology, which is today present only within certain dialects, but is nevertheless part of the standard Croatian lexicon. This lexicon will contribute significantly to laying the foundation for the creation of a Glagolitic hagiographic bestiary, in which the complex relationship between the animalistic and the hagiographic in various Glagolitic sources will be explored, along with its prevalence and function.

On the basis of this data, i.e. the documented, described and elaborated terms, it will be possible to compare the Croatian zoonymic terminology with the terminology of other Slavic languages, i.e. redactions from the same period.

A digital lexicon will be created that will contribute to the accessibility and usefulness of animal-related data, which is becoming increasingly popular. The lexicon will be designed in such a way that it can be supplemented and expanded with examples of texts not included in our corpus after the project’s completion. In addition, the lexicon will include illustrations of animals along with the terms.

By comparing zoonymic terms across texts of different functions: liturgical, fictional and legal, it will be possible to determine whether the terms are uniform or whether there are significant differences, since legal texts are written in Croatian, while other types of texts have significant influences from the Old Church Slavonic language.