G.H.F. Nesselmann - a vocabulary specialist

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of "Lithuanian Language Vocabulary" ("Wörterbuch der Litauischen Sprache", Königsberg, 1851) by famous Baltic studies philologist, professor of Königsberg University George Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann (1811-1881), lexis and its lexicographical form of this vocabulary is surveyed. The vocabulary is based on lexis of the printed and manuscript bilingual vocabularies of the Minor Lithuania of the 17th-18th centuries. It is supplemented by the material of dialects from Northern-West Higher and Lower Lithuania, also by K. Sirvydas' vocabulary words. Methods of interpretation of word meanings, illustrations of usage, word versions are discussed here. The vocabulary contains about 35 000 words which quite adequately reflected variety of the 19th century Lithuanian language vocabulary. The vocabulary is described as a vocabulary with thesaurus-type elements. Its structure is rather unconventional: words are presented according to Sanskrit alphabet and are classified by separate articles based on the etymological principle, ó // ie, о // uo sounds are not strictly separated, there are some inaccuracies in accentuation. Due to significant data of Lithuanian language lexis, the vocabulary was widely used for practice and science purposes