Basic information
Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences is a primary institution in the Slovak Republic that focuses on basic research of standard and non-standard variants of the Slovak language. The institute was established in 1943 and named the Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts (Slovak shortening SAVU), in 1952 it was renamed the Institute of the Slovak Language of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts and from 1966 it carries the current name. It is a major research institute in the Slovak Republic centralizing basic research of the Slovak national language, its territorial and social differentiation and its history. The research focuses also on the theoretical questions of general linguistics, language culture, professional terminology and onomastics, whose results are applied while compiling basic codification manuals, designing and standardizing professional terminology and geographical names. The most important scientific goals were achieved in the research of the Slovak language grammar (Morphology of the Slovak Language, 1966), dynamics of vocabulary (Vocabulary Dynamics of Contemporary Slovak, 1989), vocabulary of national language (Slovak Language Dictionary, 6 vol., 1959 – 1968; Short Dictionary of Slovak, 4th ed. 2003; Slovak Synonym Dictionary, 2nd ed. 2000; Dictionary of Historical Slovak, 7 vol., 1991 – 2008; Slovak Dialect Dictionary, up to now 2 vol., 1994, 2006; Dictionary of Contemporary Slovak, up to now 2 vol., 2006, 2011), standard Slovak orthography (The Rules of Slovak Orthography, 3rd ed. 2000), territorial differentiation of Slovak dialects within the Slovak territory as well as Slavic countries and the Carpathian area (Atlas of the Slovak Language, 4 vol., 1968 – 1984; Slavic Linguistic Atlas, up to now 2012; Carpathian-Wide Dialectological Atlas, 8 vol., introductory (unnumbered) vol. in 1987, vol. 1 – 7 were issued in 1989 – 2003) and confrontational research of the Slavic languages vocabulary (Czech-Slovak Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1981; Great Russian-Slovak Dictionary, 5 vol., 1960 – 1970; Great Slovak-Russian Dictionary, 6 vol., 1979 – 1995). Scientists from the institute have published dozens of monographs from various fields of the national language research. The institute also published a series of anthologies called Linguistic Studies (over three dozens), each devoted to one of the linguistic disciplines. It has been a major organizer and co-organizer of several linguistic conferences with international participation.
Major fields of research:
- system of the contemporary Slovak language
- how language works in contemporary communication
- language culture in theory and practice
- professional terminology
- etymology and language geography
- history of language
- onomastics
- corpus linguistics and natural language processing
International cooperation:
The institute cooperates with the foreign research institutes in Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, the Ukraine and the USA.