257 The Dictionary of the Contemporary Slovak Language: A Product of Tradition and Innovation Alexandra Jarošová & Vladimír Benko Keywords: Slovak explanatory dictionary, prescriptivism and descriptivism. Abstract After having published the first two volumes of a multivolume monolingual dictionary of Modern Slovak, herein we try to summarise the basic concepts as they have been implemented in the actual dictionary text and introduce some extralinguistic and linguistic contexts relevant to our language and political situation. Both the traditions and innovations that have influenced the actual lexicographic decisions are presented. The extralinguistic contexts are represented above all by the existence of a special linguistic institution authorised to issue codification publications, as well as by the existence of the ‘Act on the State Language’, the amendment to which was passed in 2010. In Slovak lexicography, the linguistic contexts are governed by two contradicting traditions of prescriptivism and descriptivism. The presented discussion of the macro- and microstructure of the dictionary introduces some novel lexicographical solutions. 1. Introduction The new monolingual explanatory and exemplification dictionary Slovník súčasného slovenského jazyka (SSSJ, The Dictionary of the Contemporary Slovak Language) has been envisaged as a multivolume lexicographical work of an academic type. So far two of its planned eight volumes have been published (Buzássyová and Jarošová 2006, Jarošová and Buzássyová 2011). The dictionary is the product of the basic research of the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In addition to fulfilling the role of offering the principal lexicographical description of the Slovak national language, the dictionary (by including a highly extensive number of grammatical data) also serves as a kind of substitute for grammatical research (the only academic morphology of Slovak was published in 1966, and no academic syntax has yet been appeared). The dictionary describes the parameters of the lexical items characterised by their ‘nation-wide’ occurrence. Hence, it is not intended to be just a dictionary of literary language, as it also includes lexical items frequently used in informal communication. The SSSJ covers the lexis from about the 1940s onwards, which is the generally accepted boundary of the contemporary forms of Slovak. 2. Extra-linguistic contexts 2.1. The scientific-organisational factors Of direct importance for the dictionary is the existence of a specialised institution whose mission is to produce codification publications. Such a status was acquired by our Linguistics Institute in 1949. This situation, which is paralleled in several other countries, socio- linguistically contrasts with the situation where the authority of a dictionary is not supported by any state institution, but rather by a renowned publishing house. Thanks to supplementary financial support provided by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture, the SSSJ has a sufficiently large team (thirteen authors, three editors, one computer linguist and sixty seven terminological consultants). 1 / 5 1 / 5