Dar kartą apie Didžiųjų kalbos klaidų sąrašo žodyno klaidas: semantizmai
Once again on vocabulary mistakes from the list of major language mistakes: semantic calques

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses 115 improper semantic calques provided on the List of Major Language Mistakes. The Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language was used for the study of the said semantic calques.The study revealed that the proper usage of words that were considered as semantic calques amounts to 85,31 per cent, while the improper cases make up 14,69 per cent of all occurrences.After the calculation of normalised frequency (occurrences per 100 thousand words), it was determined that spoken language contains most semantic calques (36 usage instances per 100 thousand words). Quite similar usage data was found in publicistic texts (9,8 occurrences), administrative texts (8,8 occurrences) and in the non-fiction part (7,8 occurrences).Appr. 86 per cent of the semantic calques were used without motivation, 14 per cent – with motivation. Presumably, language users find it hard to recognize semantic calques because it is difficult to identify borrowed meanings; they are confused with acceptable figurative meanings of other words.In texts published before 2000, the usage of semantic calques is about 60 per cent; therefore, we can assume that language users and editors have become more familiar with language norms.It is recommended to describe the vocabulary mistakes on the List of Major Language Mistakes or in some other normative publication in more detail, to discard words which were used only several times in the corpus, which were found in the extracts of normative publications, thus with motive and not to be treated as language mistakes. It would be advisable to provide language users, e.g., on the website of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, with a list of non-standard lexical units with comprehensive explanations, numerous usage examples, so that language users would be able to see the difference between a mistake and correct usage.

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