Bulcsú László

Bulcsú László (October 9, 1922, Čakovec) is a Croatian linguist and information scientist.

After graduating electrical engineering in Budapest he studied Slavistics at the University of Zagreb where he graduated at the Faculty of Philosphy in 1955. As a student and an assistant of Stjepan Ivšić he worked at the Faculty of Philosophy up until the retirement in 1993 - and well after that, teaching Slavic studies, Russian studies, general linguistics and information science.

He received his Ph.D. in 1986, and in the period 1964-1997 he taught on the various universities across USA. He was interested in algebraic linguistics, and as one of the pioneers of machine translation and innovative linguistic studies he founded information science curriculum at the University of Zagreb, initiating the work on computer processing of Croatian literature. Among other things, he was interested in philological interpretation and linguistic analysis of Asyyrian cuneiform literature, and has translated numerous ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform inscriptions. László as a driving force of Zagreb linguistic circle had a crucial influence on the final form of Croatian linguistics.

László's contributions to the formation of Croatian standard language is not easily determinable. Wider audience is more or less familiar with his passionate support for morphological (etymological) orthography and the formation of Croatian terminology, for he has most of the foreign borrowings (even those of Greco-Roman origin) substituted with neologisms. László's proposal for the reform of Croatian orthography draws heavily on the work of Zagreb school (those tenets were still used by Bogoslav Šulek, Adolfo Veber Tkalčević, August Šenoa, Ante Kovačić, Eugen Kvaternik), but László has structured them in a more rigid way. Some of his proposals are listed:

* forceful jekavization in a form that was absent even in the works of Zagreb school ("vrieme"/"vrjemena"; "potrjeba"/"trjebati"; "prjedpostavka"; "prjepisati"/"priepis"; "prjenositi"/"prienos"; "napried"/"naprjedak"; "vrjelo"; "srjeća")

* somewhat different principles in some cases. - e.g. the superlative forms of adjectives: "naj bolji", "naj veći" (as opposed to the standard spelling: "najbolji", "najveći")

Other László's solutions mostly coincide with that of Zagreb school, from yat to non-assimilation of consonants by voiceness ("liepo", "primjetba", "razstaviti", "izčupati"...). Another feature of László's work is the language purism, as exemplified by his interesting alternatives to the names of grammatical cases: "nazovnik", "rodnik", "datnik", "tvornik", "zovnik", "mjestnik", "orudnik".

László's formulation of orthography rules is very difficult, and practically unfeasible at the national level. His contributions on the area of terminology used for computing and other modern disciplines is yet to be acknowledged. He influenced the word coinage of Tomislav Ladan, whilst other valuable contributions by this philologist, chiefly at the field of orthography and language purism, will probably never enter the matrix of Croatian standard language.

External links

* [http://www.hnk.ffzg.hr/jthj/Laszlo.htm Englezko-hrvatski i Hrvatsko-englezki rječnik obavjèstnîčkôga nazivlja] (English-Croatian and Croatian-English dictionary of information science terminology as envisioned by Bulcsú László)