Lexicographic studies by Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (1685-1735): methods of collecting and processing language material
The first scientific explorer of Siberia Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (1685-1735) collected language material during his entire Siberian expedition. D. G. Messerschmidt’s studies of vocabulary material cannot be called properly lexicographic, and they exerted almost no influence on the development of lexicography, mostly because they remained practically unknown to the academia for a long time. However, the traveler’s records present valuable data on the languages of the peoples whose representatives Messerschmidt met during his journey through Siberia in the early 18th century. Messerschmidt developed a productive method of collecting reliable information about the words of certain semantic fields he was interested in. Dealing with non-written and written languages, his method had only one fundamental difference: in the second case, Messerschmidt needed to spend a lot of time and efforts on mastering the corresponding writing systems. As for the rest, the algorithm of actions was the same. First, draft vocabularies were compiled: in the case of non-written languages, they were made by the traveler himself by means of Latin transcription (with the addition of equivalents in Latin as well as German); in the case of written languages, they were recorded by his informants, and afterwards D. G. Messerschmidt processed the lexical material. Draft records also serve as valuable sources of information.