ŽODIS VALSTYBĖ – SIMONO DAUKANTO PASISKOLINTAS LATVIZMAS
THE LITHUANIAN WORD VALSTYBE 'STATE, POLITY' - A LOANWORD FROM LATVIAN BY SIMONAS DAUKANTAS (AT ABOUT 1828-1834)

Summary/Abstract: 1. T he Lithuanian word valstybė ‘state, polity’ was first registered in a Lithuanian text by Simonas Daukantas’s History of the Lithuanian Lowlands (Istoryje Ƶemaytyszka; IƵ; ~1828– 1834 in Rīga, Latvia). 2. D aukantas borrowed the word valstybė from Latvian. He himself believed he had appropriated the word from the Herulian language (not Latvian) via Joachim Lelewel’s text. The word had reached Daukantas this way: Hasentöter (beginning of the sixteenth century) → Münster (1550) → Lazius (1557) → Lelewel (1808) → Daukantas (1828–1834). 3. D aukantas’s work at the General Governor’s office in Rīga must have stimulated him to transfer valstybė into Lithuanian. Daukantas could not miss the printed texts containing the Latvian combination Kreewu(=) walſtibas ‘of the Russian state’ that were circulating in the office, and it could have encouraged him to adapt it for his Lithuanian text.

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