Germanizavimo įtaka Mažosios Lietuvos asmenvardžiams XVIII–XIX a.

Author(s): Aušra Žemienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2016

The purpose of the article is to evaluate the influence of the 18th century great German colonization, Germanisation and the related bilingualism (Lithuanian and German) on the Lithuania Minor anthroponyms that functioned in the 18th-19th centuries. The object of the study is anthroponyms of the most intensely colonized counties (Įsrutis and Ragainė) of Lithuania Minor, inscribed in manuscript church books of christening, marriages, confirmation and death registration in the 18th-19th centuries, which are currently stored at the central archive of evangelicals (Berlin, Germany) and the funds of Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library. The study has justified that the situation of bilingualism played a crucial role in the assimilation of Lithuania Minor residents (Įsrutis and Ragainė counties). It has been found that such a situation prevailed until late 19th century in the region (Įsrutis and Ragainė counties). The analysis of anthroponym versions evidences superstratic impact of the German language dialects on the anthroponyms of local people and substratic impact of the Lithuanian language on the German anthroponyms. There were features of the Germanisation (orthographic and phonetic Germanisation methods) of local people’s anthroponyms in the 18th century, though these Germanisation cases were not regular: only a few surnames Germanised in the aforementioned methods were found. Thus, rare cases of orthographic and phonetic Germanisation should be evaluated in the extralinguistic context – different genders of the same surname could be written in the documents due to insufficient Lithuanian language knowledge of priests. Obvious consequences of Germanisation process of local people’s anthroponyms was manifested in late 19th century, when the structure and formation of surnames were strongly affected. Various structures of surname genders without endings were established, e.g., Markß, Maʒeik, Skalik, Woicʒul, female surnames also lost their typical methods of formation and became the same as male surnames, i.e. surnames with the Germanised suffix -eit (Lith. -aitis) were established, e.g., Abromeit, Joneleit. On the other hand, in the early 18th century names and surnames of German newcomers sometimes took Lithuanian elements. However, German acronyms in general were not Lithuanianised. Sporadic cases of sound substitution (German. f – Lith. p, Ger. ch– Lith. k), as well as addition of Lithuanian endings, illustrating the influence of the Lithuanian language, are assessed as a result of foreign lexeme adaptation in the Lithuanian linguistic area.

Problem języka w klasztorze sióstr katarzynek w Krokach w pierwszej połowie XX wieku

Author(s): Vaida Kamuntavičienė / Language(s): Polish Issue: 43/2019

After 1918, the two Catholic convents on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania faced the issue of Lithuanisation, which was solved in different ways. The Benedictine Convent in Kaunas, the provisional capital of Lithuania, had been firmly Lithuanised by 1924. However, St Catherine’s Convent in Krakės in Samogitia chose a different path. This article aims to find out how the Krakės convent dealt with the challenges of nationalism in the context of ongoing modernisation of its life at that time. The main objective is to present the shift from the Polish to the Lithuanian language in public and private life of the convent. The study is mostly based on original documents held in the archives of St Catherine’s Convent in Kaunas. The Polish language was very important for the Krakės convent (established in 1645). According to the modified Rule of St Catherine the Virgin and Martyr adopted in Krakės in 1673, the language of prayers and sermons was Polish. Only daughters of noblemen were accepted to join; they were obliged to donate a dowry, which meant that only wealthy girls could become nuns. The Krakės convent stemmed from the cultural traditions of the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The establishment of the independent Republic of Lithuania meant that St Catherine’s sisters of Krakės needed to re-evaluate their political (civic), national and cultural identities.

Imiona mniejszości litewskiej w Polsce

Author(s): Justyna B. Walkowiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 43/2019

This article analyses the given names of members of the Lithuanian minority in Poland. It is based on a Lithuanian telephone directory issued in Puńsk in 1997, in which a significant number of personal names are recorded in the Lithuanian form. Their comparison with the corresponding data in two Polish telephone directories from a similar period revealed over two hundred “given name + surname” pairs in two language versions: Lithuanian and Polish. About eighty pairs in which the names differed in spelling and morphology have been extracted for analysis. In the analysis of given names, also Kazimierz Rymut’s name dictionary (1995) has been used to establish the frequency of selected names in the Suwalki region and beyond. The statistically significant higher turnout of names of Lithuanian origin in the Suwalki region than in the rest of Poland was confirmed in almost all cases. It was also established that the occurrence of Lithuanian given names in unassimilated form is more frequent there. The frequency of the given names which appear in the aforementioned Lithuanian telephone directory and on the lists of high school graduates in Puńsk from 1959–1995 was compared to the ranking lists of given names used in Poland and Lithuania. This enabled some observations concerning the choice of names by Polish Lithuanians.

Language shift: The case of the Žeimiai area in the Kaunas-Jonava region

Author(s): Danguole Mikulėnienė,Aušra Pacevičiūtė / Language(s): English Issue: 43/2019

As a result of application of the principles of multidimensional dialectology in Lithuania in the early twenty-first century, the research discourse of Lithuanian dialectologists now covers not only the traditional dialects, but also several local language variations that continuously interact and compete with one another in the same geographical area. The processes of convergence and divergence of language variations are addressed in a more comprehensive manner, not only analysing the linguistic characteristics of a local variation, but also looking into the language environment (or language landscape) and the attitude of the local populace (especially the young generation) towards their linguistic homeland. The linguistic study presented in this article was conducted in the Žeimiai area in the Kaunas-Jonava region in 2015–2017. It involved interviews with 21 members of three generations of one family (15 females and 6 males aged 19 to 95), over 20 hours of audio material in total; the informants also answered a sociolinguistic survey. The description and analysis of collected material involved: (1) analysis of the degree of viability of language variations used in the area on the basis of a model of sociocultural networks of Žeimiai town; (2) description of the linguistic landscape of the region; (3) description of the linguistic behaviour and attitudes towards local variations on the basis of informants’ replies in the sociolinguistic survey; (4) analysis of salient phonetic features of the informants’ speech that best describe the local language variation in use. The collected and processed material allowed the researchers to investigate the competitiveness of local language variations in this area, identifying ones that have greater demand with representatives of different generations compared to others (cf. Inoue, 1997, p. 41).

Litewska i polska spuścizna językowa Antoniego Juszkiewicza (Antanasa Juški) z perspektywy XXI wieku

Author(s): Zofia Sawaniewska-Mochowa,Vilija Sakalauskiene / Language(s): Polish Issue: 43/2019

This article presents the assumptions of new research on the legacy of Antanas Juška, recorded in Lithuanian and Polish. We assume that the forgotten works of this bilingual author from Lithuania, mainly translation dictionaries, are an underestimated study material for interdisciplinary research. They are particularly important for understanding the rich conceptualisations of the world by two collective subjects, Poles and Lithuanians, co-existing in Lithuania under the Russian partition. We have formulated two research hypotheses: (1) the bilingual dictionaries authored by Antanas Juška, who was a Catholic priest, are not only a valuable source of knowledge about the state of the Polish and Lithuanian languages in the nineteenth century, but above all specific cultural texts which form part of the social discourse of their time and place, and thus carry relevant ethnolinguistic and ethnocultural information; (2) bilingual dictionaries as a genre had an impact on the crystallisation of Lithuanian national awareness and the strengthening of cultural identity of Lithuanians in the second half of the nineteenth century. Juška’s linguistic legacy will be jointly studied by Polish and Lithuanian researchers from different perspectives, applying the tools and methods available in twenty-first-century humanities.

ROZWAŻANIA NAD ETYMOLOGIĄ GROMU

Author(s): Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 10/2020

The Polish appellative grom m. ‘thunderclap’ (< Proto-Slavic *gromъ m. ‘thunder, thunderclap, roar of a thunder’) should be associated with Greek βρόμος m. ‘any loud noise; crackling of fire; roar of a thunder; roaring of a storm; rage, fury’. Both these nouns derive from the Proto-Indo-European archetype *gu̯rómos m. ‘loud noise; thunder, thunderclap, roar of a thunder’ (originally nomen actionis with the meaning ‘roaring; thundering’, derived from the root *gu̯rem- ‘to roar, to thunder’, cf. Gk. βρέμω ‘to roar; to clash, ring (of arms); to shout, rage (of men)’, pol. grzmieć ‘to thunder’). The comparison of PSl. *gromъ with Gk. χρόμος m. ‘neighing or whinnying (of horse)’ is semantically doubtful.

Prezerwatywa, kondom, gumka

Author(s): Jarosław Pacuła / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

W artykule omówiono funkcjonujące w polszczyźnie nazwy prezerwatywy. Oglądowi towarzy-szy perspektywa historycznojęzykowa. Autor przedstawia proces kształtowania się bogatej synonimii nazewniczej, sięgając do leksyki należącej do różnych rejestrów (odmian) języka. W tekście przywołano ilustracje tekstowe z XV wieku i stuleci późniejszych. Artykuł zawiera uwagi związane z etymologią poszczególnych określeń; uwydatnia momenty zapożyczania poszczególnych form i znaczeń z języków obcych. // In this article the author discusses different names for ‘condom’ used in the Polish language. The analysis is carried out with the use of methods characteristic of the study of language history. The author presents the development of rich nomenclature synonymy providing the lexical examples from various registers (varieties) of language. The text presents textual ex-amples from the 15th century onwards. The author discusses the etymology of particular words and emphasizes the historical contexts in which words and meanings were borrowed from foreign languages.

SIMONO DAUKANTO PATARLIŲ ORTOGRAFIJOS LŪŽIS SANKT PETERBURGE (~1838–1841)

Author(s): Giedrius Subačius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 22/2020

Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864) moved to St Petersburg in 1835. Impermanence and competition of variants were typical for his orthography. During the four initial years in that city, Daukantas managed to shape at least two consecutive distinct Lithuanian orthographies of his own: (1) of the Beginning Years in St Petersburg (1835–1836) and (2) of his First Printed Books (ca. the 2nd half of 1836 to 1838). This study analyzes Daukantas’s third period of significant orthographic transformations during his residency in St Petersburg— a prolonged four-year phase of orthographic modifications that can be termed the Orthographic Switch of Proverbs (ca. 1838–1841), since the change was best reflected in the draft lists of proverbs. The major orthographic data was collected from Daukantas’s manuscript Margumynai (Miscellanea, p. 156–166, LLTIBR: f. 1 – SD 27) and printed book Abecieła Lîjtuwiû- Kalnienû ir Żiamajtiû Kałbos (The Primer of the Lithuanian Language—of Highlanders and of Lowlanders, St Petersburg, 1842).

BIRUTĖ KABAŠINSKAITĖ, XVI–XVIII AMŽIAUS LIETUVIŠKŲ KALVINISTŲ GIESMYNŲ KALBA: REDAGAVIMO ISTORIJA

Author(s): Dalia Jakulytė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 22/2020

Review of: Dalia Jakulyte - Birutė Kabašinskaitė, XVI–XVIII amžiaus lietuviškų kalvinistų giesmynų kalba: redagavimo istorija, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2019, 240 p. ISBN 978-609-07-0357-1

Gyvenimas, atiduotas tautosakai

Author(s): Leonardas Sauka / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 30/2005

The article contains a brief review of spheres of folkloristic activities by professor Kazys Grigas. His most outstanding achievements, however, belong to the field of paremiology: thanks to his own ceaseless attempts and under his guidance, over 200 000 proverbs and proverbial phrases were systematized, and publication of the fundamental edition of “Lithuanian Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases” launched (vol. 1, 2000). K. Grigas was the author of significant works in comparative paremiology, including books like “Lithuanian Proverbs” (1976) and “Parallels of Proverbs” (1987), and also numerous studies and problem articles. He published and examined other small forms of folklore as well, including riddles, onomatopoeias, tong-twisters, jokes, etc. K. Grigas also significantly contributed to the Lithuanian folklore historiography, conducting research into the 19th century, especially the works by S. Daukantas. K. Grigas was an active folklore collector, a devoted teacher of the young folklorists and researchers, editor of various folklore publications, etc. His merits in Lithuanian folklore research and popularization are truly magnificent.

The Monograph “Lithuanian Proverbs” by Kazys Grigas and Its Significance to the Paremiological Research

Author(s): Arvo Krikmann / Language(s): English Issue: 30/2005

The contribution of Kazys Grigas to Lithuanian folkloristics cannot be overestimated; his theoretical works and publications of source materials made K. Grigas one of the most famous and prolific paremiologists of the second half of the 20th century. His lifework is worth a whole monograph and I sincerely hope that someone from the younger generation of Lithuanian folklorists would eventually write it. My paper aims at discussing only some particular problems that emerge from the fundamental monograph by K. Grigas, “Lithuanian Proverbs” (in Lithuanian Lietuvių patarlės, 1976; in Russian Литовские пословицы, 1987), which has not been done justice so far, as it deserved. Due to the limited space at my disposal I will only be able to touch upon just a few of those problems. The main problem raised in the monograph by K. Grigas is the relationship between the national and the international not only in the Lithuanian proverbs, but also generally in proverbs. It is discussed on two levels: in the first part of the work, the genetic relations and borrowings based on three Lithuanian proverbs (‘Don’t drive God into the forest / into the tree’; ‘The calves drink mead (honey) elsewhere, where we are not’; ‘The forest has ears, the field has eyes’) are considered; and in the second part, the analysis of poetical forms and the dynamics of verse and prose in Lithuanian proverbs, and in those of other peoples, is carried out.

Names of Snakes in Latvian Texts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Author(s): Anta Trumpa / Language(s): English Issue: 44/2020

This article analyses the naming of snakes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Latvian texts which are taken from the Corpus of Early Written Latvian Texts, containing the first Latvian dictionaries, religious texts, and some secular texts. The objective of the paper is to try to determine how precisely the translators of religious texts rendered names of snakes, and to ascertain whether any semantic changes have taken place, or whether religious texts show specific use. The study also aims to find out if taboo of dangerous animals, snakes in particular, and related euphemisation is reflected in early Latvian texts. The paper focuses on four Latvian words: čūska, odze, zalktis, and tārps; two of them, odze and zalktis, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries until present time, have undergone significant semantic changes, probably because of euphemisation triggered by taboo. Comparison with the Lithuanian language allows to conclude that such usage, different from Modern Latvian, is neither specificity of old texts, nor incompetence of translators, but rather historical language facts. It is also established that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries animals as well as plants were not so strictly separated in peoples’ minds, the borders between their names were more fluid, therefore any of snakes’ names could be attributed to any snake species in Latvia.

Słowniki zapożyczeń świadectwem mocy języków (na przykładzie Słownika polonizmów w języku litewskim Rolandasa Kregždysa)

Author(s): Maciej Rak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 44/2020

Two publications by Rolandas Kregždys – Lietuvių kalbos polonizmų žodyno specifikacija / Charakterystyka słownika polonizmów w języku litewskim [Specification of the Dictionary of Polish Loanwords in Lithuanian] and Lietuvių kalbos polonizmų žodynas / Słownik polonizmów w języku litewskim [Dictionary of Polish Loanwords in Lithuanian], both published in Vilnius in 2016 in the series Studia Etymologica Baltica – enable a closer look at Polish-Lithuanian relations through the prism of lexis. As discussed in this article, there is a clear disparity in these relations. While the Lithuanian language adopted a lot of Polonisms (maybe even about 3,000), Lithuanian borrowings in the general Polish language are a resource of at most a dozen or so words. This can be explained by the power of the Polish language. Polish loans in Lithuanian are mostly old words (extracted from documents from the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries), including those originating from Western European languages. Thanks to them, the Polish language has enabled and strengthened cultural transmission, perpetuating the position of Lithuania in the sphere of Western (Latin) culture.

Z dziejów dialektologii litewskiej

Author(s): Zofia Sawaniewska-Mochowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 44/2020

Review of: Zofia Sawaniewska-Mochowa - Danguolė Mikulėnienė, Lietuvių tarmėtyra: genezė, raida ir paradigminiai lūžiai. I dalis: Ikitarmėtyrinis laikotarpis. Lietuvių tarmėtyros pradžia: tarmių skyrimas, tyrimų perspektyvų užuomazgos ir jų tipai [Lithuanian Dialectology: Genesis, Development and Paradigmatic Breakthroughs. Part 1: Predialect Period. The Beginning of Lithuanian Dialectology: Identification of Dialects, Research Perspectives and Their Types], Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2018, 319 pp.

Czasopismo „Acta Baltico-Slavica”: ponad pół wieku badań nad pograniczem bałtycko-słowiańskim

Author(s): Maksim Duszkin / Language(s): Polish Issue: 44/2020

In 2019, fifty-five years have passed since the publication of the first volume of Acta Baltico-Slavica. The article presents the history of the journal, including the most important changes in the editorial team, the concept and the content (volumes 1–43) which took place over the years.

Profesor Mirosław Skarżyński (1952–2019)

Author(s): Maciej Rak,Anna Czelakowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2019

Zenon Klemensiewicz a składnia dialektów polskich i słowiańskich

Author(s): Maciej Rak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2019

The paper discusses two issues: 1) Z. Klemensiewicz’s previously unknown research in the area of dialectal syntax, and 2) his dispute with J. Bauer, regarding the inclusion of syntax in Ogólnosłowiański atlas językowy (‘General Slavic linguistic atlas’). It has transpired that the collections of the Archive of Science of PAN and PAU in Cracow contain Klemensiewicz’s materials for Zarys składni polskich dialektów (‘An outline of the syntax of Polish dialects’), excerpted from K. Nitsch’s Wybór polskich tekstów gwarowych (‘A selection of Polish dialectal texts’), as well as the manuscript of the polemic with Bauer’s proposal. It seems probable that, by describing the syntax of Polish dialects, Klemensiewicz wanted to capture the characteristics of the syntax of spoken Polish.

Identyfikacja tematów na *-(j)ū w materiale polskim i słowiańskim

Author(s): Paweł Janczulewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 29/2020

The paper discusses the question of the substitution of the stem suffix *-ъv- for the suffix *-ъka, which converts words from the *-(j)ū- to the *-a-declension, as well as the problem of identification of original *-(j)ū-stems. An analysis of Polish and Slavic material leads to the conclusion that a part of nouns that are commonly regarded as *-(j)ū-stems have in fact a different origin: some can be derived from collective nouns in *-va (still productive in East Slavic), e.g. *kuropъtva, *plotva, *ǫtva, and a part have probably been extended with an unmotivated labial element -v- which has the appearance of a relic of a *-ū-stem, but appears most commonly after roots that end in a velar consonant or a spirant-stop sequence. The paper argues against the hypothesis about late (Proto-)Slavic activization of *-ū-stems and proposes instead that a part of this class had been eliminated at a prehistoric stage, depending on the quality of the stem consonant.

Dlaczego Bałtowie i Słowianie liczyli pokrewieństwo w kolanach, czyli o etymologii słow. kolěno ‘kolano; ród’ i lit. kẽlis ‘kolano; ród’

Author(s): Norbert Ostrowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 29/2020

OCS. kolěno ‘knee; tribe, generation’ (cf. Polish pokolenie ‘generation’) and Lith. kẽlis ‘knee; joint in a plant; tribe; degree of kinship’ come from old adjectives with possessive suffixes (-ěn- in Slavic and -ija- in Baltic). Their primary meaning was ‘a joint in the body’ (*‘a rotating part of the body’). Both were formed from nouns with the meaning ‘wheel’ (OCS. kolo, kolese ‘wheel’, Old Prussian kelan ‘wheel’, Latvian duceles ‘chaise’; IDE. *kwelh1- ‘to turn, to rotate’). The hypothesis proposed in this paper explains the semantic relationship between Slav. kolěno ‘knee; tribe, generation’ and Proto-Slav. *kel-nŭ- > *čelnŭ- > Slovenian člèn // Serbo-Croatian člȃn ‘joint; ankle, talus’. Assuming that the meaning ‘joint’ was the original one, OCS. kolěno ‘tribe, generation’ and Lith. kẽlis ‘degree in relationship; tribe’ can be interpreted as old terms of customary law in the field of succession. The counting of kinship by enumeration of body parts from the head to the middle fingernail has been preserved in Middle Low German customary law, so-called “Sachsenspiegel”. The hypothesis is supported by numerous parallels: Lith. sąnarys ‘a joint in the body; (OLith.) ‘generation’, Lith. stráipsnis ‘body part; (OLith.) generation’, OPr. streipstan ‘body part; generation’, Middle High German Gelied ‘body part; generation’, and Middle Low German lede ‘a joint in the body; body part; degree of kinship’.

Zur Frage der baltischen Eigennamen des Gebietes „Ragnit“ und „Tilsit“ in den Ordensdokumenten des 14.–15. Jahrhunderts

Author(s): Darius Ivoška / Language(s): German Issue: 83/2020

The article examines proper names in two selected areas of Prussian Lithuania, i.e. Ragainė and Tilžė. The primary aim and objective of the research was to examine personal names as well as place names (in case any would have been identified in the course of the research) with key focus exclusively on their possibly unknown mentions and etymology. However, in the course of the research, the aims and objectives had to be expanded by supplementing them with an attempt to answer questions related to the problems of Historical Onomastics in a broad sense, its research scope, main objectives, the selection of appropriate research sources and materials, etc.