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The paper deals with Lithuanian idioms containing lexical borrowings. Idioms in which Lithuanian words replace borrowings give rise to doublets. To maintain the stability of idioms, borrowings should not be replaced with Lithuanian words.
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The paper discusses definitions of the concept native language and different national concepts of the notion concerned with one’s mother tongue as well as its ambiguity arising in different research areas. The paper also includes some responses and reflections on a native language provided by Russian language speakers of Lithuania; the data has been extracted from the survey recently conducted in Lithuania. These reflections could be treated as naïve definitions of the above notion. Further in the paper, the key factors determining the respondents’ definitions of the native language are given. The spreading binary character of the categoryis also taken into consideration: more frequently, alongside one native language (of an early, pre-school period of life), there emerges another language (other than the one spoken at home, language of instruction), which is closely related to human cognition. The latter language becomes an individual’s second native language. The results of the survey have shown that the opposition between ‘own’ and ‘other’ language often characteristic of a homogenous monolingual society in the understanding of Russian speakers of Lithuania is replaced by two equally important ‘own’ halves.
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Social and economic changes exert influence on the language of children and adults as well as its development. A deteriorating language urges to seek reasons and raise new questions: when and how children should start learning a foreign language, which factors should be taken into consideration to achieve better results, and what impact a foreign language has on one’s native tongue. Most apprehensions on early foreign language teaching/learning are concerned with itsnegative influence on one’s mother tongue. In Lithuania there has been hardly any research done; research conducted in other countries has not confirmed any of the apprehensions. The negative impact on one’s native language can only be discussed in reference to the language loss and deterioration noticed in the language of immigrant groups who have lived in a foreign country for a longer time. On the other hand, there are numerous advantages of the early language teaching/learning: acquisition of values, development of tolerance and culture, acquisition of general skills concerned with cognition and thinking, memory and attention. The research has shown that foreign language learners tend to acquire more linguistic competences than those who only know their native language. It is important that the advantage is also seen in the better results of the native language learning, for example, in the usage of complex sentences or better reading skills. Moreover, a positive effect in the opposite direction has also been noticed when one’s mother tongue helps develop foreign language competences, since there appears a possibility to compare two different language systems.Studies of foreign researchers help find answers to all questions raised in the paper, because in Lithuania there is an obvious gap in the research on early language acquisition. Specialists of Vytautas Magnus University together with their colleagues from Croatia and Italy are currently working on a project aimed at filling in the gap and possibly providing answers to the key questions in the area.
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Jonas Jablonskis is remembered as a cherisher of Standard Lithuanian and creator of our prescriptive grammar yet he also deserves credit as a public figure and fighter for the Lithuanian ideals and rights of the Lithuanian language. His resolution to foster and protect the Lithuanian language meant that he had to oppose the disastrous intents of the Russian administration, particularly as regards the ban of the Lithuanian press, and also the pervasive influence of polonization among the landowners, the clergy and ordinary people. As a student, at the University of Moscow J. Jablonskis joined a circle of patriotically minded Lithuanianstudents who aspired to awaken the Lithuanian national ideals and after his studies he never gave up this path but rather propagated the Lithuanian identity in his pedagogical and research writing. In the articles published in the liberal Russian press, he tried to prove that the Russian alphabet was inadequate for the transcription of the Lithuanian sounds by this demonstrating both his philological education and good orientation in the socio-political reality of Lithuania. He was also publishing texts in the illegally published Lithuanian press, e. g. the magazine Varpas, contributing to its distribution, keeping contacts with so-called book-smugglers, or illegal distributors of the written Lithuanian word, taking part in secret meetings etc.More than once J. Jablonskis fell victim to the discriminating tsarist regulations and repressions: after graduation for several years he could not get a teacher’s job in Lithuania, he was constantly persecuted by the police after his family had become the centre of the Lithuanian community in Mintauja, and finally he was transfered to Tallinn (Estonia) to keep him away from Lithuania and sever his ties with the country. In 1900, his home in Tallinn was searched by the police, some “evidence” was found and charges were brought. As a consequence, he had to leave his teaching job while the case was taken up by the prosecutors in St. Petersburg. Despite the attempts of his Russian colleagues and academicians, namely, F. Korsh, F. Fortunatov, A. Shachmatov, V. Lamanski, to stop the proceedings and acquit Jablonskis, the linguist was sentenced to deportation for two years. Luckily, in 1903 he was granted a permission to move from Pskov in Russia to Šiauliai (Lithuania).In the aftermath of the persistant and long opposition of Lithuanians, which had been supported by the educated Russian people, and revolutionary movements in the tsarist empire, the ruling Russian administration decided to lift the ban on the Lithuanian press on 7 May 1904. Undoubtedly, the work and fight of J. Jablonskis had also contributed to this. The press became legal yet the Russian censorship remained since Lithuania was still a part of the Russian empire. J. Jablonskis was particularly concerned about the status of Lithuanian in schools and,more generally, in public life. In his endeavours to strengthen the status of the language, he faced two major threats: the reviving polonization and the continued Russian unwillingness to accept the independence of Lithuania.
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The 150th anniversary of Jonas Jablonskis encourages to revisit some of his works and review them from a lexicographer’s perspective. The article discusses Jablonskis’ lexicographic heritage: editorship of dictionaries, collection of authentic language samples and lexicographic reviews.His work in lexicography is primarily related to the editing of the Lithuanian-Polish dictionary by Antanas Juška. This work inspired him to start the compilation of his own dictionary. Jablonskis was constantly collecting words and samples of authentic language, both spoken and written, and he prepared material for 14,000 headwords of the future dictionary. Although its publication never became a reality during Jablonskis’ lifetime, the compilation of this material and Jablonskis’ contacts with K. Būga did contribute to the future dictionary of Lithuanian.Jablonskis collected much interesting data and even proposed many new Lithuanian words. Later editors of the dictionary used Jablonskis’ material for suitable examples.J. Jablonskis closely followed the publication of Lithuanian dictionaries and reviewed them. In a review of Mykolas Miežinis’ dictionary, he outlined the principles of a general dictionary. He always gave preference to empirical data: examples of authentic language and data from published dictionaries. Although Jablonskis did not manage to compile a dictionary himself, his work did contribute to the Lithuanian lexicography.
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The article presents the changing perception of language prescribers and users, or authoritative personalities and target audiences, and their role in the development of Standard Lithuanian. One of the changes involves a shift from an authoritative personality (Jonas Jablonskis) to an institutionalized state authority or, currently, an anti-authority. The criticism of authorities and the traditional standardization process as well as different attempts to apply liberal unrestrictive norms could be accounted for by a natural development of post-modern ideas and shifts in the post-soviet Lithuanian society. The beginning of the 21st century, however, marks the end of the post-modern consumer society and brings out new artictic and philosophical cultures and directions whose appearance has been mainly stimulated by globalization and new technologies, the Internet among them. One of the most distinctive interpretations of the postmodern transformation is the concept of the digital modernism. It proposes a structural view of cultural changes in the modern society. The author of the article relies on the ideas of the modern British culturologist Alan Kirby to distinguish peculiarities of the digital modernism. These peculiarities may contribute to a better understanding of social processes and, consequently, ease the current tension between languageprescribers and the society at large.
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The surnames of residents of the village of Barzdžiai were collected from the church records of the 17th century of Salantai Church. The following primary surnames have been established: nine male surnames include Alekstutis, Balandis, Blozeris, Gložis, Kadys, Kiaulianis, Milašius, Srutis, Vilkas; two surnames have no gender flections, namely, Benik and Lazar; three surnames are Slavonicized, namely, Kavalski, Stefanovič, Urbanovič. Six female surnames with the suffix -ienė include the following: Kidrečienė, Lekstutienė, Milašienė, Stropienė, Vilkienė, Zabitienė. Another six female surnames are Slavonicized forms, namely, Eidukova, Kiaulianova, Laiviova etc. Patronymic names with the suffixes -aitis and -aitė constitute the largest group of names in the church records – more than 40 such names were found. The total number of different primary surnames, reconstructed from female and patronymic surnames, exceed 50 items.The surnames of the village residents had completely changed before the beginning of the 20th century. None of the primary surnames of the 17th century was preserved while many of the male patronyms disappeared from use both in Barzdžiai and elsewhere. The newly inherited surnames originate from patronymic first names, e. g. Jonaitis, Petraitis etc.
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The article decribes a study of language use skills as they are reflected in test scores of a language test, formal assessment records and state examination scores of first-year medical students. The data has been used to establish whether linguistic competence of the students correlates with changes in the teaching process at school which have been caused by the recent development of the state examination of Lithuanian.The process of language teaching in Lithuania is prescribed by the General Curricula for primary, basic, or lower secondary, and secondary education. The provisions of the General Curricula provide a basis for school textbook writing in all disciplines, Lithuanian included. The last decade has witnessed a major reform in the teaching of proper language use. As a consequence, language use has disappeared from the curriculum as a separate discipline and is currently integrated in the topics of morphology, syntax and other aspects of language.Furthermore, the final assessment of written tasks has been developed to include a criterion of grammatical and lexical accuracy. As regards the state examination of Lithuanian, the weight of language accuracy assessment in the examination paper has been constantly increasing while the number of isolated language use tasks has been decreasing till such tasks have completely been abandoned.The data of the study reveals that the average final assessment of medical students at school was between 7,99 and 8,85. The average state examination score is 75,86–85,71 points. These high marks suggest that their language use skills should also be good. In the period from 2003 till 2010, a test of language use was administered to the subjects. The test scores show that the best results were achieved in 2004 while the worst in 2009. The analysis of test scores andfinal assessment revealed two distinct groups of students in terms of success in the language use test: subjects who finished secondary education in 2003–2006 were consistently better in the language use test than those who finished school in 2002 and 2007–2009. The observed decrease in the test scores coincides with the elimination of certain language use tasks from the state examination of Lithuanian in 2007. Moreover, none of the subjects who finished secondary education in 2008 and 2009 managed to do all the test items correctly or only err in a single test item.The study suggests that language use skills of the first-year students are weaker than in the previous years. One of the reasons might be related to the absence of language use as a separate discipline in the school curriculum and its inadequate integration in the teaching of other aspects of language. Besides, the state examination paper does not include a task specifically focused on language use while the weight of this aspect is too low in the final assessment of writing.
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The article presents data from the study Baltic sociolinguistics (BALSOC): language awareness and orientation in Lithuania and Latvia which was carried out to investigate views of TV and radio journalists on public language use and language policy, including self-assessment of linguistic competence and, more specifically, the impact of the field and addressees on the way the journalists speak. The analysis of the data shows that the majority of typical TV and radio journalists deliberately and owing to various reasons violate the norms of standard languageand switch to the nonstandard language use. This practice is related to the fact that the use of nonstandard but stylistically expressive elements allows the speakers to expand their repertoire of lexical expression. Hence, violating the norm has become a way of enriching one’s speech. The whole process can be seen as an intellectual and challenging interplay between the journalist, or show presenter, and the addressee rather than a simple transfer of the private register to a public context; it helps to create a more expressive background of the currentmedia, contributes to an informal atmosphere of certain shows, reveals the participants’ characters and is a time-saving strategy.The choice of nonstandard forms of expression is usually governed by the type of show and its addressees as well as by the professional maturity of the journalists: presenters of shows for the younger audiences resort to informal register more often than hosts of analytical programs targeted at more mature viewers.
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Contemporary society is based on youth cult. We want to be young, modern and efficient. One of the ways to look modern and young is to speak youth language. Youth language differs from adult language. One of the differences arises from the inclusion of English words, or to be more precise, the use of certain English words, like nice, sorry, fuck etc. As evidenced by the results of a few surveys, adolescents are fully aware of typical features of youth language and they use such language only when speaking with other adolescents. But how will they reactwhen they hear an adult use in his/her speech certain English words that clearly belong to youth language? Moreover, will adolescents tolerate the use of such English words in public, for instance, on TV?The article presents an experiment known as The Matched Guise Technique, which was carried out in a secondary school in Vilnius. 55 pupils were asked to listen to recorded speech of five women and then describe the speakers. All the women indicated their age, so the respondents were aware of the speakers’ age. What pupils did not know was that one woman talked twice: the first time she talked plain Lithuanian (the Lithuanian guise), the other time she used threeEnglish words, namely, OK, sorry and nice (the English guise). The aim of the experiment was to investigate the pupils’ evaluation of the woman in the two different guises. The pupils were also asked to indicate the best and worst speakers and evaluate how the women would function as TV hostesses.The results of the experiment showed that only a minority of the respondents reacted negatively to the use of English words in the adult speech. They described the speech of the woman in the English guise as contrived and unnatural and noted that the language she used did not become a 40-year-old woman.However, the majority of the adolescents reacted positively to the use of youth English in the adult speech. The pupils described the women in the English guise as modern, efficient and young. They also hypothesized that such adults had many foreign friends and spent much time at the computer. The adolescents’ attitudes to English words in the adult speech show that they relate the use of such language to the modern lifestyle which resembles the young people’s lifestyle. Interestingly enough, the woman in the Lithuanian guise was described as a lovelyand self-assured mother who represented the traditional life style.As regards the question about which of the speakers they liked most, similar numbers of the pupils chose the woman in the English and in the Lithuanian guises. But when asked about the best TV hostess, the pupils gave preference to the woman in the Lithuanian guise reasoning that the use of English is not appropriate in public contexts. Obviously, the official Lithuanian language policy has an impact on the adolescents’ language attitudes.
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The paper investigates the tendencies of the non-use of pronominal forms (hereinafter – PFs) as morphological markers of terms. Based on the two types of data sources, namely, (a) full and coherent texts, i.e. research articles on economics, and (b) de-contextualised data, i.e. dictionaries of economics and glossaries of terms and concepts provided in different legislative acts, the research aims to determine both the recurrent patterns of the non-marking of a term with a pronominal form and the factors influencing the attested actual use and its divergence from the codified norm, which prescribes the obligatory marking of a term with a pronominal morphological marker.A special attention is given not only to the use of PFs but also to the codified norm itself. The latter is discussed in a wider context: the paper deals with the use of PFs in accordance with other norms allowing different meanings, the classification of those meanings and the overall evaluation of PFs in scientific discourse. The results show that the norm is not consistent: the insistence on the obligatory marking of a term is based on the potential property of a PF to mark the type of an object; however, the marking of a type as being absolute is not prescribed by the norm. This feature is considered to be a very common function of PFs in both empirical and prescriptive studies; however, a few exceptions can be made. The classification of the meanings of PFs provided in the literature presupposes even more exceptions as the marking of types of objects is considered as one of the subcategories of definiteness. The meaning of definiteness (definiteness marking) is discussed in the light of possible exceptions, such as the substitution of PFs with short forms in the cases when an adjective carries a specific lexical and figurative meaning and is used in the superlative degree, etc. Thus, it could be concluded that such exceptions should be applicable to one of the subcategories of definiteness – the marking of types of objects. In general, the opposition between pronominal and short forms in empirical and prescriptive studies is treated as a continuum allowing in-between cases.Undoubtedly, the prescription of the use of PFs as term markers may follow a different argumentation path; however, neither the latter nor the relation between the marking of a term or object type and marking of types of objects or expression of definiteness is revealed. So, adding a term-forming morpheme leads to sticking to patterns typical of the marking of types of objects or the general rules of PF use.The results obtained confirm the fact that the actual use of PFs corresponds with the mentioned patterns in particular, taking into account different exceptions of the non-use of PFs, i.e. their non-occurrence with adjectives that have a specific lexical meaning or are used in the superlative degree and with words used figuratively. What is more, the findings contribute to the elaboration of the list of exceptions, namely, the non-use of PFs with international words and some participles. The analysis also reveals the importance of context, which is a crucial factor in PF use that has been often overlooked in prescriptive studies.The attested tendencies of PF use are in line with the findings presented in different papers in which not only various exceptions of the use of PFs but also the criterion of their use as term markers are outlined. This criterion is not straightforwardly defined; however, the analysis of the norm postulates reveals that it could be considered to be the term and non-term opposition, i.e. a PF is a marker that distinguishes word combinations used as terms from the ones featuring as non-terms. In a scientific text it is not only a PF that is a marker of a word as a term; there are other indications such as the high frequency of the same word combination, its concept, provided definitions, etc. Given there are such markers, the use of PFs as term markers in a scientific text becomes superfluous.If a PF obviously performs a distinguishing function, i.e. gives a different meaning to a word combination, it is used regularly in scientific texts as well as dictionaries of terms. However, the use of PFs trying to fully comply with the norm of their general use and their use as term markers results in inconsistencies. There may even be exceptions for each individual case. Thus, the principle of systematic organisation, which is of paramount importance in the use of terms, is flawed.Such a situation sets some tasks for codification. First, the criterion of the use of PFs as terms markers should be defined more clearly; second, the relation between the marking of terms and marking of types of objects should be defined more properly. Moreover, the present analysis may also pose a more conceptual question – one is to decide whether a PF should be further considered to be an obligatory marker of a term or whether some major exceptions regarding the general use of PFs and their use as definiteness markers should be allowed. A conclusion could be made that, if one chooses the first option, the use of PFs as term markers would become more systematic. If the second option is chosen, the use of PFs would continue to be inconsistent and, as has been attested in empirical studies, this would lead to the weakening of the function of PFs and their gradual disappearance in the use of term marking. Furthermore, the analysis shows that, adopting further language standardisation solutions, the factor of context should be taken into account. The similarities and differences of the use of PFs in academic, administrative and everyday discourse still need further investigation.
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The article deals with the history of the concept of standard Lithuanian. The objective of the article–to show when the society, or at least a part of it, began to realize it had a standard language, how it understood that language and how the concept has changed.Until the end of the XVIIIth-the beginning of the XIXth century there was no version of Lithuanian, which would be understood by the community or a part of it as common language. At the end of the XVIIIth-the beginning of the XIXth century Samogitian authors started thinking about standard language. Giedrius Subačius reconstructed concept of the standard language, created or intended-to-create by the Samogitians: “standard language will be common, uniform public language of Lithuanian nationˮ (1998: 20-21). At this stage, several models of standard language were created, but none of them has grown into the standard language.Interest in the standard language issue has become more intensive in the second half of the XIXth century. There were a lot of discussions on language standardization in the egodocuments and in the press of that time.“[M]any scholars maintain that any standard language is primarily a written codeˮ, wrote Subačius (2001: 127). Lithuanian standard language was not an exception: for some standard language modelers (Antanas Baranauskas, Kazimieras Jaunius, Jonas Basanavičius) in the second half of the XIXth century and even later seemed only necessary to standardize written language, which would code features of different dialects. They didn’t want to standardize pronunciation and spoken language. The publishers of illegal Lithuanian press, primarily of Aušra (1883-1886), decided to chose the dialect of Western Highlanders of Lithuania Major and East Prussia as the base for their standard language model. Soon an educated part of the community started to realize that the dialectal basis for the standard language has been chosen, and identified themselves as having standard language. Almost at the same time they started thinking about spoken standard and it was oriented to the written standard. Therefore the last decades of the XIXth century could be characterized as a critical period, when the standard language was perceived not as forthcoming, but as already existing, used or attempted to use.During this period requirement of purity of standard language began to be raised, which meant that community, even without language codification work, have already ceased to tolerate non-Lithuanian features of language.During analysed period there was also thought about the area of standard language usage. The standard language was started to be understood not only as a language of all Lithuanian-speaking territories (Lithuania Major and East Prussia), but also as a language of Lithuanians living in other countries. In addition, a perception that standard language was to be used not only in press and in personal communication but also in other fields (church, cemetaries) started to take a shape.In the last decades of the XIXth century a need to codify the standard language appeared. Codification function was performed by Jonas Jablonskis’ Lithuanian grammar issued in 1901. This collection of codes seemed authoritative for the community, worth to rely on.After 1904’s cancellation of ban of the press in Latin alphabet, standard language became legal language of the press, and after Lithuania became an independent state it became national language (embedded in the Constitution of the State of Lithuania in 1922), used in administrative and educational institutions, so its functions began to expand rapidly.In 1927 Pranas Skardžius described standard language as a language of whole nation (“in order people of the nation could communicate to each other more easily and quicklyˮ; “a language that can be understood by all people of the landˮ), national common language (standard language “has become common over the whole land, the entire stateˮ).
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This article analyses the essays written by 238 graduates who were studying at Vilnius County schools teaching in minority languages and in the Lithuanian language.Three types of syntax mistakes, such as the use of declensions, prepositives and postpositives, as well as wrong sentence structures, have been found in the essays of the state school-leaving Lithuanian Language and Literature Examination 2014 taken at Vilnius County minorities and Lithuanian schools. The data analysis shows that nonnative speakers make by one-third more mistakes than native speakers.The group of major mistakes includes non-use of double declensions. This type of mistakes were mostly found in the native speaking graduates’ papers and its reason could be that it is a more commonly used way of expression.Students of both types of schools use a locative case in a wrong way: essays of minority graduates contain more mistakes of a locative case with a time reference, while the graduates of Lithuanian schools make more internal locative case mistakes, e.g. vardan (for the sake of). Non-native speakers largely exceed native speakers by the wrong use of an accusative case instead of a negation genitive in their essays.The second group of syntax errors is a wrong sentence structure. A prevailing mistake of this type is the incorrect use of adverbial participles. These mistakes are made by the graduates from both minority and Lithuanian schools. The nature of the mistakes and their proportion show that the reason may be the same – misunderstanding of an adverbial participle meaning and its use when expressing a secondary action of the same agent in personal sentences where an adverbial participle or a gerund should be used.Unlike native speakers, most likely due to the impact of the Russian language, nonnative speaking graduates’ essays largely contain the construction kad with an infinite (so that) to express a purpose.The third type of mistakes specific to all essays is the incorrect use of prepositives and postpositives. As a result of the impact of the Russian language, a major part of the mistakes found in the essays of minority students is the incorrect use of the constructions with the prepositives pas (at) and į (to). Lithuanian school graduates mistakenly use postpositives dėka (thanks to) and pagalba (with the help of).The results show that the expressions translated from the Russian language have been found in the essays of both native and non-native speaking graduates. It is apparently impacted by the language used in the family and the people around, as well as media where written and spoken texts contain mistakes typical to the ones found in the essays.
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The topic of this study is language ideologies in minority language journals. It analyses the language ideologies expressed in four journals of three minorities: speakers of Csángó, Meänkieli and Kven. I am mainly interested in what language ideologies are reflected in the relation of minorities to their own language, the majority language, bi- and multilingualism; what they think about the importance of language standardization and about the relationship between language and identity. The journals researched are the Moldvai Magyarság, written in Hungarian and Romanian; the Ruijan Kaiku, written in Finnish, Kven and Norwegian; the Met, which publishes articles in Meänkieli and Swedish, as well as Meänmaa, publishing in Meänkieli. Th e text corpus shows the following ideologies: the ideology of inferiority, of pluralism or liberalism and the ideology which considers language the basis of identity. A difference can be made among the journals as the ideologies the texts represent are concerned. In the case of the Csángó journal, for example, the emphasis is laid on the unity with the Hungarian language standard; at the same time, in the Meänkieli and the Kven journals this kind of ideology is totally absent, as Meänkieli and Kven speakers do not identify with the Finnish language standard.
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