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J̇INA ŠVABARYTĖ-VALUŽIENĖ
Institute of the Lithuanian Language
Research areas: lexicography and lexicology of written sources and dialects, sociolinguistics.
THE INFLUENCE OF DIALECT ON THE LANGUAGE OF MARIUS KATILIŠKIS’ WRITINGS
The Influence of Dialect on the Language of Marius Katiliškis’ Works
ANNOTATION
The article presents the writer Marius Katiliškis’ linguistic views to the scholarly community. In discussing the lexicon of Katiliškis’ writings and models of dialectal speech, it advances the hypothesis that his texts are rendered in the dialect of the Western Aukštaitian Šiauliai subdialect, using a local variety and its phonological system. The use of dialectal and standardized vocabulary in Katiliškis’ writings reflects the period when the standard language was becoming established.
KEYWORDS: Western Aukštaitian Šiauliai subdialect, dialectal vocabulary, neologism, standard language, expression of dialectal speech.
ANNOTATION
The article revisits the linguistic views of the writer Marius Katiliškis for the attention of the scholarly community. An analysis of the lexis of Katiliškis’ works and dialect speech patterns leads to the hypothesis that Katiliškis’ texts are written in the local linguistic system, or dialect, of Western Aukštaitian Šiauliai. The use of dialect lexis alongside standardized lexis in Katiliškis’ works reflects the period in which the standard language was being established.
KEYWORDS: Šiauliai sub-dialect of the Western Aukštaitian, dialect lexis, neologism, standardised language, expression of dialect speech.
INTRODUCTION
Marius Katiliškis (his real name was Albinas Vaitkus; born 13 September 1914 in Gruzdžiai, Šiauliai District; died 17 December 1980, buried in Lemont, a suburb of Chicago
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) came of age and developed as a writer in northern Lithuania, in the vicinity of Žagarė. When Albinas was nine, his parents brought him to Katiliškiai village, or, as the writer himself put it, “out to the fields” (ER 38). He grew up surrounded by two linguistic systems: that of his mother, Ona Filipavičiūtė, who came from Rokiškis (the Utena subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian), and that of his father, Juozas Vaitkus, and the local residents, who spoke the Žagarė variety of the Šiauliai subdialect of Western Aukštaitian¹. Perhaps because he listened so closely to the stories told by people in the area—and to the very act of creating and speaking dialect texts—Katiliškis called himself not a writer, but a “storyteller.” Literary scholars assessed him as follows: “Katiliškis is a first-rate professional artist” (Kubilius 1995: 458).
Katiliškis’ writings reflect dialect speech (discourse) during the period when the standard language was gaining dominance and becoming established in society². This linguistic situation also determined the article’s aim: to discuss the dialectal (phonetic, morphological, and word-formation) features of the lexis in Katiliškis’ writings and compare examples with dialect material from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Linguistic expression from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is reflected in the manuscript Joniškis Dialect Dictionary (abbreviated JŠ), while that from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is found in the lexis of the collections of narrative folklore told by Matas Slančiauskas and his assistants. The dictionary is abbreviated SŽ. Several tasks are set to achieve this aim: a) recalling the writer’s own linguistic attitudes, b) analyzing the dialect lexis of his writings, and c) identifying patterns of expression in dialect speech.
The article is based on manuscript material from the Dictionary of Marius Katiliškis’ Writings (abbreviated KŽ), compiled by the article’s author. The KŽ lexis was collected from the novels Miškais ateina ruduo (1969), Užuovėja (1990), Išėjusiems negrįžti (1990), and the short-story collection Seno kareivio sugrįžimas (2003)³.
Descriptive, analytical, and comparative methods are used to examine the research material; linguistic hypotheses are proposed.
1 Apie Katiliškio mamos tarmes įtaką plačiau žr. Tumėnas 2003: 5–10, o apie Žagarės šnektą ir artimą Skaistgirio šnektą išsamiau žr.: Jšpt 16–17, Kairyte 2015: 150–173.
2 The article’s author believes that instruction in the standard language intensified as the number of schools increased throughout Lithuania around 1932–1936, and that standard-language use gradually displaced dialect speech in the 1940s and 1950s. This view is based on the author’s participation in summer expeditions since 1977; one of the topics discussed during these expeditions is questions about schools, teachers, and the learning process.
3 The novel Miškais ateina ruduo was reissued in 1991. The author does not address the influence of the editors of Katiliškis’ writings on the language or their editing principles, as she believes this topic warrants a separate article.
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MARIAUS KATILIŠKIS’S VIEWS ON LANGUAGE
In his autobiography, Katiliškis expressed his views on language. He wrote: “How did the richness of my vocabulary come about? I don’t know. My nature is probably to blame. Being damned untalented at foreign languages, I must not forget my own” (ER 391). There, too, we find another sentence: “I know only rare words, which Dr. Petras Jonikas and a few others may know” (ER 380). Having been thrust by historical cataclysms into a different cultural and linguistic environment, and seeing repatriates adapt to the living environment of the newcomers, Katiliškis complained more than once that readers did not understand the words he used in his novels. For this reason, “So many rare, wonderful words I have to set aside so that the esteemed reader will understand. Just as many more the editors and publishers crossed out, fearing they would lose readers” (ER 390). Whether Katiliškis would have taken note of such a desire to protect the reading public from his own distinctive mode of linguistic expression had it not been for emigration remains merely a rhetorical question.
Jūratė Sprindytė has noted one of Katiliškis’s traits—“he would carry a notepad for writing things down everywhere, and a pencil would always stick out of his jacket pocket.”4 Something similar is said about linguists. Thus, Katiliškis wrote down various technical terms and expressions, which is understandable, since the environment in which the writer lived and Juozas Balčikonis’s constant appeals to the nation to collect material for the great Lietuvių kalbos žodynui, I believe, also encouraged Katiliškis to seek vitality in linguistic expression.
DIALECT VOCABULARY
IN THE DICTIONARY OF MARIAUS KATILIŠKIS’S WRITINGS
In literary works, dialect words are usually used to describe characters and bring out local color. But these are generally sparse lexical items. Those who have read Katiliškis’s works have undoubtedly noticed the many words that differ from the standard language. The use of dialect vocabulary in Katiliškis’s writings is quite different from what is customary in contemporary literature.
Some traces of dialect in Katiliškis’s writings can be seen in the phonetic form of one or another word, but dialectal features are most often revealed through morphological word forms; ultimately, a word itself may be used only in a local setting. Among the phonetic features observed in Katiliškis’s writings is the insertion of the vowel a into a word stem, also attested in JŠŽ, e.g.: kazalekas ‘kazlekas’, cf.:
4 For more details, see www.šaltiniai.info/index//details/1264.
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kazalėkas5. Katiliškis consistently uses the dialectal form of the word šilima ‘warmth’, with the short vowel i instead of the standard-language vowel u. Its use is attested by examples from ŠŽ and JŠŽ, cf.: Šilima tokį kaip grinčio, – vidutinė. ŠLSP 271 (ŠŽ 561); šilimas nėr gž. (see Appendix 1).
Dialectal spelling is most clearly reflected in the morphological and derivational forms of words. In the area of the Šiauliai subdialect, nominal forms with different stems are used6. There are many such examples in KtŽ, cf.: kelūta and kelūtė ‘a narrow, little-used road’, kišenė and kišenius ‘a place in a garment or knitted item for putting one’s hands into’, paladė and paladys ‘the white downy thistle’, šelma and šelmis –ė ‘a rascal, scamp, mischief-maker’, šerkšna and šerkšnas ‘crystals of fog or vapor on trees; hoarfrost’. Nominals with different stems were also used in the narrative folklore texts recorded more than 160 years ago by Matas Slančiauskas and his assistants, cf. ŠŽ: bitė and bitis ‘a honey-carrying insect’, dysė and dysa ‘breathing, respiration’, gyventojis and gyventojas ‘inhabitant’. This linguistic phenomenon is also evident in the headwords of JŠŽ, cf.: akėtojas ‘harrower’, artojs ‘plowman’, bitis ‘bee’, alyva and alyvas ‘oil’, ámžis and ámžus ‘year’, árklas and árklė ‘an implement for plowing the soil’ (see Appendix 2).
In Katiliškis’s writings, derivatives with the suffix –utis are found as names for animal young, e.g.: šunūtis ‘a puppy’, žvirblutis ‘a young sparrow, sparrow chick’. Derivatives with this suffix are abundant not only in ŠŽ but also in JŠŽ, cf.: laputis ‘a little fox, fox cub’, varnutis ‘a young crow’, pėmputis ‘a young lapwing, lapwing chick’. Derivatives with the suffix –ininkas are less frequently found in Katiliškis’s writings, e.g.: butininkas ‘a person responsible for army quarters’7. Such suffixal derivatives are found in ŠŽ and JŠŽ, cf.: medininkas ‘forest guard, forester’, puodininkas ‘potter’, minčininkas –ė ‘from Minčiai’. In Katiliškis’s writings, the derivative with the suffix –inė ratinė is found, meaning ‘a shed for storing carts, sleds, and other things’. But, as the example suggests, vazūnė ‘a place for storing carts, sleds, farm implements, harnessed animals, and the like’, ratinė is used more often by Katiliškis than ratinė.
KtŽ reflects different dialectal word forms, showing that the writer understood the dialect system so well that he could himself vary word forms in his works, creating images that were fresh, vivid, and striking.
5 Because of the article’s limited length, Appendices 1–4 provide illustrative examples from all three sources: the publication The Vocabulary of the Narrative Folklore Collections of Matas Slančiauskas and His Assistants, the manuscript dictionary of Katiliškis’s writings, and the manuscript Dictionary of the Joniškis Subdialects. The examples found have been arranged in tables according to the dialectal features of phonetics, morphology, and word formation discussed in the article.
6 For more detail, see Lktch 64; Jšpt 35–37.
7 Cf. the transcribed texts in Jšpt 72–86, 97–105.
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Word searches were accompanied by the forms kvapnis and kvaptis ‘smell’, pakabus, -i and pakabūs, -i ‘convenient’; compare the use of pakabenis, -ė. The possibility of inserting consonants (usually n, s, t) into a word’s root or suffix is also attested in both ŠŽ and JŠŽ, cf.: lepniai ‘dressed up, showing off’, pranas and prastas ‘poor, scanty’, skraitas and skraistas ‘apron’, apynasris and apynastris ‘leather straps for bridling a horse’, atsvaitas ‘that which reflects rays’ (see Appendix 3).
In Katiliškis’s writings, compounds formed without a linking vowel predominate, cf.: vortinklis ‘spiderweb’, žemlužis, -ė ‘short in stature’. This compounding tradition is also confirmed by the headwords in ŠŽ, cf.: juodgalvis ‘cattail’, mergomėre ‘a girl who has a child’, vortinklis ‘spiderweb’. Compounds without linking vowels likewise predominate in the JŠŽ manuscript, cf.: žvyrėlis ‘gravel road’, greitgrūžnė ‘early pear’, taukarškė ‘curds mixed with bacon fat’. Katiliškis does not omit linking vowels -a- and -i- from compounds, especially when the resulting consonant clusters are difficult to pronounce, e.g.: rugiagėlė ‘a blue-flowered weed in winter cereals, a plant of the knapweed family’, rugiagėlė ‘cornflower’, voratinklis ‘1. a spider’s web; 2. figuratively, a difficult predicament or situation’, žalitorė ‘hedge’. ŠŽ also contains such compounds, though they are usually joined by the vowel -a- or -(i)a-, cf.: laukagalė ‘the far end of a field’, kiauranosės ‘poor grains separated from the chaff by winnowing’. The examples show that such difficult-to-pronounce compounds with the linking vowels -a-, -i-, -y- also occur in JŠŽ, cf.: arklėmėlis ‘horse manure’, antrakartis ‘turned for a second time’, avižanis ‘shepherd of sheep’, darbymetis ‘harvest time’. Katiliškis sometimes uses variants of the same compound with the short linking vowel -i-, characteristic of standard language, and the dialectal variant with the long vowel -y-, e.g.: šalimais and šalÿmais ‘beside, nearby’, aukštinelkas and aukštinelkas, -a ‘one who turns something upside down’, cf. aukštinėkas, used in JŠŽ. Similar compounds with linking vowels of different lengths, -i- and -y-, are also found in ŠŽ, cf.: šalikė and šalykė ‘a mouse’s nest’ (see Appendix 4).
In the novels and the collection of short stories, one can see how the writer uses dialectal lexical forms in some instances, while standard forms occur in others, e.g.: viensėdis ‘single homestead’, sodas ‘garden, little garden’. In Katiliškis’s writings, these are used much more often than vienkiemis ‘a homestead belonging to one family’ or sodas ‘a plot of land where fruit trees and shrubs grow’. In the Joniškis subdialects, instead of the word ‘village’, sodžius ‘1. village; 2. homestead’ was often used, and its inhabitant was called sodietis, -ė. These words are also consistently found in Katiliškis’s writings.
Katiliškis also uses neologisms and creative derivatives (coinages). Jolanta Vaskelienė has written about the formation and usage tendencies of such unusual formations. The linguist studied the short-story collection The Return of an Old Soldier and identified 26 unusual formations. According to Vaskelienė, “the formations obey word-formation rules, but are rarely used and are unlikely ever to
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taps aktyviosios leksikos dalimi“ (Vaskelienė 2007: 511). Tokios leksos, turinčios vaizdinę garsinę semą, gausu ir kituose Katiliškio romanuose, pvz.: parpinas ‘šonkulis’; žabūs ‘kieno ūsa tiesus, panašus į žabus’, žalonis ‘žaliavimas, žaluma’; žemkelis ‘tik žiemą įvažinėjamą kelias’.
There are words in Ktž that exactly match headwords in the lexical dictionary of Slančiauskas and his assistants’ collections of oral folklore; cf.: banka ‘bank’ (You can’t see his ears—he’s sunk into the bank. Už 58. Cf. ŠŽ 81); kanduolas ‘kernel’ (A grain like the kernel of a nut [very large]. Už 124. Cf. ŠŽ 270); kiaudienas ‘fellow, chap’ (What can such a fellow find, when there’s nowhere at all, where he can bite into a kisle. Už 220. Cf. ŠŽ 294); kriaučius ‘tailor’ (When nobody is waiting, I’m like a tailor at the gate—quick as a flash, and I show up. Už 212. Cf. ŠŽ 312); kvit ‘it’s all over’ (I don’t understand. And that’s that. IšN 530. Cf. ŠŽ 327); šeimynė ‘hired woman, servants’ room, cottage’ (What did he dream about on his first night in Doveko’s servants’ quarters? MAR 111. Cf. ŠŽ 557); šventininkas, -ė ‘festive, Sunday (clothes)’ (You can hang your Sunday clothes here. MAR 104. Cf. ŠŽ 578); žaliukas, -ė ‘a healthy, strong, sturdy person’ (Still a whole life ahead of you, the healthy young woman replied. MAR 102. Cf. ŠŽ 675). The fact that the vocabulary changed little over more than one hundred and sixty years could be explained only by the community’s members not moving away, living continuously on their parents’ and ancestors’ homesteads, and having developed high standards for their native language—the dialect.⁸ Thus Katiliškis had certainly listened closely to the local speech and rendered it in his own stories.
ASSESSMENT OF THE VOCABULARY IN KATILIŠKIS’S WRITINGS
In encyclopedic publications, Katiliškis is presented as an émigré writer. From the perspective of linguistic self-awareness, this claim is open to criticism. For émigré readers, after almost twenty years had passed and a new generation had grown up, Katiliškis was becoming difficult to read. This is also evidenced by Asta Veličkaitė’s diploma thesis (today it would be a bachelor’s thesis), completed at the Chicago Pedagogical Institute of Lithuanian Studies, A Dictionary of Marius Katiliškis’s Writings9. Veličkaitė recorded words from Katiliškis’s writings (around three hundred of them),
8 Plačiau žr.: Dobrowolski 2001: 374–385.
9 I am grateful to Associate Professor Dr. Stasys Tumėnas, who brought this work back to Lithuania and presented it to the article’s author.
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which are absent from the 1954 Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian10. The diploma thesis contains quite a few borrowed words that were understandably absent from the dictionary mentioned, the only one available to Lithuanians behind the Iron Curtain. The borrowed words are considered loanwords; moreover, the writer himself identified one reason why Katiliškis was difficult to read: the strong desire among Lithuanians to bring their language into line with English (ER 380).
Vytautas Almenas’s recollections vividly reflect the impression made by the vocabulary of Katiliškis’s writings in Lithuania and the response it elicited. At the end of 1969, after returning from exile, Almenis bought Katiliškis’s novel Autumn Comes Through the Woods at a bookshop in Joniškis. The whole family read the novel without putting it down beside the decorated Christmas tree. As Vytautas Almenas says, “Every word and sentence in M. Katiliškis’s novel ‘Autumn Comes Through the Woods’ is like a key to unlock an old chest, inside which you know you will find something extraordinary, unseen, and mysterious” (Almenas 2015: 106). His recollections express a very important sentiment—shame about dialect speech; cf.: “And yet I know the words of my region, and I even began writing a little Palatvys Lithuanian (‘skertlivių’) glossary: ‘sunelis and lygiai (together),’ ‘wheat mitas and corn atie (with corn),’ ‘the shop is kietai (closed),’ ‘ar (but).’ I use them only on my own, though, and I was ashamed, like some poor boy who, standing in a crowd of friends, sees a tinker coming, his father with his coat’s elbows worn through” (Almenas 2015: 106). Who instilled that shame? Where did it come from? These are questions for future research.
One recalls the attention attracted by the 2013 translation of Pedro Lenz’s novel Here I Am, a Dodger into the Šiauliai dialect (translated by Markus Roduner and Rimantas Kmita). According to Rimantas Kmita, “the pressure of the standard language is felt in Lithuania,” whereas in Switzerland a literary trend in dialect has taken shape. Thus we return to the natural language in which Katiliškis also wrote.
The lexical examples presented and the two differing assessments of the vocabulary in Katiliškis’s writings undoubtedly support the view that Katiliškis wrote in the dialectal variety of a local vernacular. The language was not used to individualize characters, as is usually done in literary texts. Katiliškis’s writings reflect an early, little-studied period of the standard language, when normative vocabulary and standard words had not yet displaced dialect vocabulary. One can only speculate: if Katiliškis had not had to emigrate, might we too have developed a literary movement in dialect, and a group of writers working in it?12.
10 Veličkaitė collected vocabulary from the following works: Užuǒveja. Chicago: Terra, 1952; Miškais ateina ruduo. Chicago: Terra, 1957; Išėjusiems negrįžti. Chicago: Terra, 1958; Šventadienis už miesto. Chicago: Terra, 1963.
12 While the article was being written, Rimantas Kmita’s novel Pietinia kronikas, written in the Šiauliai dialect, appeared in 2016.
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DIALECTAL SPEECH PATTERNS IN THE WRITINGS OF MARIUS KATILIŠKIS
Having discussed dialectal lexis, it is also necessary to examine the syntactic contexts of words. For Katiliškis’s sentence, as a means of realizing thought, is an adaptation of all levels of language, enabling dialectal speech (narration) to be understood by readers (Aliūkaitė 2008). The syntactic expression of narration in Katiliškis’s writings has not been studied. This is the first attempt to discuss and identify dialectal speech patterns and represent them structurally. Only sentence structures that are uncharacteristic were selected, showing that this is Katiliškis’s way of writing; that is, what matters is what distinguishes Katiliškis from other writers and makes it possible to recognize him as a writer. Whether these patterns are also reflected in dialectal texts from the Joniškis speech varieties was compared against discourse examples from the publication Joniškio šnektų pratimai ir tekstai and individual illustrative sentences from ŠŽ. One such pattern is the fragmentation of a sentence’s thought, the sequential explanation of a phenomenon. This way of expressing thoughts, described in works on Lithuanian syntax, is the most common in discourse. Usually, the part of the sentence that needs to be supplemented or explained (or can be supplemented or explained) is presented first.
Katiliškis also uses the reverse pattern, in which items are listed first and then summarized, e.g.: The fences, the hillsides, the deathly white birches—all fitted so well there among the valleys, the birch branches just bursting into leaf, adorned with buds and arranged along the walls. Už 45; Augalatas, upright, a general in a uniform sewn with fine braid, with an angular chin and a snub nose, greeted our lecturer and interpreter. IŠN 324; Along lanes, field and meadow paths, cart tracks and roads, the neighbors made their way. Už 78. This kind of detailed narration is very characteristic of discourse: in the publication Joniškio
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the speech-variety exercise and text, in the recorded narrative “Ganymas,” gives a detailed account of what and how she had to herd (Įpt 72–7413.
Katiliškis is very fond of dividing a sentence into semantic segments, sometimes asking and answering questions, sometimes narrating in simple sentences whose totality conveys a particular human state or behavior.
What about her?
She got herself involved with such a good-for-nothing.
A tithe collector, who had taken refuge with the steward MAR 299.
We often perceive a text broken into shorter segments (consisting of one or several sentence parts) as a norm for expressing a thought only when we assemble several of them into a whole, cf.: He won’t mend his harrow. He hasn’t earned it. Už 153; A village man has his own way of doing things. A poor one, unkempt, that’s true. He expresses his thoughts poorly, too. Už 228; To gnaw at the orchard. To bring ruin upon people. Me, on them. Už 226; And what are they like!.. Striped, dark brown. SKS 24; The child is the spitting image. Of the mother. And the father. Už 114. Katiliškis’s novels and collection of novellas abound in verbal evaluations. According to Aloyzas Gudavičius, it is important for the speaker not only to describe and name realities, but also to evaluate them emotionally (Gudavičius 2000: 136; Hanke 195: 93). Sentence segmentation also has the character of an afterthought, cf.: I don’t understand. And so on. IšN 530. I blubber with tears, but I sow, and that’s that. MAR 18. The afterthought, usually expressed by i(r) ‘and’, is also observed in the already mentioned texts “Ganymas” and “Naginės”; it occurs especially often in illustrative sentences for secondary words in Slenčiauskas’s dictionary (Įpt 75, 102; SŽ 2014: 44, 51, 67 et al.).
Characteristic of Katiliškis, a disseminator of ideas of a monistic world-view, is the use of vivid imagery and comparisons with certain natural phenomena14. Comparisons are traditionally expressed with comparative words such as “like,” “as if,” and “as,” e.g.: “You blow and blow barefoot”
¹³ Because of the article’s length, examples from dialectal texts are not provided; only the pages containing sentences that exemplify the described dialectal pattern are indicated.
¹⁴ For more on the contours of the monistic world-view in Marius Katiliškis’s prose, see Tūltė 2015: 66–79.
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with legs through wet grass, like a snowball, like a little patch of winter wandering amid the dense green of summer. SKS 168; The foxtail grass, bristling and ragged, like lingering frost, sifted yellow chaff. SKS 136; The well’s crossbeam, like a heron’s neck, stood out sharply against the greenish sky, among stars like those on an American flag. SKS 232. The narratives in the Joniškis dialect exercises and texts, “Ganymas” and “Paparčio žiedas ir žiniuoniai,” likewise use the words kai and kaip for comparison (see Įst 72, 83, 84).
There are instances in which a comparison is separated from the sentence. In such cases, the full thought is apprehended only through the expression of two sentences.
This kind of separation of a comparison is particularly characteristic of Katiliškis, for example: Already at harvest time his lower lip began to twitch. As if someone had jabbed him between the ribs with an awl—dry and hot, it stabbed him in the side. Už 59; I was asleep, and asleep I stayed. Like a badger in its den. MAR 198.
Katiliškis’s narration is based on simple, both expanded and unexpanded, sentences, which predominate in the discourse. Complex sentences are much less frequent; among these, subordinate clauses are used most often, cf.: When, after inhaling, he stuck a hazelnut into his sparse teeth, plucked the bristly, stiff hairs, and, with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets, stared at the workers, he looked devilishly like the miller from Suginčiai. SKS 14; When his mother was not in the house, Elija would spend a good hour beside her machine, either picking at the comb or winding off a spool like a real rascal. Už 175; While the ploughman was still turning the soil with the wooden plough and harrowing it with a wooden harrow, he did not notice that the sun had already passed its turning point. MAR 147; You cannot excuse yourself by saying you do not know how to sow it with him and generally avoid the company of such a damned contraption, which lets the fire out at both ends. ĮšN 343.
Subordinate clauses are also used more often in the dialect texts presented in the publication Joniškio šnektų pratimai ir tekstai. For instance, in the tale “Kraupi istorija,” the thoughts are expressed most often through subordinate object clauses and, less often, through subject clauses and clauses of cause and place (see Įst 79–82).
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Saulius Keturakis, who studied the novel Miškais eina ruduo as a media system, observes that “When the spoken word becomes silence for the novel’s protagonists, a kind of communicative nonexistence, the written word, conversely, promises a dialogue with another, a desired reality. [...] The characters in the novel seem to have the opportunity to remain in ‘the good old days’” (Keturakis 2010: 187). The writer’s models of dialect speech adopt the established and unchanging self-expression of the primitive language of the heroes in Katiliškis’s writings.
Summary
As can be inferred from Katiliškis’s own autobiography, he knew the Žagarė dialect of the Šiauliai subdialect of Western Aukštaitian exceptionally well. He wrote down many lexical items from that dialect (individual words and their forms), as well as various expressions and word combinations, while listening to local people’s stories. Katiliškis’s inclination to collect linguistic facts was cultivated by an evaluative attitude toward speech: everything told naturally is beautiful. It was therefore thought that words were needed to evoke natural dialectal storytelling. Katiliškis also sought to reveal forgotten words which, having crossed the threshold of the nineteenth century, were still in use at the beginning of the twentieth. Katiliškis called himself a storyteller for good reason; one might say that he conveyed dialectal storytelling, listening closely both to individual words and to their place in the sentence, and understanding the structural features of natural (innate) narration.
The abundant dialectal vocabulary in Katiliškis’s writings is by no means an artistic device intended to distinguish or otherwise characterize the characters in his novels. The variety of dialect vocabulary also shows that every dialect speaker can create words needed only by them, incorporating them into their lexicon with all their nuances of meaning. Katiliškis acts just as freely: a word, whether used or coined, is expressive and noticeable to the reader as unfamiliar, emotional, and, finally, interesting in its sound and semantic meaning.
In Katiliškis’s writings, the narrative unfolds either in expanded simple sentences or with thoughts broken into short sentence segments. The writer seems intent on making the reader pause and emphasizing each word, word combination, or phrase. Such a fragmented sentence often also conveys emotion.
Thus, it can be said that Katiliškis’s writings are texts written in a local dialect during the period when the standard language was becoming established in society. This linguistic variant was disparaged; therefore, Katiliškis’s writings will be a foundation for dialectologists and historians of language, especially those studying the tendencies behind the establishment of the written variant of the standard language.
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APPENDIX 1. Examples of phonetic changes in dialectal vocabulary.
KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
You can’t drive even a frog or a little cart into the hub. Uz 88. Or, say, [you’re] driving through the forest in autumn. Then you choose sleighs or little carts. Uz 85.
there is also a little meadow. tīreli.* Šmk.
A golden warmth in the cottage. SKS 107.
Warmth like that of a hut—that is, indoors. ŠLP 271 [SŽ 56]
ši.limas ṅė.r. Gž.
APPENDIX 2. Examples of morphological features of dialectal vocabulary.
KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
Along paths and roads through the edges of fields and meadows, the neighbors made their way in carts. Uz 78; Only a handful of them ran across the meadows at dusk. Uz 95.
The bee made a bargain with the eagle. ŠLP 49; On the tenth day the bees flew in. ŠLP 181 [SŽ 103]
I am a weaver / a sower Gž.
The godfather’s face was pitted with smallpox scars and his beard was bristly, while the godmother had a shawl wrapped around her knees. SKS 40; When he had lit up and clenched in his teeth a sparse, curled pipe, decorated with beads and tassels, and, with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, stared at the workers, he looked devilishly like the Suginčiai miller. SKS 14.
Well, he kept puffing, kept puffing—he was a man who was as unkempt as could be. ŠLSA 121; he would go along, catching his breath. ŠLP 378 [SŽ 173].
nešikūbin da. biti.s kōrū. akūt. See
The ferns, the slopes, the fragrant heathers—all fit so well there among armfuls of birch twigs that had just burst into leaf, decorated and set along the walls. Už 45; The little paths are already curling beneath soft, lush grass, and among the broad leaves the violets and ferns are blooming vigorously. SKS 130.
The resident saw to it that his children got an education. ŠLSA 297; One resident of Pusiancija [...] I said. ŠLSA 336 [SŽ 219]).
I stuffed it with hay. Dmk.; we wouldn’t use that hay. Gtč.
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KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
You heard, you rascal, he also lures away his young, beautiful woman. MAR 409; When his mother was not in the house, Elija would spend a good hour beside her sewing machine, either chewing scraps or removing the spool like a real rascal. Už 175.
Age is already upon a person; inš.; he is no longer of that age. Brn.
During that hour of suffering, a frost of grayness spread through his brown forelock, and his lower lip gradually drooped to his chin when he heard that not a single German was to try to escape west together with the Lithuanians. IšN 530; The catkins of the aspens, rumputi, like lingering frost, sifted yellow dust. SKS 136.
Those wooden ploughs had to be made by oneself. Lnk.; the spring wagon Lnǩ.
APPENDIX 3. Examples of derivatives of dialect vocabulary.
KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
She calved, and nursed that puppy, at least until it was weaned. Už 111.
That fox cub, having carried it off, will put the little bundle there for him. ŠLP 74 [SŽ 33]
I’d run or something like that, similar to a little nest. Vdg.
Won’t they give us any? – reach across the table like a cat snatching a sparrow from its nest, one of them is. Behind 153.
But when not a single young raven was left, the mother, late again with food, was seized by the young master himself by the scruff of the neck. ŠLP 39 [SŽ 64].
a little bear and a branch. Įnš.
We already prefer to retreat to the barns picked out by the farmhands, where we can gather up straw from the farmers. IšN 315.
Now that carpenter has listened in—he’ll understand what those two little dogs of his were saying. ŠLP 303 [SŽ 364].
we three minė.čininkai á.sam. Įnš.
That woodpecker had perched on that potter. ŠLP 268 [SŽ 64].
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KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
The stirred-up dust and dry clay’s smell stung the nostrils and made one sneeze. SKS 183; Having rubbed [the tinder] in his palm and smelled it, the amassed mass tore at the nostrils and stuck to the fingers, a mass of evaporated and accumulated sap. MAR 365.
But there are many such people who live in luxury or have built themselves in and let the randininkai into the best places. ŠLSA 296 [SŽ 34].
of shiny bicycle parts, there isn’t | you know | any. _ reflections. See.
Your [Agnes] mother looks out the window and is already reaching for some more handy object. MAR 253; She looked around for some more handy object within reach. Behind 90.
He had a wife and children and a shabby little mare. ŠLSP 55; the auntie then loved the old man very much and exchanged the little goat for a poor one. ŠLSP 123 [SŽ 45].
čopū̄čę [for a horse] at the harness. Dr; laika ji [the horse] at the harness. Sp.
She hurriedly gathered them into her cloak and carried them home. ŠLSA 174; He had laid his head in her cloak, while she was searching. ŠLSP 294 [SŽ 51].
4 APPENDIX. Examples of dialectal lexical compounds.
KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
The ends of the cords hanging from the crossbeams, around the cobwebs, were left up high, out of reach. Už 34.
There are many places overgrown with nothing but marshy thickets—reeds, blackheads, horsetails, yellow irises, and so on. ŠLSA 273 [SŽ 253].
he raised the … so that … gravel road. Šmk.
“I don’t smoke either,” said the earth-buried man, his face horribly battered and his ear mangled. IšN 492–493.
Thus the steward imagines himself a king, thinking there is a doctor in the town of Mergoteriai who knows everything. ŠLSP 251 [SŽ 370].
put in the curds / some kind of cottage cheese. Jkš.
The lokajos will come with their kinvarpais and cobwebs—the gentleman has only just begun to speak, while the doctor has already ended up who knows where. ŠLP 407 [SŽ 669].
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KtŽ
SŽ
JšŽ
The stars of the cornflowers glimmered in the brush of whitening stems. MAR 303.
Walking home by the fields—there, you’ve built yourself such a tall one too. ŠLSA 173 [SŽ 335].
ploughs. manure. nicely ripened,(s). Al.
She stands all blue, like a cornflower. SKS 26.
And for the holes given out at the widows’ threshing, the farmers fill their sacks from the barn in exchange for that grain. ŠLSA 291 [SŽ 295].
we hire a family. for (the) laborers. Jnn.
Dew swayed in the cobwebs. MAR 87; Astonishingly quickly, it [her mood] was erased, as if an irritating spiderweb had stuck to it, trailing across her eyes and irritating her. MAR 87.
The grass in places dried up and no longer cut through the stubble. SKS 101.
I used to be very young. Sk.
The pastures, with their broad helmets, and everywhere the fauna flits about among the bushes. IŠN 299–300. A young orchard with helmets. SKS 232.
And as they went, evening came, and there before them was a great forest, and there was nowhere, not a single inhabitant or any shelter to be seen in the surrounding area. ŠLSA 107. Then, it seems, three ladies walk and walk around the hill along the little road. ŠLSP 155 [SŽ 552].
He lay on his back and did not move; even his joints had gone numb. Už 71; He had barely managed to turn properly on the grass when he was already lying on his back, and Zuzana sat astride his belly, holding his front legs. MAR 145.
something fell from above at night. Žr.
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ABBREVIATIONS OF PLACE NAMES
Al. – Alsiai.
Brn. – Barūnai.
Dmk. – Dameliai.
Dnr. – Daunorava.
Gšč. – Gaščūnai.
Gtč. – Gataučiai.
Gžč. – Gažaičiai.
Jkš. – Jakiškiai.
Jn. – Jauniūnai.
Jnš. – Joniškis.
Kpl. – Kepaliai.
Lnkč. – Linkaičiai.
Sk. – Skaistgiris.
Stnl. – Staneliai.
Stp. – Stupurai.
Šmk. – Šimčiai.
Vdg. – Vidginai.
Žr. – Žiūriai.
LITERATŪRA
Aliūkaitė Daiva 2008: Tarminio kalbėjimo suprantamumas: apriorinės eilinių bendruomenės narių nuostatos. – Lietuvių kalba 2. Prieiga internete: http://www.lietuviukalba.lt/index.php/lietuviu-kalba/article/view/4 (žiūrėta 2017 04 10).
Almanis Vytautas 2015: Tolstančios salos. – Metai 10, 99–117.
ER – Egzodo rašytojai, par. A. T. Antanaitis, A. Mickienė. Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 1994.
Dobrovolski Kazimierz 2001: Chłopska kultura tradycyjna. – Antropologia kultury. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 374–384.
Gudavičius Aloyzas 2009: Etnolingvistika. Šiauliai: Šiaulių universiteto leidykla.
Jšpt – Joniškio šnektų pratimai ir tekstai, ats. red. Janina Švambarytė. Šiauliai: K. J. Vasiliausko įmonė, 2001 (arba CD Joniškio šnektų pratimai ir tekstai. Šiauliai: Dicsens, 2005).
JšŽ – Joniškio šnektų žodynas (rankraštis).
Handke Kwiryna 1995: Polski język familijny. Warszawa: Slawistyczny ośrodek wydawniczy (SOW) przy Instytucie slawistyki PAN.
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Kaikarytė Aušra 2015: Skaigirio šnekos ypatybės. – Kalbos istorijos ir dialektologijos problemos 3. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 150–173.
Keturakis Saulius 2010: Literatūra kaip medijų sistema arba kas yra medija Mariui Katiliškiui? – Logos 64. Vilnius: Mykolo Romerio universitetas, 179–189.
Kmita Rimantas 2014: Rimantas Kmita: kalbos vatarus. Prieiga internete: http://www.kulturpolis.lt/didikuota-klaipeda/rimantas-kmita-kalbos-vatarus/ (žiūrėta 2016 10 02).
Kubilius Vytautas 1995: XX amžiaus literatūra. Vilnius: Alma littera.
Ltch – Lietuvių kalbos tarmių chrestomatija, mokslinė red. Laima Grumadienė, sud. Rima Bacevičiūtė, Audra Ivanauskienė, Asta Leskauskaitė, Edmundas Trumpa, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos instituto leidykla, 2004.
Macienė Jurgita 2005: Deminutyvų stilistika. Šiauliai: VšĮ Šiaulių universiteto leidykla.
ŠŽ – Švambarytė-Valužienė Janina 2015: Mato Slančiausko ir jo pagalbininkų pasakojamosios tautosakos rinkinių leksika. Žodynas. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.
Tumėnas Stasys 2003: Dar vienas M. Katiliškio sugrįžimas. – Seno kareivio sugrįžimas. Šiauliai: Šiaurės Lietuva, 5–10.
Tūtlytė Rita 2015: Mariaus Katiliškio proza: meniniai monistinės pasaulėvokos kontūrai. – Colloquia 34. Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 60–79.
Vaskelienė Jolanta 2007: Žodynų nefixuoti dariniai ir funkcijos Mariaus Katiliškio novelių rinkinyje „Seno kareivio sugrįžimas“. – VALODA 2007. Valoda dažādu kultūru kontekstā, Zinātnisko rakstu krājums XVII. Daugavpils universitātes akadēmiskais apgāds “Saule”, 505–512.
Influence of Dialect on the Language of Marius Katiliškis’ Works
SUMMARY
The article describes linguistic views of writer Marius Katiliškis (real name is Albinas Vaitkus, born on 15 September 1914 in Gruzdžiai, Šiauliai district; died on 17 December 1980 in Lemont, a suburb of Chicago), who comes from Northern Lithuania, Žagarė district, discusses the lexis of Šiauliai sub-dialect of the Western Aukštaitian used in Katiliškis’ works and dialect speech patterns that the writer is known for.
The article is compiled with reference to the material of the manuscript of the Glossary of Marius Katiliškis’ Works (abbreviated as KtŽ), compiled by the author of the article. KtŽ lexis is compiled from the novels Miškais ateina ruduo (1969), Užuovėja (1990), Išėjusiems negrįžti (1990) and a collection of short stories Seno kareivio sugrįžimas (2003). Katiliškis had a good command of Žagarė speech: he had heard quite a few stories told in it, collected and noted individual words, their forms and language expressions.
Dialect lexis abundant in Katiliškis’ writings indicates that the writer acted as a dialect user, i.e., created words, formed collocations not included into any dictionaries, used various nuances of word meaning. Words used or created by Katiliškis are affective, noticed by the reader as new, emotional, finally interesting in the way of phonic and semantic meaning.
In Katiliškis’ writings the story is relayed by using simple and extended sentences or thoughts that are divided into short sentence components. It seems that the writer wishes to halt the reader for a moment and to emphasise every colocation or phrase. Usually, this kind of fragmented sentence also conceals an emotion expression.
Katiliškis’ writings, as indicated in the article, are written in local dialect, i.e., dialect language used in 20th century. Up till this day, the development of standard language requires a more in-depth study by linguists focused on various areas of research, and Katiliškis’ writings are texts on which such an investigation should be grounded.
