Sveikiname Kazį Morkūną

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA LI (2004), 141-144 Dr. Kazys Morkūnas, an extremely hard-working and humble linguist, worked all his life and still works at the Institute of Lithuanian Language. Kazys Morkūnas was born on March 4, 1929 in Piliakalnis village, Ukmergė district. He finished four classes in Kulniškiai, then studied at the primary school in Gelvonai and at the Antanas Smetona gymnasium in Ukmergė, where he saw Zigmas Zinkevičius, who later (at the university) became the supervisor of his countryman’s diploma thesis on the native Gelvonai dialect. A strong attraction to the native language in the high school prompted him to choose the path of Lithuanian. In 1949-1954 he studied at Vilnius University, he listened to lectures of Juozas Balčikonis, Vincas Mykolaitis-- Putinas, Jurgis Lebedis, Juozas Senkauskas, Zigmas Zinkevičius, Jonas Kabelka, Kazis Ulvydas, Meilė Lukšienė and other famous Lithuanianists. After graduating from the university, Kazys Morkūnas started working at the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature. In 1958-1961 he studied in the postgraduate program of this institute, in 1962 he defended his dissertation "Rytų aukštaičių pietinė tarmė" (supervised by Juozas Balčikonis). Most of the work was published in separate articles — „Rytų aukštaičių pietinės tarmės fonetika“ (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 3, 1960, 5-59) and „Rytų aukštaičių pietinės tarmės morfologija: [noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun, verb)“ (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 11, 1969, 107—146). From 1966 to 2001 was Lithuanian language 142 | PERSONALIA and Head of the Department of Language History and Dialectology of the Institute of Literature. Tactful, patient, calm, caring, always ready to help — this is how colleagues describe him today. He never said a bad word to anyone. In 1990, K. Morkūnas became deputy director of the restored Lithuanian Language Institute. He patiently and carefully worked on this difficult administrative task until 2001, was the main organizer of many scientific conferences. From 1995 to 2001 he was the editor of Lithuanian Linguistics Issues, now he is a member of the editorial board of this continuing publication. While still studying at Vilnius University, K. Morkūnas, together with fellow students and younger colleagues, began to record the dialects of various Lithuanian localities. He travelled hundreds of kilometres on the country roads in search of people who spoke a beautiful dialect. Most of his time and energy was devoted to dialectology, especially to one of the greatest works of Lithuanian dialectology, on which he worked for several years, — the Lithuanian Language Atlas (1-3, Vilnius: Mokslas, 1977-1991). K. Morkūnas was not only one of the main collectors of material and authors of the publication, but also the director of this work. The atlas of the Lithuanian language systematizes and discusses lexical, morphological, phonetic and pronunciation data from more than 700 places. In total, the publication contains 376 maps (Lexicology — 120, Phonetics — 112, Morphology — 144). Today, no dialectologist can do without it. In 1994 the work of the editors of the Lithuanian language atlas was deservedly recognized with the Science Prize of the Republic of Lithuania. Another important scientific publication for Lithuanian dialectology, on which K. Morkūnas worked extensively and meticulously, is the chrestomaty Lithuanian language dialects (Vilnius: Mintis, 1970). It was the first comprehensive publication of a cognitive nature, which presented dialect texts recorded in the years 1950-1966, collected from almost six and a half hundred places of residence, from people of various ages. The introductory article provides a broad overview of the main lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactic features of Lithuanian dialects divided according to K. Jaunius and A. Salis classification. The new approach of a mature linguist to Lithuanian dialects is revealed in the “Programme for the Study of Lithuanian Dialects and their Interaction”: K. Morkūnas, together with Danguola Mikulėnienė, prepared the “Morphology” of this program in 1995, and was also the responsible editor of other parts (“Leksika”, “Kirčiavimas”, “Sociolingvistika”, Vilnius: Lithuanian Language Institute, 1995). In 1997, K. Morkūnas (together with D. Mikulėnienė) prepared a book of dialectal texts — „Dieveniškių šnektos tekstai“ (Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas). This book presents new knowledge about one of the most interesting dialects of the southeastern edge of the Lithuanian language area. For some time K. Morkūnas led the UNESCO-sponsored Atlas linguarum Europae Lithuanian language data collection and was a member of one of the commissions of its Chief Editorial Board. Together with the Latvian linguist Aina Blinkena, he wrote an article for the aforementioned publication “Baltic languages” (Die baltischen Sprachen. Perspectives nouvelles en géolinguistigue, Rome, 1997, 89-102). During the several decades of active work of the linguist, more valuable articles and reviews of scientific publications appeared in the press, not only for dialectology, but also for linguistics in general: “The Lithuanian dialect of the fishermen of Curonian Spit and the influence of Lithuanian language on these fishermen- ”. 1959, 131— 149), „Rare pronunciation forms of the Lithuanian language“ (with A. Kučinskaite, Lithuanian TSR MA works, A series 1 (16), 1964, 215-218), „Die Onomastik in Litauen“ (Acta Baltico-Slavica 7, 1970, 197-206), „On the concept of peripheral dialect“ (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 30, 1993, 4-7), „On the prefix and its boundaries“ (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 34, 1994, 84-92) and others. The data of dialectology and dialectologist knowledge the scientist devotes not only to science, but also to the general public. He wrote a booklet for the public, Pažintis su lietuvių kalbos tarmėmis (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1980), in which he popularly, without avoiding playfulness, tells about the origin of Lithuanian dialects, their distribution, characteristics, and draws readers’ attention to the significance of dialect data for science and language practice. Many popular articles written by K. Morkūnas about dialects, their research, well-known linguists, new publications and other topics have been published in the newspapers Gimtoji kalba, Gimtasis žodis, Gimtasis kraštas, and other periodicals and newspapers. From dialectology to the history of language — only one step. So we had time to take a look at the Lithuanian language history bars and do a lot of things there. The article “Remainds of nominative adjectives in the southern dialect of the eastern Highlands” (MA darbai 2 (7), 1959, 191-203) was published as a dissertation topic in 1959. Four years later, in 1963, K. Morkūnas published his first work dedicated specifically to the history of the language, “On the origin of the word atslaimas” (MA darbai 2 (15), 1963, 267-273). On the basis of extensive material from dialects and ancient writings, he reliably proved that the word atslaimas is not related to the verb skloti (as thought by P. Arumaa and E. Fraenkelis), but to the verb šlieti. Linguistic historians, especially those studying the morphology of the historical Lithuanian language, cannot do without his article “Iš rytų aukštaičių tarmių daugiskaitos inesyvo formų istorijos” (History of the inesyvo forms in the plural of eastern highland dialects), published in 1964 (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 7, 1964, 145—152). Among the ancient authors, K. Morkūnas has focused on the writings of the Easterner Konstantinas Sirvydas. In the article “Mixed diphthongs am, an, em, en and ą, ę in the writings of K. Širvydas” (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 9, 1967, 139-146), published in 1967, where, based on statistical data of eastern dialects and these diphthongs, he has insightfully observed, “that in the first part of the Points sentences, as well as in the first edition of the dictionary, these diphthongs are consistently present only in the proper and common names of other languages, the diphthong an in the conjunction idant and the diphthong en quite often in the root sanctified. In other editions of the dictionary, published after K. Širvydas- ’s death, and especially in Part II of „Punktų sakymai- “, there are more words and forms that have the aforementioned diphthongs and vowels in a discontinuous manner. This suggests that later publishers and editors from other parts of Lithuania contributed most to the emergence of these diphthongs and vowels” (p. 145). It is probably no exaggeration to say that this conclusion formulated by K. Morkūnas should be on the desk of all beginner researchers of the language of K. Sirvydas’ writings. The language of Konstantinas Sirvydas’ writings is also the subject of the linguist’s greatest work in the history of the Lithuanian language, published in 1980 in Lithuanian Linguistics Issues — Index of Verbs of Point Sayings („Konstantino Širvydo „Punktų sakymų“ žodis (Indeksas)“. Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 20, 1980, 109—222), where all forms of verbs are registered, and their “meaning (or meanings) is highlighted after the grammatical forms by a sentence or part of a sentence with one of those forms” (p. 110). 144 | PERSONALIA To the great Norwegian Baltist Chr. K. Morkūnas published an article “Kelios M. Daukšos raštų kalbos ypatybės” (Stockholm: Almgvist & Wiksell, 1970, 347-351) in the publication Donum Balticum, dedicated to Stangis. Language historians will also find subtle observations in K. Morkūno- ’s reviews of linguistic publications, which must be read, not just mentioned. The bibliographers also have nice words about K. Morkūnas — he had to contribute considerably to the preparation of many indexes of Lithuanian linguistic literature. These books are used not only by Lithuanian language researchers, Baltists and Indo-Europeanists, but also by anyone who is interested in linguistics and the cultural history of the Lithuanian nation. And now, every day, the linguist sits at a desk loaded with books and gets to work: he reads the proofreading of the Dieveniškiai dialect dictionary, prepares the commentaries of the fourth volume of the Lithuanian language atlas for the press, writes explanations of the Balbieriškio dialect texts, prepares and edits new articles on various Lithuanian dialects for the series of monographs published by the Versmės publishing house for the Lithuanian state… On the occasion of this beautiful anniversary of his life, on behalf of the whole Lithuanian community, we wish the hard-working man of linguistic science not to tire for long, because “he has a heart with endless spaces of our own imagination, which can accommodate all kinds of knowledge and sciences without number” (K. Sirvydas). Juozas Karaciejus and Asta Leskauskaitė