Pietro U. Dini. „Baltų kalbos. Lyginamoji istorija“

254 | REVIEWS p. 32, 2 ap. In the Lithuanian part there are more errors — not only proofreading, e.g. : Aurelia (= Aurelija) p. 16, 10v., išn. 6; busimasis (= future) p. 25, 8 v.; lekti (= to run) p. 31, 8 v.; pusti, puté (= blow, blowed), žadžia (= plays) p. 31, 13 v.; baigiai (= finished) p. 34, 6 r. ; p. 34, exp. 27 works of Lithuanian accentologists are not included in the list of literature; mok+eé-- té-s and mok+é-mé-s (p. 35, 2,3 ap.) should be replaced; feciu (= dad) p. 58, 12 ap. ; biški (= a little bit) p. 92, 3 ap. ; it is not true that the form šokti does not exist in Lithuanian (p. 103, note 64); krenta (= falls) p. 115, 15 ap. (mother tongue falls —not the form of common language- ); MFTYTI (= METYTI) p. 117, 1 v.; (tevelis) (= father) p. 133, 13 ap. ; tetis (= tetis {tétis}) p. 134, 10,13 v. The here mentioned riktas „dissolve“ among the abundance of impeccably presented examples and eye-grabbing. The situation is worse with the Lithuanian summary — its language, style and punctuation require considerable editing. It is regrettable that many of the errors in the Lithuanian text are taken from the dissertation. This would indicate that the preparation of the monograph was accompanied by haste. Perhaps haste should also be interpreted as the dissertation that appeared in the text of the book instead of the monograph, e.g., “In this dissertation, I shall refer to problems of accentuation” (p. 34, note 27). Concluding this review, I would like to say that despite the shortcomings and errors, P. Węjcik’s monograph is a serious work, which has broadened the horizon of Lithuanian studies by studying children’s language. The reviewed book and articles would not have been possible without the efforts of many people: the audio recordings were made and transcribed by Ruth’s mother, Lithuanian scholar Aurelija Kaškelevičienė (this work was partly supported by the Austrian Academy of Sciences — a grant provided by Prof. W. U. Dressler; also the Open Lithuania Foundation, which purchased a computer, a tape recorder and cassettes), the data was encoded and analyzed, of course, by P. Wojcikas, advised and fully supported by the well-known psycholinguist Prof. M. Smoczynska, whose initiative also started research into Lithuanian children’s language; The writing and defence of the dissertation was supervised by Baltologist Prof. Axel Holvoet. The help of these and other people is beautifully highlighted in the book by the author himself (p. 7), but the main hero of the new branch of Lithuanian linguistics is he himself, a professionally prepared psycholinguist and Lithuanianist, who will undoubtedly continue to successfully pursue Lithuanian studies. Bonifacas Stundžia Received 2001 08 17 Department of Baltic Studies and General Linguistics Vilnius University Universiteto g. 5, 2734 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] PIETRO U. DINI, BALTIAN LANGUAGES. COMPARATIVE HISTORY. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijy leidybos institutas, 2000, 540 p. Pietro U. Dini's introduction to Baltic philology Le lingue baltiche has already received many positive reviews in the linguistic press. Translations into Lithuanian and Latvian speak not only about the fact that it fills a gap in Baltic literature, but also about the positive features of the book itself. The special editor of the book, Bonifacas Stundžia, has made considerable efforts to ensure that the Lithuanian edition takes over all these characteristics of the original. A little more surprising is the transcription [z'in'a] (instead of [zipa]) given to the Latvian word zina (p. 92). It should not be hidden from the reader that the phonetic systems of Lithuanian and Latvian are different; that in Latvian there is no assimilatory softening before the vowels of the anterior row and that the consonant marked with <n> is not a softened dental-alveolar, but a palatal consonant (i.e. palatal articulation is not secondary, but primary). Because there is no hard and soft REVIEWS | 255 gelo terminologiniy and factual inaccuracies that could easily jsivelti translation. There is no need to review the Lithuanian edition separately, since Giedrius Subačius has already reviewed the Italian original in this journal (39 vol., 1998, 253-257). However, the publication of the translation in Lithuania is an important and joyful event, and there are other reasons for commemorating it: the original will probably remain a bibliographical rarity in Lithuania, and the Lithuanian edition will undoubtedly occupy an honorable place next to the Italian one, especially since it (as it is written in the afterword of the Lithuanian edition) has been revised and substantially supplemented. Among the factors determining the value of the reviewed book, it should be emphasized that the author is equally linguist and philologist, and he feels as free in discussing the essence of de Saussure- ’s law as in describing the reasoning of Renaissance authors about the Baltic peoples and languages and their origins (“paleo-comparativeism” in the Baltic area is one of the author’s favorite fields of research). The balance of linguistic and philological aspects, especially emphasized in times of increasing specialization, makes Dinio book an exemplary introduction to Baltic studies. The book discusses the prehistory of the Baltic peoples, the main features of comparative Baltic linguistics, language contacts and area aspects, the development of Lithuanian and Latvian languages and its historical and cultural context, and describes the limited data that have survived to our times about Prussian and other dead Baltic languages and dialects. At the end we find examples of Baltic texts from different periods with commentaries and an extremely detailed bibliography. The layout of the material is somewhat uneven and asymmetrical, but this is determined by its nature: the development of Lithuanian and Latvian languages is reviewed from prehistory to modern times, therefore the data on these languages are scattered in several chapters; the author one after another reveals individual historical layers of language structure. The Prussian language, which has only a few short texts, was not possible to describe in the same way, so all the data about this language are collected in one chapter, which, by the way, gives a very good overview of the philological problems related to the reconstruction of this language. The content of the book is referred to in this review very incompletely; Without exaggeration, it can be said that there is no such field of Baltic studies that the author has not presented to the reader at least in general. The author’s diligence and broad scientific horizon are evident both from the extensive bibliography and from the content of the book. Dini's book is well written and carefully edited, and even a very stubborn reviewer would not find material for a long list of errors. The forms of various languages are usually cited flawlessly. The fact that Latvian examples are presented slightly worse than those of other languages corresponds to the average rate of publications in Baltic linguistics. Given the large number of diacritics used to write Latvian words, the statistical probability that all or at least most of the Latvian forms will be presented correctly in a non-Latvian linguistic publication can be considered to be zero. Therefore, such inaccuracies as vars instead of varš/varš (119 p.), pėrkuns instead of pėrkūns (119 p.), mūsinam instead of masinam saucamies (137 p.), kiselis instead of kiselis (181 p.), nakt priekš instead of nakt priekša (338 p.) are not surprising. It should be emphasized that there are very few such cases. 256 | RECENZIJOS The transliteration of the word šūt [š'u:t] (p. 83) is unmotivated and probably only reflects the transliteration of the Lithuanian equivalent sūti: in those languages where there is no correlation of softness, the squeaky consonants are usually alveolar-- palatal by nature. The Latvian word blaurs is also transcribed according to the Lithuanian pronunciation laws [bl’eurs] (p. 80). The author’s principle of giving Lithuanian forms with prepositions, and Latvian forms without them, seems to be questionable: the form „būt“, presented next to „liet. būti“, creates the impression that prepositions are reserved only for Lithuanian. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the Latvian forms with accent marks are very different from the usual appearance of the printed word, and this may be disturbing for the reader who is not skilled in scientific writing. The author presents the controversial problems of comparative Baltic linguistics in a concise manner, but with sufficient detail (taking into account the limitations of space), skillfully elaborating the essence of the question and everywhere with equal objectivity referring to the contradictory views of researchers. The most recent literature is taken into account, so the reader receives, without doubt, an up-to-date overview of Baltic studies. It is always regrettable that one more theory has not been referred to or that the view of one more researcher has not been taken into account, but it would be futile to search for such gaps or imperfections. We will mention only one other place where the author’s views, in our opinion, could mislead the reader a little. The book does not quite convincingly discuss the phenomena of palatalization (p. 83-84). By the way, in the bibliography we are missing Chekmon's article “O jotacii v praslavjanskom i baltijskix jazykax', Baltistica 11(1), 1975, 63-76, which clarifies the concepts of palatal correlation and softness. Quoting Kurytowicz, the author writes that “in the beginning different phonemes of soft consonants were formed, and later they were neutralized against the vowels of the front row; this neutralization led to *i’s disappearance.” In addition, the phrases of the palatalization are given in parallel, e.g. lie. sj > s' (to sew) and la. sj > š cases. For Kurytowiczius postulated the correlation of softness against the vowels of the rear row for the proto-Baltic language; it was neutralized before the vowels of the front row, where the insignificant hard consonants were generalized. This is evidenced by the disappearance of the j between the consonant and the frontal vowel in Proto-Baltic (see kėdė: kėdžių, verti: verčiu), which indicates functional identification of C'V and CjV and is the main argument for the existence of a softness correlation in Proto-Baltic. The consonant system of Lithuanian is still close to the proto-language system from a phonological point of view, although (probably due to the influence of Slavic languages) the hard consonants in the neutralization position (before the vowels of the front row) have been largely replaced by soft ones. The abundance of consonant changes caused by iotations (sj, zj > š, ž, pj bj > pl, bl) in Latvian reflects the decline of softness correlation: the correlation of palatalization based on external palatal articulation was replaced by various shifts in the place of articulation (e.g., dental-alveolar articulation changed to palatal, which in turn could change further, cf. the process k', g' > c, dz, probably mediated by some palatal consonants). Many researchers have been confused by the ambiguous meaning of the term ‘palatalization’. It is true that “the noun not coinciding with the instrumental (or rather: with the instrumental or with the final — A. H.) is used only sporadically in Latvian” (p. 319), but in the example quoted by the author from the ancient language Dewe beernes tapt “to become the children of God”, no doubt, not the instrumental (with the ending -is < *-ais) but the final is used, — this is shown by the corresponding place in the translations of Glik and Elger (feem dewe winfch Wallas Deewa Behrnus tapt Gliukas, JN 1,12; Bet cek to v3ieme, dewwe tems walliu Dewa beernus tapt Elgeris, Evangelii et Epistolae 6r25): the whole construction is erroneous, foreign to Latvian and originated by copying the Latin accusativus cum infinitivo (dedit eis 257 pp. (with a summary of the authors). The correct Latvian construction was difficult for the German authors, so the verb was chosen according to the German construction Gottes Kinder zu werden. Since the verb in such a combination was difficult to determine due to the homonymy of the verb forms, the grammatical interpretation was imposed by Latin. The erroneous assumption that the noun should be used in this construction stems from the mechanical application of Lithuanian grammar rules to Latvian. In fact, the Lithuanian noun is an innovation here (in general, it seems that the scope of use of the predicative noun in Lithuanian is considerably expanded compared to the Baltic protolanguage), while in Latvian the noun characteristic of Baltic and Slavic languages is retained for the subject of the infinitive sentence (expressed or unexpressed) and the noun case (cf. s. b. sl. Dastos im oblasts čedomv boZijemw [dat. pl.!] byti). In the construction of the modern Latvian language Dieva bērniem tapt form bērniem is a real noun, not a noun that coincides with the noun, because in the position of the noun servile of the infinitive sentence can be used not only the plural but also the singular noun (tapt Dieva bērnam), and the singular noun does not coincide with the noun. Probably by inadvertence, as an example of an iliative of the Old Latvian language, the construction exan helles 'in hell' is given, and as examples of a locative —tan tresschan Deenan the third day), cenan turret "keep in glory" (p. 320). The examples illustrating the influence of foreign languages and the social and cultural context on the vocabulary of Baltic languages are very well selected, the author could only be blamed for one more inaccuracy. For example, the Latvian word platizeris ‘pagyrunas’ (p. 360) cannot be understood without mentioning a specific source, the word pletizeris (plettiser, Plitteisen) ‘equalizer- ’, next to which the mocking form platizeris was formed by way of sound association (platities ‘praise’); It is hardly possible to speak here of the constructive element -izeris, which originated from the Middle German. Jam. iser ‘gelezis’. The emergence of Latvian adjectives such as sniegbalts “snow-white” (p. 370) was, of course, not encouraged by Russian (where this type does not exist at all), but by German (schneeweif, etc.), and not in the Soviet era, but much earlier, in the works of authors of the 19th century (Endzelyns tried to combat this phenomenon even before the war). The Latvian language has borrowed the Russian word pud twice, in different periods: the words lie. pud and est. puud as a “parallel loanword” would correspond chronologically to the older Latvian form puods, not the newer puds (p. 394). The translator has certainly done his hard work very well, and there are only a few places where there is room for criticism. For example, the use of the term “modality” in such sentences as “this modality [about indirect conditional — A. H.] is revealed by the use of the forms of the active participants...”, “the debtor is traditionally regarded as a modality” (pp. 331-332) is unsuccessful. It is possible to talk about the forms with modal function, but the term “modality” (modality, Modalitūt, uodanbkocme, etc.) encompasses the whole sphere of modal meanings, so it sounds unusual when used to denote specific forms. The English term evidential is used to describe the forms in which a speaker can or must indicate on what data or evidence he relies when saying something (e.g., whether he has seen or heard it himself, etc.); not quite appropriate seems to be the translation “obvious evidence” (p. 330), because such evidence could probably only denote what is evident (evident). The French phrase tout court does not mean ‘quite quickly’ (p. 250), but ‘just, in a word, without reservation’. It is always to be welcomed when a scientist, instead of limiting himself to original research, from which he can expect if not greater fame, at least greater intellectual satisfaction, devotes time and effort to writing a synthesis of his field of science: after all, it can always become the object of cheap criticism. Pietro 258 | REVIEWS U. Dini has undoubtedly put a lot of heart into his Baltic languages, thus giving the reader not only a dry inventory of facts, but a living and attractive book. Let us thank Piotr U. Dini for his excellent work and editor Bonifacas Stundžiai for his efforts to make it available to Lithuanian readers. Axel Holvoet Received 2001 08 24 Lithuanian Language Institute Antakalnio g. 6, 2055 Vilnius, Lithuania axel(dktl.mii.lt