Dialektologė iš pašaukimo

names of organizations, changed or deleted outdated dates. Such illustrative examples became psychologically more compelling. Compared with the earlier “Advice on Official Correspondence,” it is also new that a computer version of the “Advice” was prepared alongside the book. In these times of computerization, this gives even those who have fallen out of the habit of consulting “literature” the opportunity to check one language fact or another in the way familiar to them. Of course, it is difficult to expect that “Advice on Official Correspondence” can solve all the existing problems in the language of administrative documents. Official correspondence is only one variety of the standard language, and the requirements, laws, and rules of the standard language apply to it. If an office employee has not learned Lithuanian well and does not sense its system, learning to use one or another bureaucratic expression will not fundamentally improve the situation. But this is no longer solely the concern of language experts. Nor is it solely their concern that, as Lithuania “harmonizes” with the European Union, a flood of primitive foreignisms and literal translations should not once again pour into official correspondence from conventions, agreements, and other documents translated word for word. Unfortunately, symptoms of this disease are already evident. This attests to the value of the “Advice on Official Correspondence” volume discussed above and shows that there is no end in sight to this work (or to the possibility of improving it further). Gediminas Samulionis A DIALECTOLOGIST BY CALLING On September 29, 1999, after a long illness, the eminent researcher of Lithuanian dialects and doctor of humanities Elena Grinaveckienė died. She was born on June 10, 1928, in Jurbarkas, into the Šuopiai family. She spent her childhood in the beautiful valley of the Imsrė, where her parents had a small farm. After graduating from Jurbarkas Gymnasium in 1947, she enrolled in the Faculty of History and Philology at Vilnius University, where she studied the Lithuanian language. There she became fascinated with dialectology—and for life. First, she began studying the dialect of her native region. She also described the Jurbarkas dialect in her diploma thesis. After graduating from university in 1952, Elena Grinaveckienė worked briefly as a journalist. That same year, she enrolled in the postgraduate program at the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature and immediately immersed herself in the study of dialects. Gathering material for her dissertation, “The Dialect of the Mituva River Basin,” she walked throughout the Jurbarkas district and acquired excellent skills in collecting dialect data. She defended her dissertation, a comprehensive description of a large area of the Western Aukštaitian dialect, in 1958. After completing her postgraduate studies, Elena Grinaveckienė began working in the Department of Language History and Dialectology at the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature. The systematic study of all Lithuanian dialects had begun as early as 1950, in preparation for the publication of the “Atlas of the Lithuanian Language.” Grinaveckienė joined this work immediately—dialectology became her calling. Having started work as a junior research associate, 222 She rose to the position of department head. Later, because of circumstances beyond her control, the title of her position changed several times, but she paid no attention to this and continued diligently with the work she loved: collecting, processing, and publishing dialect data. Grinaveckienė contributed to the preparation or editing of all the department’s most important collective works. In 1963, “The Names of Lithuanian Rivers and Lakes,” edited by her and Juozas Senkus, was published. In 1970, the chrestomathy “Lithuanian Dialects” appeared; this dialectologist contributed a large portion of it and edited the volume. Collecting and organizing dialect facts for the “Atlas of the Lithuanian Language,” a task that lasted about 20 years, was Grinaveckienė’s principal work. She was one of the authors and editors of the three volumes of this work, published in 1977 (Lexicon), 1982 (Phonetics), and 1991 (Morphology), and a recipient of the Republican Science Prize (1994). Grinaveckienė published about 90 scholarly articles. Many of them appeared in the Institute’s periodical “Questions of Lithuanian Linguistics” (LKK). The first three volumes (1957, 1959, 1960) included some chapters of her dissertation. Valuable dissertation material was also published later (e.g., LKK vol. XV, 1974: “The Verb in the Dialects of the Mituva River Basin”). Material collected during expeditions was periodically discussed in her articles. Grinaveckienė’s dialectological work soon expanded beyond Lithuania’s borders. She devoted herself to studying Lithuanian dialects in Belarus. There she became acquainted with staff of the Belarusian Institute of Linguistics and joined their expeditions, which studied Belarusian dialects and place names in Belarusian areas along the Lithuanian border. She identified the Lithuanian origin of a number of place names and common words used in Belarusian. She collected many Lithuanian dialect texts from the Breslauja and Rodūnia districts and published several articles. Having gained recognition, she was invited to serve as editor of the major works “Belarusian Microtoponymy” and “A Dictionary of the Belarusian Dialects of Northwestern Belarus and Its Borderlands.” They would call her from Minsk, and she would hurry to the railway station—the neighbors needed her help and advice. Grinaveckienė also studied Lithuanian dialects in Latvia, in the vicinity of Daugavpils and Krāslava, and published articles on their features (e.g., “Some Grammatical Features of the Lithuanian Dialect of Daugavpils,” LKK vol. XXIII, 1983). She had learned Latvian and enjoyed communicating with Latvian linguists, welcoming and looking after those who came to scientific conferences held in Lithuania. Though she devoted most of her energy to dialectology, Grinaveckienė was also keenly interested in other areas of Lithuanian linguistics, especially language culture. She published numerous articles in “Language Culture,” issued by the Institute, in the Language Section’s publication “Our Language,” and in the periodical press. More recently, her short articles could regularly be read in “Lietuvos aidas.” While still at university, Juozas Balčikonis had enlisted Grinaveckienė to collect material for the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language.” She excelled at this work. She knew how to draw people into conversation so that they would open up and forgotten vocabulary would come alive again. That was exactly what word collectors needed. From every expedition or trip, she brought back to the Dictionary a substantial bundle of slips bearing carefully recorded, interesting sentences. Grinaveckienė submitted about 30,000 such slips. 223 One could compile a large dictionary volume from the words she alone collected. Many of the words she recorded made it into the published volumes of the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language.” Many more will be used in the Dictionary’s supplements. She collected words throughout Lithuania, from all the parishes where Lithuanian was spoken. But, of course, most of them came from Jurbarkas, where she spent her holidays and where many people knew and respected her. The Dictionary will sorely miss such a word collector… It is hardly surprising that a gifted and industrious person contributed so much to Lithuanian linguistics. But can one imagine that Grinaveckienė accomplished most of her work while already suffering from an incurable illness? Every step she took was unbearably painful. Bearing her suffering, she walked on and on across Lithuania, to the Lithuanians… until the Jurbarkas cemetery, visible from her childhood home, took her in. Jonas Paulauskas JĀNIS ENDZELĪNS IN THE MEMORIES OF HIS STUDENTS AND COLLEAGUES Jānis Endzelīns atminās, pārdomās, vēstulēs. Comp. Dzidra Barbare, Brigita Bušmane. Ed. board: B. Bušmane, A. Stafecka, V. Skujina (chair), M. Stengrevica. Riga, 1999: Institute of the Latvian Language, 323 p. The Institute of the Latvian Language has published an engaging book of memoirs about Jānis Endzelīns, the most eminent researcher of the Latvian language, whom Lithuanian linguists, as this book also notes, have called the giant of the Latvians. The book presents memoirs by nearly forty authors. The oldest among them is Mērija Saulė-Sleinė, born at the end of the previous century, who met J. Endzelīns in her youth and spent the last years of his life with him; the youngest is Valentina Skujina, who is also the chair of the book’s editorial board and who, with a student delegation, congratulated the linguist on his 85th birthday and carried one of his orders in the funeral procession. It can be said that in all the memoirs J. Endzelīns emerges as an extraordinary person. Everyone was deeply impressed by his legendary punctuality, the rich lectures he delivered without any notes, his rigorous examinations, his intolerance of any linguistic errors (even the slightest Sovietisms), and his refusal to defer to any authority. We find a particularly great deal of interesting information not only about J. Endzelīns’s personality but also about the whole of Latvia’s cultural life, especially the university and its professors, in the memoirs of Kārlis Draviņš, his wife Velta Rūķe-Draviņa, and Rūdolfs Grabīs (the latter had already been published in part in a book devoted to R. Grabīs, Savai valodai, Riga, 1997). 224