Apie istorinį ir etimologinį lietuvių kalbos žodynus

LITHUANIAN LINGUISTICAL QUESTIONS XXXVII (1997) PROBLEMS OF LEXICOGRAFY AND LEXICOLOGY Juozas KARACIEJUS ABOUT THE HISTORICAL AND ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE The publication of the great "Dictionary of the Lithuanian language", although slowly, is still approaching its end. But it cannot in any way replace the ancient writings or the historical dictionary of Lithuanian language, which we are increasingly missing. Such a dictionary is necessary not only for language historians, but also for practitioners, because a historical dictionary of Lithuanian language, which should include all printed and manuscript monuments of our language at least until the beginning of the 19th century, should indicate not only the frequency of the use of words, but also the meanings in which one or another word is used, and the peculiarities of the word usage that may have been determined by other languages. However, it is not so easy to create such a dictionary. Its editors first need to be familiar with all our ancient writings, their specifics. Thus, the core of the editors of the historical Lithuanian language dictionary should be specialists in the history of the Lithuanian language. Therefore, it is quite understandable why more than a decade ago the then Lithuanian Language and Literature Institute started talking quite loudly about a historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language. The initiator of this idea was the Department of Language History and Dialectology. The issue of a historical dictionary of Lithuanian language was even discussed by the Special Council for the Development and Coordination of Philological Sciences, which was operating at the time. Except for the post-war years, when we were so fond of and still diligently use the non-compulsory phrases to order, consider, order, nothing else was done. Of course, now that we have recalled those times, we could perhaps take a positive view of those deliberations in the sense that a truly relevant problem was raised. Unfortunately, after one or two meetings and deliberations, the enthusiasm began to fade, and the issues of the historical Lithuanian dictionary were less and less remembered. The question may arise, why did this happen? The answer is very simple. Throughout the post-war period, although the achievements of Lithuanian studies, especially Lithuanian linguistics, were emphasized, when money was allocated for scientific research, Lithuanian studies were at the bottom of the list of candidates. It is true that such claims cannot be refuted — Lithuanian studies have achieved great successes in the post-war years. Most of them were achieved thanks to the enthusiasm of people who came to Lithuanian studies in the post-war years, their love for their mother tongue and their homeland. However, normal conditions for their work were not created. In the presence of such provisions, not only were no additional funds allocated for the preparation of a historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language, but it was not even considered who could prepare such a dictionary, how many and what qualification people would be needed for such work. 209 It is true that the Department of Language History and Dialectology had already begun to collect the material for the historical dictionary: sentences from some ancient writing monuments were written on separate cards so that they could be multiplied and thus form a repository of the historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language. This method is possible, but only for the sake of trouble, because not all words in ancient writings can be easily derived from a shorter or longer word combination. Often we are forced to delve deeper into the context, and often the Lithuanian text (if it is a translation) must be compared with the original, to see which word of the original language is translated by that Lithuanian word, and to check what meanings the original word was used by Lithuanian translators at the time. The same can be said about the Lithuanian equivalents of the bilingual manuscript dictionaries prepared in Lithuania Minor in the 17th-18th centuries, their variation, because in these dictionaries the Lithuanian equivalents are usually presented without illustrative sentences. Moreover, as recent research shows, these dictionaries hide many more unsolved riddles (cf. Drotvinas 1984: 163-167; Urbutis 1987: 57-75). The second thing that significantly slows the preparation of a historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language is that the language of our ancient writings is still relatively poorly studied. The language of the writings of M. Mažvydas (Zinkevičius 1977-1979), M. Daukša (Kudzinowski 1977; Palionis 1995), K. Petkevičius (Kroopas 1970: 83-154; Zinkevičius 1970— 1971: 227-243, 67-86), J. Rėza (Žulys 1966: 149-159; Zulys 1970), K. Sirvydas (Morkūnas 1980: 109-222; Pakalka 1979: 13-83; Zinkevičius 1971: 153-167) is analyzed in some detail. The language of J. Bretkūnas' writings and S. Chilinski's Bible is not sufficiently studied. We also have written monuments whose language has not been studied at all. This is called the J. Morkūno postele. Therefore, it is understandable that, when thinking about the historical dictionary of Lithuanian language, it is first necessary to delve into the language of these writing monuments. The language of the 18th-century Lithuanian Grand Duchy’s writings has also been very little studied so far. It is usually satisfied with general statements about the degradation of the Lithuanian language, that at that time Lithuanian was written by people who had forgotten the Lithuanian language and that is why the language of the 18th century writings is so poor. But when you get acquainted with 18th-century Lithuanian writings in more detail, you immediately ask yourself how people who had forgotten the Lithuanian language could write in quite regular Lithuanian sentences and why they used so many borrowed words that were not present in earlier writings. Thus, when preparing a historical dictionary of Lithuanian language, we will face a new problem, what to do with the polonisms that have increased in these writings, to include them in the historical dictionary as separate articles, or to abandon them, i.e. leave them to another, borrowed dictionary. The latter case is possible, but inconvenient, because it would have to be applied also to the writings of the 16th-17th centuries. Therefore, if we abandoned the borrowed individual articles, it would seem to me that the historical dictionary of Lithuanian language would be 210 incomplete and less informative — we would not be able to form a general picture of the lexicon of 16th-18th century writings from it. On the other hand, if all the borrowed words were presented in separate articles with precise metrics, what meanings and in which writing monuments they are used, it would be immediately visible which borrowed words are older and which are newer. This problem, like other issues of the structure of the future historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language, is worth considering and discussing. These remarks do not seek absolute truth. They were only intended to show that it is not possible to start preparing a historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language without a lot of preparatory work. This would be the writing of dictionaries-indexes of individual writing monuments and at the same time the study of the language of these monuments. k eyeook The issues of the preparation of a historical dictionary of the Lithuanian language are closely linked to the problems of the preparation of a dictionary of the etymology of the Lithuanian language, even more so since historical-etymological dictionaries of individual languages are being published more and more frequently, in which the interpretation of the origin of a word begins with its history, because, according to K. Baltinger, “in a more modern sense, etymology is the biography of the word” (Baltinger 1977: 219). Such are the well-known etymological dictionaries of the French linguists A. Ernout and A. Meillet for Latin (Ernout, Meillet 1959) and P. Chantraine for Greek (Chantraine I-IV). Traditional etymological dictionaries have not lost their significance. There are even more of them, the principles of their formation differ. They almost do not examine the semantics of the word, its development, but try to reconstruct its archetype based on related words in other languages. Although Lithuanian is one of the most archaic of the living languages. languages, but we do not have an etymological dictionary of the Lithuanian native language. In 1922, K. Būga wrote in “Language and antiquity”: “A dictionary of the etymology of the Lithuanian language will be easy to write when it will have gathered considerable material in literature” (Būga II 293). Now we have not only sufficient material in the linguistic literature, but also the famous German Baltist E. Fraenkel- 's "Lithuanian language etymological dictionary", whose relatively abundant reviews and annotations not only indicated the positive sides of this dictionary and raised the inaccuracies and shortcomings that occur in it, but also cautiously expressed the idea that in the future, when preparing the next edition of this dictionary or even a new Lithuanian language etymology dictionary, similar shortcomings should be avoided. However, these proposals were followed by a long period of silence, and only at the initiative of the Department of Baltic Philology of Vilnius University was material for the Lithuanian language etymology dictionary collected. However, the collection of etymological material, i.e. the compilation of the etymological dictionary, is very different from the compilation of other kinds of dictionary indexes. First of all, it is necessary to carefully review a large amount of linguistic literature, because it is often impossible to judge from the title of an article or monograph whether there is valuable material for the Lithuanian language etymolo211 gy dictionary in that work or not. Unfortunately, our libraries do not have many foreign-- published linguistic publications. Therefore, it makes little sense to talk about planned work. The second thing that significantly slows down the accumulation of etymological material is the presentation of the etymologies themselves in linguistic works. Often, after reading it once, it is not very clear what is the most important, what should be written on the card. The basis of every future dictionary is the card library, and the structure of the dictionary depends on it. In this case, another problem arises, which could be called the problem of source selection or the problem of “rimty” and “nerimty” works, i.e. whether to collect material from all sources or, having divided them into “serious” and “unserious”, to ignore the latter. It will hardly be possible then to talk about a good record. I will give a couple of examples to make it clear. The works of A. Carnoy (Carnoy 1955, 1957) are often cited in the works of Belgian Indo-Europeanists, such as the renowned Tocharian specialist A. J. Van Windenkens, who also refer to Lithuanian language facts. However, in reviewing the mentioned works of A. Carnoy, E. Benveniste, after pointing out that A. Carnoy's so-called Pre-Indo-- European language, the dictionary of which he presents, in many cases resembles the language that A. J. Van Windenkens calls the "Pellagian language- ", went on to emphasize: "It must be clearly stated that not only is the "Pellagian language" a pure fiction [...], but that the etymological methods introduced by this idea contradict the whole method of etymology and defend the most unreasonable combinations" (BSL 1957—1958: 53(2): 52). After reading such severe words of a well-known Indo-Europeanist, you are immediately broken and, of course, you do not have the hand to collect etymological material from A. Carnoy’s works. If, after asking E. Benveniste, we can put A. Carnoy aside, then what to do with A. J. Van Windekens's works on the problems of the "Pellagian language- ", especially since his first work on this subject (Van Windekens 1952) is also found in E. Fraenkel- 's "Lithuanian language etymology dictionary" literature list. After this work, A. J. Van Windekens published “Pelasgy Studies” (Van Windekens 1960) and based this theory on writing additions to P. Chantraine’s “Etymological Dictionary of the Greek Language”. And in the 1982 article published in the journal “Indogermanische Forschungen” about ide. The structure and primary meaning of the numerals “four” and “five”, based on the works of A. Cuny and A. Carnoy, explains that ide. *g'efuor “four” is composed of *g*e, meaning “and” and the root *fuor, which we find in Lithuanian words tveriu, turiu (Van Windekens 1982: 9). The second example would be the 1984 Paris edition of X. Delamarre's thematic ide. The etymological dictionary of languages (Delamarre 1984), whose motto is a verse of Maironis’ poem “I would like to raise...” and whose “Preface” states that it is published because there is no publication similar to Waldes-Pokorny’s, Pokorny’- s, Buck’s dictionaries in the French language. It also very often refers to Lithuanian facts, which are often presented inaccurately. However, M. Mayrhofer ends the annotation of this dictionary in Kratylos (1986, 31: 186-187) with the very strict “Darum: in den Giftschrank". Of course, in this case, the easiest way would be to rely on the opinion of a famous etymologist and ignore such publications. But what to do when there are no similar ratings? After all, annotations to articles, and even more so reviews, are written very rarely. Moreover, even with such negative assessments, one begins to doubt whether we will have a good etymology dictionary, i.e., whether they will not be needed when writing the etymology dictionary of the Lithuanian language. In addition, it becomes interesting and how in such publications 212 Lithuanian language facts are presented, how they are interpreted, whether they will not mislead researchers who do not know Lithuanian well, etc. These are all šį questions that arise when you work ir į which have to be ar answered in one way or another. LITERATŪRA Baltinger K.1977: The etymology yesterday and today. —Etymology (paths of research 373), Darmstadt, 201-224. BSL —Bulletin of the Société de linguistique de Paris, Paris, 1868. 2nd ed.: Language and History. —Būga K. Selected Writings 2, Vilnius, 1959, 7-328. Carnoy A. 1955: Dictionary of Proto-Indo-- European. Carnoy A. 1957: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology. Chantraine P. I-IV: Etymological Dictionary of the Greek Language. Histoire des mots 14, Paris, 1968-1980. Drotvinas V. 1984: When was written the so-called Krauzés dictionary. —Baltistica 22(2), 163167. Delamarre X. 1984: The Indo-European vocabulary. Thematic etymological lexicon, Paris. Ernout A, Meillet A. 1959: Dictionary of the Latin Language. Histoire des mots 4 éd., Paris. Kruopas J. 1970: The Lexicon of the Catechism of Merkelis Petkevičius of 1598. —Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 12, 83-154. Kudzinowski Cz 1977: Indeks-stownik do “Daukšos Postilė". Oprac. Cz. Kudzinowski, 1— 2, Poznan. Mayrhofer M. 1986: [rec] X. Delamarre. The Indo-European vocabulary Lexique etymologique thématique, Paris, 1984, 332 p. —Kratylos 31, 186-187. Morkūnas K. 1980: The verb of Konstantinas Širvydas- ’s “Punkty Sayings” (index). — Lithuanian Linguistics Issues 20, 109-222. 1979: "Dictionarium trium linguarum" by K. Širvydas. —The first dictionary of Lithuanian language: K. Širvydas. Dictionarium trium linguarum, Vilnius, 13—83. Palionis J. 1995: Index of 1595 Catechism word forms. —The Catechism of 1595 by Mikalojus Dauksa, 627-748. Urbutis V. 1987: Lexicographical sources of the Klaipėda dictionary of 1728. —Ba/tistica23(1), 57— 75. Van Windekens A. J. 1952: The pelasgic, Leuven. Van Windekens A. J. 1960: Studies in pelagic life, Louvain. Van Windekens A. J. 1982: Structure and primitive meaning of Indo-European numerals *g*etour “four” and *pengte “eing”. —Indogermanische Forschungen 87, Zinkevičius Z. 1970-1971: The dialect of 8-14. M. Petkevičiaus Catechism (1598). —Baltistica 6(2), Zinkevičius Z. 1971: On the genesis 227-243; 7(1), 67-86. and language of K. Sirvydo “Punkty sakymy”. —Baltistica 7(2), Zinkevičius Z.1977-1979: The language of M. 153-167. Mažvydo writings. —Baltistica 13(2), 358-371; 14(1), 3844; 14(2), 139-146; 15(1), 16-22. Zulys V.1966: How J. Rėza changed J. Bretkūno lexicon. —Kalbotyra 14, 149-159. Zulys V.1970: Lexikon der Schriften von Jons Rēza. Manuscript of Ph.D. dissertation. 213 ON HISTORICAL AND ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARIES OF THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE Summary We have been missing a historical dictionary more and more frequently. Its preparation, however, is very complicated work, as it should contain not only the statistics of word usage but also indication of the meanings in whish the words are used most frequently or most seldom. Without thorough investigation of the language of separate written records this is impossible to do. Therefore, the first thing to start with is dictionaries —indexes of separate written records. * k ok The structure of a new etymological dictionary of the Lithuanian language can be discussed only after all the material has been collected. Compiling the card index of an etymological dictionary is not an easy task. Therefore, the paper concentrates on the principles of compiling a card index and the problems related this work. to 214