LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XXXVI (1996)

LIETUVIŲ KALBA: TYRĖJAI IR TYRIMAI

Giedrius SUBAČIUS

THREE MODELS OF THE STANDARD WRITTEN LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE IN THE 19TH CENTURY: J. A. PABRĖŽA, J. ČIULDA, S. DAUKANTAS¹

Before discussing three different 19th-century models of the standard written Lithuanian language (SWL), I would like to give a very brief description of Lithuania’s general political, cultural, and social condition at the time.

Geopolitically, the ethnic Lithuanian lands never belonged to a single state: part belonged to Prussia (so-called Lithuania Minor), while the rest of Lithuania (Lithuania Major) was an independent state; from the mid-16th century, it formed a union with Poland. From the late 18th century, Russia occupied almost all of Lithuania Major, so during the period of interest to me, Lithuania Major belonged to Russia, while Lithuania Minor belonged to Prussia.

Culturally, Lithuania Minor and Lithuania Major had also long differed. Lutheranism became established in Lithuania Minor as early as the 16th century, whereas Catholicism endured and predominated in Lithuania Major. In terms of the written language, fairly stable language norms had already formed in Lithuania Minor, a compact territory, in the 17th century, and remained so until the end of the 19th century and even longer. Lithuania Major was highly heterogeneous: first, there were (and are) two large dialect groups, Samogitian and Aukštaitian, whose speech differed so much that their speakers did not always understand one another; second, no single dialect had yet been definitively established as the basis for the written Lithuanian language, although Samogitian texts increasingly came to predominate in the early 19th century. On the other hand, Polish remained the dominant language of culture in Lithuania Major in the first half of the 19th century, traditionally used since the time of the union with the Polish state.

Socially, the societies also differed. In Prussia, peasants officially became free at the very beginning of the century, whereas in Lithuania Major the Russian authorities abolished serfdom only in 1861. Nevertheless, in Lithuania Major too, the emancipation of non-nobles (peasants), the spread of literacy, and increasing social mobility had begun much earlier. The ideas of liberty from the French Revolution had not yet changed social structures, but were gradually beginning to reach people’s consciousness. Only in a society becoming freer and gradually transforming into a civic society could

¹ These models are discussed in greater detail in other works by the article’s author: Simonas Daukantas’s view of the standard language. — Studies in the History of the Lithuanian Revival (LAIS): Simonas Daukantas 5, Vilnius: Viltis, 1993, 63–68; Juozas Čiulda and his grammar. — LAIS: Juozas Čiulda. Brief Reflections on the Rules of Samogitian Grammar 6, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla, 1994, 7–54; Jurgis Ambraziejus Pabrėža’s Samogitian language. — LAIS: The Individual: Between Nation and State 8 (forthcoming).

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the modern concept of the SWL and the SWL itself could begin to take shape. (A modern SWL may be defined as a uniform language used by all social strata to meet all their cultural needs.)

All three 19th-century SWL models that I would like to present were developed by authors from Samogitia in Lithuania Major, which was under Russian rule. In Lithuania Minor, the written language was sufficiently stable, and no one there was re-modelling it at that time. The three models to be presented were not set out systematically by their authors themselves. I attempt to reconstruct these models from manuscripts of various kinds (not only linguistic ones) and, in the case of S. Daukantas, also from printed works.

In reconstructing the models of the standard Lithuanian language of that period, I would consider the following aspects the most important and relevant:

1. The sphere of SWL use: a) the social strata for whom the SWL in question is intended; b) the kinds of literature, or “genres,” in which that SWL is used. Whether the written language is intended for all social strata and all kinds of literature is, in fact, what determines whether it can be called a standard language.

2. The geographical reach of SWL use, that is, whether the SWL is intended to meet the needs of all ethnic Lithuanians or only some of them.

3. The relationship between the SWL and spoken language.

4. The basis of the SWL—whether to write as people speak or in accordance with rules and the language system.

Other aspects could also be analyzed—attitudes toward loanwords, neologisms, spelling and other principles—but that can be left for the future.

I. JURGIS AMBAZIEJUS PABRĖŽA was born in 1771 in northern Samogitia. In the history of Lithuanian culture, he is best known as a Franciscan friar and priest, a renowned preacher, and the first creator of botanical terminology. In the early 20th century, considerable efforts were even made in Lithuania to have the Pope in Rome declare Pabrėža a saint or at least a blessed. He left no purely linguistic texts, but wrote about language in the prefaces to his works and in his letters.

Pabrėža’s way of thinking had taken shape back in the 18th century, in an environment that had heard little of the ideas of liberty and equality (he reached the modern 19th century at the age of 29). For him, a society in which some people were free, generally literate citizens, while others were dependent, often illiterate people (the common folk), was then natural, customary, “normal.” From 1798 onward, Pabrėža wrote a great deal—thousands of pages of Lithuanian sermons. Yet until around 1828–1831, one still cannot speak of a standard written language. Pabrėža wrote down his sermons, but their purpose was to regulate the language, while they were meant to be read aloud to the illiterate common folk—thus, the texts served only as an aid to oral expression. It was only around 1828–1831 that Pabrėža, evidently influenced by the increasingly liberal mood of society, decided to create a standard Lithuanian language. By then he was about 60 years old.

Pabrėža’s decision is documented. The end of his long period of hesitation may be illustrated by this sentence from one of his letters of 1829: “As for Samogitian orthography

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I am not inclined to change my position²². Around that time, perhaps somewhat later, Pabrėža introduced entirely new letters, used nowhere by anyone: he doubled long and lengthened vowels (that is, began writing bajooroo ‘bajoraĩ’, taapaas ‘lapais’) and began writing the palatalized [š’], [č’] as šź, čź (e.g., šźerdys ‘širdis’, augmynčźynis ‘augminyčinis’; here šź and čź were devised by blending the way Lithuanians were then accustomed to writing with Polish orthography: ś and ć usually denoted palatalized sounds, while sz and cz denoted non-palatalized ones).

1. a)—b) These letters make it easiest to identify the kinds of texts for which Pabrėža applied his standard written language conception. These were primarily his numerous works on botany and medicine. There is evidence that he also applied those norms to school textbooks, literary texts, and folklore; some of his letters, too, were written in accordance with such norms. I could sum it up as follows: Pabrėža applied his standard written language norms to all spheres of secular cultural life.

However, what may seem strange and incredible today is that those norms were not followed in the numerous religious texts either. I would put it this way: in spiritual writings, Pabrėža continued to use the standards of the 18th century, but he had already begun creating a secular standard written language in an entirely modern way. Thus, Pabrėža was, as it were, a representative of a transitional period. He had already understood that an ever larger stratum of people needed a standard language, but he had not yet understood that sooner or later such a process would lead to a society in which everyone would need that standard written language (that is, a society without serfdom, in which everyone would be free and literate). The fact that texts intended for the churchgoing common folk were not written in the standard written language shows that Pabrėža considered it entirely normal for those people to remain common folk. The new standard written language was needed only by part of society, the new enlightened people. Having analyzed Pabrėža’s poems, Saulius Žukas concluded that “their analysis allows us to discern the process of an epistemic cultural rupture, a situation of transition from one set of values to another”³. Although Pabrėža created a modern standard written language, he nevertheless retained elements of the old understanding of written language. I would call his model “defective,” but it was nonetheless already a model of a standard written language.

Moreover, Pabrėža applied his standard written language model not to the entire ethnic Lithuanian-speaking area, but only to the Samogitians. In his words, “I write the names of plants as they are pronounced in our coastal region, 15 miles inland from the sea”⁴. Converted from the miles of that time to today’s measure, this comes to about 128 km—that is, simply the territory of the Samogitian dialect. Thus, Pabrėža created a written standard language only for the Samogitians; he recognized that two other Lithuanian written languages could also exist: that of the Prussian Lithuanians and that of the Lithuanians of Greater Lithuania—the Aukštaitians. For example, when compiling lists of plant names in various languages in his botanical works, Pabrėža listed Samogitian and Prussian Lithuanian names separately; in one letter, he lamented that “Lithuanian names (that is, those of the Aukštaitians of Greater Lithuania) ought also to be included

² P a b r ė ž a J. A. 1829 m. balandžio 13 d. laiškas iš Kretingos prof. J. F. Wolfgangui į Vilnių. Rankraštis saugomas MAB, f. 7—309.

³ Ž u k a s S. Apie pyvkininkus (du J. A. Pabrėžos eilėraščiai) — LAIS: Liaudis virsta tauta 4, Vilnius: Baltoji varnelė, 1993, 117—118.

⁴ P a b r ė ž a J. A. 1828 m. rugsėjo 20 d. laiškas iš Kretingos prof. J. F. Wolfgangui į Vilnių. Rankraštis saugomas MAB, f. 7—309.

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(names) not to omit, but until now I have been unable to obtain them from anywhere”⁵. Pabrėža’s view is categorical: ”a Samogitian will never agree on language with a Lithuanian (i.e., with a Highlander of Greater Lithuania), nor with a Prussian (i.e., a Lithuanian of Prussia) or a Latvian⁶. Thus, also in territorial terms, Pabrėža’s brk. model shows that its author was oriented toward a more closed society, perhaps even toward the possibility of forming a separate Samogitian nation.

3. Pabrėža’s brk. relationship to spoken language can be described in his own words: ”it is best to write as we speak”⁷ or ”you will find the words written as all the Samogitians in that region speak”⁸. Pabrėža had not yet felt the need to regulate a common spoken language; the Samogitians spoke well for him, they simply wrote poorly. Thus, the dialect itself seems to be understood as a spoken variant of the brk., and so it does not need to be standardized either.

4. From what has been said, it is now entirely clear that the main criterion for standardizing the brk. for Pabrėža was usage, spoken language.

II. JUOZAS ČIULDA was born later than Pabrėža, in 1796, also in northern Samogitia (near Plungė, and thus closer to the Samogitian center). He, too, was a priest, having served as a chaplain at a school in Kaunas and later having worked as a priest all his life in various places in Lithuania. His greatest contribution to Lithuanian culture was writing a grammar of the Lithuanian language (around 1854). He was a representative of a different, younger generation, maturing in an environment in which the need for freedom was constantly felt and orientation toward a free society prevailed.

1. a) Unlike Pabrėža, Čiulda already modeled a society of free people only. For him, not only the nobility but also the peasants were part of the nation. The people and the nation were terms of the same meaning for Čiulda (which cannot be said of Pabrėža), for example: ”The Samogitian songs consist of the s o n g s of the p e o p l e, that is, of ordinary people [...]. In a certain sense it can be said that this n a t i o n [...]”. It is clear that Čiulda also created his brk. norms for a society understood in this monolithic way—norms identical for all strata. This was already a ”non-defective” conception of the brk.

b) Although Čiulda did not specify exactly which literary genres his brk. model applied to, it may be assumed that it applied to all possible ones. It is true that Čiulda wrote both the text of his grammar and his letters and other works in Polish; he still did not dare to write in Lithuanian. Therefore, one can speak only of brk. norms modeled in theory but not yet put into practice.

2. As the basis for the brk. norms he was creating, Čiulda took his native northern Samogitian dialect, much as Pabrėža had. However, the territory whose inhabitants Čiulda modeled his brk. for was much larger. Explaining why he relied on the Samogitian dialect, Čiulda said that ”the Western Samogitian subdialect is more com-

⁵ P a b r ė ž a J. A. 1834 m. gruodžio 19 d. laiškas iš Kretingos J. K. Gintilai į Peterburgą / Paskelbė K. Sendzikas. — Mūsų senovė, 1938, t. 2, nr. 3(8), 491.

⁶ P a b r ė ž a J. A. 1835 m. kovo 20 d. laiškas iš Kretingos J. K. Gintilai į Peterburgą. — Mūsų senovė, 1938, t. 2, nr. 3(8), 495.

⁷ Ten pat, 493.

⁸ P a b r ė ž a J. A. Uuogas nekorios apey Smertį, 1828, IV. Rankraštis saugomas Lietuvos nacionalinėje M. Mažvydo bibliotekoje. Sign. f. 124—3.

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“formed”⁹ (unlike the Aukštaitian dialect), that the Aukštaitian dialect “is not as gentle and pleasant to the ear as the Samogitian”¹⁰, that in one part of the Aukštaitian dialect “there is almost no grammaticality at all, only a mixture of distorted and corrupted Polish with Lithuanian...”¹¹, while in the other part there are no firm and consistent rules at all. This disparagement of the Aukštaitian dialects unambiguously shows that Čiulda was addressing not only Samogitian but also Aukštaitian readers, offering them “better,” “more fully formed” norms for written Samogitian. Thus, Čiulda oriented his model of written language toward the entire territory of Lithuania Major.

However, as with Pabrėža, he did not wish to impose his model on the Prussian Lithuanians. Although he too considered them members of the same nation, he nevertheless acknowledged their distinctive, different written-language tradition. One example of this perspective might be the fact that Čiulda presented an excerpt from “The Seasons,” the famous poem by the eighteenth-century Prussian Lithuanian Kristijonas Donelaitis, in its original orthography, while alongside it he “translated” it into the proposed standard “Samogitian” language.

3. A fairly new and important aspect of Čiulda’s language standardization was that, alongside written language, he also sought to standardize spoken language. This was a very clear and firm position on Čiulda’s part. For example, he writes that “the language and writings of learned people must be the language and writing of the nation”¹². Čiulda defines grammar itself as a collection of “rules for the proper ordering of language, whether spoken or written”¹³. I would call this a conception of a modern standard language that was mature for its time. For once written standard language began to take shape, spoken standard language, oriented toward the written form, inevitably began to take shape as well (after all, dialects can be very different).

4. In complete contrast to Pabrėža, Čiulda emphasized that standardization should be based on the rules of language, grammaticality—in other words, on the language system—and not on language usage. He said that “if the Samogitian (i.e., Lithuanian) language is to develop following the example of other European languages, then [...] a language should be adopted for writing books that proves clearer, more regular, and more consistent with the rules of grammar”¹⁴ (from a letter to Bishop Motiejus Valančius). Čiulda sought to adhere to the language system, that is, to reject exceptions to the rules as he saw them, regardless of whether they were used in living speech. For example, on systemic grounds Čiulda proposes writing (and saying!) the dative singular of the personal pronoun as taw [tav], rather than tau, because the stem-final consonant in all the other cases is supposedly [v] (cf. gen. sg. tawęs, acc. sg. tawę, etc.), although then, as now, all Lithuanians pronounce [u]—tau. Čiulda’s grammar contains quite a few such examples in which forms used in speech are rejected in favor of the language system.

III. SIMONAS DAUKANTAS, born in 1793, was a contemporary of Čiulda’s generation. He was also born in northern Samogitia. He made his mark on Lithuanian culture as a historian, folklorist, philologist, and, more broadly, as a representative of the new modern

⁹ Čiulda J. Trumpi samprotavimai apie žemaičių kalbos gramatikos taisykles. — LAIS 6, 233.

¹⁰ Ten pat, 249.

¹¹ Ten pat, 227.

¹² Ten pat, 230.

¹³ Ten pat, 330.

¹⁴ Ten pat, 364.

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the creator and pioneer of Lithuanian national ideology, even its symbol. Daukantas studied in Lithuania, then worked outside Lithuania for about 25 years—in Riga and Saint Petersburg, and then once again in Lithuania.

1. a) Without any doubt, Daukantas was a very clear-cut democrat; his consciousness was already envisioning a society of free citizens only. Thus, his texts and standard language were also oriented toward the very lowest strata of society, the peasants (this implies that he imagined these strata becoming literate). For example, in the preface to one historical work (”Darbai”), he wrote: ”I wrote not for learned men and thinkers, but for those mothers who are able to tell their children about the deeds of their forefathers and ancestors, and who often make mistakes without books”¹⁵. Another very new fact for Lithuania at the time was that he, Daukantas, a layman, wrote a Catholic prayer book. As Roma Bončkutė emphasizes, Daukantas sought, among other things, to establish his orthography for religious texts as well¹⁶. It is quite clear that it was the peasants who needed these prayer books most. Thus, Daukantas broke the stereotype that a religious text had to be written in the simplified traditional orthography of Lithuanian religious writings.

1. b) The preparation of the prayer book alone shows that the range of literary genres Daukantas considered necessary to write in Lithuanian standard written language was broader than Pabrėža’s. In practice, Daukantas also used his standard written language much more resolutely than Čiulda. He was not afraid to write a little grammar and other works in Lithuanian, whereas Čiulda did not dare to do so—apart from the grammar, he wrote other scholarly works in Polish.

2. At the beginning of his creative activity, Daukantas was very clearly oriented toward a Samogitian reader, and the language of his writings from that period was very Samogitian. However, in the later period of his creative work, he had changed his view, using both Samogitian and Aukštaitian elements in his written language. Daukantas stated: ”in my opinion, one cannot write in either pure Samogitian or pure Aukštaitian (dialect), but one must take an interest in their gentleness, harmony, and concision”¹⁷—that is, when writing, one must combine dialects and elements of those dialects. For example, in his great Polish-Lithuanian dictionary, Daukantas gave variant forms medioti ‘to hunt’ (Samogitian) and medzioti ‘same’ (Aukštaitian), kwiestas ‘wheat’ (Aukštaitian) and kwijstas ‘same’ (Samogitian). On the other hand, he took orthographic elements (e.g., the letters ł, é, ô, û; the values of the letters ž and y, etc.) from the written language of Prussian Lithuanians and sought to introduce them in Greater Lithuania. This was characteristic of neither Pabrėža nor Čiulda (with certain minor exceptions in Čiulda’s case). Clearly, Daukantas’s perspective was the broadest of all the standard written language models presented here: he wanted his standard written language to be intended for all ethnic Lithuanians. It would be no exaggeration to say that this was the first such broad perspective on the standard written language in the entire history of Lithuanian language codification.

3. However, the fact that Daukantas sought to model a standard written language for a large territory, for all ethnic Lithuanians speaking very different and distant dialects

¹⁵ D a u k a n t a s S. Raštai / Parengė V. Merkys ir B. Vanagienė 1, Vilnius: Vaga, 1976, 39.

¹⁶ B o n č k u t ė R. Nespausdinto rankraščio istorija, — Literatūra ir menas, 1993 m. spalio 16 d., nr. 42, 4.

¹⁷ D a u k a n t a s S. Raštai 2, Vilnius: Vaga, 1976, 788.

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different from one another in their dialects, posed problems for standardizing spoken language, that is, the oral variety of the standard language. The following quotation might be characteristic of Daukantas’s views: “Where uo happens to be written, it is very appropriate to write ą, so that this may suit everyone, both those who first say uo [i.e., Aukštaitians] and those who pronounce ou [i.e., Samogitians], since some say duoti, others doati.” Allowing each reader to read the polyphonic letter ų according to their own dialect does not at all imply a uniform, standard spoken language. This is further illustrated by another explanation from Daukantas in the preface to his work “Pasakojimas...”: “I beg you, dear Lithuanian reader, not to be angry with me for writing in a language other than that of your parish; having read it once, you can, when reading it a second time, pronounce the words according to the speech of your own parish. And so, where you find written kantri and narsį kareiviai, read kantrūs and narsūs kareiviai...”¹⁸

Thus Daukantas, like Pabrėža, did not model a spoken standard language. Pabrėža did not do so because, in the small and relatively homogeneous linguistic territory of Samogitia, spoken language seemed sufficiently uniform, whereas Daukantas essentially conceived of the standard language as written, not spoken; at least, spoken standard language was of little concern to him.

4. As already noted, Daukantas’s position on combining dialects, formulated by him as a historian, is indeed very democratic, but Daukantas himself did not know exactly how to put it into practice. It is easier to combine vocabulary, but how can different phonetic phenomena be reconciled? He often refrains from deciding for himself and establishing rules: “as for the fourth case of the pronoun asz, time will tell whether mani or manę should be written”; “how to write — tabokis or tabokas — is hard to guess”¹⁹, and so on. Such formulations as “time will tell” occur neither in Pabrėža’s nor in Čiulda’s normative texts. All this makes clear that, having decided in the later period of his work to combine various dialects—that is, having devised a standardizing principle—Daukantas goes no further, apparently leaving it to history itself to choose, in each particular case, how those dialects should be combined. His inability to make up his mind is also symbolized by the spelling he himself frequently changed, perhaps more and more often than that of any other Lithuanian cultural figure of the 19th century. The conclusion is clear: although Daukantas rejected reliance solely on usage or on the forms of any single dialect, the implementation of specific rules is nevertheless only weakly articulated.

* * *

In conclusion, the three different models must be brought together. As can be seen, the model of Pabrėža, a representative of the older generation, differs in almost every respect from those of the younger Čiulda and Daukantas. It is true that it coincides with Daukantas’s in not modeling spoken standard language, but, as noted, the reasons for this are different. Thus Pabrėža’s standard language is a written standard Samogitian language intended for the more educated strata of society and for the creation of all secular texts, modeled on spoken Samogitian. Čiulda and Daukantas, representatives of the younger generation, clearly diverge from Pabrėža in their newer, more modern views of the standard written language. —

18 Ibid., 8.

19 Ibid., 790, 791.

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— it is needed by all social strata for creating all kinds of literature (though in practice Daukantas is much bolder than Čiulda here). One of the essential differences between their models is that Čiulda models the language only for Lithuania Minor, whereas Daukantas models it for Lithuania Major as well. This was shaped by Daukantas’s historian’s perspective: he studied and especially felt the historical ethnic unity of all Lithuanians, and envisioned a common nation and a common language in the future. On the other hand, as a creator of a standard language, Čiulda is more modern than Daukantas in that he considered a spoken standard language essential; moreover, in his grammar he particularly emphasized the language system and its rules, consistently standardizing those forms that seemed to him to conform more closely to the rules (that is, to the language system). This is not clearly expressed in Daukantas’s works. I would therefore call Čiulda a consistent and modern theorist of his time, who modeled the standard written and spoken language of Lithuania Major for all social strata and all literary genres and, most importantly, grounded his model in the criterion of systematicity. Beside Čiulda, Daukantas appears as a practitioner with broad horizons: language must be created for all people and every kind of literature, and used by all Lithuanians; the immense folios he filled with Lithuanian writing attest to his practical efforts. Theoretically, however, Daukantas did not model spoken standard language or define how to draw on the language system and its rules. In terms of their views on the standard language, therefore, Čiulda is more like a theoretical linguist, whereas Daukantas is more like a public figure with broad horizons, but not a linguist.

APPENDIX

MODELS OF THE STANDARD WRITTEN LANGUAGES OF PABRĖŽA, ČIULDA AND DAUKANTAS (P,Č,D)

1. BRK. DOMAINS OF USE

a) SOCIAL STRATA

all

not all

Č

P

D

b) LITERARY GENRES

all

not all

Č

P

D

2. BRK. AREA OF USE

entire

not entire

D

ž+a

ž

Č

P

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3. RELATIONSHIP OF THE WRITTEN STANDARD LANGUAGE TO THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE

spoken standard language is modeled Č

— spoken standard language is not modeled P D

4. BASIS OF THE WRITTEN STANDARD LANGUAGE

to write as one speaks P

to write as the rules (the language system) require Č D(?)

THREE MODELS OF THE LITHUANIAN STANDARD LANGUAGE:

J. A. PABRĖŽA, J. ČIULDA, S. DAUKANTAS

Summary

This article compares the conceptions of the common written language held by J. A. Pabrėža, J. Čiulda, and S. Daukantas in terms of four aspects: 1) the sphere of use of the common language (which social strata and literary genres it is intended for); 2) the territory in which the common language is used; 3) the relationship between the common language and colloquial language; 4) the basis of the common language (whether one writes as one speaks or as the rules and system of the language require). J. A. Pabrėža’s conception differs from those of J. Čiulda and S. Daukantas in all respects. J. A. Pabrėža intended his conception only for the intelligentsia, only for secular texts, and only for Samogitia. J. Čiulda and S. Daukantas had a more modern view of the common language: it was necessary for all social strata in order to create all kinds of literature. One substantial difference between their models is that J. Čiulda intended the common language for Lithuania Major only, whereas S. Daukantas intended it for Lithuania Minor as well. In addition, J. Čiulda was inclined to standardize not only the written language but also colloquial language. In standardization, he emphasized the importance of the language system.

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