…are to be associated with the third (hence “getrai”) and fourth meanings in LKŽ; compare Daukantas’s dictionary: Pólkamasze, pùsauklės (Vol. 2, p. 474)—French demiguêtres; Nagolenica, aukle. arba karejwio czebatas (Vol. 2, p. 22)—French cuissard “thigh guard, a piece of armor covering the leg”); also compare the sentence in Daukantas’s “Būdas”: wytóro sau stajbius witnonomis tejpat joudomis auklėmis nu kótkšnių lig pat kėlių (p. 40). One may also compare the entry in Daukantas’s notes on F. Nesselmann’s dictionary. Aukle, pl. aukles f. (Questions of Lithuanian Linguistics, 1961, vol. 4, p. 313), where S. Daukantas corrected only the form given by Nesselmann, Auklys, but did not amend the meaning; Nesselmann gives the meaning as follows: blau und schwarz gestreifte wollene Bänder, welche die Frauen statt der Strümpfe um ihre Waden wickeln “blue-and-black-striped woolen bands that women wrap around their calves instead of wearing stockings.”

Thus Daukantas’s auklėmis should not be assigned the meaning “shoes.”

ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE LATVIAN LANGUAGE

In 1992, the Riga publishing house Avots published a two-volume etymological dictionary of Latvian compiled by Konstantins Karulis (Latviešu etimoloģijas vārdnīca. I. A-O. II. P-Ž. Rīga: Avots). The dictionary’s scholarly editor was the St. Petersburg linguist Nikolaj Andrejev. The reviewers were Simas Karaliūnas of Vilnius and Vladimir Toporov of Moscow. Among other things, the work was defended in Riga in 1993 as a habilitation doctorate dissertation.

Naturally, this is an exceptional event in Baltic linguistics: such a work had long been awaited not only by Latvian but also by Lithuanian linguists, as well as by Balticists in other countries. Until now, the best source for Latvian etymologies had been Jānis Endzelīns’s notes in Kārlis Mīlenbahs’s Latvian dictionary and the supplements to that dictionary (Latviešu valodas vārdnīca. Ed., supp., continued by J. Endzelins. I—IV. Riga, 1923—1932; Endzelins J., Hauzenberga E. Papildinājumi un labojumi K. Mūlenbacha Latviešu valodas vārdnīcai. I-II. Riga, 1934—1946). Nikolaj Lapinis had published a concise etymological dictionary of Latvian (Latviešu vārdu etimoloģija. I—III. Riga, 1967—1975). There is evidence that in the 1870s Augusts Bielenšteins (Bielenstein, 1827—1907), the author of the first scholarly grammar of Latvian, a Latvian linguist of German descent and pastor in Dobele, was also preparing to write an etymological dictionary of Latvian. Before the Second World War, the prominent Latvian publisher Ansis Gulbis had been intent on publishing an etymological dictionary. To carry out this work, J. Endzelīns had even recommended the linguist Žans Grauds (1896—1971). In recent decades, the most successful work in Latvian etymology may have been done by Benjamin Jegers, a graduate of the universities of Riga and Göttingen who later taught in Sweden and the United States of America. However, unfortunately, this linguist, who made his living mainly from Germanic studies, did not have the opportunity to devote himself exclusively to the study of Latvian etymology. Naturally, E. Fraenkel’s Lithuanian Etymological Dictionary (Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg-Göttingen, 1955—1965) is also a particularly valuable resource for anyone writing an etymological dictionary of Latvian.

For people less familiar with Latvian culture, a certain surprise

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may be caused here by the dictionary’s author, as the subject of this account. Konstantins Karulis (born 1915) studied law at the University of Latvia from 1932 to 1942. From 1931 onward, he published articles in popular Latvian newspapers and magazines of the time. Not long ago, we read in the Latvian press his interesting memoirs, written as a Latvian journalist, about the political upheavals in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. In 1934, K. Karulis had already published his first book. During the Second World War, he worked as a teacher. In 1944, he was mobilized into the famous Latvian Legion. He spent 1945–1947 in the Far East... After returning to Riga, he completed his law degree at the University of Latvia. He worked as legal counsel at the Academy of Sciences. He taught shorthand in various courses. From 1957 to 1964, he worked at the Latvian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Language and Literature. In 1959, he defended a candidate’s dissertation on the history of Latvian shorthand. From 1964 to 1975, he worked at the Latvian Academy of Sciences’ Fundamental Library. He published several books, among which “The Latvian Book Through the Centuries” (Latviešu grāmata gadsimtu gaitā. Riga, 1967) and “Jānis Reiteris and His Translation” (Jānis Reiters un viņa tulkojums. Riga, 1986) are especially noteworthy. Together with others, he compiled a dictionary of standard Latvian (Latviešu valodas vārdnīca. Riga, 1987). He wrote extensively on the history of the Latvian language, shorthand, and bibliography, and published reviews of linguistic works. However, in recent decades he devoted most of his time to compiling his etymological dictionary. In fact, it is probably somewhat surprising that, in this age of narrow specialization, a lawyer and journalist undertook such a task. Incidentally, we might recall that the author of one of the most comprehensive etymological dictionaries of English (A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. I—II. Amsterdam. London. New York, 1966—1967), Ernest Klein, was likewise not a Germanic philologist but a specialist in Semitic languages and literature and a prominent Jewish cleric.

Naturally, in assessing any work, one must first consider not who wrote it but how it was written. Let us hope that Latvian linguists will evaluate K. Karulis’s dictionary in detail. However, this work is also very useful to specialists in Lithuanian, especially its history. First and foremost, it presents and critically assesses what has been achieved so far in this field of Baltic linguistics. Perhaps the strongest feature of the work is its account of word histories. It is very important that, in many cases, the dictionary explains who coined a particular Latvian word (we encounter the names J. Alunāns and A. Kronvalds especially often) and where it was first used. It also provides an abundance of etymological literature. K. Karulis marks his own original explanations in the dictionary with a special symbol. These explanations may be open to question. But etymology is a branch of linguistics in which there are always many uncertainties.

At the end of the dictionary there is also a substantial study, “Indo-European Languages and Etymology,” which discusses such problems as the Indo-European language family, the Indo-European homeland, the relationship between Baltic and Slavic, Baltic prehistory, Proto-Indo-European, the phonetic system of the Indo-European languages and its changes in Latvian, the aims and methods of etymology, the history of etymological research on Latvian, and so on. The author evidently intended this study to make his work more accessible not only to linguists but also to a wider readership—to people with at least some interest in their native language.

Konstantins Karulis’s work is the first etymological diction-

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which is interesting and useful in many respects to researchers of the Lithuanian language as well. After all, it summarizes decades of research into Latvian vocabulary, and even the shortcomings or errors in this dictionary will spur further research.

Algirdas Sabaliauskas

WORKS ON LATVIAN LINGUISTICS IN AUSTRALIA

Fennell T. G. The First Latvian Grammar J. G. Rehehusen’s ”Manuductio ad linguam lettonicam...”. A fac-simile text with annotated translation and commentary. Latvian Tertiary Committee. Melbourne 1982. — 369 pp. Seventeenth Century Latvian Grammatical Fragments. Text, Translation and Commentary. Latvian Tertiary Committee. Melbourne 1982. — 322 pp. Georg Dreszell’s Gantz kurtze Anleitung zur Lettischen Sprache. Text, Translation, Commentary, Concordance. Latvian Tertiary Committee. Melbourne 1984. — 452 pp.

The Australian linguist Trevor G. Fennell, while growing up and socializing with the children of Latvian emigrants, probably never imagined that this schoolyard friendship and his first active lessons in Latvian would determine his career as a future scholar. It can probably be said that throughout the history of Latvian linguistics, we will find no linguist from another country who has worked as much in the field of Latvian studies as T. G. Fennell. It is enough to recall the three-volume Latvian textbook ”A Grammar of Modern Latvian” (Vol. 1—3, The Hague-Paris-New York, 1980. 1370 p.), prepared together with Latvian émigré Henrik Gelsen¹, and his many articles on the history of the Latvian language. However, T. G. Fennell made a particularly great contribution to Latvian linguistics by publishing and researching early Latvian texts. Here we would like to introduce three such publications.

The first book publishes the first Latvian grammar, published in 1644—Johann Georg Rehehusen’s ”Manuductio ad linguam lettonicam”, which, according to T. G. Fennell, ”despite all its shortcomings, is of great interest to scholars interested in the genesis and evolution of grammatical theory in the Latvian language”. This publication is very important because, to date, only one surviving copy of the original is known, held in the library of Uppsala University. It is true that in 1901 Augusts Bielenstein published this grammar. However, he prepared it from corresponding copies and, of course, could not avoid certain shortcomings. This time, a facsimile text of the grammar is published alongside an English translation. This is followed by very detailed commentaries and an index of all Latvian words. The headwords are given in current Latvian spelling (nominative forms of nouns, infinitive forms of verbs). They are also translated into English, and their forms are listed (in the original spelling). Such an index will one day be of great use to future compilers of a historical Latvian dictionary.

¹ Plg. Blinkeną A. Latviešu gramatika cittautiešu skatījumā. — ZA Vēstis, 1982, 4. P. 135—137; Schmalstieg W. R. (Rec.) — General Linguistics, 1982. V. 22, No. 2. P. 139—142.

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