LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987)

ALDONAS PUPKIS

J. JABLONSKIS’S THEORY OF LANGUAGE CULTURE

The most distinguished figure in the history of Lithuanian language culture and the standard language, as well as in Lithuanian linguistics as a whole, is Jonas Jablonskis (1860—1930). “In the entire history of the development of the literary language, there was no linguist equal to Jablonskis”¹. Owing to historical circumstances, he was destined to become the greatest and most renowned creator and standardizer of the modern standard language, its system’s codifier and guardian, and a champion of its use.

Jablonskis had an excellent understanding of the nature, purpose, and particular character of the standard language. In the preface to his epoch-making work—the 1901 “Grammar of the Lithuanian Language”—he wrote: “The principles of the written language are always adopted from some one dialect; other dialects contribute only their best small details, those grains which, for one reason or another, have disappeared from the written dialect and are no longer used. If the written language lacks a word known only from other dialects, the writer must use that word wherever he finds it. (…) Thus the language of this grammar will be ‘the ordinary Suvalkija dialect,’ but, where necessary, it will also be reinforced and supported by other dialects”².

Besides the living spoken language of the people, Jablonskis also drew sources for the standard language from folklore, the writings of prominent Lithuanian authors, works of linguistics, and dictionaries. Yet in all these sources the great linguist also saw things unacceptable in principle, things based “on foreign languages” and “polluting our people’s language”³. To put it in the words of the linguists of “Gimtoji kalba,” broadly speaking, the source of the standard language is Lithuanian usage, based “on the laws of the people’s language.”

However, Jablonskis did not copy that Lithuanian usage eclectically, without any selection or stricter principles. Perhaps the greatest merit of Jablonskis’s entire standardization work was that he skillfully reconciled the East Prussian variety of the standard language with the Western Aukštaitian Kaunas dialect—that is, he approved the system of the Lithuanian standard language and codified it in his 1901 grammar. In his works, it seems, Jablonskis nowhere used the term “system.” But he sensed that system very well and understood it much as modern linguistics does⁴,—

¹ Vosylýtė B. Jablonskio vaidmuo lietuvių literatūrinės kalbos istorijoje. – Kn.: Literatūra ir kalba, 1956, t. 1, p. 63.

² Jablonskis J. Rinktiniai raštai (toliau RR)/Sud. J. Palionis. – V., 1957, t. 1, p. 60.

³ Jablonskis J. RR, t. 1, p. 60.

⁴ Galima sutikti su A. Piročkinu (Prie bendrinės kalbos ištakų. – V., 1977, p. 100), teigiančiu, kad Jablonskis kalbos sistemą įvardijo terminu „kalbos dvasia“.

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this would yield a considerable number of examples. For instance, in the field of phonetics he understood the distinctive function of language elements in a very modern way. Once the Western phonetic system had been adopted, it was necessary to preserve the quality of the long vowels ū, y, o, ė, uo, ie regardless of position. Having noted that among Easterners odėlė and uodelis, vietelė and vėtyklė at the beginning of a word “very often sound alike,” Jablonskis continues: “To adapt themselves to the rules of the written language, they would need to know how the syllable sounds in the written language at that time, so that the word stress falls on it”⁵. For this reason, he insisted that long and short vowels be marked differently in spelling, that the rules governing Western consonant clusters be observed, and so forth. It should be added that he also had an excellent understanding of the distinctive function of stress and intonation in the standard language⁶.

A sense of system is especially strong in discussions and corrections concerning stress, and the formation of words and their forms. Opposing the adoption into the standard language of the stress pattern pagunda², Jablonskis wrote: “Among the Western Highlanders it is said here pagūnda, -dos. If M. Daukša really did stress this p r e f i x e d word in that way […], then his head must have been a little turned here: cf. pagálba, -bos, -ba, pagúoda, -dos, pakar̃pà, -põs, pašal̃pà, -põs, pašálpà, Palangà, -gõs, Pãlangą…”⁷ (emphasis by J. J.). Or, criticizing the form lietuvys that appears here and there in written sources, he draws an analogy: lietuvīs – lietuviškas, liežūvis – liežūviškas and vyturýs – vytūriškas, gyvulýs – gyvuliškas. “Alongside the noun ‘lietuvỹs’, the adjective ‘lietuviškas’ should form in the language”⁸. Rejecting the adverb balsiai from the standard language, the linguist reasons: “What, in truth, does the author teach the reader by this designation of three localities [Kėdainiai, Surviliškis, Krekenava — A. P.]? After all, it is from those places that we are least likely, it seems, to take examples of language for matters of the written language (vocabulary, rules). […] Not having the a d j e c t i v e balsus, -si in my language, I cannot use the a d v e r b balsiai in it either”⁹ (emphasis by J. J.).

We would find very many similar examples in Jablonskis’s writings (see especially his 1928 work “Matters concerning the dictionary of our language”). The requirement to adhere to the principle of consistency¹⁰, the constant use of analogies among linguistic facts—in other words, a systematic approach to the phenomena of the standard language—is evident in all of Jablonskis’s discussions and characterizes all his recommendations. Understanding that the system of the standard language is a living, independent phenomenon, increasingly distant from its dialectal foundation, Jablonskis, as early as 1914, when modern standard Lithuanian was still in its infancy and its norms were highly unstable, fragmented, and heterogeneous, spoke prophetically about its development and future: “the written language is the product of the nation itself and of writers who know its language, not of linguists”¹¹ and “As it grows, the written language must improve of its own accord”¹² (emphasis by A. P.). He repeated the same thing 14 years later, in 1928: “let us allow it to grow in its own way, according to the nation’s own rules, without forcing it into it…”

⁵ Jablonskis J. RR, t. 1, p. 66.

⁶ Ten pat, p. 190.

⁷ Jablonskio raštai/Sud. J. Balčikonis. — K., 1936, t. 5, p. 174.

⁸ Ten pat, p. 172.

⁹ Ten pat, p. 181.

¹⁰ Ten pat, t. 3, 1935, p. 17; t. 4, 1935, p. 276, 278 ir kt.; plg.: Piročkinas A. Jablonskis — bendrinės kalbos kūrėjas. — V., 1978, p. 201.

¹¹ Jablonskio raštai, t. 4, p. 189.

¹² Ten pat, p. 188.

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to introduce into it all sorts of new coinages without any need¹³ (cf. J. J.). Thus, the work of linguists was to establish and codify the system of the standard language, while the standard language itself is the product of the creativity of the entire nation, especially its most advanced members. The task of linguists is to ensure adherence to the accepted system: “As the written language develops, the linguists’ task is merely to bring to light the laws of the people’s language and to see that our writers, especially journalists […] do not themselves sometimes begin to undermine those laws”¹⁴.

Drawing on data from folk speech, folklore, written works, and linguistics, Jablonskis observed the diversity of Lithuanian usage and the many doublets found in vocabulary, word formation, and grammar. One might say that Jablonskis clearly understood the problem of variation in linguistic phenomena and grasped the limits of such variation in the standard language. “It must always be remembered that even in the grammars of other nations, although their orthography is much more developed, there are quite a few fluctuations of various kinds,” he wrote in the preface to his 1901 grammar. “So what can one expect from our grammar?”¹⁵ This raises the question of what principles guided Jablonskis as he selected norms for the standard language from various sources.

First, as we have seen, the decisive factor was the systematicity of a linguistic phenomenon. Anything incompatible with the system of the standard language, anything that exceeded the capacities of that system, was rejected without compromise and excluded from the standard language. This meant giving up many dialectal variants in phonetics and accentuation, certain types of word formation, and some doublets among morphological forms. Yet phenomena that fit within the system can also vary—so how did Jablonskis act in such cases, and what guided him when he accepted some linguistic phenomena into the standard language and rejected others?

The same question arises when examining Jablonskis’s views on foreignisms. Jablonskis was the great purifier of the Lithuanian language, and the criterion of linguistic purity was very important to him. “In fact, this principle was always at work whenever an attempt was made to standardize the language consciously”¹⁶. However, Jablonskis differed from all earlier language purists primarily in that he demanded purity not only in vocabulary but also in syntax¹⁷. Moreover, his work was distinctive in that he paid particular attention not only to the foreignism being criticized but also to its substitutes. He was especially attentive to these substitutes and held that a borrowing was better suited to the standard language than an inept neologism that did not fit within the language system: “if we do not have our own word, it would be much better to say, together with other nations, redaktuoti, redaktorius than to introduce into the language, without reason or any foundation, unsuitable neologisms”¹⁸. But even when there seemed to be perfectly good native words available in Lithuanian to replace a foreignism, Jablonskis sometimes left it untouched. For example, concerning the Polonism boti, he wrote: “Where appropriate, I myself will continue to use that word (boti) as before; when I find it in someone else’s text, I do not, it seems, correct it to the words žiūrėti, paisyti”¹⁹.

¹³ Ibid., vol. 5, p. 216.

¹⁴ Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 188–189.

¹⁵ Jablonskis J. RR, vol. 1, p. 61.

¹⁶ Piročkinas A. At the Origins of the Standard Language, p. 101.

¹⁷ Jablonskis’s Writings, vol. 4, p. 101.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 15.

¹⁹ Ibid., vol. 5, p. 182.

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The principle that Jablonskis followed in seeking to establish the facts of the standard language was apparently the purpose of language use, and the appropriateness of using particular linguistic phenomena that follows from it. Although the term “appropriateness” seems never to have been used in his writings, this principle can nevertheless be discerned in many of his discussions of specific linguistic questions.

Jablonskis understood language not only as a physiological and psychological phenomenon, but also as a social product. As a social phenomenon, language characterizes the society that speaks it (“In language, a nation declares what it is and what it is worth”²⁰). Whether a person knows or does not know it indicates the level of that person’s national consciousness (“the pointless hammering out of words and inability to express ‘to hammer out’ show that many of our writers, one way or another, have nevertheless lost their national identity”²¹; not knowing the language, “we cannot truly be useful even to our own people”²².

The standard language is intended for the whole nation; it is a unifying, common factor. To write in the standard language is to write for all the people, to write clearly and intelligibly for them. For this reason, narrow dialect forms are avoided in the standard language (the forms kalbė, žiūrė, turė “are not customary features of the language; they are not understood by others”²³), as are unusual neologisms—they would only make the language harder to learn: “We, at least most of our intellectuals, do not know and do not at present have time to learn even our own language textbook properly; so how, then, shall we learn ‘moksnis’ alongside ‘etiudas’, and ‘tara, tyra, tyravimas, matas’..., alongside ‘teorija, tardymas, tyrimas (tardymas), matavimas’”²⁴. Jablonskis spoke harshly against A. Vireliūnas’s neologisms²⁵ and P. Vaičiūnas’s distorted forms of reflexive verbs²⁶. In his view, understanding the language is also made more difficult by “strange signs of linguistic affectation or erudition”²⁷.

Throughout his life, Jablonskis sought unity and stability in the norms of the standard language. He was troubled by “the extraordinary variety of writers’ language in other literatures: the simplest thoughts are expressed one way by some writers and another by others in the same notebook; the uniformity of writers’ language, to the extent required by the most elementary rules of every written language, […] is nowhere to be seen”²⁸. All this harms the work of the school and, ultimately, fails to provide “any real relief in teaching the subject matter of society in that language”²⁹. He fought for this unity not only through his work to cultivate the language, but also by codifying its norms: he paid particular attention to systematicity and consistency in the formation of neologisms, and considered whether the proposed norms would be understood by the whole society. One cannot but agree with A. Piročkin’s view that, whether condemning foreignisms or legitimizing them, Jablonskis was guided by the principle of appropriateness. “Words of non-Lithuanian origin that are known to everyone and widely used—”

²⁰ Ibid., vol. 4, p. 191.

²¹ Ibid., p. 41; see also p. 57.

²² Ibid., p. 191.

²³ Ibid., p. 232.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 308.

²⁵ Ibid., vol. 5, p. 212 ff.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 121 ff.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 75.

²⁸ Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 50–51; cf. also pp. 133, 197, vol. 5, p. 121.

²⁹ Ibid., vol. 5, p. 214.

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words for which substitutes were usually unavailable in the vernacular, or for which it was difficult to coin a good neologism, Jablonskis did not drive out of the literary language”³⁰.

The purposiveness of language facts requires an exceptionally keen sense of society’s linguistic needs. Jablonskis expressed his views on these needs more than once. For instance, disagreeing with V. Kamantauskas’s position that derivatives with the suffix -uotė should be abandoned (in fact, only one word, važiuotė³¹, is known from the vernacular), he advises combining it with other related suffixes (-otė, -aulė), and here he sees no contradiction with the rules of popular speech. “If a certain suffix is now being avoided, then, in the writers’ view, it is unnecessary or no longer necessary in the language”³² (letter to A. P.).

But Germans distinguish between the words das Deklinieren and die Deklination; Kamantauskas seems to advise settling here for just one word, linksniavimas. “Would the author really want schoolchildren, in avoiding the suffix -uotė, to go on avoiding all the words they use (in textbooks) with the suffix -uotė (asmenuotė, linksniuote, vaizduotė, važiuotė...)?”³³ Compare also: “And the suffix -ūnas is, of course, something we must always be able to use wherever it is truly needed in human speech”³⁴ (letter to A. P.). “Žemaitija” is a neologism of the written language. That word and “kalvis” are still alive. If it were needed by writers, that word could, of course, also live in the written language”³⁵ (letter to A. P.). “When writing, we should use foreign words that people do not understand only where we cannot do without them”³⁶ (letter to A. P.).

There are many more such statements by Jablonskis in his writings; a careful reading will show that he applied this principle to numerous corrections.

The needs of the standard language are also taken into account in defending other words corrected by V. Kamantauskas. Jablonskis objected to the leveling of individual words and their meanings, so he advocated distinguishing dáilę and dailę, turėti and turėti, jaunatvę, jaunybę and jaunystę, patarėjas and tarėjas³⁷, and so on, even though some of these might not have met the requirements of linguistic purity or even systematicity. He understood perfectly that the needs of language users are the highest criterion, to which all others must yield, even if they stem from the best theory or the most sincere codifying efforts to “improve” the standard language: “If our language were to be as we ourselves supposedly [that is, theoretically. — A. P.] would like it to be, and if all its words were exactly as those supplied to it by the ‘language cultivators,’ then our language today would long since have ceased to be of value to an educated person, or would at least have lost some of its value”³⁸ (letter to J. J.).

Jablonskis must have had a good grasp of the stylistic diversity of language. He wrote that a drama’s hero or a novella’s philosopher cannot speak the same language as a guard or an ordinary worker³⁹. Those with less education are addressed more simply, while those with greater—

³⁰ Piročkinas A. Jablonskio kalbos norminimo pagrindai ir principai. — Kalbos kultūros teorija ir praktika/Lietuvių kalbos sekcijos sąsiuvinis, 1970, Nr. 5(18), p. 9.

³¹ Lietuvių kalbos gramatika. — V., 1965, t. 1, p. 298.

³² Jablonskio raštai, t. 5, p. 206.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 207.

³⁵ Ibid., vol. 4, p. 122.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 144.

³⁷ Ibid., vol. 5, pp. 170, 178, 185, 193.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 216.

³⁹ Ibid., p. 62.

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— one can “operate with intricate, more elaborate expressions”⁴⁰. Although the linguist has more than once emphasized that he did not like to meddle in matters of style (“I am inclined to leave matters of style to the writers themselves”⁴¹), he nevertheless expressed more than one interesting thought on specific questions of style.

First, Jablonskis disapproved of using elements from different dialects in the same text: “in the forms of words and names, and, generally speaking, in the grammar, various dialects of our language should not be mixed”⁴². He criticized the inconsistent use of the inessive and the preposition į with the accusative, the confusion of the dual and plural, and so on. He also opposed the artificial promotion of dialect features, especially in writings intended for less-educated readers: “I advise translators (and language editors) henceforth to try not to write for schools in dialects—to refrain from bringing to the fore their features that are unfamiliar in written texts. Dialect features in written texts will come to light even if they are not brought to the fore; we need only learn how to use them for our own language and the language of written texts”⁴³.

Jablonskis was also concerned with other stylistic features of written texts. He raised his voice against the ostentation and pretended erudition of written language⁴⁴, the artificiality of sentences, and the obscurity and lack of clarity in their meaning⁴⁵. “When we write something, we must first express our thought clearly and understandably”⁴⁶ (emphasis A. P.). A thought must be expressed not only clearly and understandably, but also fluently and with ease⁴⁷. That this was no empty phrase or general, nonspecific demand for good language, but a precise understanding of the stylistic features of written texts, is shown by the fact that Jablonskis clearly distinguished matters of language from matters of style (“Writers themselves need to begin taking care that our written language be a) easy, beautiful, clear, widely understood, and b) correct (it must follow the rules of the language of the people, the readers)”⁴⁸; finally, consider Jablonskis’s statement: “sentences, taken separately, seem correct, but that correctness of the sentences, it seems to me, somewhat impaired the fluency and ease of his language”⁴⁹. Correctness impaired fluency and ease!.. Is this not the subtlest example of the functional and social purposefulness of language?!

* * *

A review of Jablonskis’s views should not give the impression that they were unchanging and rigid, and thus ultimately, given his long 40-year engagement in language cultivation, dogmatic in a certain sense. In fact, throughout his life Jablonskis adhered strictly only to the fundamental requirements for the creation and development of the standard language. Above all, these were the principles of linguistic systematicity and functional purposefulness that he applied universally. Throughout his life, Jablonskis also pursued linguistic purity, although the criterion of purity was subordinated to purposefulness; consequently, he never deviated in the slightest from a sober approach to evaluating foreignisms. All the while, as an advocate of linguistic systematicity—

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 37.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 72.

⁴² Ibid., vol. 4, p. 49.

⁴³ Ibid., p. 243.

⁴⁴ Ibid., vol. 5, p. 75.

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 134.

⁴⁶ Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 133, 143.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 262; vol. 5, p. 92.

⁴⁸ Ibid., vol. 4, p. 144.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 262.

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Having become more attentive to functional expediency in the second half of his work, he eventually declared in 1921 that correctness (i.e., adherence to the system) was not everything—it was no longer enough for the standard language. Convinced that, from the beginning of the 1920s, one could already speak of a formed, genuinely existing standard language with a firmly codified system⁵⁰, Jablonskis devoted himself chiefly to safeguarding that language’s norms and defending their stability, although matters of codification continued to be extraordinarily important to him (cf. his 1928 review of V. Kamantauskas’s dictionary, “Matters Concerning Our Language Dictionary”). He uncompromisingly demanded grammatical correctness of writers and translators, firmly opposed the flood of unnecessary coinages, disagreed with Būga’s advocacy of the phonetic and morphological Lithuanianization of international words, and defended the established usage of those words’ forms.

Jablonskis’s views changed more often with regard to specific language norms, and this is entirely understandable. In his working practice he incorporated everything that contemporary linguistics had discovered (cf. his public admission that he had been mistaken in correcting derivatives with the suffix -imas⁵¹); he took into account what he himself had learned from servants (in this respect, editing Juška’s dictionary in 1897–1906 must have taught Jablonskis a great deal), and considered what language practice tended to accept or reject. For all these reasons, Jablonskis later abandoned some of his corrections, but almost every time his articles also included new matters that had not previously been addressed⁵², and consequently some language norms were assessed somewhat differently in his grammars⁵³. This, however, did not in the least undermine either the stability of language norms that Jablonskis demanded or the general principles underlying his entire work on language culture.

In general, Jablonskis’s contribution to the Lithuanian standard language and its culture is immeasurable, and can hardly be properly assessed in any survey or article. His works await new research, for generation after generation will draw spiritual sustenance from them, and each will find there invaluable treasures of its own, without which no progress in life, culture, or the standard language itself is possible.

THE THEORY OF SPEECH CULTURE OF J. JABLONSKIS

Abstract

Jonas Jablonskis, the founder of the modern Lithuanian literary language, left no specialized theoretical works on the culture of Lithuanian speech. However, his numerous statements on practical questions of Lithuanian language standardization make it possible to assert that his work was guided by a thoroughly considered theory, whose foundations consist of the following postulates. The sources of the norms of the Lithuanian literary language are the vernacular and the language of folklore, the literary works of authors well acquainted with the vernacular, and linguistic works (grammars and dictionaries). In selecting norms, J. Jablonskis took account above all of the systematic nature and expediency of linguistic phenomena; at the beginning of his work he gave priority to systematicity, while later he increasingly took expediency into account.

⁵⁰ Piročkinas A. Jablonskis – bendrinės kalbos kūrėjas, p. 191.

⁵¹ Jablonskio raštai, t. 4, p. 271–272.

⁵² Tai parodyta A. Piročkino darbuose (ypač kn.: Jono Jablonskio leksiniai taisymai. – K., 1970; Jono Jablonskio gramatiniai taisymai. – K., 1976).

⁵³ Piročkinas A. Jablonskis – bendrinės kalbos kūrėjas, p. 219–221.

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