Nauja lietuvių kalbos gramatika

In the grammar’s preface, the reader is addressed in the modest words of M. Mažvydas, a pioneer of Lithuanian literature: “mana darba usz gier prymkiet”. There is no doubt that this wish of the distinguished Norwegian Balticist will be fulfilled in abundance. On every page of the book, the reader feels deeply grateful to the author, recognizing that Comparative Grammar of the Baltic Languages is a substantial and landmark contribution to contemporary Baltic and Indo-European studies. K. Morkūnas A NEW LITHUANIAN GRAMMAR A. Senn, Handbuch der litauischen Sprache, Bd. I: Grammatik, Heidelberg, 1966. For a long time, entire generations of foreign linguists learned Lithuanian from the handbook prepared by A. Leskynas, which consists of an anthology, a concise grammar, and a dictionary. Nearly fifty years have passed since its publication (1919). During that time, not only has Lithuanian spelling changed considerably, but the usage of some forms has also changed; belles-lettres and scholarly literature have grown immeasurably, and many questions of phonetics, morphology, and syntax have been thoroughly investigated. Preparing a new, comprehensive handbook of Lithuanian had become essential. The task was undertaken by the Swiss-born linguist A. Zenas (Senn). In 1957 he published Part II of the Handbook of the Lithuanian Language, which consists of texts selected from works by various Lithuanian writers, marked for stress, and accompanied by commentaries and a Lithuanian-German-English dictionary1. In 1966, the first and most important part of the handbook appeared: a grammar of the Lithuanian language. This is a substantial 495-page work that provides a detailed description of the phonetics and morphology of contemporary Lithuanian and the usage of many grammatical forms. The author of this grammar, A. Zenas, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is well known to Lithuanian linguists for his work. He is one of the editors of the five-volume Dictionary of the Lithuanian Written Language2, recently completed in Heidelberg, and the only one who has worked on this dictionary from the very beginning of its publication. He has been interested in Lithuanian for a long time, has lived in Lithuania, and taught phonetics and other linguistic subjects at Kaunas University. In 1929 he wrote A Short Textbook of Lithuanian3 for foreigners wishing to learn some Lithuanian. A. Zenas maintained his ties with Lithuanian studies thereafter. He has written many articles and other works on Lithuanian studies, Baltic studies, and comparative linguistics more broadly, and recently has taken an active part in addressing the problem of the earliest relations among the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic peoples. His new work seems to sum up the results of many years of Lithuanian studies. The grammar consists of ten parts. The very first, introductory part is already extensive and rich in content: after briefly surveying the history of the Lithuanian people, it discusses the place of Lithuanian among the Baltic languages and its relations with other related languages. Here the author concisely presents his view on the question of the earliest relations among the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages. In his opinion, toward the end of the Indo-European period of unity, as the ancestors of the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic peoples interacted closely with one another, there emerged 1 A. Senn, Handbuch der litauischen Sprache, II, Heidelberg, 1957. 2 M. Niedermann, A. Senn, F. Brender, A. Salys, Wörterbuch der litauischen Schriftsprache, Litauisch-Deutsch, I—V, Heidelberg, 1934—1967. 3 A. Senn, Kleine litauische Sprachlehre, Heidelberg, 1929. 194 common features characteristic only of these dialects (e.g., the numeral tūkstantis, the name rugio, plural dative forms in -m, and so on). Firmly and with supporting arguments, the author rejects the Proto-Baltic-Slavic language posited by some researchers, explaining the close affinity of these languages as the result of a very long process of close contact (symbiosis) that began as early as the third century AD. Moreover, the Baltic and Slavic languages are linked by the fact that they long preserved ancient Indo-European features, whereas the Germanic languages rapidly modernized, changed, and diverged from their original state. The Baltic languages have remained especially archaic. The introduction then briefly discusses Lithuanian dialects and their relationship to the literary language, and surveys the earliest monuments of the Lithuanian language. The final chapters of the introductory part describe Lithuanian sounds, their spelling and development, and their relationships with the sounds of other Indo-European languages. The second part of the grammar discusses the declension of nouns, pronouns, numerals, and participles; the third and fourth deal with the formation and inflection of verb forms; and the fifth covers indeclinable parts of speech. The sixth part concisely presents the principal principles of word formation. The next three parts are devoted to the use of forms: the use of nouns, the meanings of cases, and the functions of non-finite verb forms are described separately. The final, tenth part briefly surveys certain features of Lithuanian sentence structure. Except for the introductory part, which touches on issues in comparative Baltic linguistics, the grammar is based mainly on contemporary Lithuanian. The author does not seek to show the prehistory of the forms under discussion, compare them with forms in other languages, or reconstruct older proto-forms unattested in written sources. In this respect, the work differs from J. Otrembskis’s grammar, published in Poland, which has a more historical orientation. The facts of contemporary Lithuanian, however, are presented here very broadly and in detail. The preface names as many as 74 authors whose writings supplied material from the contemporary language; the grammar also draws on many folklore sources (among which the collections published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature occupy a prominent place), descriptions of dialects, all earlier grammars, and a substantial body of linguistic literature. The author is well acquainted with linguistic works published in Lithuania during the Soviet period, relies on them in many places, and cites them in the bibliographies provided at the end of each chapter; particular extensive use is made of Lithuanian dictionaries published in recent decades and of publications in the series Issues in Lithuanian Linguistics. The grammar describes not only facts of the contemporary Lithuanian literary language; on every important question, it also seeks to provide evidence from dialects, earlier writings, and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century language monuments. Following the texts published in Part II of the Handbook of the Lithuanian Language, it often discusses one or another feature of word formation, inflection, or usage characteristic of a notable author (for example, M. Daukša, J. Bretkūnas, and, among more recent writers, M. Valančius, S. Daukantas, Krėvė, B. Sruoga, and others). Thus the grammar also reflects, to some extent, the development of forms used in the contemporary language during the period of written tradition. Data from dialects and older writings are distinguished from facts of the contemporary literary language, generally presented in a different typeface, and do not disrupt the unity of the work. The purpose of the work itself largely determined the method used to present and organize the linguistic data. Since the grammar is intended primarily for non-Lithuanians studying Lithuanian and reading texts, the material is presented so that, for each part of speech or group of forms, readers can find as much as possible in one place 13* 195 comprehensive information. Therefore, alongside individual declension or conjugation types, stress and even word-formation issues are also discussed; an effort is made to provide as many inflectional paradigms as possible. For example, on p. 140, where r-stem nouns are discussed, we find no fewer than six declension paradigms for the noun duktė, based on Daukša’s Postil and five Lithuanian grammars: those of F. Kurschat, K. Jaunius, J. Jablonskis (1901 and 1925), and J. Žiugžda (1961). Word-formation matters (the main suffixes), stress, and the history of forms during the period of the written tradition are also described in the same place for r-stem nouns. This approach makes it easier for the reader to find all the necessary information about a particular group of forms in one place; however, it often compromises the methodological coherence and compactness of the description. In general, methodologically and theoretically, we find little that is new in this work compared with earlier grammars. The new methods of descriptive grammar are not applied here, and even a phonological interpretation of the Lithuanian sound system has been omitted. This is offset by the abundance and variety of the linguistic facts presented. Without undertaking a more detailed analysis of this major and significant work, we will mention a few inaccuracies or debatable statements noticed while browsing it. Unlike grammarians to date, the author treats the illative as a case on a par with the others (ein regelrechter Beugungsfall, p. 92) and includes it in the declension paradigms of nouns and adjectives in the literary language. Although singular illative forms are used fairly frequently in present-day language, they are already tending to become adverbialized and are isolated from the other cases, while their sphere of use is limited to colloquial speech and belles lettres. Plural forms occur only in exceptional, stylistically motivated instances; the author himself acknowledges this on p. 437. Under these circumstances, including the illative in the literary-language paradigms alongside the other cases is difficult to justify; moreover, it is not included in the declension paradigms of pronouns or participles. The situation is different in the East Aukštaitian dialects, where the illative is indeed an equal member of the case system. While correctly stating that consonants at the end of a word are generally pronounced hard, on p. 65 the author treats as exceptions the prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions dėl, kol, tol, shortened from longer forms, in which word-final l is supposedly pronounced soft. In fact, in the present-day literary language, the l at the end of these words is also characteristically pronounced hard. The genitive plural form žvėrių, listed first in the declension paradigm alongside žvėrių (p. 129), is dialectal and no longer used at all in the literary language. The noun bendrybė, listed on p. 121 alongside the usual derivatives with the suffix yba—kūryba, rašyba, sodyba, and so on—should likewise not be regarded as a fact of the literary language. The author’s claim that the active participle forms of the past definite tense found in A. Schleicher’s chrestomathy, prigavuse and išgėruse, are innovations in place of the plural nominatives prigavę and išgėrę (p. 178) is debatable. A. Bezzenberger had already noted such dual nominatives in B. Vilentas’s writings, e.g. ateiusse VEE 202; cf. giwenuse, kalbejuse, atejuse KIC 404. Alongside them, corresponding present-tense active participle forms were also used in the Lithuanian dialects of East Prussia, e.g. negalincze Sch II 215, ne turincze Jrk 73; cf. also the half-participle ne rasdame BsMt II 198. J. Endzelīns convincingly demonstrated the antiquity of these forms (IF 33, 123–124); they may be compared with the nominative-accusative dual of consonant stems, cf. 4 The same source abbreviations are used here as in the great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. 196 žmūne DP 31310, 31416, šūne Mit II 40 (the first of these forms is also mentioned by the author himself at I 139, II 171). Without justification, on p. 295 the academic Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language is criticized for treating M. Daukša’s form nuentiemus DP 592 as a participle; the author considers it incorrectly written and analyzes it as a gerund plus a dative pronoun (nueinantį jemus). Here we most likely have the same kind of absolute dative participle without a pronoun as in bekalbančėm DP 15912, regintiemus DP 22837, tarintiemus BB Apd 27, 13, and so on; see LKK V 106–107. Among the book’s positive features are the careful selection of examples and the excellent technical preparation and editing of the entire text, which enable readers to find the information they need quickly and easily. In closing, one would like to wish that A. Zenas’s Handbook of the Lithuanian Language opens the gates to Lithuanian for as many of its friends and researchers around the world as possible. V. Ambrazas A SIGNIFICANT STEP IN LATVIAN DIALECTOLOGY M. Rudzīte, Latviešu dialektoloģija, Rīgā, 1964, 432 p. The past few years have been truly fruitful for the dialectology of the Baltic languages. Against the backdrop of a wealth of articles and monographs on individual dialects, long-awaited works of a generalizing nature in dialectology have finally appeared: Lithuanian scholars can take pleasure in Z. Zinkevičius’s “Lietuvių kalbos dialektologija” (Vilnius, 1966), while Latvian scholars can do so in M. Rudzīte’s “Latviešu dialektoloģija.” Although written using different methods and, in part, for different purposes, these two books together constitute a kind of encyclopedia of Baltic dialectology, indispensable to every scholar of these languages. Marta Rudzīte has been working successfully in Latvian dialectology for a dozen or so years: in 1958, her substantial description of several neighboring dialects of northern Latvia was published1 (this work had already been defended in 1954 as a candidate’s dissertation2); in 1963, a reader of Latvian dialect texts compiled by her for teaching purposes appeared3. In addition, M. Rudzīte’s great contribution to Latvian dialectology lies in the fact that graduates of the University of Riga working under her guidance produced a considerable number of high-quality descriptions of their native dialects, which are no less valuable to linguistic scholarship than many published studies of Latvian dialects. M. Rudzīte’s greatest contribution to Latvian linguistics and Baltic studies in general, however, is her book “Latviešu dialektoloģija.” The size of this work alone—432 pages—sufficiently demonstrates that the author has truly accomplished an enormous amount. Following a fairly rigorous plan, she describes the main dialects of Latvian: Central (vidus dialekts, pp. 59–146), Livonian (lībiskais dialekts, pp. 147–255), and High Latvian (augšzemnieku dialekts, pp. 257–405). In fact, only the phonetics and morphology of the dialects are described in detail, while questions of syntax are scarcely touched upon (notably, this “problem” also beset Z. Zinkevičius’s “Lietuvių dialektologija”—apparently, brighter days have yet to dawn for the syntax of the Baltic languages!). 1 M. Rudzīte, Ziemeļvidzemes izloksnes Braslavā, Vecatē, Baunos un Vilzēnos, „Valodas un literatūras institūta raksti“, VI, Rīgā, 1958, p. 101–256. 2 M. Rudzite, Dialects of the northern part of Vidzeme (Braslava, Vecate, Baunas, Vilzēni), Author’s abstract, Riga, 1954. 3 M. Rudzīte, Latviešu izloksņu teksti, Rīgā, 1963, 108 p. (išleista rotoprintu). 197