Nauji darbai apie lietuvių kalbos tarmes

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, II LIETUVOS TSR MOKSLŲ AKADEMIJA NEW WORKS ON LITHUANIAN DIALECTS A. VIDUGIRIS Isolated, small, and vanishing Lithuanian dialect enclaves in the territory of the Byelorussian SSR provide interesting and valuable material for Lithuanian dialectology. Soviet linguists devote considerable attention to them, since this material sheds much light on the development of Lithuanian dialects and on the problem of Balto-Slavic linguistic relations. Some of this material has already been published by our linguists1; one article and some texts are included in this collection of articles, and separate descriptions of these dialects are being prepared for publication. Works on these dialects are also appearing abroad. At this time, attention is being drawn to the work of Norwegian linguists, professors and academicians O. Broch and Ch. S. Stang. Prof. Ch. S. Stang of the University of Oslo published his first significant studies of the Lithuanian language and its dialects several decades ago2. At approximately the same time, he collected material in the village of Zasėčiai, in what is now the Zietela (Diatlovo) district of the Byelorussian SSR, where there were still quite a number of Lithuanian-speaking people at the time. The results of those studies have now been published.3 This is, one might say, the first description of the Lithuanian dialect found in the Zietela district. It is true that E. Volteris provided information about the grammar and phonetics of the Zietela dialect, as well as some texts (which now have only comparative-historical value), having visited the area as early as 1888.4 Later, around 1928–1929, the Estonian linguist P. Aruma visited this dialect area, recording and publishing a collection of dialect texts with commentary and grammatical explanations.5 But P. Aruma presented those grammatical observations on the dialect without a system. Thus, Chr. S. Stang’s 30-page article, which systematically sets out the main phonetic and morphological features of the Zietela dialect, is quite significant. 1 J. Senkus, Kai kurie Lazūnų tarmės ypatumai. — „Lietuvos TSR Mokslų akademijos Darbai“, Serija A, 1, 183—194, Vilnius, 1958. 2 Chr. S. Stang, Die Sprache des litauischen katechismus von Mažvydas, Oslo, 1929; G. Gerullis ir Chr. Stangas, Lietuvių žvejų tarmė Prūsuose, Kaunas 1933. 3 Chr. S. Stang, Die litauische Mundart von Zasėčiai im Gebiet von Wilna. — „Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap“, Bind XVIII, S. 171—201 (1958). 4 E. Wolter, Die Litauer im Kreise Slonim, Gouv. Grodno. „Mitteilungen der litauischen litterarischen Gesellschaft“, 4, 166—169, Heidelberg (1899). 5 P. Arumaa, Litauische mundartliche Texte aus der Wilnaer Gegend, 41—53, 68—75, Dorpat, 1931. 239 The villages of Zasečiai and Pagiriai in the Zietela district, where even today one can still encounter people of the older generation who speak Lithuanian, form the southernmost Lithuanian enclave beyond the borders of our republic. Scholars explain its origins in various ways. Some regard the Lithuanians of this area as evidence of the ancient Baltic ethnographic territory in the south; others consider them settlers. For example, E. Volter regarded the Zietela dialect as the Lithuanized dialect of settlers speaking ancient Prussian (Yatvingian?) speech. Like other authors, Volter bases his argument chiefly on the pronunciation of the sound ž in place of standard Lithuanian ž in words such as: ža˙šs ~ žąsis, žver˙is, bazn˙˙ča⁶. Chr. S. Stang rejects this view. In his opinion, the sound ž can be considered a feature of Prussian only in the word za˙sis; in the other words, this sound most likely arose under the influence of Belarusian. The Zietela dialect is therefore purely Lithuanian and differs from the literary language much as other dialects do. To our knowledge, the sound ž in place of standard Lithuanian ž occurs in some other places as well. For example, in the village of Ašašninkai (pronounced Asašnykai), in the Kabeliai area of Varėna district (officially called Antrieji Kabeliai), most people of the older generation almost always pronounce ž and s instead of the sounds ž and š: zu˙sis, šitas, žemė, salis, sasį, žuvis, asariukas. J. Otrębski⁷ also tends to regard this phenomenon as a remnant of a Yatvingian substrate in Lithuanian dialects, since the places mentioned lie precisely in the territory inhabited by the ancient Yatvingians⁸. In the phonetics section, Ch. S. Stang offers interesting observations on the history of sounds. Open e becomes a after l: kãula˙~kiaulė, kumelã⁹. The diphthongs ie and uo are shortened in the prepositions prīg, nūg. The phonetic changes in the words jū˙ško, jū˙škodama, rū˙šutai (alongside ji˙ško, ri˙šutai) are striking. The alternation of bilabial v with j occurs in the words sa sajĩm, sa tajĩm(p), alongside tavim, savim, tavip, etc. The morphology of the dialect is described in much greater detail. The principal features of its inflectional system are evident from the paradigms provided for the declension of the main nominal forms and the conjugation of verbs. As is well known, the Zietela dialect has preserved a considerable number of archaic case forms, for example: singular dative prīg árkli, lig vãndini; singular adesive katei̇p || kateip, kãulãip, dūkterei̇p || dūkteip, veršip, veršėp, žmogi̇p; singular allative namõp, gaidõp; plural inessive pūodwosa, veršwosa, gaidwosa. šãniwosa, šuni˙sa (alongside šunuos), bó bosa, rankosa, aki˙sa; dual nominative and accusative dù gaidù, veršù, žmogu, šunù, dvi bóbi, marì, akì, nakti, dùkteri. 6 E. A. Volter, Traces of the Ancient Prussians and Their Language in Grodno Governorate. — “Proceedings of the Department of Russian Language and Literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences,” Vol. ХУІ, no. 4, 151—160, St. Petersburg, 1912. 7 J. Otrębski, Gramatyka języka litewskiego, 1, 24,352—354, Warszawa, 1958. 8 The pronunciation žusis also occurs elsewhere, e.g., in Lazūnai (cf. J. Otrębski, cited work, p. 24) and Vėliūnai (Dūkštas district). The pronunciation žusis in Vėliūnai could, admittedly, be questioned, since it was recorded from the sole remaining speaker of the dialect who spoke Lithuanian (the others no longer knew Lithuanian; see the material collected by the dialectological expedition of the Vilnius State Pedagogical Institute in 1955). 9 The examples are given mainly in the transcription used in the “Program for Collecting Material for the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language.” Only rare variations in transcription approved in the original commentary have been retained, e.g., gaidėi and gaidžėi, bū˙čap, jôčep, etc. 240 A distinctive feature is the singular instrumental ending -ai, or -ei, for all feminine-stem nouns: sa bõbai, kàulai, dukterái, katèi, marčiai, akái, nakčiai (alongside nakčà). It is regrettable that the author did not state his opinion on the origin of this ending. Noun inflection also has some newer features. The ending -mi, found in the plural dative of masculine nouns of all stems—púodami, langámi, veršámi, gaidámi, sunámi, bóbomi—is to be considered a recent development. In the plural nominative, i-stem nouns and some consonant-stem nouns have shifted to the ē-stems: ãkės, nãktės, dãntės, dùkterės, šùnės (alongside šunẽ, dantẽ). The plural of the word žmogus is interesting: žmõgai, žmõgų, žmõgámi, žmõgis, žmõgais, žmõguõs (alongside žmõnės, žmõnų, etc.). The characteristic plural nominative ending of adjectives is -i: laukìni, mõlini. This shows that it is older than the standard Lithuanian ending -(i)ai. It is regrettable that the author did not give analogous pronominal endings, which are so common in the dialect of Zasečiai village: katri, kuri, toki, koki, nėkoki “some,” iti, tì alongside itie, tie. Slavic forms are used to form the superlative degree of adjectives: gãeras, gerãšnis, náigeráusis, áu(k)štas, au(k)štãšnis, náiau(k)štasnis. Adverbs are graded in much the same way: gerãi, gerèst, náigerèst, náigeráusa, náigeráust; dáug, dáug (el)is, dáugèst, náidáugáusa, dáugãust. The forms in -(i)ausia, recorded by Chr. S. Stang, are now very rarely encountered in the Zasečiai dialect. It is worth mentioning the identical genitive and accusative forms of personal pronouns in the singular: manè, tavè, savè, as well as the identical dative and instrumental forms in the plural: mùmi, jùmi. The third-person singular and plural nominative forms are: ãnas, anà, ãniės (alongside ãni's, ãnes). For the singular inessive, the author gives only one interrogative pronoun form, namely: kame. Today, alongside this form and with the same meaning, the pronoun kur? is used much more often: kùr tù bùsti (gyveni)?, kùr dabàr tavà dùktė? But to indicate a direction of movement, the illative of this pronoun is always used: kanà?: kanà tù važiuosi nakčiai?, kanà tù aimi, bù:k ča. The demonstrative pronoun it-sàik, ìtoi also differs from the literary language; it is highly characteristic of other neighboring dialects related to Zietela, e.g., Lazūnai, Rodūnė, Varanavas, etc. Numerals differ only in a few minor details; for example, instead of the ordinal antras, the dialect uses the word kìtas, while the first root survives only in the compound numeral pusõntro, pusẽntro. Collective numerals are used frequently: dvẽitas, trãitas, kãtvertas, penkẽtas, septì-netas. Ch. S. Stang devotes more attention to the verb. The author attempts to explain historically the emergence of certain verb forms. For example, he explains the emergence of the first-person singular past-tense verbs variau, statiau, gaudau, skaldau by analogy with other persons. The author cautiously attempts to identify the voiceless labial consonant -b or -p, which often attaches to first-person singular forms of the subjunctive (bùčap, jòčep, aičap, vėsčep), with Belarusian b(ы). However, he draws no firm conclusion about forms with -pė (aičepė, bučapėgi, gulčepės), which he conjectures to be counter-analogical. The author describes the imperative mood at length. In the Zietela dialect, this mood is formed with the suffix -k. The sole example without the suffix k is a(i)mà (an old athematic indicative form), which is sometimes still used as an imperative. The typical second-person plural ending is -t, though occasionally one also says 241 -tė! go, work. Imperative forms made from short-root infinitives in Lithuanian standard language are pronounced with lengthened a, e: vėsk, mesk, kašk, rašk. Otherwise, the vowel -i, which has disappeared everywhere after -k, is retained before the particle -g (palaukig) or when stressed (gulki). Chr. S. Stang managed to record many more and more varied examples with half-participles than are now used in the Zasečiai dialect, for example: a man died while working, dirbdami, dirbdamą (-mõs, mos); the boy fell from the plough while riding (jodamõs, jodamà). The author has recorded a great deal of valuable material on reflexive forms. Many examples with a stressed reflexive particle have been collected, namely: present tense, third person singular sėdasi, stojasi, randasi, stovisi; past tense, all persons sėdáus, sėdáís, sėdomės, sėdotės, sėdosi, stojosi, radosi, laidost, gulėsi; future tense, stosios, sėsios, rašis, laisis; imperative mood stokis, stokitės, gulki, gulkitės, sėskis, sėskitės; subjunctive mood gulčapės, šešcapės, juokčapės, skuscčapės, stocapės; infinitives stotis, sėstis, gultis, rastis, laistis. Regarding the vowel in the ending of reflexive subjunctive forms, which Chr. S. Stang consistently marks with the sign ė in his description, it should be added that in the Zasečiai dialect it is pronounced in various ways: ė, iė, ię, i:. Apart from one or two points already mentioned, the author should also be faulted for certain inconsistencies in transcription (many of them are apparent in the examples given above). It is true that some of these differences can be explained by the considerable variation in the spoken Lithuanian of Zietela. Others may also have arisen through no fault of the author, for example, inconsistent marking of length in diphthongs: ver.šis, vėr.su, but veršip (p. 183), etc. These matters, however, are relatively insignificant and in no way diminish the value of the work as a whole. Since the Lithuanian dialect of Zietela is living out its final days, people are forgetting the Lithuanian language more and more with each passing year, and many of the forms recorded by Chr. S. Stang can no longer be heard today. In this sense, Ch. S. Stang’s work is, as it were, a monument to this dialect. It is a pity only that the author did not include texts, of which, one may suppose, he recorded quite a number. * * * The other work, longer in page count (71 pages in all), examines the Dzūkija dialect spoken by Lithuanians in the vicinity of Žirmūnai and Bastūnai, in the Rodūnė district of the Belarusian SSR. Its author is Olaf Broch, who is known in the world of linguistics as an excellent phonetician, with many contributions to Slavic philology. The work of this veteran scholar, now over 90 years old, has now reached Lithuanian linguists as well10. In his description, O. Broch uses material he collected in 1895, when this entire region was still considerably more Lithuanian. The author mentions that he spoke Lithuanian with the peasants of the Aradnõs (Pol. Horodno) estate, who also knew how to speak “po-prostu,” that is, Belarusian, and understood Russian and Polish. People spoke a mixed language in the nearby village of Lapótiškės. The villages of Grubėnai, Puodžiai, Piaradnis, and Zaniūnai were also Lithuanian-speaking. Thus, O. Broch’s observations are very valuable for understanding the history of the region’s inhabitants. For example, apsi- 10 O. Broch, Zum Litauischen südlich von Vilna. — „Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap“, Bind XIX, S. 1–71 (1958). 242 Having visited this region after more than 60 years, that is, in 1957–1958, one can already see a different picture. It is still possible to encounter elderly people who know Lithuanian in almost every village of the Rodūnė district. The villages between Rodūnė and Pāditvis (to the south) remain compactly Lithuanian, while the Lithuanian villages between Rodūnė and Plikiai (in the Žirmūnai area—to the east) have begun to become somewhat Belarusian. Plikiai, too, is still an entirely Lithuanian village. But, apart from these areas, Belarusian now predominates elsewhere, although people often consider themselves Polish. It should be said that O. Broch was more concerned with demonstrating the interaction between Lithuanian and Belarusian from the phonetic point of view.11 On this subject, he intended to write an extensive study. However, the very first steps in the research showed the author that such a work would require much more time. The war and political changes in the region interrupted the author’s further work. The author says that he would not have planned to publish his material on this dialect had it not been for Ch. Stang’s encouragement and assistance. Nevertheless, despite the incompleteness and fragmentary nature of the material collected, as well as the errors that occur, the description of the dialect contains many highly valuable things. First of all, the author has recorded a considerable number of texts in this dialect very well (about 12 pages in all), which lends the description immense value. The contributors are Jonas Kurauskas (from Lapotiškės) and Vikentas Jurčys (Jurczis; place of residence not stated). The texts consist of three folk tales, two songs, and several fragments of folk speech. Since the author devoted most of his attention to the dialect’s phonetics, the texts are transcribed with extraordinary precision, with even very subtle nuances indicated. There is somewhat greater variation in the marking of pitch accent. Many doubts and ambiguities, however, are resolved by the very carefully prepared commentaries on the texts. After the texts, the most important features of the inflection of nouns and verbs are presented. The dialect is distinguished neither by archaic forms nor by any particularly rare means of word formation. It has far fewer of the interesting features, for example, that are found in the Zietela or Laz(d)ūnai dialects. The following most characteristic features presented by the author give an idea of the dialect’s inflectional system. The singular dative ending, as in Zietela, without i̇ kraštu, svėčiu. In addition, examples of old endings occur in fossilized nominal phrases with prepositions: ik̇_ pačám vākari, ik̇_ abėdi. The word vōgts is used with two stems, vōg- and vūg-, whose singular genitive and dative forms coincide: vōgo arba vūgo. The vowel of the plural locative ending is often pronounced hard, without palatalization: katėsè, širdzìsè, seserosè, geruosè, gerosà.12 The accentuation of the plural dative should be viewed critically: arklām, svėcām, vogām, vagām, su’nām alongside su’nām, since, for example, in Plikiai and around Pelesa, one more often hears arklām, svėcām. 11 Cf. O. Broch, Über einen weißrussischen Dialekt aus der Gegend südlich von Vilna. — „Zeitschr. f. sl. Phil.“, Bd. XXVI, S. 1—46. 12 The transcription used by the author for these examples differs from ours. The author marks softness next to vowels throughout, even before front vowels. In his transcription, the sign æ in this case corresponds to our transcribed a; cf. the forms recorded during the expedition of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature: rūguosà, žeirosa (in the embers). 243 The old ending of consonant-stem nouns has been preserved in the singular genitive and in the plural nominative of some nouns: dukterės, akmenės, piemenės (alongside akmenė, piemenė), seserės, šunės, dukteres, seseres, šunes. Dual forms are rarely encountered: du kraštu, but dvi dukteres. Adjective inflection is much the same as in other dialects, except for the singular instrumental, where the ending -um is sometimes found instead of -u, e.g.: gerum, gerim, alongside saldù, didelù. The singular genitive of personal pronouns differs from the accusative by its pitch accent: nuk, tavī, savī, manī and manì, tavì, savì, while the plural dative differs from the instrumental chiefly in stress placement: mūmi, jūmi and mumì(m), jumì(m). The singular instrumental ending of demonstrative, and partly interrogative and relative, pronouns is masculine -uom: tuom, jitiom, juom, huom, and feminine -uoi: tuoi, jitiuoi, juoi. Shortened singular genitive forms of possessive pronouns are very common: mā, tā, sā alongside māno, tāvo, sāvo. Numerals differ little from those of other dialects. Locative forms of numerals that have become adverbial are characteristic of the dialect: penkuose, septiņuose, aštuoniuose, dešimcet, vienuolikos, dvi-likoi. They are used, as the author notes, in the nominative sense, both independently and in agreement with nouns, e.g., penkuose žmonių. The verb also has some archaic features. The subjunctive is formed differently from standard Lithuanian: suktāu, suktum or suktai, suktū, verstāu, verstāi or veršt, verstūm, verstūt, mi·lbūt or mi·lb·tūr¹³. The following athematic and contaminated verb forms are recorded: jėdmi, liekmi, liekmi, liekma, miegmù, miegmì, niēšt. The verb sēc attracts attention; the author guesses that it is an infinitive, arising in his notes from a spelling error for sėdėti (pronounced sėdėc). But the usage of this word indicates that it is a present-tense third-person form, most likely arising through shortening of the word sėdzi. There are quite a few examples of sēc in this sense in the Rodūnė, Varanavas, and Jūrotiškės areas: ānas sėdės ir sēc prie langēlo (Plikiai village); an kèlmo sēc ir lāuka (Paditvys village); Ānas sėdàs ir sēc ir nė sù kuoj nēi.tarija (Lazūnai). Many examples are given of infinitives used with the ending er: dži·ce, jėsce, dzi·gce, aukce, bėkce, likce, mī·kce. As noted, O. Broch devotes particular attention to the dialect’s phonetics. He describes each sound of the dialect, briefly characterizes it and shows its variants, often even addressing phoneme formation from the physiological perspective. Thus, in this respect, O. Broch’s description of the Lithuanian Dzūkian dialect in the eastern part of the Rodūnė area is useful not only to dialectologists but also to anyone interested in Lithuanian phonetics in general. Here the author also provides numerous examples of vocalism and consonantism, from which the place of the dialect under description within the system of Lithuanian dialects can be determined. Standard Lithuanian sounds ą, ę have developed into u’, i’ in the dialect: krāštu, kāti, žū’sis, ti·šù, tu·soū, gri·žù, while the mixed diphthongs am, en remain intact: žvāngęs, pāšraṅgou, vānc. ¹³ One cannot agree with the author that ē after hard l becomes completely dark, changing to ō. As far as is known, in this dialect ē after l develops only into a mid-front vowel e: kalbēk, ci·lēk (Plikiai). 244 In the dialect, diphthongs au with the circumflex accent (and also unstressed ones) become ou: roudóna, poũkštė, groũsmas gradžou. The e at the beginning of words in other dialects corresponds to au in this dialect: ágłb, ãžeras, alkū’nė, arãlis, akė̃s, ãina. The hard i (transcribed as ł) occurs in the dialect in place of u in the prefixes nbł-, žbł-, sbł (nbłvedė, žbłman’, žbłspirė, sbłsmušė), in place of ė following l (in žolb’s, dairgėlb’s, dukrãlb’s, mi’lól’c’), and in words of Slavic origin: šłubkas, mùslijo. The dialect also hardens r when it is not preceded by l: turù, nórus, rãtas (rare), ragė̃. The author notes that the dialect has dzūkavimas, that is, it turns the consonants t and d before i and ie into affricates c, dz: nakės, ci’l’c’, širždžis, cieh, džiėdas. But this change does not occur before the newly arisen i’, for example, štiedži (ate). O. Broch also devotes considerable attention to the dialect’s stress and accent. The author correctly observes that speakers of the dialect often do not distinguish the circumflex and acute accents in their pronunciation, since they pronounce a stressed syllable evenly, with the voice neither rising nor falling. There are cases in which speakers of the dialect pronounce a circumflex instead of an acute; consequently, the transcriptions of the accent in the recorder’s own notes—that is, the author’s notes from 1895—sometimes do not match those of standard Lithuanian. The same dialect words also appear with differing accents, for example: viezdėk, gĩvas, džĩksta, parãijo, parãia, parãj, tõi, tõi, saldžói, Li tõi (pp. 28–29), tõm, saldžõm, gerõm, gerõm (p. 26), žmogùm, su’nùm, su’nãm, su’nãm (pp. 22–23), dukterim (p. 24). Besides the accentual variations mentioned above, the description also contains numerous other transcriptional inconsistencies. For instance, to represent the degree of reduction of unstressed o alone, the author uses several symbols, ɔe, oe, ə, ǝ: negalė́jǝ, pàłkǝ (p. 55), ãrkło (p. 20), alongside ãrkło, pàłkǝ. It is therefore entirely natural that the author’s effort to record all the fluctuations and nuances of pronunciation in living speech (for which he deserves great credit) led him to develop a complex transcription system that is not always clear or intelligible to us. Thus, this work should be used with caution and discernment. However, despite the shortcomings mentioned above and others, O. Broch’s work on the Southern Dzūkian dialect is a major and valuable contribution to Lithuanian dialectology. NEW WORKS ON LITHUANIAN DIALECTS A. Yu. Vidugiris Summary This account provides an overview of two works on Lithuanian dialects by the well-known Norwegian linguists, professors and academicians O. Broch and H. S. Stang. First, it characterizes H. S. Stang’s article “Die litauische Mundart von Zasėčiai im Gebiet von Wilna,” published in the Norwegian linguistic journal “Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap,” vol. XVIII, pp. 171–201. The locality mentioned is now part of the Dyatlovo (Zietela) District, Grodno Region, Byelorussian SSR. 245 Next, it summarizes O. Broch’s second work, “Zum Litauischen südlich von Vilna,” published in the same journal, vol. XIX, pp. 1–71, which describes the dialect of the southern Lithuanians (Dzūkians) living in the Radun District, Grodno Region, Byelorussian SSR. Since Lithuanian in the localities mentioned has recently been undergoing quite noticeable assimilation to Belarusian, descriptions of these dialects are of great interest to Lithuanian dialectology and comparative linguistics.