ZIGMAS ZINKEVIČIUS

THE EMINENT ANNIVERSARY OF LINGUIST ALGIRDAS SABALIAUSKAS

On July 26, 2009, the eminent Lithuanian linguist, corresponding member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, author of many scholarly and popular-science books and articles (his works comprise nearly two thousand bibliographic entries!), decorated with two Orders of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas, habilitated doctor and professor Algirdas Sabaliauskas turned 80.

The jubilarian was born in Marijampolė. There, in 1948, he graduated from the Rygiškių Jonas Gymnasium (which had lost this name during the Soviet era). Among his teachers was Lithuanian linguist Jonas Kalbelka, whom the jubilarian met again while studying Lithuanian at Vilnius University, where he was most interested in the history of the Lithuanian language. One remembers the young man, with eager eyes, sitting in the front row and carefully noting every thought expressed by the lecturer. He actively took part in the activities of the Lithuanian Language Circle and was elected its chair. At meetings he delivered papers on athematic verbs (the topic of his future diploma thesis) and consonant-stem nouns. An important event was a visit to Riga with a student from a lower year, Jonas Kazlauskas, who later became a renowned researcher of the Lithuanian language. There the two met the great Latvian

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linguist Jānis Endzelīns. All this prompted A. Sabaliauskas to take an interest in Latvian studies. He learned Latvian well. Later he translated several books by Latvian writers into Lithuanian and was elected a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences.

Paskutiniais studijų universitete metais (1953) pradėjo dirbti Lietuvių kalbos ir literatūros institute, su kuriuo vėliau susiejo visą savo gyvenimą. Institute baigė doktorantūrą (tada vadintą aspirantūra), parašė ir apgynė kandidato, vėliau ir daktaro (dabar habil. dr.) disertacijas. Visą laiką dirbo Kalbos istorijos ir dialektologijos skyriuje – nuėjo kelią nuo jaunesniojo mokslinio bendradarbio iki vyriausiojo mokslo darbuotojo; 1997–2000 m. buvo atkurto Lietuvių kalbos instituto direktorius.

The jubilarian accomplished a great deal in researching the history of Lithuanian words. He published many articles and substantial studies on this subject. His doctoral dissertation was entitled The Origin of the Names of Agricultural Plants in the Baltic Languages (1958), and his habilitation thesis was entitled Studies in the Lexicon of the Baltic Languages (1975). He published three major studies in this field: The Development of the Lithuanian Lexicon, Names of Domestic Animals in the Baltic Languages, and From the History of Animal-Husbandry Terminology in the Baltic Languages. In 1990 he published a synthesis, The Lexicon of the Lithuanian Language. He was interested in and researched borrowings in the Baltic languages and Balticisms in other languages.

The second area of A. Sabaliauskas’s work, to which he devoted much time and energy, was the history of research on the Lithuanian language and, more broadly, the Baltic languages. He published numerous articles and shorter pieces on this subject, bringing them all together in the two-volume work History of the Study of the Lithuanian Language: Volume I—from the beginning to 1940 (published in 1979); Volume II—1940–1980 (published in 1982). This is the most comprehensive and finest history of Lithuanian and, more broadly, Baltic linguistics. The author was awarded a state prize for it. A third book is now being written, surveying research on the Lithuanian (Baltic) language in recent decades, conducted after 1980. This is complemented by the books Studies in the Baltic Languages (1986) and East Slavic Linguists in the Field of Lithuanian Studies (1990, with Jonas Palionis), as well as the popular works How the Lithuanian Language Has Been Studied (1984), We, the Balts (1986, ²2002; English translation, We, the Balts, 1993). He published many articles in this field in Lithuania and abroad: about researchers of the Lithuanian language, research institutions and organizations, and publications and events important to Lithuanian and Baltic studies, especially in encyclopedias (the Encyclopedia of the Lithuanian Language (1999) alone contains as many as 563 of his entries!). This entitles us to call Algirdas Sabaliauskas the Nestor of Lithuanian linguistics and the foremost popularizer of Lithuanian studies. What, after all, does it mean to be included in an international publication such as Lexicon Grammaticorum: Who’s Who in the History of World Linguistics (Tübingen, 1996; member of the editorial board)?

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As the foremost popularizer of Lithuanian linguistics, Algirdas Sabaliauskas published numerous other articles intended for a general audience and brought out booklets that captured the public’s interest: Words Travel (1962, ²1993), Words Tell Their Tales (1965), Words Come to Life (1967, ²1980, ³2000; English translation, 1973; Japanese linguist Ikuo Murata translated individual chapters of this booklet into Japanese!), A Hundred Language Riddles (1970, ²2001). In 1994 he published another booklet for young learners, telling the story of word origins, Where Do They Come From? All this broadened people’s horizons, popularized the Lithuanian language and Lithuania abroad, raised Lithuanians’ self-esteem, and showed the widespread interest in the Lithuanian language around the world.

The jubilarian also accomplished a great deal in other areas of Lithuanian linguistics. For example, together with Kazys Morkūnas he studied the language of the inhabitants of the Curonian Spit; he wrote on practical matters concerning Lithuanian and published articles on language culture, spelling, and morphology. He actively participated in events organized by the language section of the Lithuanian Ethnographic Society at Vilnius University. His television lecture series on the origins of Lithuanian words, researchers of the Lithuanian language, and other topics was particularly important. He contributed greatly to the preparation and editing of collaborative works. Since the founding of the scholarly journal Baltistica (1965), he has been a member of its editorial board. He was one of the editors of Jonas Kruopas’s Selected Writings and of the book Vladimir Toporov and Lithuania. He served on the editorial boards of various philological and bibliographic publications and as a member of many councils, committees, and commissions. He took part in organizing conferences of Balticists. For about 30 years he chaired the state examination commission for Lithuanian studies at Vilnius Pedagogical University (formerly an institute). He lectured to future teachers of Lithuanian language and literature, as well as to the general public.

Among all Lithuanian linguists, Algirdas Sabaliauskas has the most extensive ties with colleagues abroad.

The author of these lines has had the good fortune to know the jubilarian for more than 50 years. That is ample time to get to know someone well. I will never forget our trip to Tartu in 1975 to congratulate our friend, the Estonian linguist Paul Ariste, on his 70th birthday; our 1986 trip to France and visit with the famous Lithuanian scholar Algirdas Greimas, one of the founders of semiotics; and our frequent encounters with the warm-hearted friend of Lithuania, the great Russian linguist Vladimir Toporov, among others. Time and again I had occasion to witness the jubilarian’s sincerity, goodwill, and friendliness. All that remains is to wish him good health and creative energy, so that he may complete everything he still intends to accomplish.

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