Disertacija apie Tautos Atgimimo laikų lietuviškų katekizmų religijos terminus

A Dissertation on Religious Terms in Lithuanian Catechisms from the Era of the National Revival STASYS KEINYS Institute of the Lithuanian Language The first printed books of the Baltic languages with written monuments are all catechisms: the Prussian one, published in 1545, and the Lithuanian one, in 1547 (both Lutheran), in Königsberg, while the Latvian one appeared in 1585 (Catholic) in Vilnius. At the very end of that same sixteenth century, two more Lithuanian catechisms were published in Vilnius—one Catholic, in 1595, and one Reformed, in 1598. As precious and important monuments of our language, the old catechisms have remained in view of researchers of Lithuanian and, more generally, Baltic languages, as well as of early Lithuanian literature, for three centuries now. Among other things, dissertations written for the award of academic degrees have been devoted to them. For example, in 1929 the Norwegian linguist Christian Stang (1900–1977) published his doctoral dissertation on the language of Martynas Mažvydas’s 1547 catechism; in the early 1950s, Jonas Kruopas (1908–1975) defended a candidate-of-sciences dissertation (equivalent today to a doctoral dissertation) on the vocabulary of Merkelis Petkevičius’s 1598 catechism. Mikalojaus Daukša’s 1595 Terminologija | 2012 | 19 255 catechism’s language, especially its vocabulary, was discussed over several pages in Jurgis Lebedys’s monograph on this man of letters (Mikalojus Daukša, 1963; on its basis, a candidate-of-sciences dissertation, in today’s terms a habilitated doctoral dissertation, was defended in 1966). However, the language of catechisms from later centuries has so far received little attention. This may have been due, among other things, to the generally deteriorated state of religious writing, strongly influenced by circumstances and usually Polish originals, which contributed to the Polonization of Lithuanian, especially its vocabulary and syntax. Thus, the most important linguistic undertaking of the National Revival movement, which expanded at the end of the nineteenth century, was the creation of the modern standard language and the cultivation of its distinctiveness and vitality—that is, its Lithuanian character. The language-standardization activity of the movement’s early period (1880–1901) was the subject of Jonas Palionis’s candidate-of-sciences dissertation, defended in 1952. In this respect, the doctoral dissertation in the humanities Religious Terms in Catechisms of 1883–1916, written by Aušra Rimkutė at the Terminology Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and defended there on 18 May 2012 (supervisor: Dr Jonas Klimavičius), continues research into an important part of the vocabulary of Lithuanian catechisms of Western Christianity (the dissertation title is broader), while also marking a transition to a more thorough study of the religious language of modern times. Viewed more broadly, this dissertation became part of the stream of studies on the new National Revival, which began, as is commonly held, with Aušra (1883) and led to the restoration of statehood in the homeland in 1918, and also on the rapid development of our modern standard language, inseparable from this Revival. Using bibliographic sources, the dissertation’s author established that 99 Lithuanian catechisms were published during the period under study—that is, over 34 (not 33; see p. 41) years at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries: 87 for Catholics, 9 for Lutherans, and 3 for Reformed Christians (pp. 13, 41). The material was collected from 65 catechisms and five additional sources (on p. 41, all 70 are presented as catechisms); the other 29 are said to be new, unchanged or slightly revised reprints. In total, 20,900 forms were collected from different catechisms, including variants and repetitions; after excluding variants attributable to several orthographic features mentioned in a footnote (use of upper- and lowercase letters, vowels ė and ē, consonants v and w, l and ł, š and sz, and č and cz)—about 11,000 terms remained (pp. 14–15). The variation of terms is not examined in the dissertation (as stated in the footnote on p. 15), although examples of the topics examined, including variants involving the orthographic features mentioned, are presented abundantly. In future work continuing this research, terms and their variants should be distinguished and studied separately. 256 Stasys Keinys Disertacija apie Tautos Atgimimo laikų lietuviškų katekizmų religijos terminus The dissertation consists of a detailed table of contents and preface (pp. 3–11), an introduction (pp. 12–18), and, as it were, two parts—An overview of the development of religious terminology: from the sixteenth century to the second decade of the twentieth century (pp. 19–57) and Religious terminology in catechisms from 1883 to 1916 (pp. 58–194)—as well as conclusions (pp. 195–202), lists of sources (pp. 203–210) and literature (pp. 211–221), and an appendix, An explanatory glossary of religious terms in catechisms from 1883 to 1916 (pp. 222–271). The dissertation’s considerable length is due in large part to the fact that examples are provided generously for each section and subsection of the outline, and that a glossary is included. Both are worthwhile and useful, since they help the reader gain a fairly good and accurate picture of a portion of the religious terminology used by the popular faithful of the Lithuanian National Revival and influential on their language. The dissertation’s brief introduction sets out the matters customary in works of this kind: justification of the topic and subject of the study, its relevance and novelty, selection of sources, aims and objectives, methods employed, structure, defended propositions, articles published on the foundations of the study (seven), and scholarly papers (four, presented in Lithuania, Latvia, and Hungary). The introduction indicates that the dissertation sought (aim, p. 15) to present systematically the meanings of the terms collected (with meanings classified into chapters, sections, subsections, and sub-subsections), their origins (primarily in groups of Lithuanian and borrowed terms, further divided into subgroups, smaller groups, and still smaller groups), and their synonymy, and to establish the manifestations and extent of the Lithuanianization and standardization of the terms. The intended aims are pursued consistently through the very detailed classification and discussion of terms assigned to each subdivision of meaning. The study itself is descriptive. At the beginning of the overview of the development of religious terminology (not merely the body of terms themselves) from the sixteenth century to the middle of the second decade of the twentieth century, some matters concerning the state and development of written language up to 1883 are briefly mentioned, mainly on the basis of the work of Professor Zigmas Zinkevičius and, in part, Professor Jonas Palionis and others. The account of religious language and the use, creation, and regulation of terminology during the period under study (1883–1916) is much more extensive and also draws on primary sources. It surveys contemporary periodical writings on religious language and terminology, the work of the Prayer Commission established in 1909, and the work and contributions to the renewal of religious language of the priests Juozas Laukaitis (1873–1952) and Kazimieras Paltarokas (1875–1958), the linguist Jonas Jablonskis (1860–1930), and others; it also discusses efforts to bring that language into line with the modern written (standard) language then being rapidly developed and introduced into use. Finally, it separately discusses during Terminologija | 2012 | 19 2 5 7 the third of the century under study, the catechisms published by Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed Christians (Calvinists). At the end of the part, the meaning of the term “religious term” is explained. Apart from the term itself, the discussion is mainly about the terminologization of common words (in the dissertation, this is referred to by the author’s own coinage terminization); incidentally, its explanation conflates Kazimieras Gaivenis’s account of terminologization and transterminologization in Outlines of Lithuanian Terminology: Theory and Regulation (the discussion draws on p. 18 of that book). It should also be added that, besides term and terminologization, it would have been helpful to explain some other terms used somewhat idiosyncratically in the study, for example, nomenclatural designation, hybrid, synonym, variant, etc. And since the discussion is not historical but synchronic, it would seem more appropriate to provide the current understanding—or the understanding needed only for this study—in the dissertation’s introduction. Nearly three quarters of the main dissertation text consists of a part whose title is essentially that of the work itself: Religious terminology in catechisms from 1883 to 1916. In it, terms are examined from selected perspectives in two chapters: The semantics and origin of religious terms (pp. 58–178) and Synonymy of religious terms in catechisms from 1883 to 1916 (pp. 178–194). Meaning and origin are examined in detail, while synonyms are treated more coarsely. In the chapter The semantics and origin of religious terms, the primary basis for classifying terms is their origin. Thus, the largest group—nearly half of all terms (p. 61)—consists of purely Lithuanian terms, followed by non-Lithuanian terms (nearly one fifth of all terms; see p. 122), which are further classified as international terms, true borrowings, foreignisms (borrowings not accepted in present-day standard language), calques involving semantic borrowings, and, finally, hybrid terms (said to account for 33% of all terms examined; see p. 169; of these, single-word, i.e. genuine, hybrids account for only 8%, while the remaining 92% are compound terms whose components have different origins; see p. 174). The groups thus distinguished by origin are further divided according to the languages that served as sources or intermediaries, or according to larger combinations of these languages (the reference is to some Slavicisms, that is, in this case, words that are difficult to link to any one specific Slavic language). In this chapter, two aspects of the origin of borrowings are intertwined: (1) the etymology of a word (which is not always traced back to its original source) and (2) the source language from which the word was borrowed. In assigning the collected terms to these groups, the study relies on Lithuanian dictionaries of international words and on Lithuanian etymological dictionaries (by Ernst Fraenkel and Vytautas Mažiulis), as well as Polish (by Aleks- 258 Stasys Keinys Disertacija apie Tautos Atgimimo laikų lietuviškų katekizmų religijos terminus ander Brückner), Russian (by Max Vasmer), and other dictionaries. Finally, the terms in these groups are presented and described according to their subject-matter (religious) meaning. Reikšmės atžvilgiu, remiantis Katalikų Bažnyčios katekizmo (Vilnius, 1997) sandara (tai pasakyta p. 59), tiriami terminai visų pirma yra padalyti į dvi – 1) tikėjimo išpažinimo ir 2) tikėjimo gyvenimo – dalis, iš kurių savo ruožtu išskirti išeiliui šeši ir devyni skyreliai (p. 58). Tikėjimo išpažinimo dalyje skiriami tokie skyreliai: 1) pagrindinės krikščionių tikėjimo tiesos, 2) religijos veikėjų pavadinimai, 3) antgamtinių būtybių pavadinimai, 4) religinių knygų, tekstų ir kitų dokumentų pavadinimai, 5) tikėjimo simbolių pavadinimai ir 6) sakramentų pavadinimai, o tikėjimo gyvenimo dalyje – 1) dorybių pavadinimai, 2) nuodėmių ir ydų pavadinimai, 3) religinių apeigų pavadinimai, 4) maldų pavadinimai, 5) liturginių reikmenų pavadinimai, 6) religinių švenčių, švenčiamų dienų ir kitų religijai reikšmingų laiko sąvokų pavadinimai, 7) bažnytinių drabužių ir jų dalių pavadinimai, 8) religinių vietų pavadinimai ir 9) Bažnyčios administracijos, administracinio suskirstymo pavadinimai. Tie skyreliai yra smulkiausios aprašomųjų disertacijos dalių plano padalos, ir visame darbe jie pateikiami ta pačia tvarka. From this classification and the descriptions of terms arranged according to it, one can infer that some terms in present-day religious language may have narrower, more precise, or subdivided meanings than they are usually understood to have in ordinary language (as a single meaning). This is presumably why designations for some concepts appear in more than one subsection, or even in both parts. For example, in the section on the profession of faith, names of religious figures are distinguished (the word figure is used here in a sense different from its usual word-formation meaning), e.g. (divided into certain groups) Heavenly Father, Son of God and first man, prophet, priest, preacher, monk, believer, idolater, sinner, even the deceased, drunkard, liar, etc.; names of supernatural beings are treated separately, e.g. foreign God, angel, spirit, soul, Satan, devil; and, on the other hand, God, Lord, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, etc. In addition, God, Lord, Lord God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit and other designations related to these concepts are also discussed in the subsection on the principal truths of the Christian faith. But is every one of the aforementioned designations for God, considered separately, really polysemous in religious language? From the perspective of semantics, it would also seem inaccurate to distinguish the names of prayers (in the section on the life of faith; incidentally, that subsection includes Terminologija | 2012 | 19 259 and sermon) from the titles of religious books, texts, and other documents (in the section on the profession of faith). Such and other considerations, which probably caused doubts or even concern for the author of the work herself, regarding classification and the assignment of individual terms to a particular sense subsection are nothing new to people engaged in scholarly work, especially since the results of semantic classifications made with regard to subject matter and language may differ considerably. Religion encompasses the entire spiritual as well as material life of people, from baptism to burial and the commemorations that follow. It is therefore unsurprising that a large, perhaps even the greater, part of the vocabulary enters into the usage of religious language. Yet it is also evident that not all words used in religious (faith-related) texts are terms of that field and, conversely, many ordinary words and terms from other fields are incorporated into the composition of complex terms in the field under study. For example, taken individually, the words writing, week, Saturday, or supper would hardly be regarded as terms of religion, but they form part of the genuine terms Holy Scripture, Holy Week, Holy Saturday, and the Last Supper. Moreover, in a clear textual context, such nouns may be used as substitutes for the corresponding complex terms. But would it be appropriate, on the basis of such uses, to consider them terms of that field in their own right? This shows that the dissertation’s author had to make decisions on more than one theoretical issue, including the relationships between religious terms and words mentioned here, and the boundary between them. Incidentally, she deserves praise as a thoughtful researcher who has thoroughly explored the terminology of the field under study and seeks to clarify and explain more difficult cases. On the other hand, it would be strange if no one had even the slightest doubt about individual terms or words. Furthermore, the dissertation does not specifically investigate the connections, shaped by religion, between its terminology and the terms of philosophy, ethics, psychology, art, and many other fields; nor, ultimately, the relationships between the terminologies of religion and Christianity, Christianity and Catholicism, Catholicism and Lutheranism, or Calvinism. These matters, however, evidently lie beyond the dissertation’s aims and objectives. In the brief section on synonymy among religious terms in catechisms from 1883–1916, synonyms are described according to a plan similar to that used earlier for semantics and origin. Here, too, the terms are first divided into groups of purely Lithuanian terms, terms of foreign origin, and terms of mixed origin. The structure of the terms forming the synonym groups serves as the basis for the second level of classification: the study considers whether the groups consist solely of single-word terms, solely of compound terms, or of both single-word and compound terms. As before, the sense subsections discussed earlier make up the third and most detailed level of arrangement of the synonym groups. 260 Stasys Keinys Disertacija apie Tautos Atgimimo laikų lietuviškų katekizmų religijos terminus This chapter examines only terms presented as synonyms within the catechisms themselves. According to the dissertation’s data, synonyms placed side by side in the catechisms under study account for about 7% of all terms collected, forming a total of 1,420 groups (p. 179). Most (82%) are groups of synonyms made up of terms of different origins (purely Lithuanian and borrowed words, or hybrids), for example: atlaidai and atpuskai, globėjas and patronas, iščios and žīvatas, paskučiausias sudas and paskučiausias teismas, piktžodžiavimas and bliuznijimas, viera and tikėjimas, and so on. In addition, many Lithuanian terms vary across groups in different catechisms, for example: cnata and dora/dorybė, čystata and grynumas/grynybė/nekaltybė/skaistybė, pakūta and apgaila/atgaila, and so on. Such cases reveal catechism compilers’ and translators’ efforts to find an appropriate Lithuanian word. On the other hand, in at least some cases, a Lithuanian word may be written alongside a loanword, or vice versa, for the sake of clarity—to retain or recall church-language loanwords that had become established and familiar through continuous use. The dissertation states that the Lithuanian term was most often placed first, although the 52% of cases cited (p. 193) would more likely indicate an even balance of frequency. It would be very useful to scholarship to investigate the terminology of earlier catechisms and to show in greater detail how it changed during the period under study, in order to establish the scale of the shift toward Lithuanianization that was gathering momentum at the end of the nineteenth century and took place in the early twentieth century. The young linguist and scholar is better prepared than anyone else at present to undertake such work. The explanatory glossary of religious terms from the catechisms examined, included at the end of the dissertation, contains nearly 190 entries. Together with the species terms presented in those entries, these comprise about 250 religious terms used at the time not only in catechisms (some of them are still in use today). The explanations of the terms—apparently with all the variants found—are drawn from the catechisms themselves and supplied with source references. Thus, the glossary not only supplements the account presented in the research section but could also encourage the author to investigate the accumulated terminology from other perspectives. The bibliography lists more than 250 works on religion, linguistics, philosophy, literary studies, book history, and bibliography, published from 1892 to the present day. The dissertation shows that Aušra Rimkutė spent nine years in work that was meaningful and beneficial to linguistic scholarship, religious language, and knowledge of the nation’s past. Her study and research into the terminology of catechisms from the period of the National Revival began at Vilnius Pedagogical University, when she undertook Terminologija | 2012 | 19 261 to write a master’s thesis on the terminology of Lithuanian Catholic catechisms from that same period, and continued fruitfully at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, where she worked as a junior researcher and, several years later, pursued her doctoral studies. During that decade of her life, she grew from a promising researcher into a scholar who had accomplished a great deal in the study of religious language. The dissertation, scholarly articles, and other publications present a fairly comprehensive and reliable picture, in the respects examined, of the terms used in Lithuanian catechisms of Western Christianity, some three and a half centuries after the time of M. Mažvydas and half a century less than that after the time of M. Daukša and M. Petkevičius, who belonged to a later generation. It was a happy coincidence that the author, a Samogitian woman from the heart of Samogitia, near Telšiai, defended her dissertation on the eve of the six-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of Samogitia’s baptism. It would be highly desirable for a book based on this work to be prepared and published. It would also be important for this PhD, now experienced and theoretically and practically equipped to study religious language, to continue investigating the collected material and new data—for example, with regard to term structure, word formation, variation, distribution, and other aspects. Moreover, since, evidently owing to the Lithuanian Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical subordination to the Polish Catholic Church, a substantial proportion of Lithuanian Catholic catechisms are translations or adaptations of Polish catechisms, while at least some Protestant catechisms are linked in the same way to German originals (there were also occasional translations from other languages), comparative research on catechism terminology and religious language more broadly is very much needed. Many more subjects worthy of investigation could be mentioned, but what matters most is that the work should not stop, and that it should continue to be carried out for the benefit and honor of Samogitia and Lithuania, as the Samogitian patriots of the first half of the nineteenth century used to say. Received 2012-11-21 Stasys Keinys Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius E. paštas [email protected] 262 Stasys Keinys | Disertacija apie Tautos Atgimimo laikų lietuviškų katekizmų religijos terminus