HISTORY OF TERMINOLOGY

Stasys KEINYS

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

ON A. DAMBRAUSKAS’S LINGUISTIC AND TERMINOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES

For Lithuanian intellectuals born in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century, the sacred duty fell to kindle and/or foster the national revival movement, which in the space of a third of a century fundamentally changed Lithuania’s position. Along with that movement began and steadily expanded the work of creating, developing, and teaching one common exemplary language for all Lithuanians, enabling that language, in the first decades of the twentieth century, for the first time in its entire history to encompass every sphere of the country’s life and its people’s activities. This was a period of the Lithuanian nation’s unification and rapid maturation for a new independent life. It was also a time of unprecedented growth in the Lithuanian language, an expansion of its role, and the formation of the modern standard language.

Without any doubt, the foremost founder of the foundations of the modern standard language, its cultivator and teacher, was Jonas Jablonskis (1860–1930). Yet alongside him worked a fairly large group of people from various fields of scholarship, technology, culture, and religion—some agreeing with and constantly supporting him, others arguing passionately, but still taking his views into account. These people, often consulting one another and at times sitting down together for longer or shorter periods, laid the foundations of modern specialist and artistic language, renewed the language of religion, and created and developed the terminology of public life, the economy, secondary and higher education, pure science, and other fields. Looking back on those times, one cannot keep silent about, let alone fail to notice, Professor and Prelate Aleksandras Dambrauskas, a contemporary of J. Jablonskis, who was highly active, ploughed furrows in many fields, wrote extensively, edited, and taught others. In our cultural history he is better known and most often mentioned by the name Adomas Jakštas, though he also signed himself Druskius and used other pseudonyms.

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A. Dambrauskas and J. Jablonskis were not only contemporaries but also the same age—both were born in 1860, though A. Dambrauskas was three months older (born on September 8, while J. Jablonskis was born on December 30). Both became prominent men of learning and culture during the national revival and the years of the press ban and its restoration, and both were persecuted and even punished by the tsarist authorities for their work. Their paths, especially in matters of language, often crossed, and sparks flew from these points of contact more than once. J. Jablonskis’s linguistic proposals usually displeased A. Dambrauskas. In the two-volume “Our New Literature” alone, J. Jablonskis (Rygiškių Jonas) is mentioned directly a good fifty times, and at least half as many times again under the generic, at times derisively used, name “philologists.” A. Dambrauskas disapproved of J. Jablonskis’s spelling; many of the terms he introduced seemed unsuitable, and his grammar and other features of Suvalkija, Samogitia, or even Dusetos speech continually drew criticism (A. Dambrauskas himself came from Pagiriai parish, then in central Lithuania and now in Kėdainiai district, that is, on the eastern edge of the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect area). It should be said that, over several decades of being harangued by A. Dambrauskas, J. Jablonskis remained dignified—he gave his critic an extended reply only over one or two substantive disagreements and briefly offered explanations a dozen or so times. A. Dambrauskas himself, even a hundred or nearly a hundred years after those days, seems biased, devoid of brotherly affection toward J. Jablonskis, and in many cases an unjust faultfinder—especially since at times, after condemning or even mocking one of J. Jablonskis’s proposals in one place, he used it himself elsewhere.

A. Dambrauskas’s activities were very wide-ranging. The authors of the entry about him in the “Lithuanian Encyclopaedia,” Pr. Dovydaitis and Vacl. Biržiška, wrote: “Although D. tended to become a cabinet-bound scholar-specialist [= scholar specialist. – St. K.], he could not confine himself to any one undertaking, but sooner or later had to become an encyclopaedist. He was a church activist and a theoretical theologian, a mathematician and philosopher, a poet and satirist, a politician and publicist, a linguist, historian, and literary critic, and finally perhaps the first Lithuanian Esperantist. Working in these fields for over 50 years, he created something of his own everywhere, leaving Lithuanian public life his own distinctive, Jakštian stamp—”

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press¹. Without a doubt, this is true. A. Dambrauskas was a very prolific contributor to the Lithuanian press from the time of “Aušra” onward; moreover, he was himself the founder and editor of more than one periodical. During his lifetime he published over fifty of his books and booklets. Most of his written legacy was written and published in Lithuanian, but there are also publications in Polish, Latin, French, Russian, and Esperanto.

Without worrying whether or not it is appropriate to call him a linguist (he himself called himself an amateur philologist²), A. Dambrauskas has entered the history of Lithuanian linguistics. It may be said that throughout his entire career and creative life he took a keen interest in questions concerning the standard Lithuanian language, concerned himself with its development, and contributed directly to its creation and elaboration. In preparing textbooks on logic, geometry, and trigonometry, and writing works in philosophy, theology, mathematics, and other fields, he was one of the creators of the present-day technical language and terminology of those fields. At the beginning of the 20th century, together with J. Laukaitis, J. Jablonskis, K. Būga, and other priests and linguists, he considered matters concerning the renewal of the language and terminology of religious rites, prayers, and the Church in general³, and himself prepared prayer books and hymnals. Later, in the early 1920s, he was a member of the Terminology Commission established for state and scholarly purposes, which operated under the Ministry of Education; in the mid-1930s he took an interest in general questions of philosophical terminology considered by the Terminology Section of the Lithuanian Language Society⁴. A. Dambrauskas responded keenly to Lithuanian publications in almost every field, whether literary, artistic, scholarly, or journalistic, as well as to other publications, writing longer or shorter articles, reviews, or at least annotations about many of them; what matters here is that,

¹ Pr. D. ir Vc. B-ka. Dambrauskas (Aleksandras) // Lietuviškoji enciklopedija. Kaunas, [1937]. T. 5. Sk. 1399.

² Jakštas A. Mūsų naujoji literatūra (1904–1923). T. 2: Mūsų naujoji prozos literatūra (1904–1923). Kaunas, 1923. P. 39.

³ Piročkinas A. J. Jablonskis – bendrinės kalbos puoselėtojas: 1904–1930. Vilnius, 1978. P. 62.

⁴ Šalkauskis St. Raštai. Vilnius, 1991. T. 2. P. 127.

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that he almost never forgot, if not to say more, then at least to say a word or two about their language. Anyone who has read both volumes of A. Jakštas’s “Our New Literature”—“Our New Poetry (1904–1923)” and “Our New Prose Literature (1904–1923),” published in Kaunas in 1923—has seen this with their own eyes.

His remarks on the language of various publications clearly show that A. Dambrauskas cared about the Lithuanian character and commonality of the written language. Many times he drew the attention of authors—writers, scholars, and journalists alike—to the need to avoid foreignisms. He pointed this out even in the poems of Maironis’s “Voices of Spring”—they are greatly marred by syntactic Polonisms (vol. 1, p. 34)⁵. He strongly disapproved of the use of provincial forms, which he most often called provincialisms, and for this he also reproached more than one writer. For instance, writing in “Draugija” in 1913 about L. Gira’s play “The Dawn Is Breaking” (Vilnius, 1913), A. Dambrauskas said: “<…> the language is crammed full of all sorts of local provincialisms: loc, butau, niaugi, porinti, uogela, širdela, kumula, ledokas, and so on. Instead of mano, tavo, savo, ma, ta, sa are used. Of these three shortened forms, Lithuanian Kaunas residents use only sa, and even that is said only when addressing a dog (sa, sa, sa), not people. To force such provincialisms into the written language is simply to corrupt it. We have already protested against this, and we shall continue to do so” (vol. 1, p. 140). He summed up his remarks on the same author’s collection of poems “Along the Roads of the Homeland” in these words: “We regard L. Gira not only as a Vilnius resident and a Dzūkian, but also as a bard of all Lithuania; therefore, we have the right to demand that he sing not in the Vilnius manner, but in pure Lithuanian” (vol. 1, p. 139). He advised Putinas to beware of “the deplorable shortening of past-tense verbs typical of Suvalkija” (skambė, spindė; skambėjo, spindėjo)—this was, he maintained, “a vile corruption of the language”; no one in either Samogitia or Aukštaitija shortened them that way (vol. 1, p. 209). As for V. Krėvė, “though he is no baron, he truly has a baronial fantasy—for mangling our grammar and conjugation,” since he uses not the common Lithuanian forms bū-

⁵ Alongside quotations, paraphrased statements, and examples, the volume and page of “Our New Literature” are given. Nothing has been changed in the quotations (corrections of major errors are given in square brackets).

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čiau, būtumei, būtumet, and the Dzūkian forms būtų, būtai, būtut, and others of this kind (vol. 1, p. 385). His fervent remarks on the language of “Šarūnas” and “Tales of Old Men from the Land of Dainava” may be seen as a kind of summation of all this. The latter short article says: “One should love one’s homeland, one’s dialect—but one should not make idols of them and force others to worship them”; it continues: “V. Krėvė’s dialect is a fact, but the written Lithuanian language is another fact. To cherish the first and scorn the second would mean introducing harmful separatism and foolish provincialism into our literature. Dialects have every right to prevail, but only in the realm of folklore, not belles-lettres” (vol. 2, p. 56). Today, as then, many would grant greater freedom to writers and creators of artistic language (technical language is another matter), even knowing that A. Dambrauskas had in mind primarily the use of variants in the sounds and grammatical forms of words and their combinations. He often criticized “hymnbook-style versification” and “distortions of accent.” Reviewing “The Children’s Little Star” (Vilnius, 1909), a book compiled by teacher P. Bendorius for the second and third grades of primary school, and quoting a couple of its short poems (e.g.: The grasshopper merrily spent the day, / Singing of spring), A. Dambrauskas rightly wrote that “a child, whether willingly or not, will have to learn from these verses either to mangle his language or to break the rules of poetry” (vol. 2, p. 479). These thoughts are highly relevant today as well.

As an active press worker, A. Dambrauskas had many concerns about spelling. The spelling of publications from the late 19th and early 20th centuries varied considerably, and linguists and editors of different publications alike disagreed about it. A. Dambrauskas had established his own spelling principles (set out in the booklet “The Question of Our Alphabet,” published in 1914); he had considered these matters much earlier as well (for example, in the article “Do We Already Have a Good Spelling?” published in “Tėvynės sargas” in 1900), and continued to do so later. He was particularly dissatisfied with J. Jablonskis’s spelling, and whenever the opportunity arose, he would criticize this or that aspect of it. Apparently, he was irritated by the spread of spelling he found unacceptable, but, being disciplined, nevertheless adhered to it in essentials. Incidentally, some aspects of A. Dambrauskas’s spelling would have suited the post-Jablonskis spelling reformers very well, especially his proposed principle that each sound requires one separate symbol,

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and on that occasion, it seems, without a firmer basis, J. Jablonskis was even credited with “orthographic conservatism and indecisiveness”⁶.

Both volumes of “Our New Literature” are full of comments on the terms used in the publications reviewed. There are particularly many in the second volume, entitled “Our New Prose Literature,” which contains reviews and annotations of prose in the broad sense (not only works of fiction, but also books on science, religion, education, public affairs, and periodical and other publications) issued during the first two decades of the 20th century after the restoration of the press. The questions raised here concern the Lithuanian or international character of terms, their stability, uniformity and variation, the sources of borrowed terms, and their adaptation into Lithuanian.

A. Dambrauskas unequivocally opposed the linguistic and terminological foreignisms of his time, most often called barbarisms. In 1907, reviewing in “Draugija” a two-volume work translated from Polish, “Meditations or Spiritual Reflections,” which, in the reviewer’s view, would be adopted in seminaries as a manual for meditation and become “the spiritual guide of most Lithuanian priests,” he praised its language as elegant and correct (it was noted that the translation had been revised by “our well-known young philologist K. Būga”) and mentioned that Lithuanian words were used in place of most Polonisms, for example: yščius / yščius (now iščios), malonė, mirtis, rather than živatas, loska, smertis, and so on. In the same passage, he notes that the Polonisms asaba, apiera, griekas, pasikłonioti, Traice and others had been retained, and adds: “Apparently the reviser considered the correction of theological terms not to be his business. To tell the truth, that matter is beyond the reach of a layman, too. The priests themselves must certainly take part in this” (vol. 2, p. 212). The review ends with the remark that for a new edition “it would be worthwhile to provide a more Lithuanian theological terminology” (ibid.).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the language of religious publications was being revised, and liturgical books, catechisms, prayers, hymns and other texts were being corrected. There were both disagreements and resistance to revisions of these established texts. Introducing the “First Catechism for the Samogitian Diocese,” published in 1916-

⁶ Salys A. A†A. A. Dambrauskas-Jakštas (1860–1938) // Gimtoji kalba. 1938. Sąs. 2 (52). P. 18. Tas pats: Salys A. Raštai. Roma, 1985. T. 3. P. 126.

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mokslių“ (str. „Nauji tikybos vadovėliai“. – „Ateitis“, 1917, Nr. 2), dėl naujos poterų redakcijos A. Dambrauskas rašė: „Tiesa, vienam kitam kritikui, rasit, nepatiks naujai ištaisytoji ir čia pirmoj vietoj padėtieji poteriai. Kai kas, nesugebėdamas surasti, kuo nauji terminai bei posakiai pakeisti, gal pagailestaus, kodėl nesilaikyta senovės teksto. Tiems čia primenam, kad poteriuose yra du dalyku: 1) glūdinti juose Dievo apreišktoji mintis ir 2) tą Dievo mintį žmogiškais žodžiais išreiškiančioji forma. Dievo mintis palikta nepaliesta ir naujuose poteriuose; jei čia kas pakeista, tai vienas kitas žodis bei sakinio sustatymas, t. y. jų išorinė forma. Ši gi, kaip ir visa, kas yr žmogiška, nėra nekintama. Kas tuo abejo­tų, tepasiklausia istorijos: iš ten sužinos, jog poterių tekstas XVI ir XVII amžiais buvo kitoks, negu XVIII ir XIX. Tai yra faktas, gal kam ir nemalonus, bet nieko čia nepadarysi. Kintant šiaipjau gyvai žmonių kalbai, negali nekisti ir poterių tekstas, gyva kalba kalbamasi. Ne mūsų galioje tas kitimas sustabdyti. Kas šiandien nauja, ryt bus visai paprasta, poryt jau sena. Kritikai pamurmėję nusiramins, o jaunuomenė naują tekstą su padėka priims. Dievas gi, kursai ne niekino senų poterių, lygiai mielai klausys ir naujųjų, nes jam rūpi mintis ir meilė, o ne raidė bei žodžiai. Tai žinom iš jo paties pamokymo apie tai, kad „raidė užmuša, dvasia gaivina” (t. 2, p. 241–242). Teisingai ir labai įtikinamai pasakyta.

A. Dambrauskas also stated on several other occasions that Lithuanian terms should be used. Reviewing “Lectures on Biology and Bacteriology” (Brooklyn, 1912), he reproaches the author, A. Garmus, for having “apparently followed Russian sources blindly,” as evidenced by such unsuitable terms as ličinkos, probirkos and others (vol. 2, p. 432). In his review of A. L. Graičiūnas’s textbook “Health, or the Straight and Short Road to Health: Fundamental Knowledge of Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene,” published in Chicago in 1911 for primary schools and the general public, he writes: “The names of all the parasites have been left in Latin. The author apparently did not know how to name them in Lithuanian. This should not be the case in a textbook intended for schools” (vol. 2, p. 429). He held the same view ten years later when discussing S. Garbačiauskas’s booklet “Football” (Kaunas, 1921), which, in the reviewer’s opinion, “will be difficult to understand because of the many foreign words”

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“to understand. For example, who will understand sentences such as ‘The centre forward must be a good player,’ or ‘The halfbacks—the runners—must join the forwards at one point and the backs at another’ (16). In our view, all these backs, insides, goalkeepers and corners should certainly have been Lithuanianized, since, being English, they are just as unsuitable for Lithuanians as for other nations” (vol. 2, p. 572). Later, as everyone now knows, football terms were successfully Lithuanianized, and only the name of the game itself, of English origin, remained. A. Dambrauskas’s comment at the time probably contributed to that effort. Generally speaking, A. Dambrauskas proposed replacing a considerable number of various borrowed terms with Lithuanian ones or, at times, with other, more familiar loanwords, or endorsed substitutions proposed by others; for example (all the examples given here are from the second volume of “Our New Literature”): ataka = ambush (p. 544), distancija = distance, atstogumas, tolis (p. 544), kielikas = goblet (p. 138), linza = lens (p. 338), nervas = dirksnis (p. 339 and elsewhere; now written dirgsnis), objektas = thing, regimentas = regiment, sousas = sauce (p. 141; and this was in 1910!), spižius = cast iron (p. 338), škicas = sketch (p. 178), and so on. He objected to the “Russian borrowing from French,” marš, retained “quite unnecessarily” in the booklet “Commands and Terms for Infantry Formation” (Kaunas, 1919), and therefore proposed the commands run at a trot, march at a walk (p. 543; incidentally, the commands bėgte marš, žengte marš use adverbial participles in a very unusual way, making them genuinely strange and exceptional). A. Dambrauskas made many interesting and perceptive comments and proposals concerning the statutes and regulations then being drawn up for the Lithuanian Army (see vol. 2, pp. 541–553); some were taken into account in new editions of those documents.

A. Dambrauskas reviewed almost all the Lithuanian terminology glossaries published toward the end of the second decade. He made especially many criticisms of M. Šikšnys’s “Glossary of Arithmetic and Algebra Terms” (Vilnius, 1919) and his “Draft of Mathematical Terms” (“Lietuvos mokykla,” 1918, No. 11), as well as Z. Žemaitis’s “Collection of Geometry and Trigonometry Terms” (Kaunas, 1920). While acknowledging that most of the terms in these glossaries were good and suitable, the reviewer argued passionately that a considerable number of the terms included in them were unsuitable, beginning, he said, with the inept names for the four arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Here,

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As in more than one other place, the critic’s superficial, external understanding of linguistic matters is clearly apparent, along with a stubborn, perhaps even blind, defense of what he himself has conceived or adopted (as noted, A. Dambrauskas himself also wrote mathematics textbooks and other works). Here, for example, is how he explains the inappropriateness of the names for those arithmetic operations: “Addition already has its own meaning—sostav; subtraction would more likely be vyčet than vyčitanie; division in Russian is dielež, multiplication—pomnožka. Nouns formed from verb infinitives denote the results of actions; whereas arithmetic operations are actual operations and processes, so they would have been much better named by the Vilnius mathematicians: dėstymu, imstymu, dauginimu and dalymu” (vol. 2, p. 332). Neither possible Russian equivalents of Lithuanian words, nor—still less—the assertion, based on who knows what, that nouns formed from infinitives cannot denote names of actions, proves that the terms being criticized are inept. In this piece, as in some others, A. Dambrauskas is very eager to link Lithuanian terms to Russian ones; moreover, unlike in the case mentioned earlier, here he stubbornly defends so-called international terms and considers their Lithuanianization a Polish influence. This, he says, is a mistake, because “Science is an international matter, and so terms must remain international. Terms such as perpendicularis, paralėlis, katetas, hipotenuzė, diametras, perimetras, diagonale, mediana, bisektrisė, elipsė, parabolė, hiperbolė, etc., need no national christening whatsoever. By nationalizing them, we will only make it harder for future generations of Lithuanians to use foreign mathematical literature, and for foreigners to read our future mathematical works” (vol. 2, pp. 335–336). Evidently, this is an enduring, if naive, argument, still alive in the minds of proponents of international loanwords today. Incidentally, it is interesting that even now some physicists, although the term spindulys has become firmly established, like A. Dambrauskas, consider stipinas to be better. A. Dambrauskas wrote the following about this term: “Radijus—spindulys is a pure Polonism (cf. Polish promien). Just as krug’ is best suited by the Lithuanian ratas or ratilas alone [=abbrev. – St. K.], so radius’ has no more suitable term than stipinas” (vol. 2, pp. 348–349).

Considerable attention was also devoted to mathematics textbooks—at least 15 of them were discussed. Here, too, much is found to fault in the terms used in some of those textbooks, especially those written by P. Ma-

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šiotas and M. Šikšnys (incidentally, together with J. Jablonskis, mathematics teachers P. Mašiotas, M. Šikšnys, and Z. Žemaitis, who found themselves in Voronezh with their gymnasium during the First World War, created and organized those mathematical terms, which is why A. Dambrauskas called them the Voronezh terms). Certainly, it was not good that textbooks of the time used two sets of terms, so A. Dambrauskas’s proposal to standardize mathematical terminology can be endorsed (vol. 2, pp. 416–417). But apparently the terms were already being standardized; priority was simply given to the terminology that the critic had inadequately dubbed “Voronezh.” This is borne out by the fate of the terminology in A. Smetona’s “Theory of Arithmetic”: a second, revised edition was published in 1918, in which the Vilnius terms of the first edition were replaced with the Voronezh ones, but the Vilnius terms were also given in parentheses (A. Dambrauskas praised the retention of these terms in his annotation, vol. 2, p. 407). Later, however, almost all those Vilnius terms disappeared—in the “Preface” to the sixth edition, the textbook’s editor, A. Smetona, wrote: “The Lithuanian teachers of Voronezh also worked on school textbooks during that difficult but productive period of occupation and deportation, and they did so with greater and stronger resources than we who remained in Vilnius. Our teachers returning from Russia brought with them a considerable body of terminology for all branches of science and education. When my prepared theory of arithmetic was printed for the second time, the terms established in Voronezh were adapted to it by the linguist J. Jablonskis and the mathematician P. Mašiotas, and many other corrections were made <...>. This sixth edition has been revised only to the extent that most of the original terms, which had been left in parentheses, have now been deleted”⁷. In general, A. Dambrauskas seems to have valued the teaching of mathematics very highly—sometimes, it seems, too highly. Neither in the circumstances of that time nor today does his proposal to teach geometry to primary-school children by taking time away from language lessons seem at all acceptable. Reviewing A. Busilas’s 1920 booklet “The Young Surveyor: A Geometry Textbook for Primary School,” A. Dambrauskas wrote: “We gladly recommend Busilas’s textbook to all teachers. If lack of time were to hinder the introduction of a geometry course anywhere

⁷ Theory of Arithmetic. 7th ed. Kaunas – Vilnius, 1924. P. 3.

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shortage, we would advise shortening the teaching of Lithuanian grammar and spelling and devoting the time saved in this way to geometry. For knowledge of geometry will certainly be useful to pupils in life, whereas the dry, futile theory of various nasal and long vowels will still fail to achieve [=fail to achieve. – St. K.] its purpose in primary school. So there would be no need to torment primary-school children with it unnecessarily” (vol. 2, p. 423). Could such ideas have arisen from his great opposition to J. Jablonskis’s work?

A. Dambrauskas liked to compare the terms under review with their equivalents in other languages and would often criticize a Lithuanian term if he found that its basis of designation differed. For example, in J. Elisonas’s “Brief Proposal for Zoological Terms,” published in Lietuvos mokykla in 1919, the term voratinklio indai (“волосные сосуды”) is judged to be “of dubious quality,” because it does not correspond to Latin, Russian, or other languages; he considers that the best choice would be to call волосный plaukiniu or kapiliaru (vol. 2, pp. 339–340). Other examples of this kind include the story of deguonies and vandenilio—in a review of J. Baron’s “Elementary Natural Science” (Tilsit, 1920), we read: “<...> the author, following Jablonskis, calls the acid-former deguoniu, and the water-former vandeniu <...>. If Baron does not like the old rūgštigamis and vandengamis, it would have been better to retain the international oksigeno and hidrogeno” (vol. 2, pp. 437–438; see also the review of V. Ruokys’s “Chemistry Textbook,” Vilnius, 1920, pp. 439–440). In such cases A. Dambrauskas adopts a different basis for term formation from J. Jablonskis, because J. Jablonskis first tried to establish what the term denoted and only then sought a Lithuanian expression, drawing above all on people’s speech⁸, whereas A. Dambrauskas tended more to follow other languages. Incidentally, this tendency is still very characteristic of specialists in various fields. As a result, terminology abounds in imitations and even calques, although, on closer consideration, this is not a good thing.

A. Dambrauskas also raised and discussed the Lithuanianization of loanwords many times, especially so-called international words. He firm-

⁸ For more detail, see Kalbotyra. Vilnius, 1967. Vol. 18. Pp. 22–23.

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he maintained the position that in those words one should use la, lo, lu – he considered the use of lia, lio, liu (e.g., iliuzija, ventilacija, etc.) to be the result of Russian pronunciation influence (vol. 2, pp. 341, 453, etc.); sinusas, kosinusas reminded him of the “out-of-fashion” Jezusas Kristusas (vol. 2, p. 335), or šabas, kutosus (vol. 2, p. 411). A. Dambrauskas corrected many such things, and quite a few of his corrections took hold. For example, on numerous occasions he firmly and immediately opposed authors’ or publishers’ inclination to use loanwords according to the pronunciation of other languages—French egoizmė, klasikis, kulturelis (vol. 1, p. 274), Russian kamanda, kamendantas = komanda, komendantas (vol. 2, pp. 546, 549), adding that “Russian pronunciation is not required to be the norm for our spelling” (vol. 2, p. 550), or German špora = spora (vol. 2, p. 433). Drawing on examples from Greek and other languages, he advised V. Ruokis to use chemija rather than chimija (vol. 2, pp. 438, 452); he mocked those who avoided f, ch, h, writing that K. Jaunius, “when asked how words such as fizika, fiziologija, tip, gimn, ieroglif, and the like ought to be written, would answer that, if one considered only philology, they should be written puzikė, puziologija, tupas, umnas, ieroglupas, etc. But, well aware of the strangeness of all these forms, and even more so acknowledging the inadequacy of forms such as pizikė, piziologija, etc., he urged that they be replaced by entirely Lithuanian artificial terms, for example, using esybmokslis instead of puzikė or pizikė, and so on” (vol. 2, p. 568; see also vol. 1, p. 379, etc.). He repeatedly opposed distortions of international words, e.g., eroplanas = aeroplanas (vol. 2, p. 546), divizė = divizija (vol. 2, pp. 547, 552), and so on. Incidentally, it is interesting to note here that A. Dambrauskas himself used a few (though not very many) terms in the spelling of the original language, that is, without any phonetic (and partly grammatical) Lithuanian adaptation—for example, French chef d’oeuvre’as (vol. 2, p. 40), “edition [=édition. – St. K.] de luxe” (vol. 2, p. 362), évadés, “those who have left the priesthood, former priests” (vol. 2, p. 231); Russian “otečestvoviedenije” (vol. 2, p. 435), “otsiebiatina” (vol. 2, p. 44); and German “Durchsichtigkeit (vol. 2, p. 410: the text lacks what the Germans call ‘Durchsichtigkeit’), ‘Kunststück’as’ (vol. 1, p. 323), ‘Lebenslauf’ (vol. 2, p. 260), ‘Lebensphilosophie’ (vol. 2, p. 745), ‘Liebesgeschichte’ (vol. 2, p. 72), ‘Sachregister’is’ (vol. 2, p. 248), ‘übermenschizmas’ (vol. 1, p. 255), and ‘uebermensch’as’ (vol. 2, p. 9). Almost all these terms are written in quotation marks, so they should apparently be understood as

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quotations; perhaps they were sometimes used for stylistic purposes as well. This is undoubtedly indicated by the use of the Russian кукольная комедия: Using Russian terminology, this work could be called “kukolnaja komedija”—a puppet comedy (vol. 2, p. 197). And here is one more quite strange reproach, directed at A. Iešmanta, the translator of Molière’s The Miser (Marijampolė, 1920), for having rendered the French dish ragout as “Lithuanian ragas” (vol. 2, p. 178). It is a pity that this criticism was not developed further, and it remains unclear how, in A. Dambrauskas’s view, that ragout ought to have been Lithuanianized.

In his comments on terms used in various publications, A. Dambrauskas sometimes supported certain terminological proposals. For example, vora in the sense of “column” was very suitable because of its brevity, though it was not heard in spoken language (vol. 2, p. 544); parlamentininkas (Russian парламентёр) was supposedly a term “long, cumbersome, and even downright ridiculous, since ‘parlamentioras’ has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘parliament’”; he apparently proposed his own word, tarlys, coined from the surname Tarlas, because “just as a person sent to propose marriage or invite someone is called a piršlys or kvieslys, so a person sent to negotiate will be a tarlys or tarla” (vol. 2, p. 547); he proposed replacing rikiuotę with rike (vol. 2, pp. 543, 549). On the other hand, iskriestinio apskritimo spindulys, in the sense of “apopheme” [= “apothem.” – St. K.], was “not a term but rather a definition, and one ineptly phrased at that” (vol. 2, p. 346); while vaškuota paukščių snapo odelė for Russian восковица “is a description, not a term. One word, vaškuotinė, would suffice for a term” (vol. 2, p. 340). At times, however, he held contradictory views. For example, when reviewing arithmetic textbooks, in one place he advises “using one name for each concept, not two or more, since this makes learning more difficult for children” (vol. 2, p. 416; see also p. 405), while elsewhere he praises the inclusion of two alternative terms, because pupils, especially teachers, would be able to “compare which term is better” (vol. 2, p. 407). In the same vein, he praised the first issue of the journal Medicina, launched in 1920, and again recalled mathematical terms on that occasion: “There are no plans to dispute terms, leaving their sifting to the process of natural selection. A very sound position. It is a pity that our mathematicians do not follow this principle and are stubbornly determined to make their unsuitable Voronezh-style terms permanent [= eternal. – St. K.]” (vol. 2, p. 699). Finally, three-

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in those freedoms of choice left to the reader regarding terms, he sees both advantages and disadvantages (vol. 2, p. 338). In some places, the vitality of terms is regarded positively, while elsewhere they are criticized as lifeless or artificial. Nothing could be faulted in many of the terms in J. Elisonas’s previously mentioned “Brief Project for Zoological Terms”; most of them came from spoken language, and therefore “this collection of special anatomical terms would be useful reading for every lover of the mother tongue, especially for writers” (vol. 2, p. 340). They are also praised for their harmony: “Their chief characteristic is their naturalness; when reading them, one feels no artificiality or contrivance, even where they are unquestionably coined” (vol. 2, p. 339). He adds that A. Dambrauskas praised Vaižgantas for his knowledge of folk terminology. Of Pragiedruliai he wrote: “Few of our writers know our people’s way of life as well as Vaižgantas. One might say there is not a single corner of life unknown to him. When he begins to speak about the art of weaving, he immediately appears a true specialist, knowing all the terminology of weaving better than many an aged weaver. When he needed to describe harnessing a horse, he depicted everything here too, enumerating the parts of the harness with the utmost precision, like a true expert” (vol. 2, p. 38). He goes on to add: “As an amateur philologist, I found all those names for plants, harness parts, patterns in sashes, and types of weaving interesting and precious; but as an ordinary reader, here and there I felt somewhat burdened and distracted by them, diverted into philology instead of receiving poetry. For even good things, when forced upon us without measure, can become tiresome” (vol. 2, p. 39). This touches on the use of terms or specialized terminology in fiction, and the question of whether such use is appropriate.

* * *

A. Dambrauskas himself coined terms and actively discussed Lithuanian terms created or revised by others in a wide range of fields, as well as questions of language more generally. This shows that he was a major activist during the formation of the modern standard language. Through his work he made a notable contribution to the development and spread of the standard language. However, his linguistic work, including his terminological work, was seriously hampered by a lack of firmer grounding in linguistics and in that field of

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the lack of foundations for the work, and an insufficient understanding of the language system itself. As a result, many of his language corrections, comments, and suggestions are inadequately substantiated, and quite a few entirely unsubstantiated; this is above all why many of them were not taken into account, especially since he himself was often inconsistent, even contradictory. A. Dambrauskas gained little authority as a language worker from his almost constant opposition to J. Jablonskis’s work, to some of his recommendations, and even, at times, from belittling or mocking them. J. Jablonskis’s critic was certainly not lacking in courage or vehemence. Reading A. Dambrauskas alone, one might think J. Jablonskis some kind of unsuccessful philologist who had done more harm than good to the language. Yet life showed that many of the aspects of J. Jablonskis’s language that A. Dambrauskas condemned took firm root in the standard language, are still used to this day, and will undoubtedly remain in it for a long time to come. This shows that, in those already distant days when the modern standard language was being created, J. Jablonskis, as a professional linguist, knew the spoken and written language best and understood the system and spirit of our language best. A. Dambrauskas lacked these qualities. Consequently, he himself learned a good many things about the language from J. Jablonskis. It would be good if someone were to investigate A. Dambrauskas’s views on language and his own language in depth in the future, and, on that occasion, also review the extent to which he followed J. Jablonskis’s recommendations in spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. As one of the prominent figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he is certainly worthy of such attention.

In conclusion, it should also be said that A. Salys gave a fairly accurate account of A. Dambrauskas’s linguistic work in an obituary published hot on its heels in Gimtoji kalba, writing: “As in everything, so too in matters of language, A. Jakštas was strict, at times even too vehement, but always straightforward.”⁹.

⁹ Salys A. Min. veik, ibid.

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FROM A. DAMBRAUSKAS’ LINGUISTIC AND TERMINOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES

Summary

This paper deals with the linguistic and especially terminological activities of A. Dambrauskas (1860–1938) who was a writer, a priest, a man of religion and science, a worker of culture and press. The analysis first of all is based on the collection his of articles and reviews in two volumes “Mūsų naujoji literatūra (1904–1923)”, which was published in Kaunas in 1923 under the well-known pen-name of A. Jakštas. In almost every article of that collection A. Dambrauskas gave his evaluation of the language of scientific and religious literature, textbooks and fiction. Quite frequently he discussed questions of correctness of language and terminology and their acceptability. Some of his corrections and suggestions were accepted in the modern language, though quite a large part of them did not take root, because they were not well enough grounded and too subjective. His works were damaged by continuous dispute with the works and suggestions of the linguist J. Jablonskis (1860–1930) who represented the main trend of creation of modern standard Lithuanian at the time.

The wide and manifold activities of A. Dambrauskas allow the assertion that he was an eminent man in the times of creation of modern standard Lithuanian and an active participant of that process.

Stasys KEINYS Institute of the Lithuanian Language Antakalnio g. 6 LT-2055, Vilnius

Received 2000 11 17

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