Termino „žemė́vardis“ klausimu

DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language ORCID id: orcid.org/0000-0003-3060-4713 Research area: onomastics (research into the formation, origin, and motivation of proper names). DOI: doi.org/10.35321/all83-14 ON THE TERM ŽEMĖVARDIS On the Term žemėvardis ANNOTATION The article discusses the process and outcome of the terminologization of the autochthonous word žemėvardis, which functioned in the usage of the interwar scholar Kazimieras Alminauskis; the concept denoted by the word, the term’s place in the system of native terminology, and its relationship with other terms used in Lithuanian toponomastics are also examined. Having revealed the conceptual information conveyed by this linguistic sign, the article identifies broader possibilities for its use. The article is supplemented by encyclopedic data and fragments from the history of recording place names from living speech; these are complemented by information from the Dictionary of Lithuanian Place Names, the national toponymy register of the last century, and by examples of native toponymy representing the cultural semantics of the interwar countryside, taken from Land Names questionnaires. KEYWORDS: toponym, autochthonous term, usage-text analysis, context analysis, terminological nomination, motivation, terminology system, interfield communication. ANNOTATION The article discusses the process and result of the terminologization of the indigenous word žemėvardis (‘land name’), which functioned in the language of interwar scientist Kazimieras Alminauskis, its concept, the place of the term in the system of local terms, its relationship with other terms used in Lithuanian toponomastics. After revealing the conceptual information provided by this linguistic sign, broader possibilities for the use of the term are provided. The article is expanded by encyclopedic data, the fragments of history of collecting place names from living language (speaking); they are further supplemented 310 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu by the information from the national register of toponymy of the previous century Dictionary of Lithuanian Toponyms and the examples of local toponymy representing the cultural semantics of the interwar village from the Land Names questionnaires. KEYWORDS: toponym, indigenous term, analysis of the text of usage, context analysis, terminological nomination, motivation, system of terms, cross-disciplinary communication. Introduction. The terminology of proper names may be regarded as part of the entire body of linguistic terminology, with features characteristic of it alone. Unfortunately, general dictionaries of this field of scholarship (Šmilauer 1963; Подольская 1978, 1988; GTSGN 2002) do not contain units of national terminology that best reflect the concepts of a linguistic community, its naming models and system, or the field it represents. As scholarship develops, the need arises to select terms, and this becomes one of the researcher’s most important tasks. The principles and criteria for selecting terms defined by scholars determine the subsequent stages of terminological activity: implementing the selected research methods and accumulating information required for further term usage and dictionaries, on the basis both of the requirements imposed on a term and of the prepared methodological principles of terminological work, the criterion of terminological definiteness, and the principles of synchronicity, systematicity, and standardization, which are implemented in practice by modelling a logical-conceptual system1. Terminology, as “specialized language lexicon, requires special standardization based not on literary but on natural authenticity and correctness, determined not by the usage tradition or word formation valid in a particular language, but by the circumstances dictated by this language subsystem”2. In the view of Lithuanian terminologist Albina Auksoriūtė, “it is very important that the Lithuanian language be used both in the public life of the state and in the world of scholarship” (Auksoriūtė 2020). Kazimieras Gaivenis (1987: 84) also referred to the links between the language of scholarship and living folk speech, without turning it into a purely artificial means of communication among specialists. Recently, a cognitive approach to the analysis of morphological motivation has increasingly proved useful in 1 For these, see the works of Lithuanian terminologists who declared traditional principles (Gaivenis 1987: 83–91; Gaivenis, Keinys 1990: 210) and of contemporary Russian scholars working within the anthropocentric paradigm (Костерина, Кондратюкова 2014: 133–137; Васильева 2014, 2015). 2 “Specialized vocabulary undergoes special standardization, based not on literary correctness but on production-related correctness, dictated not by the norms of word usage or word formation of the given language, but by the conditions of the corresponding subsystem” (Суперанская 2003: 28). Straipsniai / Articles 311 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ studies, and terms are therefore no exception. As Russian linguist Jelena S. Kubriakova states, “the information conveyed by a word is packaged into a motivated sign that usually conveys its meaning in parts and combines cognitive and communicative needs in the most appropriate way” (Кубрякова 2004: 393)³. “During every speech act, the mental content actualized in consciousness is subjective, while the content actualized with a particular word is the word’s true, real meaning in the situation of the speech act. Real meaning is what a person thinks, what they have in mind when they understand (hear or themselves use) a particular word. A large part of such meaning is shared by all speakers because of similar life experience and the recurrence of typical communication situations” (Gudavičius 2011: 111). Meaning is understood as the unity of content and form. To understand the content represented by a linguistic sign, one must grasp the pragmatic feature that provided the impulse for the emergence of the linguistic sign. In the view of Nikolai F. Alefirenko, “the inner form of a linguistic sign is regarded as a synchronic epidigmatic component of its semantic structure, performing the function of the idioethnic basis of indirect nomination, i.e. reflecting the denotative feature by which one of the possible fragments of reality was named” (Алефиренко 2009)⁴. In linguistics, it is acknowledged that “the purpose of a term is not only to express a scientific concept accurately, but also to perform the function of a particular instrument of cognition, elucidating what is new in the environment of the particular field of scholarship it serves” (cf. Блинова 1981: 28)⁵. Thus, on the assumption that an autochthonous term could become established in the developing science of proper names and highlight its national cognitive features, the principal source of analysis chosen was the Instruction for Recording the Land-Name Register compiled by Kazimieras Alminauskis in the interwar period (hereinafter – Instruction; LŽVI). The section On the Land-Name Register, Its Significance and Recording states: “Among folklore and folk art in folk creativity, an honorable place belongs to the land-name register” (Alminauskis 1934: 3). In the face of globalization, apparently echoing the interwar situation⁶, described by the opposition “to disappear or to remain,” the continuing interest in the field of proper names does not allow ³ “The information conveyed by it is packaged into a motivated sign that, as a rule, conveys its meaning in a dissected manner, as well as into a sign that optimally coordinates its cognitive and communicative tasks” (Кубрякова 2004: 393). ⁴ “The inner form of a linguistic sign is viewed as a synchronic epidigmatic component of its semantic structure, serving as the idioethnic basis of indirect derivative nomination, i.e. reflecting the denotative feature according to which the corresponding fragment of reality was named” (Алефиренко 2009). ⁵ “A term is intended not only to express a scientific concept with the utmost precision, but also to serve as a distinctive instrument of cognition, revealing what is new in the branch of scholarly knowledge it serves” (Блинова 1981: 28). ⁶ K. Alminauskis’s thoughts seem to be echoed today by those of Lithuanian geographer Filomena Kavoliūtė: “The names of inhabited places, together with other place names, form a specific 312 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu the undiminished interest in the field of proper names to be fulfilled⁷. Thus, this research is important both for toponomastics and for terminology, because “the distinctiveness of onomastics, its position within the sphere of the humanities, has repeatedly provoked much debate, just as uncertainty about the status of proper names in linguistics and their diversity has influenced the process of onomastic terminology” (Матвеев 2005: 5)⁸. Moreover, “national terms are an inexhaustible source for replenishing scholarly terminology. In some cases, they provide more accurate and precise information about the content and nuances of a geographical object or natural phenomenon” (Мурзаев 1984: 4)⁹. The aim of the article is, on the basis of K. Alminauskis’s Instruction, a document representing the interwar situation and created for the purpose of preserving the universal recording of place names, to determine the scope of content conveyed by the linguistic sign žemėvardis, to use the data obtained to define the concept of the autochthonous term žemėvardis, and to envisage further possibilities for using this term and word. To achieve this aim, the following tasks are set: 1) to clarify the origin of the word žemėvardis; 2) to present the encyclopedic and established toponomastic concept of the term žemėvardis, its terminological environment and contextual partners, explain (interpret) its motivation, and reveal its structural model; 3) on the basis of the text of K. Alminauskis’s Instruction and the most recent context of native toponomastic research, to reveal (interpret) changes in attitudes toward the named fragment of reality (place names) that determine the correction of the content of the concept žemėvardis. Thus, in order to determine (interpret) and highlight what is new in the language and how it relates to what is still-used old, the subject is studied at the lexical-semantic, syntactic, and linguocultural levels, purposefully combining onomasiological and semasiological methods. In addition to these, the article applies theoretical cultural-mental strata of the region, inseparably existing with society and no less significant than customs or traditions” (Kavoliutė 2019: 740). ⁷ “Intangible cultural heritage—living, flourishing, passed down from generation to generation, providing people with the sense of identity they so need—has always occupied an important place in the life of society: from universally ingrained traditions to customs sincerely cherished by small communities, which they generously share with all those wishing to learn about and experience our [...] worldview, and the distinctive traits retained by people’s characters.” Available online: http://lki.lt/lietuvos-nemate-rialaus-kulturos-paveldo-vertbyiu-savade-vietovardziu-atminties-ir-vartojimo-tradicija/ [accessed 2020-07-11]. ⁸ “The distinctiveness of onomastics, its position in the sphere of the humanities, has repeatedly provoked numerous disputes, just as the uncertainty of the scholarly status of proper names in linguistics and their diversity have influenced the process of onomastic terminologization” (Матвеев 2005: 5). ⁹ “Folk terms are an inexhaustible source for replenishing scholarly terminology. In a number of cases, they provide more accurately and objectively information about the content and nuances of a geographical object or natural phenomenon” (Мурзаев 1984: 4). Straipsniai / Articles 313 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ analytical, descriptive-analytical, and componential analysis methods; qualitative research10 rules oriented toward the object of research are observed. The article is valuable for terminology, terminography, toponomastics, cultural geography, sociolexicology, and interfield communication, and is also of interest from an educational perspective. 1. The origin of the word žemėvardis. The word žemėvardis, formed by compounding, consists of two constituents. The first is related to Lithuanian žemė ‘earth, land’, and the second to Lithuanian vardas ‘name’. The origin of the word’s first structural constituent can be explained on the basis of the Database of the Etymological Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (hereinafter – LKEŽBе), compiled at Vilnius University12, according to which Lithuanian žemė [...], as in other related languages, is semantically connected with ‘lying low, that which is low’ (cited from Buck 1949: 16). Further, focusing on the most typical, autonomous, stylistically neutral meaning given in the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (hereinafter – LKŽe), marked with the number one, it becomes clear that Lithuanian žemė means ‘the (surface of our planet), [...] (often contrasted with the vault of heaven)’ and the shade of this meaning13 | ‘bottom (in water)’. These components of meaning are supplemented, and the semantic structure is developed, by other meanings of the polysemous word žemė: 4. ‘the upper loose layer (usually cultivated or otherwise used) of our planet’s surface’; 5. ‘the material constituting our planet’s surface || ‘clay’ || ‘mud, dirt’; 6. ‘a plot, area, field intended for some purpose’; 7. ‘dry land’ || ‘shore, edge’; 8. ‘ploughed, cultivated field, soil’; 9. ‘private (usually cultivated) plot, land use’ || ‘private holding’ || ‘farm’ || ‘valakas’; 10. ‘a layer suitable for plants to grow and be cultivated, soil’; 11. ‘the territory, region, or country inhabited by a nation or nations’ || figuratively14 ‘the inhabitants or nation of a particular region or country’ || ‘state’ || ‘ethnic territorial unit’ || ‘surrounding area, locality, region’ || ‘homeland, native land, fatherland’. The origin of the second structural constituent is Lithuanian vardas ‘a name given not to one particular item but to every item, phenomenon, action, etc., of a certain kind’. Cf. also –onimas [onimai], the second part of a compound word, meaning 10 “Qualitative (qualitative) research is the systematic, unstructured study of a case or group of individuals, a situation, or an event in a natural environment, aimed at understanding the phenomena under investigation and providing an interpretive, holistic explanation of them” (Kardelis 2002). 11 Sociolexicology is the science that investigates the connections between word usage and people’s place of residence, profession, and social status. In general terms, it is the science of the relations between words and society. 12 Project manager Prof. Dr Daiva Sinkevičiūtė. Available online: http://etimologija.baltnexus.lt/ [accessed September–October 2020]. 13 Hereafter, the symbol || is used to mark a shade or shades of meaning. 14 Abbreviations such as LKŽe are not explained separately. 314 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu “name,” “designation,” “word” (TŽŽ 2013: 822), onimai [Greek onyma – name] ling. proper words or word combinations designating objects (ibid.)15. 2. The concept of the term, its terminological environment, place in the system, motivation, and structural model. According to encyclopedic data, toponyms, or place names—that is, proper names of places—are first divided into names of uninhabited places and names of inhabited places. Names of uninhabited places are in turn divided into two large groups: hydronyms and žemėvardžiai. Žemėvardžiai are the names of mountains, hills, cliffs, hollows, valleys, meadows, flood meadows, pastures, fields, fallow lands, gravel pits, clay pits, forests, clearings, pinewoods, shrubs, thickets, roads, paths, and so on. Žemėvardžiai are the most numerous Lithuanian toponyms. More than 500,000 have been recorded. In terms of origin and time of emergence, they are the most diverse among toponyms. These are mainly names of small and relatively unimportant places; as historical and social circumstances change, they change, disappear, or new ones arise. Fewer of them enter official documents, and they are less often legalized. However, for communication and orientation, žemėvardžiai are no less important than the names of bodies of water or inhabited places (LKE 2008: 599, 556–557)16. This (sub)division reveals the position of žemėvardžiai in the general system of toponymic terms: they occur at the lower level of names of uninhabited places and, together with hydronyms17, form a subtype of toponyms, or place names. Grasilda Blažienė, drawing on the experience of German onomastics, states that “the toponyms that remain after oikonyms and hydronyms have been separated would most appropriately be called žemėvardžiai, or names of uninhabited places” (Blažienė 2006: 27). Vitalija Maciejauskienė’s conception of the system of toponyms, or place names, emerges from her description of the source of the Dictionary of Lithuanian Place Names, the card file held in the collections of the Center for the Research of Baltic Languages and Names at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language: “It was accumulated throughout nearly the entire twentieth century, and currently contains about 600,000 cards. They record Lithuanian place names collected from living speech at various times and in various ways—names of inhabited places, hydronyms, and names of various other objects on the earth’s surface (ploughed fields, elevations, marshes, fords, hollows, fields,”},{ 15 Cf. also a representative of Russian terminology: “Toponym (from Ancient Greek τόπος – place + ὄνομα – name, designation) is a category of onyms, a proper name designating the proper name of a natural object on Earth or of an object created by humans on Earth. Toponyms are studied by toponymy, which is a branch of onomastics” (Подольская 1988: 127). 16 See also TŽŽ 2013: 822: toponimas (topo– + Greek onyma – name), ling. place name, the proper name of an inhabited place or another geographical object. According to LKŽE, vietāv ardė means ‘proper name, designation of a place’ [In Aukštaitija there are surnames and place names – Kušlaukčių Vaižg.]. 17 Regarding the use of this term in both the narrow and broad senses, see Vanagas 1999: 239. In the first case, the term hydronym denotes the names of rivers and lakes; in the second, it also denotes the names of other proper bodies of water—seas, oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, ditches, fords, marshes, mires, and so on. Straipsniai / Articles 315 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ pastures, ditches, bays, mountains, hills, roads, fields, forests, marshes, bogs, and so on). There are very many of these place names, and they have been studied the least (Maciejauskienė 2002: 102)18. The group of objects called žemėvardžiai in the encyclopedia remains unnamed by this author; however, it is clear that the onomastician distinguishes it from the names of other classes (subclasses). As has become customary, in all works devoted to Lithuanian regional (areal) toponymy—in the collective monograph by Lithuanian scholars Lithuanian Place Names, Žemėvardžiai and Hydronyms in the European Context (LOFGEK 2019), in studies by Ilona Mickienė, Renata Endzelytė, and Nerija Bartkutė, and in the publications of the “Versmė” series of local studies—the term žemėvardis is used for names of the earth’s surface, that is, of mountains, fields, meadows, forests, roads, paths, and so on. It was also used by geographer Stanislovas Tarvydas, who wrote on questions of language (1958: 5, 46), linguists Bronys Savukynas (1963: 235)19, Aleksandras Vanagas (1988: 16), Marija Razmukaitė (2003: 67), and ethnologist Auksoolė Čepaitienė (2013: 112, 129). The circumstances and motivation for the emergence of the term are, from a synchronic perspective, apparently not difficult to understand: there arose a need to name zones of the dry earth’s surface (the land cover) distinguished from the surrounding environment (cultivated, mountainous, wooded, used for walking, driving, and so on). Motivation helps us understand other specific terms at the same level: hydronyms, names of inhabited places. In Lithuanian toponymy, terms of mixed origin are also used alongside them: some Lithuanian, others containing stems of Greek origin. The following terms are used synonymously: vandėnvardis – hydronym; name of an inhabited place – oikonym; name of a marshy place – helonym; name of a mountain – oronym; name of a field or meadow – agronym; name of a forest – drymonym; name of a road or path – hodonym. When necessary, these are collectively called place names or toponyms, while oronyms, agronyms, drymonyms, and hodonyms are called žemėvardžiai. Thus, the terminological model was formed from the principal constituent vardas, denoting a class (category) of proper words, and the secondary constituent žemė, denoting a place and marking the subclass of inanimate objects. To understand the information conveyed by the linguistic sign, it is essential to heed the syntactic relations between the principal and secondary constituents (respectively vardas and žemė), because what matters is not the sum of the meanings of the individual constituents but the semantic whole, that is, the meaning of the derivative. 316 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu 3. A retrospective view of the term’s usage. 3.1. The Instruction states that the land-name register “consists of place names20) and žemėvardžiai21), by which people have named almost every little place: a field, forest, small lake, stream, meadow... a hill... each with a different name distinguishing it from the others” (Alminauskis 1934: 3). First, the occurrence of žemėvardis should be discussed; its meaning is explained by the author himself in a footnote to the Instruction: “Žemėvardžiai in the broad sense encompass all names of places on the earth’s surface, including place names” (ibid.). From what has been said, it can be understood that in K. Alminauskis’s usage the concept of the term žemėvardis was formed according to the notion of “that which is low,” with all segments of the surrounding environment (space) understood as opposed to the sky. Thus, in the interwar linguist’s view, žemė is the foundation of the systematizing top / bottom. This conception of the opposition is also declared in dictionaries of symbols (Bekeris 1996: 318; Lapinskienė 2007: 176)22. In contemporary native toponomastics23, the situation is different: toponyms, or place names, also include the names of objects in the universe—stars, constellations, planets, comets, and so on (otherwise called cosmonyms and astronyms) (see also LKE 2008: 557). 3.2. K. Alminauskis’s statement that almost every place (little place24 – K. A.) had been given25 a different name distinguishing it from the others is (con)firmed by the list of abbreviations for references to objects in the Dictionary of Lithuanian Place Names, compiled for practical needs of identifying places26. As the dictionary’s chief editor Laimutis Bilkis states, “compared with Volume I, the concept of place names has been expanded somewhat: Volume II includes the names of individual geographical objects (stones, trees), buildings with certain areas of land (inns, servants’ quarters, bathhouses), and transport objects (footbridges, bridges). The aim is that these onyms, often interesting in structure and origin, should not remain gathering dust in the archive and gradually sink into oblivion” (LVŽ II: VII). Thus, it is not difficult to infer that in our culture nearly all socially significant segments of the land cover are named. Their opposition to a particular class or subclass is indicated by the object reference. For purposes of distinguishing names from one another, this was (and remains) used by both those providing place names and the teachers, foresters, and researchers who recorded them on questionnaires. This is confirmed by column 7, “Object,” of the tables on the standardized sheets of the Land Names Questionnaires27, which indicated what fragment of reality was being named. As the latest Lithuanian toponomastic research shows, the reference to a physiographic term is not eliminated from the semantics of a place name—it is essential for substantiating the nomination and motivation of the place name28. This is necessary information, identifiable with the unitary concept29 expressed by the inherent characteristic of proper names. 3.3. The unevenness of the content of žemėvardžiai and their competition with one another is also attested by K. Alminauskis’s further thoughts: “These land names show us in detail the nation’s attachment to its land, its love and fondness for it. People give even the smallest corner of land their own name; in other words, they make it conscious and thereby bring it closer to themselves” (Alminauskis 1934: 3). The highlighted sentence shows that the compiler of the Instruction drew attention to the land names’ Straipsniai / Articles 317 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ connections with people, members of a particular linguistic community, who identify places with themselves while also distinguishing them from one another in some respect³⁰. Native toponymy contains examples confirming this. One of them, based on subjectivism, has a person as the place: the pond is Panaïtė (Vv³¹). Stefan Ullmann identifies anthropomorphisms as one of the tendencies of metaphorization (see Ульман 1970). These are words describing the human body, spirit, or activity, used to name things in the inanimate world³². In naming topo-objects in this way, associations with a human are evoked in the addressee³³. Adjectives describing a human being (a living creature) form the basis for the nomination of the following žemėvardžiai: the arable land Mùdrė (Brb); the pond Skaitė (Kdn), the meadow Skaitė (Lbv); according to the place-name informant from Melagiai village’s Land Names Questionnaire, the name of a section of cultivated land and meadow, Piktãbalė (Kdn), arose because there used to be a pond in that place in which many animals drowned. According to Vaida Drukteinytė, who studied verbs with figurative meanings, these “occur on the periphery of semantic groups, because in many cases the same verb, used in literal and figurative meanings, falls into different semantic groups” (Drukteinytė 2002: 318). In the context of the question under discussion, this observation is particularly significant because it warns of semantic changes and certain deformations in the semantic structure of place names. 3.4. “Place names often acquaint us with earlier circumstances of the nation’s life and give us an opportunity to gain deeper insight into its soul,” it is stated in the Instruction (Alminauskis 1934: 3). “Some of them³⁴ (place names—the author’s note) are associated with memories of old times, ancient magic practices, beliefs, and similar matters of the nation’s cultural history, about which we would know nothing without them”³⁵ (ibid.). From the sentences recorded in the Instruction, it can be understood (interpreted) that 30 The epigraph from Kazimieras Būga, which has become a foundation for the presentations and articles of many Lithuanian researchers when emphasizing the importance of place names, does not lose its significance in this context because of the early-twentieth-century linguists’ attitude toward the proper names of their land and their region. “Through place names, the land itself speaks to us. Its words of speech are the names of cities, villages, rivers, lakes, pools, forests, mountains, etc.” (Būga 1961: 491). 31 Abbreviations such as LVŽ are not explained separately. 32 See also Gudavičius 2007: 165–168. Tatjana Fedotova (Uzbekistan State University of Humanities and Pedagogy) calls this type of metaphor cognitive in toponymy (see Федотова 2008: 48, 49). 33 Anthropomorphic metaphors form the basis of personification—stylistic figures in which objects of the inanimate world are attributed human properties and features (cf. Gudavičius 2009: 117). 34 Spelling as in the Instruction. 35 The contents of the third sheet of the questionnaires: 13. “Historical information,” 14. “Archaeological information,” 15. “Explanations of name origins,” 16. “Folkloric information.” The standardized questionnaire sheet ends with a table indicating the informants’ age range, i.e., information about which age group they (he or she) belonged to. 318 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu The concept of žemėvardis is associated with a certain period, the history of the nation36, territory, humanity, its anthropological commonalities and differences, and individuals (their way of subsistence, this information-preserving function of place names, from which one can infer the inner world, worldview, perception of the world, and standards of thinking of people who lived in a certain area. Thus, as Kazimieras Būga accurately observed, “our past, our bygone existence (history) is closely connected with the vocabulary of the language” (LKŽe). Contemporary female scholars also hold a similar view of place names: “The study of place names is distinctive in that, in order to learn the origin and meaning of a name, one must open the door not only to the world of words, but also to the worlds of nature, history, mythology, geography, and psychology [...]” (Kiseliūnaitė, Simutytė 2005: 7); “Microtoponyms and other toponyms: Reflections of human perception of the world” (Sinkevičiūtė 2015: 75). The concept of the term microtoponym used by the latter authors is associated with locality: the first structural component shows that micro are toponyms of a certain area37 (cf. also the collocation place names of the locality, found written in one of the questionnaires), individuality38, distinctiveness, and uniqueness (otherness). This perceived content brings the concept of the latter term closer to the concept of žemėvardis39, providing additional information about its unofficial status40, the limitation of its use to a particular field (or fields) of science, and also reveals its relationship with the term 36 Cf. also: “Place names are dear to us because, in the hands of a scholar, they can serve as historical documents” (Būga 1961: 743); “Where a nation lived in ancient times, the land can tell us: one need only know how to ask it and understand its answer” (ibid., 491). 37 For an interpretation of the first structural component of the term microtoponym, see Васильева 2014: 117–126. 38 D. Sviderskienė has collected more examples illustrating how a particular landscape (natural, geographic) feature symbolizes a fact of an individual’s psychological state from the research of Lithuanian ethnologist and researcher of folklore, Baltic religion, and mythology Radvilė Račėnaitė, who, drawing on material from the Land Names questionnaires of Alytus and Trakai counties, analyzed how memories of the past are consolidated in different genres of legends and how they interact with the landscape; from an article by Vigimantas Butkus, who studied the topography of literature; and from an article by Lithuanian mythologist and folklorist Daiva Vaitkevičienė, based on the paper “To Hear a Place and to Be Heard,” which mentions “the bogs’ mutterers” (see respectively: Sviderskienė 2015: 173–174, 183; 2016: 261). 39 For the use of the term in Lithuanian toponymy, see Bilkis 1997: 35–57; see also Подольская 1978: 86: “Микротопоним – Собственное имя (чаще) природного, физико-географического объекта, (реже) созданного человеком, имеющее узкую сферу употребления: функционирующее в пределах лишь микротерритории, известное узкому кругу людей, живущих в близи именуемого микрообъекта, в т. ч. микрогидроним, микроойконим, микроороним, микрохороним, названия урочищ, хозяйственных угодий, микросооружений (колодцев, мостов, будок, вышек, зимовий, кордонов, охотничьих домиков и т. п.).“ 40 This observation may also be compared with the encyclopedic information presented in Section 2 of this article. Straipsniai / Articles 319 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ toponym, situated at a higher level of the hierarchical structure and used at the official level in the language of science. G. Blažienė, addressing problems in the study of Prussian place names, states that “place names, or names of uninhabited places, are used by a small group of people, e.g. the inhabitants of one village,” and, continuing, relies on L. Bilkis’s view: “One must be familiar with the locality in which its name exists” (see also: Blažienė 2006: 27; Bilkis 1997: 49). Dalia Sviderskienė studies the totality of place names as names of places located within a certain administrative unit41, in a particular linguistic environment reflecting linguistic, cultural, historical, and regional (areal) characteristics. The researcher is aided in implementing this by a unit of the interwar heritage—the Lithuanian land-name inventory questionnaires. 4. Prospects for the use of the term, the word žemėvardis. 4.1. Based on an analysis of the use of žemėvardis, it can be stated that the concept has changed and expanded. Žemėvardis, continuing the tradition, denotes not only the names of land cover—mountains, fields, meadows, forests, roads, paths—but also place names of atypical structures having connections with historical and ethnocultural spheres of development and functioning. Such use of the term would appear particularly well-founded within the framework of anthropocentrically oriented regional (areal) toponomastics. The main argument for this claim is that place names are the result of the linguistic and extralinguistic experience of members of a particular linguistic ethnic community43. Unofficial place names are informative only in their use (speech), in the sociocultural and ethnocultural environment in which they arise. Without knowledge of the onymic context, a place name may become a source of misunderstanding. Since place names are witnesses of the past, preserving common nouns (native and borrowed), personal names not recorded in present-day collections, the surrounding environment and its details, traces of historical-cultural relations among nations, and representatives of atypical structures of a particular ethnic area together with their characteristic “infrastructure,” they may be called žemėvardžiai. 41 Of the interwar Marijampolė County. 42 In conducting research on the inventory, it was observed that the teacher who recorded the place names calls the place names written on the Land Names sheets žemėvardžiai: in the questionnaire from Žilvyčiai village, Seirijai district, Alytus County, an attached note was found with handwritten information confirming this. The žemėvardžiai (13) of Žilvyčiai village were listed by Kalėda Juozas, received from teacher Liegaus Pranas of Stračiūnai. The place names of the locality (emphasis by the author) were also listed by teacher Lekavičius Rapolas of Krikštonys, whose sheet contains only 4 place names (three times fewer?!). A. N. 1936-IV-24. There was also a case in which the table of an uncompleted Land Names questionnaire contained the sole entry “there are no žemėvardžiai.” 43 For more detail on the studies consistently carried out in recent years that produced results of this kind, see: Sviderskienė 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019. 320 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu 4.2. The arguments substantiating the value of Pranas Skardžius’s compounds make it possible to foresee further uses of žemėvardis as a word of our language: “By their nature, they are chiefly suited to a more precise, more condensed, richer, and more meaningful mode of expression. Therefore, compound words very often have a much fuller, richer, and at the same time more specific content than the separate parts of word groups, which have not yet been perceived as a unity” (Skardžius 1943: 396). “In this way, compound words constitute one of the principal special means of expression [...]; they usually have something selected” (ibid., 397). It has been established that the origin and thematic environment of the second structural component name are not confined to the field of toponymy; cf. personal name—a term of anthroponymy, meaning proper names of persons; cf. also the onomastic term zoonym with a second structural component of Greek origin performing the same naming function. In the face of globalization, all representatives of these classes are linked by the challenge of disappearance and survival and by the idea of preservation. Thus, by analogy, on the basis of which, in the interwar period, questionnaires were (re)named Land Names for the purpose of preserving place names (cf. the adjacent questionnaire title form Land Names⁴⁴), žemėvardžiais may be qualified and called representatives of native origin and of other semantic groups that are important components of identity⁴⁵. Their list is not exhaustive because, as K. Alminauskis stated in the Instruction, “hundreds of thousands of žemėvardžiai are hidden among the people.” Conclusions. Having analyzed K. Alminauskis’s Instruction for Collectors of Place Names (1934) as the primary text in which the term žemėvardis arose, its toponymic context, the multidisciplinary scholarly environment in which, as far as is known, this term functions, and having considered the specificity of the objects (real entities) named by the term, ⁴⁴ The onomastic material collected by the Lithuanian Society of Science Enthusiasts was also called Land Names. In the collections of the Center for Research into Baltic Languages and Onomastics of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, these standardized Land Names sheets were found. They are somewhat smaller in format (A4) than those formed during the comprehensive inventory of place names and constitute the absolute majority; they contain multi-column tables holding information about the village environment. In addition to the aforementioned material, the title sheet provides other information: Official name: the village, manor, single farmstead, folwark, town, colony, Driškūnai (Dryszkūny), forest district (forestry district—the author’s note), of Daugėliškis district, Švenčionys County. Recorder: surname, first name Švilpa Kazimieras, occupation teacher, farmer. Place of birth: Lobiniai district, Dūkštas County, Breslauja. Address: Velniadvaris Avenue, Gyvatbalis village, Pumpėnai County. The information was recorded in December 1939. Information about this unit of intangible heritage is published for the first time in this article. ⁴⁵ Loreta Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė, seeking to reconstruct the concept of identity on the basis of tapatus, –i and its derivatives in contemporary Lithuanian-language journalism, identified, based on the research data, the following layers of human identity: social (near / distant; family / humanity) ↔ self (constant / changing; assistance / similar) ↔ place (near / distant; native / world) ↔ time (past / present / future) (see Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė 2018: 131 for more detail). See also the concluding findings of this unique study, which trace connections with place, an individual’s worldview, and the perception of distinctiveness and otherness (ibid., 137–138). Straipsniai / Articles 321 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ it emerged that (1) žemėvardis occupies an intermediate position between a living language element and precisely fixed systematic units of terminology. During the comprehensive qualitative study, (2) the structural model and semantic amplitude of this term were established. It was clarified that the semantic domain earth is related to (a) the expression of the surrounding environment (space)—earth as a surface location situated below (without excluding the bottom of a body of water as a position of the earth’s surface), (b) the expression of relief—earth as a part of the surface characterized by certain distinguishing anthropogenic and geogenic features (cf. inhabited, wet, overgrown with particular kinds of plants, cultivated, segments of the earth’s surface along which one walks, travels, and so on), (c) earth is identified with a certain region or place of residence, (d) socially significant cultural and other objects. The study also revealed (e) a linguocultural connotation: the earth is alive. Until now, in our toponomastics, the term žemėvardis has traditionally denoted the concept of proper names of land cover (mountains, fields, meadows, forests, roads, paths, etc.). Analysis of the terminological environment made it possible to understand the richer content of the term žemėvardis and to foresee broader possibilities for its use. The presumed concept of the term žemėvardis is the names of land cover formed through natural nomination at a particular time and in a particular area, important in orientational, communicative, and emotional senses, reflecting the existential psychology of members of the local linguistic community. Thus, the use of the term žemėvardis in the future would appear especially well-founded in the field of anthropocentrically oriented regional (areal) toponomastic research. This assumption is supported by the experience of the research conducted by the author of the article, highlighting a common feature of nominative decisions in a certain multiethnic area, manifested in the desire to reinforce the principle of the semantic integrity of spatial fragmentation and organization through a certain subjectivism. The model of the local interwar information system, (s1)constructed according to administrative units (counties, districts, villages, manors, single farmsteads), of the Lithuanian land-name inventory questionnaires reinforces this assumption. Moreover, as the study demonstrated, earth is the most typical expression of the features of a place, i.e. of an area or space in which something is or occurs. Summarizing what has been said, it can be stated that (3) žemėvardis is a component of identity. Thus, žemėvardžiais may be called not only names of places but also representatives of other semantic groups associated with the identity of our nation and facing, in the context of globalization, the challenge of disappearance and survival. (4) The broad field of use of žemėvardis is determined by its rich semantic content; its revealed inner form is associated with locality, distinctiveness, uniqueness, and identity, whereby, in different situations, this language sign may meet different needs of scholarly communication and education, depending on the researchers’ intentions. 322 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu REFERENCES AND SOURCES Auksoriūtė Albina 2020: It is very important that the Lithuanian language be used both in public state life and in the world of science. 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Федотова Татьяна В. 2008: The specificity of metaphorical toponyms from the perspective of human perception of the world. – Вестник ВГУ, series: Лингвистика и межкультурная коммуникация 2, 48–51. 326 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII Termino žemėvardis klausimu On the Term Žemėvardis S U M M A R Y After analysing Instrukcija vietovardžių rinkėjams (The Instruction for Collectors of Place Names) (1934) by Kazimieras Alminauskis as the main text where the term žemėvardis (‘land name’) originated, its toponymic context and the multidisciplinary scientific domain, where, to the best of our knowledge, the term functions, and taking into account the specificity of the objects (phenomena), which the term refers to, it turned out that (1) žemėvardis occupies an intermediary position between a live language element and accurately recorded systemic units of terms. The complex qualitative study determined (2) the structural model of this term and its semantic amplitude. It was ascertained that the semantic domain žemė (land) is related to (a) the expression of the surrounding environment (space) – land as a low surface area (by not eliminating the position of the bottom layer in water as the land surface), (b) the expression of terrain – land as a part of the surface characterised by certain distinguishing anthropogenic and geogenic properties (cf. inhabited, wet, overgrown with the plants of a certain type, cultivated, land surface segments for walking, driving, etc.), (c) land is equated to a certain region, living place, (d) socially significant cultural and other objects. The study also revealed (e) the linguocultural connotation: land is alive. It justifies the traditional concept of the term žemėvardis established in local toponymy – the proper names of the cover of land (hills, fields, meadows, forests, roads, paths, etc.); it also allows us to comprehend a richer content of the term žemėvardis and to anticipate broader possibilities for its use. The implied concept of the term žemėvardis is as follows: the names of the land cover formed at a certain time in a certain area by way of natural nomination, which are important in orientational, communicative and emotional terms and reflect the psychology of existence of the members of a local linguistic community. The usage of this term in the research area of anthropocentric regional (areal) toponomastics seems especially likely in the future. The above assumption is supported by the author’s research experience highlighting the common feature of the nominative decisions of a certain polytechnic field, which manifests itself in the attempt to strengthen the principle of the semantic integrity of space fragmentation and organization thanks to certain subjectivism. The local model of the interwar information system, the Land Names questionnaires, constructed on the basis of administrative units (counties, districts, villages, estates, individual farmsteads), strengthens the above assumption. Taking into account the above, it can be concluded that (3) žemėvardis is a component of identity. Consequently, not only place names but also representatives of other semantic groups (as stated by Alminauskis, “hundreds of thousands of land names are hidden among Straipsniai / Articles 327 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ people”) associated with the identity of our nation and facing the challenge of extinction and survival in the face of globalization, may be referred to as žemėvardžiai. Submitted on December 6, 2020 DALIA SVIDERSKIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language Petro Vileišio St. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] 328 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIII