DALIA KISELIŪNAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

Research areas: comparative Baltic linguistics, geolinguistics, ethnolinguistics.

NIDA CARD NO. 30084 IN THE ARCHIVE OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE ATLAS OF PHILIPPS-UNIVERSITÄT MARBURG: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Language Analysis of Nida Questionnaire № 30084 in the Archive of the Linguistic Atlas of Germany at the Phillips University, Marburg

ABSTRACT

The article analyzes one of the few written records of the endangered Kursenieku language—the so-called Wenker card No. 30084, which was included in the index-card collection for the “German Language Atlas” (Deutscher Sprachatlas or DSA) initiated by Georg Wenker. The manuscript of this card, the circumstances of its creation, and its orthographic system have already been presented by the author together with Christiane Schiller in a published article. The only Kursenieku-language card in the collection was compiled by Nida teacher Otto Pohlmans, based on information provided by a local informant, the fisherman Mikel Pleikis. This article analyzes the language of the manuscript at various levels (orthography, phonetics, morphology, lexicon, and syntax). Particular attention is given to the authenticity of the language—how the recorded text reflects the actual situation of the Kursenieku language at that time, and which facts should be regarded as shortcomings of the documentation method (translation). The linguistic features observed are compared with material from a study published several years later by Adalbert Bezzenberger and from Jūro Plakis’s study, published half a century later. Since a digitization project for the DSA (DiWA) is currently underway in Germany, it is expected that a detailed linguistic analysis of each card will also contribute to this undertaking.

KEYWORDS: Georg Wenker, “German Language Atlas,” language documentation, endangered language, Kursenieku language, language interaction, linguistic text analysis.

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A N N O T A T I O N

The article analyses one of the few written monuments of the endangered Kursenieku language, Card No. 30084 from Nida/Niden, which, along with other analogues from the 19th century German regions, was included in the file of the German language atlas (Deutsche Sprachatlas, or DSA) launched by Georg Wenker. The manuscript of this card, the circumstances of its creation and the orthography system were already presented by the author and co-author Christiane Schiller in the article published in 2015. The only Kursenieku language card in Wenker’s project was filled by Nida’s teacher Otto Pohlman. It was based on the information provided by local fisherman Mickel Peleikis. The article analyses the language of this manuscript on various levels (orthography, phonetics, morphology, lexis, and syntax). The author focuses on the authenticity of the language – how the written text reflects the real situation of the Kursenieku language at the time, and which facts are to be considered as weaknesses of the documentation method (translation). The observed language peculiarities are compared with the study by Bezzenberger published a few years later and another study by Plakis published fifty years later. In Germany, the DSA digitization project (DiWA) has recently been implemented, and it is therefore thought that a comprehensive linguistic analysis of each card will also serve its purpose.

KEYWORDS: Georg Wenker, German language atlas, language documentation, endangered language, Kursenieku language, language interaction, linguistic text analysis.

INTRODUCTION

Written monuments of the language of the Curonians¹ are not very old. Records of individual lexemes are associated with the names of Matthäus Prätorius and Paul Ruhig (for more detail, see Schiller, Kiseliūnaitė 2015: 444). To our knowledge, the first published monument of the Curonian language is a small dictionary in Peter Simon Pallas’s language atlas Linguarum totus orbis vocabularia comparativa (Pallas 1786: 89), discussed in the works of Victor Diederich (Diederichs 1883: 44–46), Daina Zemzare (Zemzare 1961: 164–174), Vanda Kazakienė (Казакене 2013), and Arina Ivanicaya (Иваникая 2017). The latter article presents the earliest known written monument of the Curonian language—the manuscript register of the aforementioned P. S. Pallas’s dictionary, dated to around 1773. A few Curonian words found their way into the so-called Richter dictionary (Schiller 2014).

¹ This article adopts the position that the speech of the inhabitants of the Curonian Spit should be termed a language, using the term in its sociolinguistic sense; however, when its features are compared with Standard Latvian or its dialects, the term Kursenieku dialect is used, following a genealogical approach.

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The source discussed in this article is the so-called Wenker card—a handwritten card no. 30084 in the archive of Georg Wenker’s “Linguistic Atlas of Germany” (Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reiches)², dated 1879, i.e. several years earlier than Adalbert Bezzenberger’s study (Bezzenberger 1888). In addition to individual examples illustrating the description of Kursenieku features, the latter includes several connected texts, later published in Standard Latvian orthography by Jūris Plakis in his study Kursenieku valoda (Pl).

A facsimile of the text on Wenker’s Nida card, the circumstances of its production, and its orthographic features, together with a transcription, were presented by the author and Christiane Schiller in an article (Schiller, Kiseliūnaitė 2015), but the language itself was hardly analyzed there. This article analyzes the most important features of Kursenieku reflected in the Nida card in the Wenker atlas archive. Its aim is to identify both the older features brought from Courland and those that emerged in the language’s subsequent development, to reveal signs and trends of language interaction, and to distinguish features unique to this source, which do not necessarily apply to all speakers. The appendix presents a transcription of the manuscript in numbered sentences; the second line gives the same transcription in standardized Kursenieku using Latvian letters³; the third line gives a word-for-word translation into Latvian⁴, with an edited Standard Latvian version of the text in the footnotes; and the fourth line gives the transcription of the German sentence provided for translation.

The analysis of the source language is organized by linguistic levels and applies methods of textual and comparative analysis.

On Wenker card no. 30084, the translations of the so-called “40 Wenker sentences” into Kursenieku, using German and Lithuanian letters, are written in the hand of the Nida teacher Otto Pohlman⁵. The reverse side of the second sheet is filled in with questionnaire data; in line 1, in response to the question “Geschah die Uebersetzung durch Schüler oder durch den Lehrer?” (“Was the translation done by pupils or by the teacher?”), the words “durch Schüler” (“by pupils”) have been crossed out by hand, and the following has been added: “mit Hilfe eines Eingeborenen (Mikel Pelēkis)” (“with the help of a native” (Mikel Pelēkis)) (with a grave accent over the e in the handwritten form, apparently indicating stress).

It is now difficult to say which Mikels Pelēkis helped the teacher. The crossed-out line indicates that, contrary to Wenker’s recommendations, it was probably not

² Plačiau apie lietuvišką šios kartotekos medžiagą žr. Fleischer, Sommer 2012.

³ This transcription was prepared by the author in accordance with the rules for reconstructing the relationship between orthography and phonetics, without correcting the language of the text; where necessary (in cases of uncertain phonetic realization), possible variants are given in parentheses, with notes in the footnotes.

⁴ The author is grateful to her colleague Dr. Liene Markus-Narvila for her assistance in editing the Latvian part of the transcription.

⁵ Otto Pohlman, who came from the Prussian district of Ylava, worked at the Nida school from 1878 to 1883 (Chronik 2013: 75, 137).

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… teacher … In the genealogical database⁶, several individuals are recorded as Michel Peleis, who lived or had children in Nida during the period when the questionnaire was completed; however, it is most likely that the teacher made use of the assistance of M. Peleikis, from whom he rented his lodgings⁷.

The language of the Nida forms, recorded as translations of Wenker’s sentences, reflects the linguistic characteristics of the period. In terms of phonetic and morphological features, and to a large extent lexical ones, the language of the Nida forms should be considered a variety of Courland Latvian dialects, which had developed on the Curonian Spit before the 17th century⁸; however, it should be emphasized that this is not a continuation of any single Latvian subdialect, but the result of interaction among various dialects, with substantial Lithuanian and German influence.

ORTHOGRAPHIC FEATURES

In the sentences on the Nida questionnaire, German letters are used⁹; the author attempts to represent features of Baltic phonetics with them, but does not succeed in doing so consistently.

Vocalism. Vowel shortness is often represented by consonant gemination: e, a + dd (is ledus ‘into the ice, ice’, prada snkti ‘it begins to snow’, pradim ‘rain’¹⁰), i + tt (kritīs ‘fallen’), a + nn (par mani ‘for me’), i + bb (gribb 3 before ‘wants’), a + mm (namms ‘houses’), u + rr (eβ turu dikti saukti ‘I have to call loudly

⁶ http://www.online-ofb.de/namelist.php?nachname=PELEIS&ofb=memeland&modus=lang=de.

⁷ The surname Pelekis is very common on the Curonian Spit, but genealogy portals do not give everyone’s place of birth or burial. Potential informants should therefore be sought only among those who lived in Nida at the time, although they may have originated elsewhere. It is difficult to say what the teacher meant by “local.” In the chronicle of the Nida school, Michel Peleis from Preila is mentioned among the members of the Nida church council in 1887 (Chronik 2012: 142). However, it is most likely that the teacher drew on his close acquaintance with M. Peleis, who had rented him accommodation in his house since 1878 (ibid., 137). The same Michel Peleikis was probably also later identified in historical sources as the person renting premises to the school (ibid., 149).

⁸ Although there is evidence that the first settlers from the Curonian Spit had arrived as early as the 15th century, their personal names are not yet attested in historical sources for the first century, and it is difficult to say whether these particular settlers laid the foundations for the language that later developed and became established. A larger wave of migration from Courland reached the Curonian Spit in the 16th century and intensified especially from the 17th century onward (for more, see Elertas 2014).

⁹ The influence of Lithuanian orthography may be seen in the somewhat inconsistent marking of consonant palatalization with the letter i; the letter ž consistently represents the sound ž, which has no German equivalent; ā and ū with diacritics occur, but apparently only in the word bedšan ‘monkey’ (German Affe), where the diacritic can reliably be interpreted as a marker of length.

¹⁰ For the meaning, see “Lexical Features.”

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(‘to call’) and so on. Sometimes such marking of vowel shortness reflects regular phonetic features of the dialect, such as the shortness of vowels in verb prefixes: gaidėti (Latvian standard language gaidīt ‘to wait’), daretė (Latvian standard language darīt ‘to do’), nedarės (Latvian standard language nedarīs ‘will not do’), or the specific nature of word-forming prefixes, e.g.: ar abelenis ‘with apples’, awenu (gen. pl. diminutive from dialectal ave, Latvian standard language aita ‘sheep’).

Pasaiko also shows unmarked length (more precisely, shortness): radusci (Latvian standard language radusi ‘having found’), or forms written in two different ways: es neparmanu jummies ‘I do not understand you’, but wintsch numis¹¹ neparmane ‘he does not understand us’. There are also doubtful cases: for example, tadus, taddi is written twice (tadus nieks ‘such nonsense’; mūbu kalni nau taddi diži ‘our mountains are not so big’), cf. Latvian standard language tāds ‘such’.

In the word wiers = vīrs ‘man’, the length of the vowel ī is marked somehow with ie, but only once; elsewhere the spelling of ī varies: czijsi = čsti ‘cleanly’, ziti = dzīti ‘to drive, herd’.

The length of other stressed vowels is reflected rarely. udnigi = ūdnā ‘water’, jubu = jūsū ‘your’, buri = būri ‘herds, farmers’, kajas = kājas ‘legs’; the diacritic bedschan = bēdzane ‘monkey’ is used once (cf. bedzāne ‘monkey’ (Plāķis 1927: 50) and bēdzāns m. (Pietsch 1991: 36)); and acc. sg. būdel-ki¹² ‘bottle’.

As might be expected, unstressed long vowels in Latvian are not reflected in this document, since in the language of the works they are usually shortened to short vowels, in certain cases to half-long vowels, and more rarely remain long; for example, in prefixal roots iega ‘went’, locative endings (mežā ‘in the forest’), adverbs derived from the locative (pakalā ‘behind’), and forms of pronouns in certain cases (tā ‘that’).

The stressed diphthong ie is most often written iā: iābrits = iebrītis ‘fallen in’, and stressed ē and ę are also represented this way: ēd = ēd ‘eats’, valgo, biāz = sēž ‘sits’, miās iām = mēs iesam ‘we are going’, though other spellings also occur: pi tas sewos = pie tās sievas ‘to that woman / at that woman’s place’. Pasaiko even has two different spellings in the same position within a single sentence: kur tu ietī wa meb ar tevi ēbam? (kur tu iej, va mes ar tevi iesam? ‘where are you going, will we go with you?’). For possible monophthongization of unstressed ie, see the section “Phonetic features of the dialect.”

The diphthong uo in a stressed position is more often represented by oa: doadao = duodau, Latvian standard language dodā ‘I give’, koaki = kuoki, Latvian standard language koki ‘trees’, gowes acc. pl. guoves, Latvian standard language govis ‘cows’, soasis koasch (zuoses kuož, Latvian standard language zosis kož ‘the geese are biting’), sometimes uo: uoglis, Latvian standard language ogles ‘coal’, or o: kiozi = kuoci ‘sifts’.

¹¹ Typographical error; it should be munis.

¹² Judging from the riddle, this is most likely how ū was marked in the manuscript.

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Consonantism. Fricatives and affricates: Latvian c is usually transcribed as tʒ (wetzaich = vecais, standard Latvian vecais ‘the old one’); ts occurs (līts = lec ‘flies’) and dz once (dzīma = ciema ‘of the yard’); dz is more often transcribed as ds (idser i = iz-deri ‘to sow in’, pabādis = pazadis ‘having stolen’, kādads = kā daudz ‘how much’), but ziti = dziti ‘to drive, herd’; z – s (ar sirgu = zirgu ‘with a horse’), š – sch (sadegschi = sadeguši ‘burnt’), although other spellings also occur, e.g.: wirchus = veršus (standard Latvian vērsus), č – cz (czijsti = cīsti, standard Latvian tīri ‘cleanly’), ž – the ž used in Lithuanian writing (bjāž = sēž 3 pres. ‘sits’, laužī = laužī, standard Latvian lauzīs ‘people’), but sch also occurs (koasch = kuož ‘bites’). The letter β denotes s: isch krābnis (= from krānes, standard Latvian krāni ‘into the stove, in the stove’), βaubas lapas (= dry leaf ‘dry leaves’), es eβu (= I am, standard Latvian esmu, ‘I am’), though inconsistently—cf. is gaisa (= iz gaisa, standard Latvian gaisā ‘in the air’) and gaβas (gais, standard Latvian gais and laiks ‘weather’). z is also sometimes represented this way: pabādis (pazadis ‘having stolen’), uβ¹⁵ to lauk (uz tuo lauk ‘into that field’), but these are rare cases.

Historical consonant clusters with j: the cluster *nj is reflected more often as ng: is ta undi = iz tā ūnda ‘into the water’, winga = vina ‘into’; other Latvian palatalized consonants are written as in modern Lithuanian, with palatalization marked by the letter i: nedęlo = nedu (Plāks 1927: 69), standard Latvian nedēļu ‘weeks’, plauti = plauti, standard Latvian pļaut ‘to mow’, gallu = gaļu ‘meat’, kiucchis = ķaušis, standard Latvian ola, ‘egg’, kiozi = kūci, Latvian koci, groz ‘basket’. In the word wurschzu (= gen. pl. vuršķu, nom. vuršķis ‘box’), the Latvian k at the end of the stem was probably pronounced, sounding like c. There is no complete consistency in the instances of palatalized l < ļ: for example, tiā lauzi = tie laužī ‘those people’; in another sentence there are three positions where palatalized ļ would be expected, but it is precisely in the word ļauzi that palatalization is not marked: Es eβu ar tes ļauzis tiā pakalla par plaβam ib gradu i žjāβ. ‘I have driven with those people there (?) through the meadows into the rye’. Consonant palatalization is one of the more interesting questions in the development of Kursenieku speech; for more detail, see the section “Phonetic features of the dialect”.

The consonant j is usually written as j (jau, kajas = kājas ‘legs’), but g also occurs between vowels: satsegu = saciju, standard Latvian saciju ‘I say’, pagings = pakajings ‘calm, polite’, mazis = mācijs, standard Latvian mācījis ‘will have taught’.

Cases of assimilation are usually written phonetically: snikłi = snigti, aukti = augti, laps = labs, jodsch = juo dž, and so on. But morphological spelling also occurs, for example, tads = tāds ‘such’, as do errors: pudneni = den. putneni (standard Latvian putni ‘birds’).

¹³ See “Lexical features”.

¹⁴ This instance may reflect a phonetic feature; cf. fiedat ‘sings’, firdi 2 pres. ‘hears’ (Bezenberger 1888: 37).

¹⁵ It should probably be regarded as phonetic notation; see below.

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Prepositions are sometimes written together: ista = is tā (Latvian iz tā), kaduds = kā daudz ‘how much (a lot)’, nußirds = nu(o) sirds, standard Latvian no sirds ‘from the heart’, jodsch = juo dižs, standard Latvian lielāks ‘larger’.

PHONETIC FEATURES

In the Nida dialect card of Wenker’s atlas, completed using German letters unsuited to Baltic languages, we see a non-native-speaking teacher’s efforts to represent the sound system of the text he heard, which allows us to identify some (though certainly not all) of the phonetic features of the Kuršininkai language at that time. Some of these were inherited from the dialects of Courland, but here we find elements from various subdialects; the section title is therefore provisional and applies to Kuršininkai as a geolect of Latvian.

Reduction of endings. Advanced reduction of endings is characteristic of present-day Kuršininkai. However, the material in this source shows that in the second half of the nineteenth century most endings were still relatively clearly distinguished, although the long ones had probably shortened long ago. In many cases, the spelling of endings still makes it possible to distinguish case forms:

Kas tur mane kozi ar galiu pabdis? = kas tur mana koči ar galu pazdis?, Latvian standard-language equivalent: kas tur (ir) man koči (grozu) ar galu pazdis?; ‘who has stolen my basket with meat, i.e. who […] stole it’; wing¹⁶ tur tas dranas par sawa mati gatawas schti = vina tur tas dranas par sava mati gatavas šūti, Latvian standard-language equivalent: vina tur tās drānas priekš savas mates gatavas šūt (vina ir jaužus) ‘she has those clothes ready to sew for her mother’; ar to wendamo = lepli (ar tuo vendamo lepi), Latvian standard-language equivalent: ar to vārāmo karoti ‘with the cooking spoon’, etc.

The varying spelling of the same ending shows that, owing to reduction, vowels are not always clearly distinguished: acc. sg. mane kozi (= mana koči), cf. Latvian standard-language manu grozu; acc. tewe / tewi (= tevi), prt. act. nom. pl. ebam pawargusch (= pavarguši) / (and) sadagusch, voc. sg. be(ž)dzān (be(ž)dzāne) / mišaisch waikili (= mielai vaikeli). However, such cases are relatively few. The attested variants in the spelling of endings are also associated with other phonetic changes (vowel lowering), and sometimes they are grammatical errors: kad tu wing but pasnis (= kad tu winu būt(u) paznis) ‘if you had known him’.

Reduction of endings in Kuršininkai was also noted by A. Bezzenberger, who states that in place of unstressed a and u he heard a reduced e, but consonants before it are not palatalized: galdē ‘of the table’, mane meit (mana meita) and so on (Bezzenberger 1888: 24–25). J. Plakis also discusses shortened endings.

¹⁶ The ending is probably an error.

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(Plāks 1927: 17). In Kuršininkai, final a is not elided if consonant clusters such as s+s, z+s, sn+s, and the like arise. The card contains the example gaibas, Latvian standard-language gaiss ‘air’; cf. svēss, Latvian standard-language svess ‘strange’, tiesnas, Latvian standard-language taisns ‘straight’, and so on (Plāks 1927: 83, 86).

Written Kuršininkai texts from the second half of the twentieth century show that final endings undergo pronounced reduction, leading to the leveling of case forms: Kad tie zvejes par labes savumes jua duag āspelni, tap piges cēpe [...] (Pietsch 1983: 116 (= kad tie zveji par labis savumis juo daug āspelņa, tapa pīragi cēpi), Latvian kad tie zveji par labiem savumiem (lomi) vairāk nopelna, tika pīragi cepi ‘when the fishermen earned a lot (of money) from good catches, pies were baked (were being baked)’. For more on the leveling of endings and the disintegration of the declension system in twentieth-century Kuršininkai, see Ivanauskas, Kisiliūnaitė 2015.

Shortening of unstressed vowels. Shortening of unstressed vowels in non-final forms has been noted by all researchers of Kuršininkai (Plāks 1927: 17; Bezenberger 1888: 24–26), but on Wenker’s card this feature is illustrated only by cases reflected in the spelling, namely doubled consonants. The shortening of vowels in verb suffixes is particularly evident: darete (= dareti, Latvian standard-language darīt ‘to do’), gaideti (= gaideti / gaidīt Latvian standard-language gaidīt ‘to wait’).

Vowel lowering. In Kuršininkai, short vowels i and u are lowered in unstressed position, but this is reflected inconsistently on the card: darete (= daryti, Latvian standard-language darīt ‘to do’), wīno (= vienu ‘one’), nedares (= nedaris, Latvian standard-language nedarīs ‘will not do’), priekš schiescho niedelo niers (= priekš šešu nedēļu nirš, Latvian standard-language pirms sešām nedēļām miris ‘dead for six weeks’), āmeguš (= iemiguši ‘asleep’), ei und stawe (= ej un stāvi ‘go and stand’), pulātis¹⁷ (= palicis ‘having remained’; wiņa [...] pasi (= viņi pasi), jumies = jumes < jumis ‘you’, but snkti ‘to snow’, eβ turu dikti saukti (= es turu dikti saukti, Latvian standard-language man ir dikti jāsauc) ‘I have to shout loudly’, and so on. In other written Kuršininkai sources, this feature (if we set aside endings, where e may mark reduction of the ending) occurs only in certain cases, for example in the forms of the particle si / se and in the verb suffix -inat (Latvian standard-language -ināt): ziema saserinkas (= ziemā sasirinas, Latvian standard-language ziemā salasījās ‘they gathered in winter’); iemācēne (= iemācī-nati, Latvian standard-language iemācīt ‘to teach’) (Pietsch 1983: 82). It is worth noting that, until now, researchers of Kuršininkai, with the exception of Christliebe El Moghabel (Moghabel 1993: 66, 68), have devoted little attention to this feature and have not given it a separate analysis.¹⁸

Vowel raising. Another salient feature noted by nearly all researchers is that unstressed close e, especially after sonorants, merges with i (Bezenberger 1888: 33,

¹⁷ Editorial note.

¹⁸ In J. Plāks’s study, the shift of the suffixes -īt and -ināt to -ēt and -enāt is mentioned in the section on grammar (Plāks 1927: 33).

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34; Plāķis 1927: 16; Endzelīns 1931: 574). On Wenker’s card, such cases are often written with the letter i: acc. sg. uglis = uogles, iš krãnis = iš krãnes, la. b. k. krãsni, ta ugnī (= tā ugne); perhaps owing to this feature, the ending *-el(ia)s / -ele shifted to -ils: mergìls, vaikìls, stiklìs; compare also sīgīles < ‘tile’, mentìlis < ‘coat’ (Bezenberger 1888: 33–34).

Diphthongization. In the Kursenieki dialect it is not regular and, under the influence of Lithuanian dialects, occurs more often in common words: vielu, la. b. k. vēlu ‘late’; viel ‘again’, etc. (Plāķis 1927: 16). On Wenker’s card, this feature is attested only in the word tie, Latvian te ‘there’ (Plāķis, ibid.), but wel = vēl ‘again’.

Reflexes of diphthongs. Monophthongization. Only a couple of cases were found in which unstressed ie is written as i (schadin = šuodin ‘today’, ti < tie ‘there’) and e (ar tes laũzis = ar ties laužis; compare Latvian ar tiem laudim, where the instrumental form of the pronoun tie is ties (Plāķis 1927: 27); see “Morphological features”). However, this is insufficient to determine whether such monophthongization was regular. In the dialect documented later, monophthongization of unstressed ie occurs quite often (Mogharbel 1993: 85¹⁹). As in other Latvian dialects, proclitic prepositions undergo monophthongization naturally: nubīdis = nu sirds, Latvian no sirds ‘from the heart’.

Another case of monophthongization observed in the dialect is the raising of ei towards a close ²⁰, which nowadays is sometimes written with the Lithuanian letter ė: grēt < greit < ‘quickly’, mēte < meita ‘girl’, vēds < veids ‘face’, rēz < reiz ‘once’, and so on (Pietsch 1991: 126, 142, 261; Mogharbel 1991: 72), but this feature is not found on Wenker’s card: grait ‘quickly’.

The characteristic combination of the Courland dialect elicited is uv in the word dui (Latvian divi) ‘two’, but illustrative words such as ‘fish’ and ‘bottom’ are not found in this source; compare: zuve (Latvian zivs ‘fish’), dubens (Latvian dibens ‘bottom’), suvens (Latvian sivēns ‘piglet’) (Plāķis 1927: 16; Ābele 1927: 119).

Consonant palatalization. Researchers of Kursenieki have emphasized that palatalization of the consonant l is irregular—in the words laužī and pak ju, unpalatalized l was also frequently pronounced (Bezenberger 1888: 38; Plāķis 1927: 17); thus the “orthographic consistency” we have observed in ar tes laužis on Wenker’s card is probably not an error. Endzelīns also noted this in the interwar period (Endzelīns 1931: 574), and, having studied the speech of present-day informants, the author can confirm that in the later period of the language, the opposition between l and l is neutralized to an alveolar sound in all positions (most likely under the influence of German); in such cases as valoda, lēt and laužī, it is difficult to distinguish palatalization by ear. The material on Wenker’s card allows us to observe that in the 19th century palatalization of the consonant l before historical i was nevertheless

¹⁹ It is not worthwhile to associate the preposition pi < pie with regular monophthongization, since this form is used in many Latvian dialects where regular monophthongization does not occur (Endzelīns 1951: 679).

²⁰ Ši ypatybė būdinga Ventspilio apylinkių tarmėms (Šmite 1928: 116).

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was exceptional, despite efforts to mark it. Nevertheless, some spellings give rise to various questions, for example, whether in the compound able koki ‘Apfelbaum’ the l is palatalized, or whether it is an unreduced, articulationally reduced ending, which most likely loses its function when two words merge into one according to the German word-formation pattern. However, tracing the development of l and the combination l from the earliest written sources to the present day, we could hypothesize a progressive neutralization of these phonemes under the influence of German²¹.

Nors J. Plakis rašo tik apie veiksmažodžių kamiengalį (Plākis 1927: 32), tačiau ir vardžodžiai, kurių kamienas baigiasi istoriniais bi, pi, rods, jau XIX a. nebuvo jų išsaugoję – kortelėje tai liudija žepu = ziepu, la. b. k. ziepu ‘muilo’.

Another feature is worth noting here: on Wenker’s cards, j also appears as a marker of softness in other positions (priækš [...] schiešo niedelo mieres (prieš [...] šešu nedėlu miris); jumies = jumes < jumis ‘you’, tos kiauschis ‘eggs’). This spelling could indicate that consonants are softened also before front vowels, i.e. that “Lithuanian-style” palatalization is taking place. This phenomenon most likely also progressed depending on speakers’ contact with the Lithuanian language (especially if their mothers were Lithuanian).

The effect of palatalized consonants, j, and historical j on subsequent vocalism: the vowels a and o at the end of a word after j, l, n are written on the card as e, and sometimes even as i. This most likely reflects pronunciation: ista auksta udina (iz tā aukstā ūdena), Latvian iz tā auksta ūdena / tajā aukstā ūdenī ‘into that cold water’, darė = darja, Latvian darja ‘did’, bij = bija ‘was’, pargjem = pargjam, Latvian pargjam ‘we returned’, compare Low Lithuanian turje (had), peile (of a knife).

The endings of definite forms regularly have -aiš in the nom. sg.: mielaisch = mielais, Latvian mīlais ‘the dear one’, brunaisch = brūnais, Latvian brūnais ‘brown’, tas labaisch wetwaisch wers = tas labais, vecais vīrs, Latvian tas labais, vecais vīrs ‘that good, old man’. This feature has been preserved in the dialect to the present day. J. Plakis attributes it to the effect of j on the following syllable (vējš, zvejš); in Kursenieki it is also reflected in the endings -āj > -aiš, -ēj > -īš (plavš ‘fisherman’, and so on) (Plākis 1927: 17).

Vowel insertion. In the Nida dialect, vowels are inserted in TR and SR position before a word ending in a zero vowel, but no vowel is inserted when the following syllable contains a vowel (nom. tīkls ‘net’, but gen. tīkla) (see Kiseliūnaitė 2005 for more details). On Wenker’s card, this feature is attested in the word agirs = agrs, jo āgrirs (= juo agri, Latvian agrāk ‘earlier’). Another type of vowel insertion—anaptyxis (insertion of a vowel after diphthongs)—is a feature described in detail by A. Bezenberger

²¹ Ch. El Mogharbel (1993: 32) writes that palatalization of consonant l varies according to the age of informants.

²² The diacritic above a is most likely an error.

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(Bezenberger 188: 28–29), attested in the word pi smertšes = pi smerčes²³ < Lithuanian. sl. smerties / smerčio ‘death’. The loss of anaptyxis after half a century is mentioned by]. Plakis (Plāķis 1927: 15, 23).

Consonant deletion. Consonants v, n are deleted after tautosyllabic consonant clusters. This feature occurs regularly in Kursenieki and is characteristic of almost the entire Latvian Central dialect, but only one example was found in the text analyzed: mels (Latvian lit. lang. melns) ‘black’; cf. other sources: vēls, Latvian lit. lang. velns ‘devil’ (Pietsch 1991: 291), cilēks, Latvian lit. lang. cilvēks ‘person’, ciris, Latvian lit. lang. cirvis ‘axe’, gala, Latvian lit. lang. galva ‘head’, tēs Latvian lit. lang. tēvs ‘father’, and so on (Bezenberger 1888: 39; Plāķis 1927: 17).

MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES

The sentences in Wenker’s questionnaire are not grammatically flawless, but they reflect some morphological features of Kursenieki described in other studies.

Nominal forms. The old masculine plural instrumental forms of o-stem nouns have been preserved: ar sarkanis abolenis, Latvian lit. lang. ar sarkaniem āboliem ‘with red apples’, ar tes (= ties) laužis, Latvian lit. lang. ar tiem ļaudīm ‘with those people’. Such forms were also regularly used in the 20th century (Plāķis 1927: 21–23; Mohrbel 1993: 127), but in contemporary dialects of southwestern Kurzeme they are more often replaced by standard-language forms (Ozola 2007: 383).

In Kursenieki, i-stem nouns have shifted to the ē stem. The questionnaire contains examples such as: isch krabnis = iš krānes, Latvian lit. lang. gen. krāsns ‘of the oven’; ta ugni = tā ugne, Latvian lit. lang. tā uguns ‘that fire’; bi bales = be sāles, Latvian lit. lang. bez sāls ‘without salt’; nufridis = nu(o) sirdes, Latvian lit. lang. no sirds ‘from the heart’; tur [...] dewines govas = tur devinas guves, Latvian lit. lang. acc. pl. devinas guovis ‘has nine cows’. In some cases, it is difficult to determine this on the basis of this rule, since unstressed e and i are often confused (tas piktas soais = tās piktas zuos, Latvian lit. lang. tās piktas zos ‘those angry geese’), but sufficient evidence can be found in other sources from the period, cf. ause, aze, awe, smilte, suwe and others (Bezenberger 1888: 65).

Prepositional constructions are used with the meaning of the locative (inessive and illative; cf. Latvian standard language to live in the forest and to go into the forest) with is / iš + gen.: is gais (Latvian standard language gais) ‘in the air’, is ledus (Latvian standard language ledū ‘into the ice, the ice’), iβ graudu (Latvian standard language graudos ‘whey’ ‘into whey’), isch krānis (Latvian standard language krāsnī ‘into the oven’), i mušu dārž buduati (Latvian standard language mūsu dārzā būvet ‘to build in our garden’), and so on. The locative is used

23 smērīs, -ča (Plāķis 1927: 81).

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more rarely: with inessive meaning in gulėjo […] jau gulta (Latvian lit. lang. gulēja gultā ‘was lying in bed’), and in adverbialized forms: apakša (Latvian lit. lang. apakšā ‘below’). On the competition between the locative and prepositional constructions, see also Bezenberger 1888: 48–49. As the influence of German grew stronger in the 20th century, analytic forms became even more widespread.

Analytic comparative forms of adjectives with juo are used: tu turi […] judis but (= juo džis, Latvian lit. lang. lielaks ‘bigger’), mužu kalni […] daug jo didži (Latvian lit. lang. lielāki ‘bigger’). The comparative adverb is also formed in this way: tu wari jo āgri pis maju īt, Latvian lit. lang. tu vari agrāk mājās iet ‘you can go home earlier’. Such comparative forms are also attested in the dialects of Kurzeme (Ozola 2007: 387). The superlative occurred only in a construction with a noun that functions adverbially: Tu ebi schadin wibu daugumu mazis = tu esi šuden visu daugumu mažis, Latvian lit. lang. tu esi šoden visvairāk mažies ‘you learned the most today’.

The numeral du has two number forms: grib du (acc.) pius jaunus namus […] budavai, cf. Latvian lit. lang. grib divas skaitas mājas būvēt, ‘wants to build two beautiful houses’, but the nouns used with it are in the plural form²⁴. A contaminated form of the numeral ‘four’ is attested: gen. tschēturi (= čet(u)ru, Plāķis 1927: 29 nom. četri, Latvian četri, cf. Lithuanian keturi); the written reduced ending may reflect a palatalized r, which A. Bezenberger had also heard (Bezenberger 1888: 38; Plāķis 1927: 17). In Kursenieki, the forms of numerals from 12 to 19 are borrowed from Lithuanian; the questionnaire contains one example: dewika ‘twelve’; see “Lexical features”.

Tarmė būdingos įvardžių linksnių formos: ac. ir dat. pl. munis, jumis (Plāķis 1927: 26) kortelėje liudijamos pavyzdžiais: nepamanu jumis (la. b. k. ak. jūs) ‘nesuprantu jus (jūs)’, wintsch numis (= mumis) nepamane ‘jis mus (mūsų) nesupranta’, ųmumis gaideti (uz mumis gaiditi), la. b. k. mūs gaidīt ‘mus (mūsų) laukti’, kurias J. Plāķis laiko perimtas iš vakarų žemaičių (Plāķis 1927: 26)²⁵. Tačiau kortelėje yra formų, nesutampančių su J. Plāķio nurodytomis: instr. ar jums (plg. instr. jumis Plāķis 1927: 26), suns tewi nieka nedares (tev – Plāķis 1927: 26), la. b. k. suns te nekā nedarīs. Kitos vienaskaitos formos yra tokios kaip la. b. k.: kasch tewi (la. b. k. kož tevi) ‘kanda tave’, ar tewi (la. b. k. ar tevi) ‘su tavimi’, par mani (la. b. k. par mani) ‘dėl manęs, man’.

Possessive pronouns are used in an invariable form: Mana mīlalis waiki; us manna galdu; sati twa mājai. Such forms are also attested in southwestern

²⁴ J. Plāķis nurodo ac. dui sievu, bet nekmentuoja (Plāķis 1927: 29). Tokią daiktavardžių dviskaitos formą galėtų atsirasti dėl kaimynų lietuvių tarmių įtakos, tačiau iki šiol daugiau pavyzdžių neteko užfiksuoti.

²⁵ J. Endzelīns notes that the forms jumis, mumis were used in Kurzeme with dative meaning (Endzelīns 1951: 514).

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Kuržemėje, kalbininkai linkę laikyti jas lietuvių kalbos įtaka (Ozola 2007: 387). Pasitaikė, kad dėl vokiečio originalo įtakos savybiniai įvardžiai mano, tavo vartojami vietoje savybinio savo: saki tawa maβai (la. b. k. saki sawai maša ‘sakyk savo seseriai’), tačiau ne visada: par sawa mati ‘savo motinai’, wing gribejə sawo mait (= meitai) satse (= saci), la. b. k. viņa gribējə savai meitai sacīt ‘ji norėjo savo dukteriai sakyti’. Įvardis viņš, viņa vartojamas ir asmenims, ir neasmenims reikšti: Tas sniegs[...], wintsch satrips (la. b. k. tas sniegs[...] tas iskusis) ‘tas sniegas [...] jis ištirpęs’.

Verbs. Structure.

The infinitive form in Wenker’s questionnaire varies: -ti // -t (snikt ‘to get angry’, saswiri ‘to boil, i.e. to come to a boil’, satse = saci, Latvian standard language sācīt ‘to say’, darete = dareti, Latvian standard language darīt ‘to do’, but stawed = stāvet, Latvian standard language stāvēt ‘to stand’, iat = iet ‘to go’; variation occurs even within the same sentence: isderi, you must [...] aukti and jodisch but = izderi, augti, būt ‘to drink up, to grow, to be’, similarly suti = šūti ‘to sew’ and pataisit = pataisit ‘to repair, to make’, etc. The varying forms are still used today. J. Plakis consistently reconstructs the form with -ti (Plāķis 1927: 37), while Ch. E. Mogherl regards forms with -i as a rarely occurring optional variant (Mogherl 1993: 159).

Among athematic verbs, ieti ‘to go’ has a 2nd person singular present form with a continued ending: kur tu iētti; cf. iēti alongside ēji (Plāķis 1927:31). It may also have originated in the Livonian subdialects of Courland, and the influence of western Samogitian Lithuanian may have helped it become established (see also Kiseliūnaitė 1998: 130). The form pagajem = pāgājam ‘we returned’ also retains its old meaning, cf. Latvian standard language atnācām.

The structure of the present and imperfect singular forms of non-suffixed verbs usually does not differ from Latvian standard language or the dialects of Courland: id = ed ‘eats’, liats = liec ‘put!’, lāts = lec ‘flies’, koasch = kuož ‘bites’, eβi = esi ‘are’. There are, however, also forms with a different structure: virti has a present form with a da-stem: ar to werda-mo = leppili = ar tuo verdamo lepil, Latvian standard language ar vāramo kari ‘with a boiling spoon’; the same form is recorded by A. Bezzenberger and J. Plakis (Bezzenberger 188: 83; Plāķis 1927: 32) and is still used today.

It is unclear whether, under the influence of the German text, the present form siš²⁶ is used in sentence 11 with future meaning (cf. Latvian standard language sītu ‘I would hit, strike’); alternatively, it may be a future form in which no vowel is inserted after t, as in Latvian (sišu), but the end of the root merges with the suffix, as in Lithuanian²⁷: Es scha tewe tuiu ar to werdamo = leppili (= es sišu tevi tuju ar tuo verdamo-lepili); cf. German ich schlage Dich gleich mit dem Kochlöffel. ‘I’ll hit you with the cooking spoon right away.’ That the translator may also have refrained from copying German grammar is shown by sentence 39, where German Hund thut Dir nichts is translated using the future tense

26

Šis veiksmažodis turi ia kamieno præs. formą, žr. Kiseliūnaitė 1998: 133.

27

Ch. El Mogherl tokias formas laikė reta išimtimi (Mogherl 1993: 174), tačiau autorės pastebėjimu, dabartinių kuršininkų kalboje jos nėra retenybė.

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as sns tevi nieka nedres (tevi nieka nedaris, Latvian standard language tev neka nedaris) ‘the dog will do you no harm’.

In Kursenieku, as in some Latvian dialects, past-tense forms with an ē-stem were used²⁸ (for more detail, see Kiseliūnaitė 1998: 136–138). However, their transition to the ā-stem had apparently already gained momentum before the move to the Curonian Spit, since only weakened palatalization and sporadically occurring third-person forms attest to traces of the old structure. In Wenker’s questionnaire, this structure can tentatively be identified in nazi = nāce, Latvian standard language nāca ‘came’.

The vowels in the endings of all verbs are short, and verbs with the endings -eti < -ēt and -iti < -īt are not inflected, although this occurs mostly in past-tense forms (saci-ju, turiju, gribju, net runaju // runju – Plāķis 1927: 34). Wenker’s sentences contain few prefixed past-tense forms. The variable spelling of sacit (Latvian standard language sacīt) ‘to say’ indicates that the phenomenon may have originated phonetically (through lengthening): es wingu satse un wingu satse, wing gribēja savo maita satseta = es ūnu (ūnai) sacēju un(d) ūna sacēja, ūna gribēja savo maita (meitai) sacīt (Latvian standard language es ūnai saciju un ūna sacīja, (ka) ūna gribēja savai meitai sacīt ‘I told her, and she said that she wanted to tell her daughter’; but pažakes pažazija = pasakas pasacija, Latvian standard language pasakas pasacīja ‘told stories’; mazigis = māci(j)e(s), Latvian standard language mācī-jes ‘learned’ wintsch darie = viņš darīja, Latvian standard language viņš darīja ‘he did’; gribēja = gribēja, Latvian standard language gribēja ‘wanted’.

Since i-stem forms (turet, Latvian standard language turēt) may show i-lengthening or weakened palatalization in the second-person plural forms, the questionnaire examples may perhaps contain reflexes of endings with i or -ia: newaret, turret < *varīt / varīt, *turit / turīt; cf. Latvian standard language nevarat, turat. Since traces of i-stems persisted in the dialects of Courland until the 20th century (Endzelīns 1951: 790–800), their reflexes may also have existed in Kursenieku, although they quickly disappeared under contact with the western Samogitian dialect, especially in the use of words of common origin.

Wenker’s questionnaire records the first-person plural future form with -am: ėbam (iesam, Latvian standard language iesim) ‘we will go’. Forms of this kind are also regularly used in the language today, although J. Plāķis says that he also heard forms with -i- (Plāķis 1927: 34).

Prefixed verbs place the reflexive particle after the prefix; sometimes two are used (Plāķis 1927: 36). In Kursenieku, the form of the reflexive particle after the prefix varies—sa is used more often, si somewhat less often. Wenker’s questionnaire records the following reflexive forms: sasviti = sasvirti / sasvirti, Latvian standard language ‘to boil’, parsķerjes = parskrējis, Latvian standard language ‘having run too much’, mazigis²⁹ = mācij(e)s, Latvian standard language ‘having learned’.

²⁸ Daugiau apie ē kamieno pėdsakus Kuržemėje žr. Ābele 1928: 136; Ozola 2007: 389.

²⁹ This participial form is not very clear; judging by its meaning, it should be reflexive.

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Formų daryba. Kadangi kūrinių tarmeje nebuvo vartojamos dėtyvo formos (Endzelīns 1931: 574; Bezenberger 1888: 88), jo funkciją atlieka analitinės formos su veiksmažodžiu turēt ‘turėti, reikėti’: turr tas dānas par sava mati šuti = tur tās dānas par sava mati šūti, la. b. k. (viņai ir apgērbs savai mātei jāšuj ‘ji turi tuos drabužius savo motinai siūti’; tu turri dar bischki aukti = tu turi dar biški augti, la. b. k. tev vēl biški (drusku) jāaug ‘tu turi dar truputį (pa)augti’. Kitų analitinių formų (su vaizdeli = la. b. k. vajadzēt ar lietuvišku reikia, pavyzdžiui, reik zvejoti³⁰) Wenkėrio kortelėje nepasteikė. Formos su tureti paplitusios ir Šventosios latvių kalboje, fiksuojamos ir vakarų Kuršėje bei ten sukūtoje XVII a. raštijoje (Ozola 2009). Tačiau veiksmažodis turet vartosena tuo neapsiriboja – kaip pagalbinis veiksmažodis jis tarnauja sudėtinėms formoms sudaryti, kurios dažniausiai nukopijuojamos iš originalo vokiečių sakinio (žr. toliau).

Į. Plāks provides many examples showing that the Kursenieki use “Lithuanian” conditional forms, i.e. inflection: es būčiau, tu būtum and so on (Plāks 1927: 34). The 2 cond. sg. found on the card does not confirm this: Kad tu winga but pasinis, buti zitadi nazis und but stawis ar winga labi. A. Bezenberger’s work from the same period states that Lithuanian and Latvian conditional forms competed at that time (Bezenberger 1888: 96, 97), so the role of Lithuanian in the formation of the conditional endings was growing.

Although various non-finite verb forms were used in Kursenieki speech, nearly all participles in Wenker’s text occur in compound forms, usually copying the German sentence construction³¹: ir ar zirgu is ledus ākritis ir sta aukta undi kritis = ir ar zirgu is ledus iekritis ir (un) is tā aukta und(a) kritis, Latvian standard language ir ar zirgu ledū iekritis (ielūzis) un (aukstajā ūdenī) (ie)kritis ‘has fallen into the ice with the horse and fallen into that cold water’. Similarly: ir [...] mēres, ir [...] sadaguschi, ebu [...] parsiskrejs, ebu [...] bijis, ebi [...] magis, turr [...] pabads, ir [...] pulūzis ale sho it ir wintsch satris, neturat raduschi, turr [...] adaduschu, ebu [...] ijājis. The verb turet functions as a copula in compound corresponding forms, as would be expected in speech modeled on German (Wer hat mir meinen Korb mit Fleisch gestohlen? kas turr mane kozi ar gallu pabads? = kas tur mana koci ar gaļu pazadis?, Latvian standard language ‘who has my basket with meat stolen, i.e. who stole my basket with meat’); similarly habt ihr [...] gefunden: wa jus neturat [...] raduschi = neturat [...] radūši? ‘have you not [...] found, i.e. did you not find it’). In this situation, compound forms are also used in present-day Latvian

³⁰ See Plāks 1927: 35.

³¹ For more detail, see “Syntactic features”.

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forms, but with the auxiliary būt. How much German influence there is here, and how old it is, is another question.

It seems that there are few cases in which a participle is used in a compound form according to the Baltic-language tradition, i.e. where the correlation in tense or modality between the auxiliary and main verb is maintained: but pasinis = būtų pazinis ‘you would have known’, butu drėchali pastelajusch = butu drėli pastelajuši ‘they would have hired a tiler’, ėjam pawargusch = esam pavarguši ‘we are tired’, bija [...] įmegusch = bija [...] įmegúši ‘they had fallen asleep’.

Only one participial form performing an attributive function was found – prt. praes. act. instr. sg. ar werdamo lepli ‘with a spoon for boiling’.

Prieveiksmiai. Dalis prieveiksmių pavarti įprastai: apkarti (Plāks 1927: 47 apkārt) ‘aplink’, bischi = biški, la. tarm. biški, biškin ‘truputį’, zitai = citādi ‘kitaip’, labi ‘gerai’, wacker ‘vakar’, scho rit = šuorit, la. b. k. šorīt ‘šįryt’ ir kt.

Dialectal lexemes and their forms characteristic of Kurzeme were recorded: ne mag = nemag, Latvian standard language nemaz ‘not at all’, nu ‘still’³², gana ‘enough’, dikti ‘strongly’ < German dicht, Latvian standard language loti, stipri, aukstum = augšum, Latvian standard language augšā ‘high’ (ME I 218).

Kortelėje galima rasti prieveiksmių („įpėnėjus veidojums“ – Plāks 1927: 38), kuriuos kuršininkai sudarė savitai: šāmi = žemu ‘žemai’ (žr. „Leksikos ypatybės“). Prieveiksmio daug / dauz formos kortelės sakiniuose įvairuoja (EH I 310): pardau ‘per daug’, wißu daudum ‘daugiausiai’, bet kadudus = kā daud ‘kiek’ (žr. „Leksikos ypatybės“). Kuršininkų kalboje prieveiksmio daug laipsnių formose nėra latviams įprastos leksemos vairāk, visvairāk, čia, kaip ir būdvardžiuose, vartojamos analitinės formos su juo ir visu. J. Plāks laiko latviška ir prieveiksmio formą ciec ‘kiek’ (Plāks 1927: 38; ME I 392 tik iš raštų).

There are adverbs and constructions borrowed from Lithuanian (see “Lexical features”). The Germanism fasti occurs once and should be regarded as incidental, since no equivalent has been found for the phrase fest am schlafen ‘to sleep deeply, soundly’, although in Kursenieki speech ciets is still used with the word miegs.

Prepositions are used in ways that only partly coincide with present-day Latvian or traditional usage in the dialects: ar sigu = ar zigžu ‘with a horse’; bi bales = be sāles, standard Latvian bez sāls ‘without salt’; pi tas sewas = pi tās sievas, standard Latvian pie tās sievas ‘at (that) woman’s place’; pi smerrishes = pi smēr(e)s, standard Latvian līdz nāvei ‘until death, to death’; ar tewi (= ar tevi) ‘with you’, par [...] mati = par māti, standard Latvian māte ‘mother’; par mani, standard Latvian man ‘to me’, etc. The most striking difference observed is the previously mentioned use of the preposition is / iš (Latvian dialect iz) with the function of an ablative: is musu darza = is mūsu dārza and so on. This may be a contaminated form: cf. Latvian dialect iekš krāns = krāsnī and Latvian iz (with gen. ME I 712); Lithuanian iš is also possible

³² Betones nu ‘now’ – ME II 752, 753.

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influence. There are also further differences: Latvian aiz ‘behind’ is monophthongized by the Curonians, with a shortened a < āz (as nama = az nama, Latvian standard language aiz nama)³³; the preposition už with the accusative performs the function of the inessive (and [...] uβ to lauku, Latvian standard language uz tā lauka, lauka. pž. ‘in the field’, i.e. ‘in the field’; us to muren, Latvian standard language uz tā mūra ‘on the little wall, stone fence’; us mana galdu, Latvian standard language uz mana galda ‘on my table’); the preposition pic < pēc is probably used to denote direction of movement under German influence (pis maju iät = pic māju iet, Latvian standard language mājas iet) (Endzelīns 1951: 677). Unlike in present-day Latvian, prepositions are used with various plural cases: pis maju = pic māju (gen. pl.), Latvian standard language mājas alongside ac. sg. uz māju; priekš schiešo niedelio miēres = priekš šešu nedēļu miris (gen. pl.), pi mušu (= pi mūsu, Latvian standard language pie mums, uz mums (ac. pl.) (for more, see Plāķis 1927: 40; Ivanickaja, Kiseliūnaitė 2015: 217). The only instance in which a preposition in the plural is used with the instrumental (in present-day language, with the accusative in the singular) is gar ausim (German acc. um die Ohren)³⁴.

LEXICAL FEATURES

Most of the words in the text are familiar from standard Latvian or its dialects. A few more interesting examples of vocabulary characteristic of the dialects of Kurzeme merit particular attention: archaic word forms, genuine and semantic dialectal forms, and Germanisms characteristic of western Latvian dialects. These are lexemes used or recorded in these dialects: maģģ (= maģ), Latvian standard language maz ‘little’ (ME I 548); par diždžu = par dižu, Latvian standard language par lielu ‘too big’, since dižs = juo dižs, Latvian standard language lielāks ‘bigger’ (ME I 475)³⁵; dikti, Latvian standard language ļoti, stipri, skaļi ‘intensely, loudly’ (ME I 466); drānas = drānas, Latvian standard language drēbes ‘clothes’ (ME I 494 drāna = drēbes bibl. u. in Kurl. ‘Kleider’); kiozi = ķuoči, nom. kuocis from German dialect kō(t)z ‘Korb’ ‘basket’ (ME II 393; cf. Lithuanian Samogitian kiočis ‘basket, basket’); uz murens = mūrens / mūrēnes ‘on the fence’ (muris, murieneks – Plāķis 1927: 68) < German dialect mur.

Recorded on the card among derivatives formed with diminutive suffixes are: el > il (vaikeli, ‘little child’, stukila ‘little piece’), which are used with diminutive meaning and without a pejorative connotation, as is also characteristic of the Kurzeme dialects (Markus-Narvila 2011: 98); although the examples found are Lithuanianisms, the Curonian language also has many authentic derivatives with the suffix el > il (pušilis ‘young lad’, laivis ‘little boat’, ruokile

³³ Prėdelis āz- ir prielinksnis az (Plaķis 1927: 39, ME I 233).

³⁴ gar ausim duot ‘to give someone a thrashing’ (ME I 601).

³⁵ The word lies is unfamiliar in the Curonian language of the Curonian Spit; the lexeme dižs, -a came from Kurzeme (Ābele 1928: 142).

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‘little hand’ and others – Plāķis 1927: 14). Another diminutive suffix favored by the Curonians is en, unlike in standard Latvian, with a short vowel (Plāķis 1927: 19): ar abelenis = ar ābuolenis ‘with apples’; avenu = āvenu ‘of lambs, little rams’ (from dialect ave, Latvian standard language aita ‘sheep’), pūdeni = pūteni ‘little birds’; uz murens = mūrena / mūrenes ‘on the little fence’.

A characteristic Curonian tendency in forming abstract nouns (with meanings such as a state resulting from a quality, a result, etc.) is to use the suffix -ums: slapumu = slāpumu, Latvian standard language slāpes ‘thirst’, cf. situms, Latvian standard language sitiens ‘blow’; nuronajums, Latvian standard language noruna ‘agreement’ (Plāķis 1927: 19, 69), etc. It seems that these forms also served to create the superlative form of the adverb ‘much’: wibu daugumu ‘most’.

Attention should also be drawn to the distinctive formation of adverbs mentioned earlier, which is partly similar to that of the Kurzeme dialects: aukschum = augšum, Latvian standard language augša ‘high, up’ (Paula 1926: 56); sām = zemī, Latvian standard language apakša ‘low, below’ (cf. virsuoji Paula, ibid., alongside apakša= apakā ‘the same’). Other researchers have already noted that the Curonians use various lexemes with the meaning ‘very’: dikti, tā, tā daug, par daug, and the unfamiliar Latvian loti (Plāķis 1927: 38); on the card, German sehr ‘very’ corresponds to pardaug = par daug, tadi dzi = tādi dzi. The German adverb to(d)t ‘to death’ is rendered here by the prepositional construction pi smerithes = pi smerā, cf. Latvian standard language līdz nāvei.

Semantic features indicate that the meanings of some words are not sharply differentiated, although in this case this is not necessarily a feature of the language itself, but rather a translator’s choice: for example, German erzählen ‘to tell’ is rendered in present-day Curonian by rākot (Latvian standard language stāstīt), while the card has pažagia = pasacia (Latvian standard language pasacīa); it is also unclear whether the word pasakas (German Geschichte) is used stylistically neutrally, or whether a pejorative nuance was intended, ‘a false, invented story’. Although the Curonians have the word tupeti ‘to squat’ (Plāķis 1927: 86), probably under the influence of the German original, birds are said here to bīāz = sēž ‘sit’. However, there are also differences in meaning that can undoubtedly be attributed to the Curonian language and are recorded in various sources up to the present day, such as: iāijβ = iējis ‘gefahren’ ‘having driven in’ (jāti, Latvian braukt, ‘to drive’ – Plāķis 1927: 60), namme = namus, Latvian standard language māja ‘house’³⁶.

The vocabulary of the sentences on the card shows considerable influence from Lithuanian, especially neighboring dialects. Both Lithuanian lexemes and lexemes that entered through Lithuanian from other languages are borrowed and adapted in various ways phonologically and morphologically: graiti = greiti < Lithuanian greitai, Latvian standard language ātri

³⁶ In the Curonian language, the singular word māja is most often used in the lexicalized locative form mā(jā) ‘at home, homeward’, or in the plural mājās ‘at home’. The meaning ‘house, dwelling, post’ is expressed by nams.

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kiauschis = kaŭšus < be. kiaũšis, Latvian standard language ola

waikili = vaikilis < Lithuanian. vaikẽlis, Latvian standard language bērniņš

prada = prada, infinitive pradēt < be. pradėti, Latvian standard language sākt

wis pradim < be. dialectal tam. pradēm ‘constantly’, Latvian standard language always

dewika < be. dỹlika, Latvian standard language seventeen

miels < mīlas (Plākis 1927: 68 – mīls), la. b. k. mīļš

schischi = šīš(i) < be. dialectal tam. šīš ‘here’, Latvian standard language here, there

tujau < Samogitian tujau ‘immediately’, Latvian standard language tūlīt

dar < be. dar, Latvian standard language vēl

arb < lie. arb (Plākis 1927: 41 –va), la. b. k. vai.

The word pradēt ‘to begin’ has adapted in Kursenieku to the mixed-type persons: pradēt, prada, pradija (Kiseliūnaitė 1998: 128).

Some lexical features that look “Lithuanian” may have been classified as loanwords by other researchers, not always justifiably; for example, lāts = lec ‘flies, flits about’, Latvian standard language lido was used in the Kursenieku dialect (ME II 458). Words traditionally classified as Lithuanianisms may be Curonianisms, for example, puik ‘excellent, beautiful’, which is widespread in the Lithuanian Samogitian area and is also known in the Courland dialects (ME 3: 403).

Slavic loanwords entered Kursenieku mainly through spoken Lithuanian and religious language. Of the old ones, brought from Courland, (baznīca, cil(v)ēks and the like), there are only a few; among those on Wenker’s card belongs domajo = duomoju, Latvian standard language domāt ‘to think’. More numerous are Slavic loanwords that arose via Lithuanian⁷: pakajings = pakajings < dialectal hib. pakajęs ‘calm’, Latvian standard language mierīgs; cizti = čišti < Lithuanian dialectal Slavic loanword čystai, Latvian standard language tīri ‘cleanly’; smerits = smerd / smetes < Lithuanian dialectal Slavic loanword smėris, Latvian standard language navė ‘death’; būdeli = būdeli (būdelė ‘bottle’ Plākis 1927: 51) < Lithuanian dialectal Slavic loanword butėka ‘bottle’; budavati = budavati < Lithuanian dialectal Slavic loanword budavōti ‘to build’, Latvian standard language celt, būvēt; bedschan = bezdāne < Lithuanian bezdžionė / beždžionė < Belarusian абязьяна, Latvian standard language pērtiķis.

Per lietuvių tarmes bus atėję ir kai kurie germanizmai: stukla (= stukėla, plg. vak. žem. stukės ‘gabaliukas’ < vo. dial. stuk; bū ‘būra’, valstiečiai < vo. dial. buhr; slekti, plg. lie. tam. šlėtas < vo. schlecht, la. b. k. slikts ‘blogas’ (Plākis 1927: 81); wurschu (= vuršku, nom. vuršis) < lie. tam. vuršis / vurštas < vo. Wurst, plg. la. b. k. desa ‘dešra’; pastelajusch = pastelajuši < lie. tam. steliuoti ‘kviesti’, vo. stellen; ar bērschtu ‘su šepečiu’ (bērštas la. birste, šukas – Plākis 1927: 50) < lie. tam. bērštas < vo. Bürste ‘šepetys, šukos’. Įdomus žodis ac. sg. drāschali = *drēš(i)s < vo. Drescher ‘kūlėjas’, neužfiksuotas kuršininkų žodynuose, o vo. dreschen verčiamas kulte ‘kulti’ (Pietsch 1991: 88). Kuršininkų leksika, susijusi su žemės ūkiu, daugiau veikė lietuvių, o ne vokiečių kalbą, ir

³⁷ Plačiau žr. Hinze 1993.

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It is difficult to say whether the word *drēlis was familiar to the creators of works in general. It could not be found in sources of the Prussian Lithuanian language either, but phonetically it appears to be a Germanism adapted into Lithuanian, cf. hat <Ger. term. skriver and so on.

There are also further nuances in word usage that suggest interaction between Lithuanian and Kursenieki: the word vel = vēl is used in the sentences on the card not in the Latvian sense ‘again’, but as Lithuanian vėl ‘again’; lauku < Samogitian lauku, cf. Latvian literary language laukā, āra ‘outside, out’ (lauku I. Plakis classified among special Kursenieki derivatives (Plāks 1927: 38), though he may not have been familiar with the Samogitian word); satirpis³⁸, Latvian literary language izkusis ‘melted’; scha = šā, German sonst, cf. Lithuanian conjunction šiaip ‘otherwise, else, differently’; it is possible that the use of the conjunction ‘and’ alongside un(d) (bi šales ir bi piparu = be šales ir be piparu ‘without salt and without pepper’) is also an influence from Lithuanian, although it is attested in Latvian dialects as well (ME I 708).

Lexicon borrowed directly from German is relatively scarce in this text: und German < vo. und ‘and’, ganz German < vo. ganz ‘considerably, entirely’, fasti German < vo. fest ‘firm, hard’, elsewhere in Kursenieki sources Latvian ciets, -a and adverb > adv. cieti are used; lepile ‘spoon’ from German Löffel, cf. Latvian literary language karote ‘spoon’; brunaisch = brunāiš ‘brown’, the latter may have been brought from Courland (ME I 341). Perhaps koki ‘pies’ should also be included here, cf. Latvian dialect koka and German dialect < vo. dialect koke (ME II, 342).

Regarding lexical usage, it should be noted that these texts are translations; therefore, not all the “peculiarities” of lexical usage should be attributed to the Kursenieki community of that time. It is clear that the translator often followed not only German sentence structure but also literal lexical equivalents, not always choosing an authentic semantic match. Thus, semantic calques arose in the text both in free combinations and in phraseology. The apparent use of the pronouns tas, ta and iens, -a is particularly striking: wienō bisch = vienu biški ‘ein Bischen’; wintsch id os kaucsis = vińš ēd tuos kaušus, cf. er ißt die Eier; tas kajas man padau tap = tās kajas man padau sap, cf. die Füße thun mir sehr weh; ta uni bi par karta, tīe koki ir [...] sadaguchi = ta une bi(ja) par karta, tie kuoki ir [...] sadeguši, cf. das Feuer war zu stark / heiß, die Kuchen sind [...] gebrannt; Mušu kalni nau taddi dzi tie jušu daug jo dzi = mušu kalni nav tādi dziži, tie jušu daug jo dziži, cf. Unsere Berge sind nicht sehr hoch, die euren sind viel höher, and so forth.

Some German word combinations are translated literally: rein machen: czisti pataisit = čisti pataisit ‘clean’; fertig nähen: gatwas schuti = gatavas šūti ‘sew’; recht von ihnen: labi no viņa = labi nuo viņu ‘they did well, acted well’. The same applies to fixed German expressions: wiewel: kadaus = kā daudze ‘how much’, haben Durst (see below).

³⁸ tirpt ‘to flow, melt’ from the literature (ME 4: 197); see also Endzelīns 1931: 575.

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The meanings of words are not always carefully observed. For example, German durch’s Eis gebrochen is translated as iš ledus įkritęs = iš ledus įkritis ‘fallen through the ice, fallen under the ice, broken through’, although the word įlūžti ‘to break through’ is used in the kūrinininkai language.

There are also misunderstandings in translation. For example, German durchgelaufen (of feet) was apparently not understood by the translator (‘to rub raw, injure by walking’) and was translated as parsikreis = parsikreisis, thus distorting the meaning of the whole sentence. Likewise, in the sentence Es hört gleich auf zu schneien, the phrase es hört [...] auf ‘will stop, come to an end, cease (snowing)’ evidently caused difficulty, and the opposite was translated: wel jau prada snikti = vėl jau pradeda snigti ‘it is snowing again now’.

The use of the verb turėti ‘to have’ is worth noting. In Kursenieki it is normally used as Lithuanian turėti, German haben. This meaning has also survived in western Latvian dialects (Ozola 2007: 396–398). It seems difficult to find an equivalent in Kursenieki for the German verbs (ihr) dürft (nicht) (cf. Latvian literary language (ne)drīkstat); German dürfen is translated as varet ‘be able to’ (Pietsch 1991), and in this text as (ne)turėti ‘(not) have’. In addition to the verb turėti being used where Latvian grammatically employs the debitive, i.e. corresponding to the German modal verbs müssen, sollen (see “Morphological Features”), it also serves a modal purpose in expressing intention: kad tas piens greit sasvirit tur = kad tas piens greit sas(i)virti tur ‘so that (the) milk boils sooner’. The verb turėti is also used to describe a state: turam slapumu = turam slapumu (lit. ‘we have thirst’); although J. Plakis records the verb slāpt (Plāks 1927: 81), the current generation of Kursenieki more often uses precisely the analytical construction, while slāpt ‘to be thirsty’ occurs in contexts referring to fish: ‘the fish are thirsty’. In addition to all these cases, the verb turėti functions as an auxiliary in compound perfect forms, which should be regarded as calques from German (see “Morphological Features”).

Some German words used figuratively are translated literally (e.g. Das war recht von ihnen), but there are also cases where the translator gives a natural equivalent: Augenblickchen: biški ‘briefly, a little, for a moment’.

Sometimes it is not entirely clear whether similarities with German constructions are a feature of this translator’s usage, of the language of the Kursenieki community as a whole, or the influence of German on Latvian. For example, the phraseological use of stāvet meaning ‘to get along, live in harmony’ (es thate besser um ihn stehen: but staw ejs ar wing labi = būtu stāvejs ar viņa (viņu) labi): cf. German stehen mit [...] ‘to get along, be on good terms’ and ar vieniem raden saietes, ar citiem – stāv naidā (EH II 574). In some cases, it seems, the translation even goes too far, since the German original does not “call for” the word stāvet (sei so gut): staw tads laps = stāi (esi) tāds labs ‘be so good’. The influence of German on phraseology is likewise open to differing interpretations. In the example ihr dürft nicht solche Kindereien treiben!: jus ne turret tads niakus ziti = jūs neturēt tādus niekus dzīt ‘talk nonsense, speak foolishly’, the use of the word dzīt is close to Latvian phraseology,

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cf. Latvian dialect jokus džit ‘to joke’, but the German translator of Kinderen did not render it literally, instead finding the equivalent niekus.

SYNTACTIC FEATURES

It is difficult to assess the syntactic features of the card’s text not only because Kursenieki syntax has been little studied, but also because the short sentences in the source were translated from German, and by no means can every language user convey or understand how to express a thought in a foreign language using the familiar syntactic means of their own. The translations drew on information from only one informant; therefore, not every unusual syntactic phenomenon found here should be regarded as an authentic feature of the language of the entire community.

On the other hand, in the second half of the nineteenth century, instruction in German was adopted throughout Germany, and the Kursenieki were taught using German textbooks and other books; it is therefore likely that some syntactic features of German had already entered their spoken language at that time. Without venturing into possible evaluations or a comprehensive study, a few of the more striking syntactic features of this text will be noted here.

Sentence construction. Many of the translated sentences differ little in their construction from the German original, that is, both simple and complex sentences follow German word order.

The German rule governing predicate position is most striking: it becomes evident after reading just a few sentences, but is especially noticeable where it violates the natural logical order of the speaker’s own language: Was sitzen da für Vögelchen oben auf dem Mäuerchen? kas biž ti par pudeni aukšum us to murens = Kas sėž tie par puteni aukšum uz to (tā?) muren(e)s?, cf. Latvian dialect kas par putnieni sėž tur augšā uz mūriša?, Lithuanian kas par paukšteliai tupį ten aukštai ant mūrelio? In this instance, kas par putneni is an indivisible subject, which in the translation is separated by the predicate and an adverbial.

In simple sentences formed with compound verbal forms, the copula and the nominal predicate part “class” follow the rules of German³⁹: 15. eßi pagangs biž = esi pakaģis biž (similarly 5, 28, 32, 33, 40); even in cases where a German compound form is translated with a simple form, the predicate still remains at the end of the sentence: Wem hat er die neue Geschichte erzählt? Kam wints tas jaunas paßas paßiga?; Latvian Kam viņš tās jaunas pasakas (pa)sacija?

In complex sentences with subordinate clauses, the predicate is left at the end of the subordinate clause in almost every case (3, 9, 16, 17). Such sentences also lack

³⁹ Here and below, sentence numbers are given; the corresponding examples can be found under them.

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namely, that a subordinate clause is attached without a conjunction: [...] sag Deiner Schwester, sie solle [...] nähən: [...] saki tava māsai, vingai tur [...] schuti = saki tava māsai, vīnai (vīna) tur [...] šūti; ich glaube, ich habe sie durchgelaufen: es domajo es eβu par daug parsikrējis = es domāju, esu par daug parsikrējis.

Coordinate and mixed-type complex sentences likewise reproduce the German sentence order word for word (4, 6, 14, 20, 31).

Cases of conjunction insertion were also observed: 20. [...] sie haben es aber selbst getan: winga ale pachi darė = vīna (vīni) ale paši darja.

The fact that the word order in many of the sentences is unnatural is also shown by translating the sentences into contemporary Latvian (see the appendix, translated by Liene Markus-Narvila), where the word order is often different.

German prepositional constructions also affected the phrasing of the translated sentences. Such influence can be identified in cases where the equivalents of prepositional constructions in the Baltic languages, especially Latvian, are different: gar aūbim = la. b. k. pa ausīm, für mich: par mani = par mani, la. tam, priekš manis; la. b. k. man; für eure Mutter: par sava māti = par sava māti, la. b. k. savai mātei; the already-mentioned use of the preposition pic: pis maju = pic māju (la. b. k. mājās).

Another difficulty for the translator was negation, expressed in German by the particles nicht and kein, whereas in the Baltic languages it is required in the verb prefix. Of the three cases on the card, two are translated according to their own rules, while in one sentence the negative prefix is missing from the verb: habt ihr kein Stückchen [...]: wa jus neturat neviena stukla = va jus neturat neviena stukla; Hund thut Dir nichts: uns tevi nieka nedarēs = uns tevi nieka nedaris; but: Ich will es auch nicht mehr wieder thun!: Es gribu ne mag to darte = Es (ne)gribu ne māg to darit.

It can be stated that German syntax considerably constrained the natural theme and sentence structure of the Baltic languages; on the card, only one sentence, translated with a freer word order and with the languages’ own grammatical equivalents, is at odds with the others:

12. Wo gehst Du hin? Sollen wir mit Dir gehn? Kur tu īeti wa meβ ar tewi eβam? = Kur tu ieti, va mes ar tevi iesam? (the German predicate position is not followed).

29. Unsere Berge sind nicht sehr hoch, die euren sind viel höher: Muβu kalni nau tadi diži tā jūbu daug jo diži = Mūsu kalni nav tādi diži, tie jūsu daug jo diži (the copula is not repeated).

30. [...] wieviel Brod wollt ihr haben?: kadus maizes jus gribat = kā daudze maizes jūs gribat? (the word haben is not translated).

7. ohne Salz und Pfeffer: bi šales ir bi piparu = be sales ir be piparu (the preposition is repeated).

We find more natural translations in cases where the grammatical expression in German and the Baltic languages differs completely: 18. Hättest Du ihn gekannt!: Kad tu viņa but pazinis = kad tu viņa (viņu) būtu pazinis. The same sort of “making do” occurs when a German impersonal sentence is replaced by a personal one: 22. Man muß laut schrein: eβ

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turru must call out loudly = es turu dikti saukti. It seems that the translator may have “simplified” the entire construction legen geblieben in sentence 25: Der Schnee ist [...] bei uns liegen geblieben = That snow is [...] at our places = That snow has [...] stayed with us. It is not entirely clear why, in sentence 38, one of the coordinated predicates has been replaced by a purposive adjunct: sind [...] draufen auf dem Felde und mähen / haue: Those people are outside in the field today, to mow = Those people are today all in the field, to mow.

Thus, syntax is probably the layer of the Kursenieku text most affected by the choice of method; however, only a more detailed linguistic analysis of other sources, especially audio recordings, could reveal how everyday Kursenieku speech was actually influenced by bilingualism.

CONCLUSIONS

Wenker’s Atlas card No. 30084 is a valuable written document of the Kursenieku language. Through it, Kursenieku became part of a major European linguistics project. The language is documented on the card as well as possible, with German and Lithuanian writing systems creatively adapted for a language without a writing system of its own. Having set out the orthographic principles and conducted a linguistic analysis of the text, we can conclude that the Nida card was transcribed carefully and that its linguistic information in many cases reflects the authentic language of its time. Comparison with studies of Kursenieku conducted by professional linguists (A. Bezzenberger and J. Plakis) showed that in the second half of the 19th century, from the perspective of Latvian dialectology, Kursenieku was still a systematic dialect group, bearing witness to the origins of heterogeneous dialects. The card also reflects language contact on the Curonian Spit.

Phonetics reveals old features of the Courland dialects, as well as the results of contact with neighboring Lithuanian dialects in morphology (phonetic changes in certain forms), but relatively little German influence (for example, Latvian palatalization of final l is still visible, while the process of ending reduction has not yet occurred). Morphology also preserves archaic features inherited from the Courland dialects (relatively clear declensional paradigms, old noun case and adjective degree forms that have survived, subjunctive forms that have not yet become established, an attested ē-stem form of the past tense of the verb, and prepositions used with various plural cases); at the same time, Lithuanian influence is apparent (pronoun endings, the use of the verb tureti + infinitive, etc.) as is the beginning of German influence, manifested in the use of prepositional phrases and compound verb forms. However, German influence should not be considered a dialect feature in every case—for example, the use of the pronouns tas, ta or the verb tureti in compound forms appears to

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be regarded as a translation error. In the lexicon, alongside old Courland words and word-formation patterns, a marked Lithuanian influence has been established, especially from neighboring Samogitian dialects, from which Kursenieku speakers borrowed lexemes not only of Lithuanian but also of German and Slavic origin, while some common Baltic words began to be used with Lithuanian meanings. Direct German influence on the lexicon cannot in every case be regarded as an authentic feature of Kursenieku, since later sources do not attest some words or their meanings. It is likely that some lexical and semantic Germanisms in this text arose through literal translation. Some links with German equivalents are not easy to interpret, since similar phenomena also occur in Latvian. This is particularly true of syntax. Most translated sentences reproduce the construction of the German original sentence literally, a construction that is often alien to the Baltic languages and sometimes makes the sentence difficult to understand. There are exceptions, however: familiar, natural syntactic equivalents are found, and the ideas are expressed more freely.

Because of the chosen survey method (translation), German influence on Kursenieku in this source should be assessed with caution, since following the original literally is almost unavoidable when this method is used.

LITERATŪRA

Ābele Anna 1927: Rucavas izloksne. – Filologu biedrības raksti 7, 112–128.

Ābele Anna 1928: Rucavas izloksne. – Filologu biedrības raksti 8, 135–144.

Bezenberger Adalbert 188: Über die Sprache der preußischen Letten. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.

Chronik 2013: Chronik der Schule zu Nidden, sud. Gitanas Nausėda, Vilija Gerulaitienė. Vilnius: Petro ofsetas.

Diederichs Victor 1883: Die kurische Nerung und die Kuren in Preußen. – Ma-gazin hrs. von der Lettisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft. 17. Bandes 1. Stück. Mitau, 1–97.

Endzelīns Jānis, Hauzenberga-Šturma Edīte. Papildinājumi un labojumi K. Mühlenbacha latviešu valodas vārdnīcai 1–2. Prieiga internetu: www.tezaurs.lv/mev.

Elertas Dainius 2014: XVI a. visuomenės siluetas šiaurinėje Kuršių nerijos dalyje. – Res humanitariae 15, 17–67.

Endzelīns Jānis 1931 (1979): Par kurseniekiem un viņu valodu. – Darbu izlase 3(1). Rīga: Zinātne, 571–578.

Endzelīns Jānis 1951: Latviešu valodas gramatika. Rīga: Latvijas valsts izdevniecība.

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Fleischer Jürg, Sommer Florian 2012: Litauische Materialien im Archiv Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas Marburg. – Archivum Lithuanicum 14, 417–436.

Hinke Friedhelm 1993: Die slawischen lexikalischen Elemente im Nahrungskurischen Wortschatz, die das Alltagsleben der Nahrungskuren bezeichnen. Versuch einer Systematisierung – Contributions to Baltic linguistics. Linguistic and Oriental studies from Poznań, hr. von Michal Hasiuk. Monograph supplement series. 2. Poznań: UAM, 43–52.

Ivančaja Arina 2017: XVII a. kuršininkų kalbos žodžių rankraštinis registras. – Res humanitariae 21, 12–42.

Ivančaja Arina, Kiseliūnaitė Dalia 2015: Kuršių nerijos kuršininkų tarmės nykimo požymiai: daiktavardžių linksniavimo pokyčiai rašytiniuose paminkluose. – Baltiska, tautinė, regioninė savimonė baltų literatūrose ir kultūrose. Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas. 207–227.

Kiseliūnaitė Dalia 2005: Balsų įterpimas Vakarų Lietuvos lietuvių ir latvių (kuršininkų) tarmėse. – Baltai ir jų giminaičiai. Tiltai, priedas: Mokslo darbai 26, 139–144.

Kiseliūnaitė Dalia 1998: Kai kurie kuršininkų tarmės veiksmažodžių bruožai nuo A. Bezzenbergerio iki šių dienų. – Baltistica 5, priedas, 127–140.

LKŽ – Lietuvių kalbos žodynas 1–20, 1941–2002, elektroninis variantas (antras elektroninis leidimas), red. kolegija: Gertūda Naktinienė (vyr. redaktorė), Jonas Paulauskas, Rūtė Petrokienė, Vytautas Vitkauskas, Jolanta Zabarskaitė. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2013.

Markus-Narvila Line 2011: Rucavas izloksnes vārdnīca: leksikografiska un leksikais aspekts. Promocijas darbs. Liepāja: Liepājas universitāte.

ME I–IV – Mühlenbachs Kārlis. Latviešu valodas vārdnīca 1–4, rediģējis, papildinājis, turpinājis Jānis Endzelīns. Rīga, 1923–1932. Elektronisks variants. Prieiga internetu: www.tezurs.lv/mev.

Mogharbel El Christlie 1993: Nahrungskurisch. Dokumentation einer moribunden Sprache. Frankfurt am Main: Wissenschaftliche Buchhandlung Theo Hector GmbH&Co.

Ozola Ieva 2007: Gramatisās īpatnības un to pārmaiņas rucavnieku valodā. – Rucavā, tur Pauropē... Etnogrāfija, folklora, valoda. Liepāja: LiePA, 379–400.

Ozola Ieva 2009: Vajadzības modalitāte Lieksūzemē: par kādu reti dzirdamu konstrukciju. – Vārds un tā pētīšanas aspekti 13(1). Liepāja: LiePA, 292–297.

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Pallas Peter Simon 1786: Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa. Pars Prior. Petropoli, Typis Iohannis Caroli Schoor, MDCCLXXVI.

Paula Lizete 1926: Īvandes izloksne. – Filologu biedrības raksti 6, 48–63.

Pietsch Richard 1983: Fischerleben auf der Kurischen Nehrung. Berlin: Camen.

Pietsch Richard 1991: Deutsch-kurisches Wörterbuch. – Schriftenreihe Nordost-Archiv 33. Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk.

Plāķis Juris 1927: Kursenieku valoda. Latvijas Universitātes raksti 16. Rīgā: Valstspapīru spiestuvē.

Schiller Christiane 2014: Kuronismen im Halleschen sog. Richter-Wörterbuch. – Res Humanariae 15, 105–114.

Schiller Christiane, Kiselinaitė Dalia 2015: Ein kuronisch-kurischer Text im Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas in Marburg. Das Blatt Niden 3008. – Archiv Lithuanicum 17, 443–466.

Šmite Tekla 1928: Sarkanmūžas pagasta izloksne. – Filologu biedrības raksti 8, 108–134.

Zemzare Daina 1961: Latviešu vārdnīcas (līdz 1900. gadam). Rīga: Latvijas PSR Zinātņu Akadēmijas izdevniecība.

Казанкене Банда 2013: Материалы балтийских языков в словаре Петра Симона Паласа. – Материалы семнадцати чтений памяти И. М. Тронского «Индоевропейское языкознание и классическая филология – XVII». СПб: Наука.

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PRIEDAS

DSA KORTELĖS

NR. 30084 TRANSKRIPCIJA

1 PUSĖ¹

1. Siāma lȧts βaũβas lapas is gaisa apkarti. Ziemā lec sausas lapas is gaisa apkārti. Ziemā lec (ido) sausas lapas gaisa apkārt.² 1. Im Winter fliegen die trocknen Blätter durch die Luft herum.

2. Wel jau prada snkti, tad bus³ gaibas vel laps. Vēl jau prad⁴ snigti, tad būs gaisas vel labs. Atkal sāk snigt, tad būs laiks atkal labs. 2. Es hört gleich auf zu schneien, dann wird das Wetter wieder besser.

3. Līts Uoglis is krãnis, kad tas piens grāti sawirti tur. Liec ogles iš krānes, kad tas piens greti sas(i)virti tur. Liec ogles ikš krāns, kad tas piens āri vārītos.⁵ 3. Thu Kohlen in den Ofen, daß die Milch bald an zu kochen fängt.

4. Tas labaiš wetaiš wiem ir ar sirgu is ledus ākritis ir ista auksta udin-gi krittis. Tas labāš vecāš vīrs ir ar zīgu is ledus iekritis ir is tā auksta udēna kritis. Tas labāš vecāš vīrs ir ar zīgu ikš ledus (ledū) iekritis (ielūzis) un ikš tā auksta udēna (aukstaja udeni) (ie)kritis. 4. Der gute alte Mann ist mit dem Pferde durch’s Eis gebrochen und in das kalte Wasser gefallen.

5. Wintsch ir präksch schetturri arba schiescho niedelio mières. Viņš ir priekš četru arba (va) šešu nedēļu miris.

¹ Antrosios pusės, užpildytos vokiškai, perrašė žr. Schiller, Kiseliūnaitė 2015.

² Ziemā gaisa īdo sausas lapas.

³ 3 a. galūne ū yra klaida.

⁴ Vertimo klaida, turi būti ‘liaus, baigs’.

⁵ Liec ogles krāsni, lai piens ātrāk sāktu vārīties.

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Viņš ir piekš (pirms) četrām vai sešām nedēļām miris.⁶ 5. Er ist vor vier oder sechs Wochen gestorben.

6. Tā ugni bi par karta, tē koki ir apakša gauz meli sageuši. Tā ugne bi(a) par karta, tē kuoki ir apā ganč meli sageuši. Tā uguns bija par karta, tie pragi ir apakš gan (loči) meli (melni) sageuši.⁷ 6. Das Feuer war zu stark/heiß, die Kuchen sind ja unten ganz schwarz gebrannt.

7. Wintsch iäd tos kiauschis wis pradim bi ßales ir bi piparu. Vinš ēd tos kaušus vis pradem be sāles ir be piparu. Vinš ēd tos kaušus (olas) vienmēr bez sāls un bez pipariem. 7. Er ißt die Eier immer ohne Salz und Pfeffer.

8. Tas kàjas man pardaug ßap, es domajo es eßu par daug parsikreijis. Tàs kàjas man par daug sāp, es domàju, es esu par daug parsikreijis. Tàs kàjas man par daug (daudz) sāp, es domàju, es esu (esmu) par daug (daudz) skrēis. 8. Die Füße thun mir sehr weh, ich glaube, ich habe sie durchgelaufen.

9. Es eßu pi tas sevos bijis und es wingu sacegu und winga sacega, winga gribeja savo mait satseta⁸. Es esu pi tas sievas bijis und es viņu⁹ saciju und viņa sacija, viņa gribeja sa-vo meita(i) saci. Es esu (esmu) pie tās sievas (sievietes) bijis un es viņu (viņai) (to) saciju un viņa sacija, (ka) viņa gribēja sava meitai sacīt. 9. Ich bin bei der Frau gewesen und habe es ihr gesagt, und sie sagte, sie wollte es auch ihrer Tochter sagen.

10. Es gribu ne mag to darte. Es gribu ne māg to date. Es (ne)gribu mag (nemaz) to darīt.

⁶ Viņš ir miris pirms četrām vai sešām nedēļām.

⁷ Uguns bija par karstu, pīrāgi apakšā ir sadeguši pavisam melni.

⁸ Dēļ -ti redukcijas gali būt ne visai tiksliai atstatytas balsis.

⁹ Klaida, greičiausiai dėl redukcijos neteisingai užrašyta dat. galūnė, turi būti viņai.

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10. Ich will es auch nicht mehr wieder¹⁰ tun!

11. Es sicha tewe tuja ar to wedamo = leppili gar ausim, tu beschān¹¹.

Es sīšu tevi tuja ar tuo wedamu lepili gar ausim (-im?), tu bedzān. Es sīšu tevi tult ar to vāram karoti gar ausim, tu pertiķi¹².

11. Ich schlage Dich gleich mit dem Kochlöffel um die Ohren, Du Affe!

12. Kur tu iēti wa meß ar tewi eßam? Kur tu ieti, va mes ar tevi iesam? Kur tu ej, vai mēs ar tevi iesam (iesim)?

12. Wo gehst Du hin? Sollen wir mit Dir gehn?

13. Nu ir slekti laiki. Nu ir slekti laiki. Nu ir slekti laiki.

13. Es sind schlechte Zeiten.

14. Mana mālaisch vaikili, pald¹³ schischi sēmui staved¹⁴, tas piktas soasis koasch tewi pi smerishes¹⁵.

Mana mielā¹⁶ vaikili, paliec šīi zemū stāvet, tas piktas zuosis (-es?) kuōz tevi pi smer(i)ča.

Mans mīlais bērniņ, paliec te apakšā stāvet, tās piktas zosīs kož tevi līdz nāvei.¹⁷

14. Mein liebes Kind, bleib hier unten stehn, die bösen Gänse beißen Dich todt (dt. zu Tode).

15. Tu ebi schoadin wibu daugummu mazis und ebi pakagins bijs, tu wari jo āgni¹⁸ pis maju iāt kad tā ziti.

¹⁰ Kursinakai vok. k. nicht mehr wieder su veiksmāždžiu paprastai atliepia morfologine forma nibi- < lie. nebe-: es nibėriau ‘aš nebenoriu’, plg. la. b. k. vairs nebrū.

¹¹ Rankraštyje matyti ā (su diakritiku).

¹² Es sīšu tevi ar pavāņu pa ausīm, tu pertiķi!

¹³ Greičiausiai klaida, turėtų būti c.

¹⁴ Klaida, inf. turi būti t.

¹⁵ Subraukta, atstatyta s pagal sistemą pi su gen.

¹⁶ Plg. mīļš, -a (Plāķis 1927: 68).

¹⁷ Mans mīlais bērniņ, paliec te apakšā stāvet, tās niknās zosis nokos tevi līdz nāvei.

¹⁸ ā greičiausiai klaida vietoje a.

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Tu esi šiōdien visų daugumų māčijis und esi pakajīgs bijis, tu vari jo ag(i)ri pic māju iet ka(d) tie citi.

Tu esi šiōdien visvairāk māčijis un esi pieklājīgs (miēgs) bijis, tu vari jo agr(i) (agrāk) mājas iet (ne)kā tie citi.¹⁹

15. Du hat heute am meisten gelernt und bist arg gewesen, Du darßt früher nach Hause gehn als die Andern.

16. Tu dar ne ēbi par didžu gana wiāno būdelki²⁰ winā izdēti, tu turi dar biški augti ir jo dižs būt.

Tu dar nesī par didžu gana vienu būdelki vnā izdēti, tu turi dar biški augti ir jo dižs būt.

Tu vēl neesi gana dižs (iels) (vienu) pudeli vīna izdzert, tev vēl bišķi (mazliet) jāaug un lielākam jākļūst²¹.

16. Du bist noch nicht groß genug, um eine Flasche Wein auszutrinken, Du mußt erst noch ein End/etwas wachsen und größer werden.

17. Ei und stāve tās labs und saki tava māsa, viņai tur tās dranas par sawa mati gatavas šuti und ar Bāršču czijti pataisit.

Ej und stāvi (esi) tās labs und saki tava māsai, viņai²² tur tās drānas par sava mati gatavas šūti und ar bērtu čišti pataisit.

Ej un stāvi (esi) tās labs un saki tava (tavai) māsai, viņai tās drānas priekš savas mātes ir gatavas jāuzšuj un ar birsti jāiztīra.²³

17. Geh, sei so gut und sag Deiner Schwester, sie sollte die Kleider für eure Mutter fertig nähen und mit der Bürste rein machen.

18. Kad tu vīna būtu pazinis, būtu citādi nācis un būtu stāvējis ar viņa labā²⁴.

Kad tu viņa (viņu) būt(u) pazinis, būt(u) citādi nācis und būt(u) stāvējis ar viņa (viņu) labā.

Kad tu viņu būtu pazinis, būtu citādi iznācis un būtu stāvējis ar viņu labā.²⁵

¹⁹ Tu esi šiōdien visvairāk māčijis un esi bijis pieklājīgs (miēgs), tu vari iet mājās agrāk nekā citi.

²⁰ ū su diakritiku yra užrašytojo klaida, nes po to einanti germanų dd turi reikšti trumpą balsį.

²¹ Tu vēl neesi gana liels, (lai) vienu pudeli vīna izdzertu, tev vēl mazliet jāpieaug.

²² Dat. forma čā neregulāri: jeigu reikamybė reiškiama su turėt, vartojamas nom. formos.

²³ Ej un esi tik labs, un saki savai māsai, ka viņai ir apģērbs savai mātei jāuzšuj un jāiztīra.

²⁴ Rankraštyje raidė a išbraukta.

²⁵ Ja tu viņu būtu pazinis, būtu citādāk bijis, (tu) būtu labi ar viņu satics.

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18. Hättest Du ihn gekannt! dann wäre es anders gekommen, und es täte besser um ihn stehen.

19. Kas tur mane kozi ar galiu pab̃dis?

Kas tur maną kuoci ar galų padzis?

Kas ir manų koci (grou) ar galų padzis?²⁶

19. Wer hat mir meinen Korb mit Fleisch gestohlen?

20. Winsch darė tą jaunas pabkes pabziga²⁷ kad wingi butu drėschali pas-tellajusch, winga ale paschi darie.

Viñs darija tą, kad viñ butu drėeli pastelauši, viñ ale paši darija.

Viñs darija tą, ka viñ butu kūleju pastelejuši (pasūtijuši), bet viñ (to) paši darija.

20 Er hat so, als hätten sie ihn zum Dreschen bestellt; sie haben es aber selbst gethan.

21. Kam winsch tas jaunas pabkes pabziga.

Kam viñs tas jaunas pasakas pascija?

Kam viñs tās jaunas pasakas pascija (stāstija)?²⁸

21 Wem hat er die neue Geschichte erzählt?

22. Eβ turu dikti sakti cha winsch numis²⁹ nepamane.

Es turu dikti sakti, šā viñs mumis nepamane.

Es turu (man ir) dikti (skali) saukt, citādi viñs mumis (mūs) nesaprot.³⁰

22 Man muß laut schreien, sonst versteht er uns nicht.

23. Męβ ębam pa wargusch und turam sląpum.

Mes esam pavarguši(i) un turam sląpum.

Mēs esam pavārguši un turam (mums ir) slāpes³¹.

23. Wir sind müde und haben Durst.

²⁶ Kurš ir man gals grozu nozadzis?

²⁷ Rankraštyje išbraukta; matyt, per klaidą buvo įrašytas fragmentas iš kito sakinio, žr. toliau.

²⁸ Kuram viñs tās jaunās pasakas stāstīja?

²⁹ Klaida, turi būti mumis (Plaķis 1927: 26).

³⁰ Man ir ļoti skali jāsauc, citādi viņš mūs nesaprot.

³¹ Mēs esam pavārguši un izslāpuši.

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24. Kad mäß wacker wacker pargajem, ta gullejo ta zitti jau gultā und bija fasti iāmegusch.

Kad mēs vakar vakar(ā?) pārgājam, ta guleja tie (?) citi jau gultā und bija fasti (cieti) iemiguš(i).

Kad mēs vakar vakarā pārgājām, tad tie citi jau gulēja gultā un bija cieti iemiguši.³²

24 Als wir gestern Abend zurück kamen, da lagen die Andern schon zu Bett und waren fest am schlafen.

25. Tas sniäks ir scho nakti pi muḷbu pulātzis³³ ale scho rit ir wintsch satirpis.

Tas sniegs ir šo nakti pi mūsu palicis, ale šopit ir viņš satirpis.

Tas sniegs ir šo nakti pie mūsu (pie mums) palicis, bet šorīt viņš ir satirpis (izkusis).³⁴

25. Der Schnee ist diese Nacht bei uns liegen geblieben, aber heute Morgen ist er geschmolzen.

26. As muḷbu namma stav trīs puiki ābole koaki ar sarkanis abolennis.

Az mūsu nama stāv trīs puiki ābol(1?)a (-u?) kuoki ar sarkanis ābuolenis.

A(i)z mūsu nama stāv trīs puiki (skaisti) ābolu koki ar sarkanis ābolēnis (ar sarkaniem āboliem).³⁵

26. Hinter unserm Hause stehen drei schöne Apfelbäumchen mit rothen Aepfelchen.

27. Wa jus newaret wieno bischki uʃmumīs gaidetti tad mēs iäbam ar jums.

Vai jūs nevarat (nevarētu?) vienu biški uz mums gaideti, tad mēs iesam ar jums.

Vai jūs nevarat (nevarētu?) bišķi uz mums (mūs) (pa)gaidīt, tad mēs iesim ar jums.

27. Könnt ihr nicht noch ein Augenblickchen auf uns warten, dann gehn wir mit euch.

28. Ius ne turret taddus³⁶ niäkus ziti.

³² Kad mēs vakar vakarā pārnācām, tad tie citi jau bija gultā un bija cieti iemiguši.

³³ Priēsdēlejie greičiausiai korektūros klaida.

³⁴ Sniegs ir šonakt pie mums saglabājies, bet no rīta tas ir nokusis.

³⁵ Aiz mūsu nama stāv trīs skaistas ābeles ar sarkaniem ābolīšiem.

³⁶ Mažai tikėtina, kad tads būtų su trumpuoju, tačiau du kartus parašyta geminata dd (žr. Nr. 29), leidžia spėti, kad gali būti ir ne klaida.

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Jūs neturat tādus niekus dzī̄t. Jūs nedrīkstat tādus niekus dzīt. 28. Ihr dürft nicht solche Kindereien treiben!

29. Mußu kalni nau tādi diži tiā juḅu daug jo diži. Mūsu kalni nav tādi diži, tie jūsu daug juo diži. Mūsu kalni nav tādi lieli, tie jūsu (ir) daudz lielāki. 29. Unsere Berge sind nicht sehr hoch, die euren sind viel höher.

30. Ziäk schwarru wurschu ir kadauds maīes jus gribat. Ciek svaru (švaru?) wuršku ir kā daudź maizes jūs gribat? Cik svaru desas un cik (daudz) maizes jūs gribat? 30. Wieviel Pfund Wurst und wieviel Brod wollt ihr haben?

31. Es neparmanu jummies jus turrat wienu bischki dikti satziti. Es neparmanu jumis, jūs turat (vienu) bišķi dikti saciti. Es jumis nesaprotu, jums bišķi (mazliet) diktak (skaļak) jāsaka.³⁷ 31. Ich verstehe euch nicht, ihr müßt ein bißchen lauter sprechen.

32. Wa jus neturrat newiena stukkila baltu Žȩpu par manni us manna galdu raduschi. Va jūs neturat (neesat) neviena stukiļa baltu ziepu par mani uz mana galdu (galda?) raduši? Vai jūs neturat (neesat) nevienu gabaliņu baltu ziepju priekš manis uz mana galda atraduši?³⁸ 32. Habt ihr kein Stückchen weiße Seife für mich auf meinem Tische gefunden?

33. Winga bralis gribb dui puikus jaunus namm us is muḅu darźa³⁹ būdawati. Viņa brālis grib dui puikus jaunus namus is mūsu darza būdavati. Viņa brālis grib dui (divus) puikus (skaistus) jaunus namus mūsu dārzā būvēt. 33. Sein Bruder will sich zwei schöne neue Häuser in eurem Garten bauen.

34. Tas warts nazi wingam nußirdis. Tas vards nāce viņam nu(o) sirdes.

³⁷ Es jūs nesaprotu, jums jārunā mazliet skaļāk.

³⁸ Vai jūs neesat nevienu baltu ziepju gabaliņu uz mana galda man atraduši?

³⁹ Tikriausiai ž yra rašybos klaida, nes latvišką darzs kuršininkai vartoja iki šių dienų.

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Tas vārds nāca viņam no sirds.

34. Das Wort kam ihm von Herzen!

35. Tas biji labi no winga.

Tas bija labi nuo viņu⁴⁰.

Tas bija labi no viņiem⁴¹.

35. Das war recht von ihnen!

36. Kas Bǟž ti par pudnenni aukschum us to murenns.

Kas sēž tie par putneni aukšum uz tuo muren(e)s⁴²?

Kas sēž tur par putniniem aukšum (aukšā) uz mūr(en)a?⁴³

36. Was sitzen da für Vögelchen oben auf dem Mäuerchen?

37. Tā būri tur piätzus wirzchus und dewinges goawes und dewìlika awennu priäksh ta dziāma advādušchu tos wingi gribbeja parduati.

Tie būri tur piecus vēršus und deviņas goves und dvìlika avenu priekš ta ciema atwedušu⁴⁴, tuos viņi gribēja parduoti.

Tie zemnieki ir piecus vēršus un deviņas goves (govis) un divpadsmit aitiņas priekš tā ciema atveduši, tos viņi gribēja pārdot.⁴⁵

37. Die Bauern hatten fünf Ochsen und neun Kühe und zwölf Schäfchen vor das Dorf gebracht, die wollten sie verkaufen.

38. Tā ļauži ir schoadinni wißu⁴⁶ lauku uß to lauku pliauti.

Tie ļauži (ļauži) ir šodien visi lauku uz to lauku plauti.

Tie ļauži (ļaudis) ir šodien visi ārā uz lauka pļaut⁴⁷.

38. Die Leute sind heute alle draußen auf dem Felde und mähen/hauen.

39. Ei nu tas brūnaisch suns tewi niēka nedarres.

Ej nu, tas brūnais suns tevi nieka nedaris.

⁴⁰ Vokiškas sakinys rodo daugiskaitą.

⁴¹ No viņu puses tas bija labi / taisnīgi (darīts).

⁴² Su –en– nuo muris (Plāķis 1927: 68), la. b. k. mūris, tačiau neaiškus vedinio linksniavimo tipas.

⁴³ Kas par putniņiem sēž tur augšā uz mūriša?

⁴⁴ Greičiausiai klaida, turėtų būti atveduši.

⁴⁵ Zemnieki atveda pie ciema piecus vēršus un deviņas govis, un divpadsmit aitiņas, tos viņi gribēja pārdot.

⁴⁶ Galbūt klaida: turėtų būti visi (lauži).

⁴⁷ Tie ļaudis ir šodien visi ārā uz lauka pļaut.

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Nidos kortelė Nr. 30084 Marburgo Pilypo universiteto vokiečių kalbos atlaso archyve: kalbos analizė

Ej nu, tas brūnais suns tev nekā nedarīs.

39. Geh nur, der braune Hund thut Dir nichts.

40. Es eßu ar tes ļaužis tiä pakaļļa par pliawam iß graudu iäjajiß. Es esu ar ties ļaužis (laužis) tie pakaļā par pļavam(s) is graudu iejājis. Es esmu ar ties ļaužis (tiem ļaudīm) tur pakaļā par pļavām graudos iejājis (iebraucis?).⁴⁸

40. Ich bin mit den Leuten da hinten über die Wiese ins Korn gefahren.

⁴⁸ Es esmu ar tiem ļaudīm pāri pļavām graudu laukā iebraucis.

Language Analysis of Nida Questionnaire № 30084 in the Archive of the Linguistic Atlas of Germany at the Phillips University, Marburg

S U M M A R Y

The article presents a written source of the Kursenieku language - Card No. 30084 (Nida/Nidden) from Deutscher Sprachatlas (DSA) launched by Georg Wenker. The linguistic analysis led to the following conclusions:

The Nida card is carefully written, and its linguistic information in many cases reflects the authenticity of the language. The comparison with the research by professional linguists (Bezzenberger and Plakis) showed that in the nineteenth century the Kursenieku language was still a systematic geolect derived from a heterogeneous dialectal basis. The card also reflects the interaction of languages in the Curonian Spit.

Phonetic features reflect the dialects of Courland and the results of interaction with the neighbouring Lithuanian dialects in terms of phonomorphology and a relatively insignificant influence of the German language.

Morphology also contains archaic features of the dialects of Courland (the manifested declension paradigms, the old flections of nouns and the grades of adjectives, the preserved

Straipsniai / Articles

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DALIA KISELIŪNAITĖ

preterit forms of verbs, prepositions with plural forms). At the same time, the influence of the Lithuanian language (pronoun flections, verb tureti + inf., etc.) and the beginning of the influence of the German language, which manifests itself in the use of prepositions and compound verb forms, is observed. However, the effect of the German language cannot always be regarded as a dialect feature – for example, the often-repetitive use of tas, or the verb tureti in compound verb forms looks more like a fault of translation.

In the lexis there is a strong Lithuanian influence, especially from the neighbouring Samogitian dialects, next to the lexis inherited from Courland. The Kursenieki also adopted German and Slavic lexemes from Western Lithuanian dialects, and some common Baltic words absorbed the Lithuanian meaning. The direct influence of the German language on lexis is not always considered to be an authentic feature of the Kursenieku language, since some words or their meanings are not confirmed by later sources; a part of lexical and semantic Germanisms in the text arose due to literal translation. Some similarities with German language equivalents are not easy to interpret, because analogical features can be found in Latvian. This makes the determination of the time of their occurrence in the Curonian Spit difficult.

This is most applicable to syntax. Most of the translated sentences literally repeat the construction of the German original sentence, which is often not typical of the Baltic languages and sometimes makes the sentence hard to understand. However, there are exceptions – some natural, creative syntactic equivalents are found.

Due to the chosen method of language documentation (translation), the effect of German on the Kursenieku language in the 19th century should be carefully considered in this source, because the use of this method makes the literal transfer of the original almost inevitable.

Įteikta 2018 m. birželio 8 d.

DALIA KISELIŪNAITĖ

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lietuva

[email protected]

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