Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje

NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language Research areas: dialectology, dialect morphology, sociolinguistics, language contact. ARCHAIC AND INNOVATIVE PECULIARITIES OF THE VERB IN THE SOUTHERN AUKŠTAITIAN SUB-DIALECT IN BELARUS Archaic and Innovative Peculiarities of the Verb in the Southern Aukštaitian Sub-dialect in Belarus ABSTRACT The article analyzes the twofold characteristics of the verb in the continuation of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect in Belarus, in the Voranava district: archaic relics and innovative phenomena. From these perspectives, it surveys changes in the verb, its formation, and semantics in the speech varieties of the Southern Aukštaitian borderland enclaves. The study draws not only on dialectological but also on sociolinguistic data from the past twenty years, making it possible to describe not only the archaic and innovative verb forms themselves, but also to reveal variation in their use and establish the direction of change. Data on the alternating or parallel use of these verb forms were collected from speakers of both the older and younger generations; thus, they can be analyzed in apparent time, since the speech of older speakers reflected usage trends characteristic of the sub-dialect at least half a century ago, whereas that of younger speakers reflects current trends characteristic of the same sub-dialect after half a century. The article presents unique Lithuanian-language data, since some of the verb features discussed in it are entirely or largely atypical of the speech of inhabitants of the main Southern Aukštaitian area, and therefore have either not been recorded or have been recorded in very few places. On the one hand, prolonged contact with other languages and the sub-dialect’s isolation from the main Lithuanian-speaking area encouraged the Voranava speech varieties to become increasingly conservative; consequently, although very sporadically, there are instances of … KEYWORDS: speech varieties of the Southern Aukštaitian borderland enclaves, apparent time, archaic verb features, innovative verb features, language contact. KEYWORDS: sub-dialects of boundary micro-areas of Southern Aukštaitian, apparent time, archaic peculiarities of the verb, innovative peculiarities of the verb, interaction of languages. 82 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje …forms of the Lithuanian verb that are exceptionally archaic, inherited from the distant past and perhaps even reaching back to the tribal Baltic languages. On the other hand, as a result of constant interaction with Slavic languages (most notably Belarusian), the dialects under study have undergone innovative changes that have even formed a substantial layer of Slavic calques. Examples of archaic features are very scarce in the available dialect recordings and occur sporadically; more generally, this nearly extinct sub-dialect in Belarus is characterized by a wealth of competing verb forms and the increasingly intensive use of semantic calques. The considerable variation and unevenness in the use of the verb forms under study have meant that the analysis of verb forms presented in this article may sometimes give an impression of imbalance or episodic coverage. ANNOTATION The article addresses two-fold peculiarities of verbs of the continuity of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect in Belarus, Voranava district: archaic remains and innovative phenomena. Conjugation, formation and semantics of verbs from the sub-dialects of the boundary micro-areas of Southern Aukštaitian are reviewed from this perspective. The article follows both dialectological and sociolinguistic data of the past twenty years; therefore, there is a possibility to describe the most archaic and innovative verbal forms as well as to reveal the variation of their use and to identify the direction of their change. Data on the alternative or equivalent use of these verb forms were gathered from the information providers of both the older and the younger generation, enabling their analysis at the apparent time because the language of the older generation reflected the tendencies of use characteristic of the sub-dialect at least fifty years ago, while the language of the younger generation reflects contemporary tendencies characteristic of the same sub-dialect fifty years later. The article provides unique data on the Lithuanian language because certain verbal peculiarities discussed in the article are either not characteristic or little characteristic of the language of residents from the main area of Southern Aukštaitian; they are therefore not recorded or scarcely recorded. On the one hand, a long-term foreign environment and the isolation of the sub-dialect from the main area of the Lithuanian language led the sub-dialects of Voranava into even greater conservation; therefore, though very sporadically used, they feature especially archaic forms of Lithuanian verbs inherited from the remote past, perhaps even dating back to tribal Baltic languages. On the other hand, due to the continuous interaction with Slavic languages (mostly Belarusian), the sub-dialects under analysis underwent such innovative changes which have even formed a rather solid Slavic cover. The available records of the sub-dialect contain very few examples of archaic properties; they are sporadic. Generally speaking, this sub-dialect, which is on the verge of extinction in Belarus, can be characterised by a high number of contiguous forms and the intensifying use of semantic loan translations. A high variation and inconsistency of verbal forms under analysis determined that the analysis of verb forms described in the article creates an occasional expression of non-proportionality or episodicity. Straipsniai / Articles 83 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ 0. INTRODUCTION Recent dialectological and sociolinguistic data from Lithuanian borderland enclaves1 enable researchers to observe and assess the development of these isolated dialects and compare the findings with those already published. This refines the picture of the borderland enclaves both synchronically and diachronically, reveals the diversity of the dialects, fills gaps in the dialectological data already available, and presents new findings on the outcomes of language contact. This is particularly important with regard to the Lithuanian enclaves in Belarus, which have become more difficult to access in the twenty-first century. There, the rapid decline of the Lithuanian language is making it impossible to record not only significant and interesting facts about the development and functioning of the language, but also evidence concerning the ethnic origin and affiliation of the earliest local inhabitants. This study seeks to accomplish at least some of the aforementioned tasks. The aim of this article is to investigate the twofold character of the verb system: features that have been retained from the past and those that have emerged through innovation. The relationship between these two types of features is analyzed on the basis of the latest, unique dialectological material, collected from the Lithuanian enclaves that still exist (or formerly existed) in the Voranava district of Belarus, from the late twentieth to the early twenty-first century. In other words, the study seeks to identify the most stable verb features and those most prone to change as the Lithuanian dialect as a whole breaks down and disappears. The analysis of the collected material takes into account the sociolinguistic circumstances in which Lithuanian existed in the Lithuanian enclaves of Belarus. Thus, variation in usage is discussed in apparent time2; that is, verb features and their patterns of use are analyzed in the speech of dialect speakers of different ages. The present-day linguistic situation is documented using local informants who speak Lithuanian both more and less fluently. During individual field trips, the opportunity was taken to verify the use of different verb forms by asking informants directly, in an effort to establish the reliability of possible variants: whether such usage was conscious and acceptable to the informants, or whether it was lapsus linguae or a transcriber’s error. Wherever possible, the sentences illustrating the claims are accompanied by the name of the specific village in which they were recorded. 1 This article adopts the terms South Aukštaitian borderland enclaves and, more specifically, the dialects of the Voranava enclaves. These terms have not yet become established, but in the author’s view they are more suitable than the term peripheral dialects for describing areas of Lithuanian speech that, for one reason or another, lie beyond the borders of Lithuania (a term also proposed by Vytautas Kardelis (2014)). 2 The term apparent time (English apparent time) became more widespread in linguistic works in the 1960s. The apparent-time hypothesis was first formulated by William Labov (1963: 207–309; 1975: 199–228): for language change to be recorded while it is taking place, the speech of several generations living at the same time must be observed. A noun study of the Ramaškoniai dialect, one of several Lithuanian-speaking enclaves on the Varanava border, was conducted using apparent time (Tuomienė 2010). 84 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje FIG. 1. The Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect, including the continuous Lithuanian islands in the Voranava district of Belarus3: Varanãvas, Nevãšiai, Asavà (according to The Atlas of the Lithuanian Language, point VI); Nočia (point VII); Ródūnia, Plìkiai (point VIII); Pelešà (point IX). Aziėrkai (X) and Naujiėji Giėrnykai (XI) do not fall within the area described. The map is taken from The Reader of Lithuanian Dialects (compiled by Edmundas Trumpa). an example was recorded, because the Lithuanian borderland island of Varanãvas was not a single one, but consisted of several. These islands are spread over a winding belt extending for about 50 km along the present state border (once it was continuous and connected with Lithuania), from the Dieveniškės salient to the surroundings of Peleša (see Fig. 1). 3The larger points marked on the map are the district center, towns, settlements, church villages, and collective-farm centers. These points have remained from the period when dialect material was collected in the mid-20th century for The Atlas of the Lithuanian Language. However, research in recent years has shown that, for example, there are no longer any local people who speak Lithuanian well in Varanãvas itself, or in Nočia, Asavojè, or Nevãšiai. The linguistic data examined in this study were recorded mostly not only in villages in these locations, but also in isolated farmsteads—wherever at least one local person speaking Lithuanian well was found during the past two decades. In the article, an effort is made to indicate, alongside each sentence or word combination illustrating a claim, the names of the places where it was recorded. Straipsniai / Articles 85 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ It should be noted that linguistic studies in recent years concerning borderland islands (and Lithuanian dialects more generally) often rely, with little differentiation in terms of time, on data recorded in the past—most commonly various dictionaries, collections of transcribed texts, the written legacy of extinct dialects, and sound recordings, as well as material from The Atlas of the Lithuanian Language, which records the language use of several generations who did not live at the same time, sometimes more than 100 years ago (for example, recent studies: Ragaišienė 2010; Mikulėnienė 2012: 51–62; Tamulionienė 2013: 128–145, etc.). Consequently, some linguistic phenomena and their changes are difficult or even impossible to interpret sociolinguistically, because there is no apparent-time perspective. This article continues the research into the morphology of the dialects of the Lithuanian islands—Ramaškoniai, Nevãšiai, Ródūnia, Plìkiai, Nočiõs, Pãaradnė, Asavõs, and Pelesõs4—located (or present until very recently) in the Voranava district on the southern edge of Belarus5. The verb is an interesting part of speech and perhaps the one least studied separately. The article takes a somewhat unusual approach to the verbal system of the dialects around Varanãvas: (a) first, it seeks to discuss the recorded archaic remnants of verb forms (including their adaptations that arose earlier); (b) second, it aims to describe innovative phenomena associated with language contact, and therefore does not shy away from discussing in greater detail several more interesting features of verb inflection, derivation, meaning, and other aspects. 4In the villages of the largest Lithuanian islands around Pelesõs that have survived to the present day, Lithuanian is used in public and at home. A Lithuanian school has operated in Pelesa since 1992. It is the first Lithuanian secondary school in Belarus—the Pelesa region’s cultural and educational center. The school was founded by the Culture Fund of the Republic of Lithuania and the Ministry of Culture and Education. In 2012, the school graduated its 13th class. Most of its graduates successfully pursue studies at institutions of higher education in the Republic of Lithuania. Several former pupils returned after their studies to work as teachers at the Lithuanian school. The local Lithuanian community and the public association Gimtinė are supported and assisted by the Lithuanian state. The development of the Lithuanian dialect around the village of Pelesõs differs noticeably from that of other Lithuanian dialects, present and former, in the Voranava district and throughout the Lida region. Undoubtedly, this dialect warrants separate and closer examination (probably the most important and substantial recent work devoted to the Pelesõs dialect is Edmundas Trumpa’s 2008 monograph The Phonemes of the Pelesa Dialect and Their Variants). This article focuses more on the smaller dialects, which are disappearing or have completely disappeared and which lie geographically within the present-day territory of the Voranava district. 5The first more comprehensive synchronic description of the noun declension system of an endangered Lithuanian island was presented in the 2010 book The Noun in the Ramaškoniai Dialect: A Sociolinguistic Study. The publication also provides a detailed account of the sociolinguistic situation throughout the Voranava region during the period under observation, compares paradigms of all noun inflection types produced by representatives of two generations (older and relatively younger), and discusses the issue of code-switching. The introductory section of the collection Texts of the Ramaškoniai Dialect, published in 2008 with a CD, presents in detail the dialect’s characteristic features and matters of accentuation. Both books review the work of earlier authors who studied the micro-area. We still lack newer studies of the development of Lithuanian in the aforementioned islands. Thus, a comprehensive examination of all parts of speech remains a task for the future. 86 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje 1. REMNANTS OF THE OLD LANGUAGE MODEL – ARCHAIC FEATURES OF THE VERB 1.1. Some Forms of the Subjunctive Mood of Verbs Lietuvių kalbos tarmėse tariamosios nuosakos formos labai įvairuoja (Kazlauskas 2000: 385–403). Iš esmės visi pietų aukštaičiai, dzūkai, turi savitą tariamąją nuosaką, kurios daryba iki šiol nėra visai aiški, plg.: vienaskaitos 1 asmuo būtau, 2 asmuo būtái, o 3 asmuo – būtų; daugiskaitos 1 asmuo būtūm (būtūmė), 2 asmuo būtūt (būtūtė). Daugiskaitos 1 ir 2 asmens formos yra naujos, sudarytos prie 3 a. formos būtų pridedant senesnes būtum, būtut, dar vartojamas pietų aukštaičių patarmėje. Ir vienaskaitos 1 ir 2 asmens formos sudarytos naujai ā-kamienių veiksmažodžių asmenavimo pavyzdžiu. Šių formų išlaikyta tvir tapradė priegaidė aiškintina tuo, kad galūnės –au, ir –ai, būdamos akūtinės, akūtinių galūnių kitimo metu tariamosios nuosakos sistemoje galėjo būti tik kirčiuotos (plačiau žr. Kazlauskas 2000: 101–102). A considerable number of two-syllable verb forms in the first and second person singular of the subjunctive mood have been recorded in present-day dialects in the vicinity of Varanava, for example: àš bu.tá.u, tù bu.tá.i ‘I would be, you would be’; àš dirptá.u, tù dirptá.i ‘I would work, you would work’; àš eitá.u, tù eitá.i ‘I would go, you would go’; àš neštá.u, tù neštá.i ‘I would carry, you would carry’, àš vestá.u, tù vestá.i ‘I would lead, you would lead’, etc. They are pronounced with a changed ending, usually stressed on the final syllable, while the pitch accent is essentially always preserved as acute. As in the entire present-day Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect (cf. LKA III 107–109, map nos. 103–105; LKTCh 2004: 83; Markevičienė 1999: 33; Leskauskaitė 2006: 60; 2009: 65). The development of changes in the conditional mood forms (1st and 2nd person singular) is most likely related to a well-known rule of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect: if č, dž occurs only once in the paradigm, the paradigm is leveled and t, d is pronounced throughout, both in the noun paradigm, e.g., dė̃du., mergá.įtų. ‘dedžių, mergaičių’, and in the verb paradigm, e.g., á.udū, matáu. ‘audžiau, mačiau’. Thus, búčáu, dirbčáu, ei.čáu is also leveled to bu.tá.u, dirptá.u, eitá.u. The consonant of the verbs remains hard throughout the paradigm, so the 1st and 2nd person singular conditional forms are also pronounced hard, e.g., mæstá.u, mæstá.i ‘mesčiau, mestum’; ręktá.u, ręktá.i ‘rėkčiau, rėktum’; važiá.u, važiá.i ‘vežčiau, vežtum’. Rarer instances in which the stress falls on the root have been recorded in the speech varieties studied: èi.táu šbl.ná.uč, āle labai. lĩja ‘I would go to mow hay, but it is raining heavily’; vèstai tu. mer.gu. ir.gi.væ.ntnai sá.u ‘you would marry that girl (young woman) and live on your own’; bú.tai pasá.kus, ku. pažskai. rašbʹc næmó.kį, næpraší.tau ‘if you had said that you did not know how to write in Polish, I would not have asked’ (examples mainly from the environs of Ródūnia). Straipsniai / Articles 87 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ ). Stem stress in the first- and second-person singular forms of the subjunctive mood is extremely rare in the Varanava dialects; alongside forms with ending stress, it most likely arose here because informants tried to speak “correctly” and “grammatically,” that is, they sought to imitate Standard Lithuanian⁶. Although stress on the stem in the aforementioned forms is recorded in most dialects across the larger Southern Aukštaitian area (see LKA III 108; Leskauskaitė 2006: 60; 2009: 65). In the Varanava dialects, suffixal verbs generally retain the stress position and pitch accent of the infinitive, for example: galvóːtau, galvótai ‘I would think, you would think’; mokėːtau, mokėːtai ‘I would learn, you would learn’; rašbʹtau, rašbʹtai ‘I would write, you would write’; skaićtau, skaićtai ‘I would read, you would read’; šá.udi.tau, šá.udi.tai ‘I would shoot, you would shoot’; žu.rėːtau, žu.rėːtai ‘I would look, you would look’. In prefixed forms derived from two-syllable verbs, stress usually remains on the ending, for example: næsupá.isi.tãu, visùs burõkus nurautá.i ‘I would not manage (not look after), you would pull up all the beets (sugar beets)’ (Tūsamonys); kad až galćtau, ir tá.u dúnos⁷ iš krá.utuvės pãrnẽštá.u ‘if I could, I would also bring you bread⁷ from the shop’ (Ramaškónys); nueitá.i tù ir má.n kã.rui. parvarbítai ‘you would go and bring the cow back for me’ (Stanišiai); išmestá.u aš jù iš pìr.kos, á.le kùː svi.tas pasakìːs ‘I would throw her out of the house, but what would people (everyone) say?’ (Ramaškónys). In the opinion of many linguists, stress on the ending in the first- and second-person forms of the subjunctive mood is more recent. It may have developed under the influence of the third-person form, since a considerable number of Southern Aukštaitians, like the Eastern Aukštaitian Utena and Vilnius dialects, have the third-person form būtų (LD 367–368; LKA II 128, map no. 109). As Zigmas Zinkevičius argues, the shift of stress did not happen suddenly—apparently two stresses coexisted for some time. On listening closely, the second stress can also be heard in examples from the Varanava dialects under study: atsùktá.u ìtu. šrù.bu., ci(g) næturú. su kum. ‘I would unscrew this screw, only I have nothing to do it with’ (Ramaškónys); ci.tá.i tù sá.u ir nesùktá.i má.n galvò.s ‘you would go on your way and not give me a headache’ (Stanišiai); imtá.i, žmõ.gus, ir pabėktá.i nǫk.tù. saviẽ.tu. ‘you would take it, man, and flee from those Soviets (the Soviet system)’ (Plikiai); pǫ glẽ.bi., pǫ glẽ.bá.li. ir sunẽštá.u sá. vi.su. šienu. ‘I would bring all the hay in for myself, an armful at a time, a little armful at a time’ (Kargaudai). One might assume that the dialects under study preserve a more archaic stress pattern. However, without special studies, it is difficult to establish whether this is “split” stress or simply emphatic, exaggerated pronunciation related to the text’s intonation. Some researchers’ 6 None of the local Lithuanians has a grounding in contemporary Standard Lithuanian or can speak it fluently. The oldest local Lithuanians are somewhat better able to imitate Standard Lithuanian; they learned to read and write Lithuanian at Lithuanian schools and reading rooms between the wars, and more often watch Lithuanian television (more precisely, watched it, since in recent years Lithuanian channels have been viewable in Belarusian territory—more precisely, in its border region—only with special digital receivers). 7 Various degrees of monophthongization of stressed diphthongs ie, uo (e.g., pronunciation with the quality of one of the components, and so on) are characteristic of most of the Varanava dialects studied. These diphthongs are monophthongized most extensively in the vicinity of Ramaškónys (for more on this, see Tuomienė 2008: 46; 2010a: 62–67). 88 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje it is stated that in other dialects of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect, too, the 1st and 2nd person forms of this verb mood are also clearly pronounced with two accents, e.g.: dẹ̇tá.u, nei̇.tá.u, su̇ktá.u, sakįtá.u – in the dialects around Punia and Kučiūnai (see LD 363; Markevičienė 1999: 33–34; Leskauskaitė 2006: 60). In various dialects around Varanȧva, two variants of the 3rd-person singular conditional form have been recorded: a longer form with –tų and a shorter one without –ų, e.g.: imtá.u, kàt anà eitū ‘I would take (lead) her, so that she would go (flow)’ and o kàt kàs ēi.t ir má.n padẹ̇t‘o, so that someone would go and help me’; ni.kas jọ.næmuštū, pàc prɪsprášo ‘no one would beat him; he brought it on himself’; švi.stu. jāu.rėi.kæ mùšč ‘the linen would already need to be beaten’; atvažu̇.t brọ̇lis, pataisí.tu. má.n dank̇sci. ‘my brother would come and fix my roof’; jei_kàs pataisí.t má.n žvìračì. ‘if someone would fix my bicycle’; kù:nikas sakí.tu., kù. cæ grḃ.kas ‘the priest would say that this is a sin’; kàs má.n kù. sakí.t, ni.ko kitàp næbùs ‘whatever anyone might say to me, nothing will be different’; važu̇tu trá.u:kinu, cik næturẹ̇jo ažu kù: ‘he would travel by train, but he did not have enough for it (to buy a ticket)’; prášẹ̇, kat_sæsuvà važú.t lidọ̇n ‘she asked her sister to go to Lydon (to Lyda)’ (examples from the vicinity of Ramaškonys village). The form with –tų is nevertheless more common, as it is in many Lithuanian dialects on the southern and eastern periphery. In general, two-syllable words are more often shortened (cf. LKA III 110–111, map No. 106; LD 114). 1.2. Remnants of athematic (consonantal) conjugation and new analogical forms In present-day Lithuanian dialects, very few athematic (consonantal) verb forms remain, though some have survived. The most widespread relics are 3rd-person present-tense forms with stative and intransitive meanings (see LKTCh 2004: 33; 202; Kazlauskas 2000: 309–311), cf.: nėršti ‘spawns’; kóšti, niėžti, gėlbsti, peršti, plėišti ‘splits’, ėsti ‘is’; čiausti ‘sneezes’; sniegti ‘snows’ and others. As Jonas Kazlauskas states, verb forms with athematic inflection found in 16th–17th-century Lithuanian writings indicate that the disappearance of athematic verbs and their transition to thematic conjugation date back to the pre-literary period and began before athematic inflection itself started to disappear (2000: 309). These old writings show that these verbs formed a lexical-semantic group with stative and intransitive meanings. Such a group could most likely have formed because the 3rd-person form of athematic verbs, ending in –ti, with –i, closely resembled i-stem verbs, which likewise have a 3rd-person ending –i and a stative meaning, cf.: ėsti and guli. Thus, relics of athematic 3rd-person forms in present-day dialects (peršti, niėžti, etc.) have survived partly because their form resembles the 3rd person of i-stem verbs (cf. also the newly formed infinitives perštėti, niežtėti). In addition, the longer survival of athematic verbs was also due to the similarity of their meaning to that of i-stem verbs— Straipsniai / Articles 89 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ žodžiams (plačiau žr. Kazlauskas 2000: 311–313). Tiek praėjusio amžiaus viduryje, tiek ir šiame amžiuje Varanāvo šnektose taip pat užrašyta esamojo laiko atematininių veiksmažodžių liekanų (plg. Šukys 1960: 182; Tuomienė 2008: 70), kurios buvo pavartotos sporadiškai, pavyzdžiui, 2008 m. Ramaškonyse buvo užfiksuota reta 1 asmens formos liekmi pagrindu pasidaryta 3 asmens forma (pa)liekma / (pa)li.kma ‘(pa)lieka’ (greičiausiai įprastos šnektoje formos miẽgma ‘miega’ pavyzdžiu). Pagal šios išlaikytos formos modelį, matyt, buvo pasidaryta ir visa paradigma. Užrašyta keletas pavyzdžių iš kitų šnektų: ka(p)_pasakâũ., àš liˀkẽčù cenõ.jaka, nœvažu.ˀsù su_ jùmim, tadù ã.ni.s manì. mũ.šč ‘kai pasakiau, aš lieku čionai, nevažiuosiu su jumis, tada jie mane (pradėjo) mušti’ (Plikiai); paklã.usâu sã. mærgã.las, ãr. liˀkti su_mã.nim ‘paklausiau savo mergelės, ar lieki su manim’ (iš pasakos, Nočia). Atematinę 3 asmens formą liẽkti ‘likti’ turi gretima Dieveniškių šnekta ir daugelis didžiojo ploto pietų aukštaičių šnektų bei jau išnykusi Zietelos lietuvių šnekta Baltarusijoje, priskiriama vakarų aukštaičiams. Šios formos pagrindu šnektose pasidaryta visa paradigma: aš liekčiù, tu liekti, mes liektir, jūs liektit (plg. LD 348–349; LKA III 89; Vidugiris 2004: 243–244; DvŽ 2005: 21; Leskauskaitė 2006: 60; 2009: 64). In the dialects around Ramaškonys, Ródūnia, Nočia, and Pelesà, an analogical form based on miegmù with u from thematic conjugation has been recorded. Here, too, apparently a complete paradigm was formed, e.g.: àš miegmù, ci(g)_giržù, šá.udo ‘I sleep, I only hear, [they] shoot’ (Klaišiai); a(r) tù gœrai. mieǵmì ‘do you sleep well?’; ãnas miẽgma lãˀškọi, àš in_pæˀçọ ‘he sleeps in the bed, I on the stove’ (Kargaudai); mẽs i.č(i) i_miẽgmam, i_žì.rbam visì ‘we all sleep and work here’ (Ródūnia); kur. jūs ti._miẽ.gmat, an_šiẽno ‘where are you sleeping, there on the hay?’ (Pelesà); á.i jūs vaikài, cinginei., ko_tęp_jilgài. miẽ.gmat, ẽi.–kit dar.buič ‘ah, you lazy children, why are you sleeping so long? Go to work!’ (Nočia). These forms were also found in the now-extinct Zietela and Lazūnai dialects (see ZtT I: 29; Jaroslavienė, Tuomienė 2013: 31). Several extremely rare forms of this verb with s have been recorded in the Varanāva dialects, e.g.: aš miegsmi klúoni an_šiẽno ‘I sleep in the barn on the hay’ (Plikiai), or aš_nemiegsmù jilgài., šaštoi valandòi kelùõs ‘I don’t sleep long; I get up at six o’clock’ (Tūsamonys)8. The largest number of present-tense na-stem forms was recorded around Ramaškonys: àš mi.knù, li.knù ‘I sleep, I stay’; tù mikni, likni ‘you sleep, you stay’; ãnas mi.kna, lì.kna ‘he sleeps, he stays’; mẽs mi.knam; lì.knam ‘we sleep, we stay’; jũs mi.knat, lì.knat ‘you sleep, you stay’; ã.ni.s mi.kna, lì.kna ‘they sleep, they stay’ (for more on these forms, see Kaukienė, Pakalniškienė 2002: 113–131). These typical analogical forms of infixed verbs have long been observed in the neighboring Dieveniškės dialect as well (cf. LD 348–351; LKA III 82–83, maps No. 85–87). Moreover, in the border-island dialects under study, as throughout the area of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect, the 3rd-person present-tense form is very common 8 This inserted s is often pronounced indistinctly. 90 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje with the stem-final consonant n, e.g.: būna, pjāuna, grybāuna, lāndžiauna, šienāuna, vāikščiauna, žuvāuna. It may be assumed that this consonant displaced the m of the verb forms mentioned earlier (miegmù, liekmù). In several speech varieties of Varanãvo, the third-person singular athematic forms of the verb sneeze have been preserved: ragì, kāp ānas čã.ušti, mòi jæ.m ri.mè ‘see (you see) how that one (he) is sneezing here; he probably has a runny nose’ (Stanišiai); mà. mócina m'egóč nægãl, čã.ušti, kóšti, α_paz_dá.ktaru. ani_kàp nænór ‘my mother cannot sleep, she is sneezing, coughing, but absolutely does not want to go to the doctor’ (Tùsamonys); mòi pipìru. pavũ.šte, ka(t)_tèp čã.ušti ‘he probably smelled pepper, that’s why he is sneezing like that’ (Ramaškónys); kāp žĩӡ icì. bæ̇ržãi., òt ānas čã.ušti ‘when those birches blossom, there he goes sneezing’ (Plìkiai). Generally, many Eastern and Southern Aukštaitians use this verb form with the consonant s, which arose through dissimilation. The athematic third-person singular form kósti is recorded across almost the entire area, e.g.: tɔkìs kãšalus prìbstójo, kóšti i_kóšti žmó.gus, ūtarùč nægà.l ‘such a cough came on; the person keeps coughing and cannot speak’ (Paaradnė). On the basis of these forms, a full paradigm has also developed in the southern Highland Lithuanian dialects across much of the area, e.g.: aš čiauščiu, tu čiausti, mes čiaustim, jūs čiaustit ir aš kóščiu, tu kósti, mes kóstim, jūs kóstit (cf. LD 346, 348; LKA III 90; Leskauskaitė 2006: 60; 2009: 64). All these forms are now standard in Standard Lithuanian (see DLKŽe). Other forms of the verb paradigm are rare in the Varanãva dialects; for example, the first-person plural: kāp mažì būvọm, ci’élùs mæ̀tùs basì, čã.uštim, kóštim, iš_nósæz béga, anì kàs ti. mùs pá.ise, anì ti. kàs mùz gìde ‘when we were little, barefoot all year, we sneeze and cough, our noses run; no one there looked after us, and no one there treated us’ (Piliakalnis). The athematic third-person form of the verb sniegti was recorded in the village of Kargaudai, near the town of Ródūnia, e.g.: zìdelèi.s kušnèi.s šnìegt, grèi.ta su_visù iš_pĩ.ḱos neišeisù ‘it is snowing in big flakes; soon I will not be able to leave the house at all.’ Isolated first-person singular examples with the contaminative ending -mu (from eimu and eimi; cf. Latvian esmu) are recorded in the dialects under study, e.g.: galvà sùkasi, kur_eimù, viz_grūmu ‘my head is spinning; wherever I go, I keep falling’ (Asavà); škimù kvìetkas sà mergã̃lei, dovonóšu já.i žiedã̃lu. ‘I pick flowers for my girl; I will give her little flowers as a gift’ (from a folktale; Nočià). The surviving forms show that not all verbs that have relics of an athematic paradigm actually belonged to this conjugation type in ancient times. Apparently, when fluctuation between athematic and thematic conjugation arose, athematic-origin inflection eventually spread to some thematic-conjugation verbs as well (cf. LD 362). In the Nočiõs, Pelesõs, and Ramaškoniai dialects, the form yra is generally used in the third person, but in rare cases it functions not only as the third person but also as other persons in the paradigm, for example, the first and second person singular and the third person plural: tù jāu. irà, ānas irà ir_às irà ‘you already are, he is, and I am’; mã:s visì čæ irà ‘we are all here’. Such a Straipsniai / Articles 91 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ generalized suppletive third-person form is recorded in the Dievėniškiai and Pùnsk dialects and in the extinct Lithuanian island of Zíetelas (LD 345–346; LKA III 82, map no. 78; Vidugiris 2004: 243). The emergence of the form yra throughout the paradigm, probably replacing present-tense forms of the verb būti formed from the stem es-, in the dialects under study should be explained by language contact, since the equivalent of yra in the local Belarusian language is ёсць ‘is’; cf.: я тут ёсьць; ты тут ёсьць; ён і яна тут ёсьць; мы тут ёсьць, яны тут ёсьць ‘I here is (am); you here is (are); he, she here is; we here is (are); you here is (are), and they here is’—in the present-tense paradigm, singular and plural forms are identical. 2. SOME CHARACTERISTIC VERB FEATURES OF THE DIALECTS AND INNOVATIVE CHANGES 2.1. Forms of the Past Frequentative Tense of Verbs The past frequentative tense of verbs is a relatively late development in Lithuanian and is found in only some Lithuanian dialects (see Stang 1942: 172–173; Otręb ski 1956: 221–224; LD 356–359; Palionis 1967: 135–136; 1979: 51; Zinkevičius 1987: 217–218). In most of the Lithuanian-speaking area (the Aukštaitian dialect and the Samogitian varieties closest to it), as well as in standard Lithuanian, the third-person forms of the past frequentative tense are used; they are formed from the infinitive stem of verbs with the suffix -davo. They are inflected according to the ā-stem pattern. The infinitive’s stress position is retained. In the varieties of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect and in the Varanava enclaves under study, the past frequentative tense is used only rarely, or not at all. Speakers usually make do with the simple past, repeating its forms or reinforcing them with certain adverbs (often, frequently), or with the particle vis, for example: suñ.kei ʒi.rβom_vis i_ʒi.rβom, niẽko gãːro nəmãːtem ‘we worked hard, always working, and saw nothing good’ (Nevėšiai); sæñāũ. vaikāi. dažnai. má.n lākštus rāšė ‘in the old days, the children often wrote me letters’ (Ramaškónys). Another way of expressing recurrence is by using verbs with the suffixes -inėti, -dinėti or -dyti, which convey intensity and iterativity (for more on this, see Kaukienė 1994: 218–224), for example: aš_pàč patikžāu kã.rves ‘I myself used to meet the cows’ (Tùšamonys); br̄ó.lis tá.njkei mùm pasùkas sũžde ‘my brother often sent us parcels’ (Ramaškónys); ãnas pas_mani atæʒinėjė ir_visku. paʒezinėjė ‘he used to come to my place and help with everything’ (Tùšamonys); su.nūs vis_atvažù.ʒinėjo, α_dabař u.nūkai. pabūna ‘my son used to keep coming, but now my grandchildren (grandkids) stay for a while’ (Ródūnia). However, verbs with the suffix -dinėti or -dyti are often used not so much 92 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje to express repeated action as duration, for example: ci.lu. ži.n burōkus ra(s)- sōdinėjau ‘I planted beets (root beets) all day’ (Plikiai); ragì, li.tùs susrblŋgzi- nėja ‘you see, the rain is gathering (coming)’ (Ramaškónys); ik̇vãkaru razmušžinėjau šlãpijūs prakãšus ‘I spread out the wet windrows until evening’ (Ramaškónys). In almost all the Varanava varieties under study, the third-person form būdavo was observed to be used very frequently as a parenthetical word, a kind of filler, when talking about events that often occurred in the past. This usage is characteristic of all Lithuanian dialects. It might seem that in the Varanava varieties under study, too, the filler būdavo is the usual past frequentative form. However, as already noted, third-person forms of the past frequentative tense are extremely rare throughout the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect area. Moreover, the word “бывало” in the sense of ‘it used to be’ is quite alive and frequent in the local Belarusian variety; compare: kadà tai, būdavo, kat prьkępam grьkinu. б líпu ir bru. kalima, бывала, як напячом грьчанных блинов ‘sometimes, it used to happen that we baked buckwheat pancakes’; suvei.- na, būdavo, jaunimas, tai padainuoja, pašóka and Belarusian зьдзяца, бывала, маладзешь, то панатянуюць, паспяваюць ‘the young people would gather, sing songs, and dance’; a_rūdeni, būdavo, jau_gãno ciēlu. žiēnu. and Belarusian a y осень, бывала, ужо пасуць уэллы дзень ‘and in autumn, they used to herd (the animals) all day’ (Ramaškónys). In rare cases, the shorter variant būdo is pronounced, for example: žīdai, būdo, vã:ža visó:kus dá.iktus ir_cà pər- davinėja ‘the Jews used to bring all sorts of goods here and sell them’; vã:karu, būdo, tai_vi.nõn, tai_kitõn pīr.k̇on sū.srankam ir_vēr.pæm ‘in the evening, we used to gather in one house or another and spin’ (Kargaudai). Thus, comparing the examples from the two local varieties, where the language is used more or less actively, one might suppose that when informants speaking Lithuanian describe events that frequently recurred in the past, the local Belarusian variety prompts them to use the third-person form of the verb būdavo more often. This is one instance of speakers of isolated varieties, who communicate in Lithuanian ever less frequently in everyday life, beginning to regard Belarusian expressive resources as their own and readily incorporating them into their speech. Some also simply translate their thoughts or individual sentences from Belarusian—in other words, express a Belarusian thought in Lithuanian words (for more, see Grinaveckienė 1997: 185–195; Tūomienė 2006: 161–172, 2006a: 80–86, 2010b, 223–234; Grumadienė 2005: 42). 2.2. Reflexive Verbs At first glance, the use of reflexive verbs in the Varanava varieties appears conventional—that is, the same as in other Lithuanian dialects. However, closer examination of the most recent dialect material reveals an increasing number of language-contact phenomena characteristic of an active-contact zone. These are newer and somewhat different phenomena from those discussed so far. Most striking is the intensified use of semantic calques and the growing body of calques that has emerged as one-sided Lithuanian-Belarusian bilingualism expands Straipsniai / Articles 93 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ language use. These linguistic phenomena may be called the purest products of late bilingualism that has become fully established. Reflexive verbs are usually formed with the reflexive affix -si-, used without the vowel i, which is dropped as a semantically and functionally insignificant element, e.g.: žãugies žmõgus, kãd iš_lóvos pãskeli ‘you rejoice, i.e. rejoice, person, that you get up (rise) from bed’ (Plikiai); krãpštāũ.s ir_krapštãũ.s prie_tọ_žvirãčo ‘I fiddle and fiddle, i.e. fiddle, with that bicycle’ (Ramaškónys); paródik, kũ_cæ tep_sũñ.kei nešiẽs ‘show me what you are carrying so heavily here, i.e. carrying’ (Ródūnia). As usual, non-prefixed verbs have the reflexive affix at the end, e.g.: ar_mã.n su_jeĩ.s mũščis ‘whether I should fight with them’ (Ramaškónys); tadà tévas pradėjĩ bá.rcis ‘then father started arguing’ (Kargaudai) (cf. LKA III 105; LD 331; Leskauskaitė 2006: 61). Third-person past-tense forms are often shortened; some have two possible stress patterns, on the stem and on the ending, for example: rã:dọs ir radõ:s ‘appeared’; sẽ:dọs ir sẹdõ:s ‘sat down’; stó:jos ir stojõ:s ‘stood up’. This dual stress pattern has long been observed in many Southern Aukštaitian dialects, the neighboring Dieveniškės dialect, and the more distant Lithuanian enclaves of Gervėčiai and Zietela in Belarus (LD 333; Grinaveckienė 1973: 224; ZtT I 30; Leskauskaitė 2006: 60–61; 2009: 65). The stress pattern of these forms indicates the retention of the old final stress of these verbs (see LKG II 301). However, it has been observed that in the Varėnavas dialects the two stress patterns of these forms are still very closely associated with a difference in their meaning. The newer forms, stressed on the stem, are generally used more often here to denote non-isolated past tense, indicating an action taking place at the time of speaking, whereas forms stressed on the ending denote an isolated action that took place well before the time of speaking, e.g.: tó:i bó:ba tai stó:jos, toi_sẽ:dọs, tai_vi(s)_skrai.dė po_pirkšs ‘that woman kept standing up and sitting down, and kept flying around (rushing, running) through the house’ (Plikiai) and anà sẹdõ:s in_dũiračọ ir_nuvažã:vo ‘she got on the bicycle and rode away’ (Ramaškónys); mã.žas vai.kas stojõ:s in_kọ́ju. ir_iškãf.c nuvãži ‘the little child stood up on its feet and immediately left’ (Tùšamonys); nẽžinãũ. iš_kur. ji.tas žmõ.gus čænójaka rã:dọs ‘I don’t know where this person came from here (appeared)’ (Kargaudai) and kã.rvę bũvo pabẽ.gus, ã.le vã.karu radõ:s ‘the cow had run away, but appeared (turned up) in the evening’ (Pelesà). If the main verb is prefixed and the prefix ends in a consonant, the reflexive affix -si-, inserted between the prefix and the stem, is not shortened, e.g.: acisã.kem ẽi.c læŋkiškon škã.lon ‘we refused to go to a Polish school’ (Plikiai); apŝivẽr-tė su_visù ã.rkļu ir_væžbimù šieno ‘overturned with the whole horse and cartload of hay’ (Tùšamonys); rb́to žmõgus acikjẽle, pã.iso, dùrbl.s ažušpirta ‘in the morning the person got up, looks (is looking), the door is barred (blocked)’ (Stanišiai); usidã.rė sàvọ pir̃.kọj ir_sẽž ‘shut himself up in his home and sits’ (Ramaškónys). However, if the verb’s prefix ends in a vowel, syncope of the reflexive particle occurs, e.g.: vọ:s nẽsuzbarẽm ‘we almost had a falling-out’; kàs jã.m pazdãrẽ ‘what happened to him’; suzdãũ.že kóju. ‘I scraped my leg, like I—’ 94 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje gandâu. ‘how frightened I got (was startled)’; ká.ṛvę nəslá.izə ‘the cow won’t let herself be milked’ (all examples from Ramaškónys). In rare cases, when a difficult-to-pronounce consonant cluster is formed, the vowel i is retained, e.g.: prʌsivėža šaūsū pagalũ ir kurbl.na ‘he brings in dry sticks and burns them’; paskum pasistatėm nãũ.ju. pir.ku. ‘then we built a new house’; prʌbiská.ldãu smalẽku. in_cielōs žiʹmōs ‘I chop up smalėkai (pitch-rich splinters) to last the whole winter’ (all examples from Plikiai). There are instances in which the reflexive affix of a prefixed verb (most often with the negation ne-) occurs at the end, as in Slavic languages, e.g.: fėlūkas jilgaĩ. nəžãžinasi (cf. Belarusian не жэницца) bò jo˛mõtkai visos mer̃gos blõgos ‘Feliukas (a man’s name) does not get married (does not take a wife) for a long time, because all the girls are bad in his motkai (mother’s) opinion’ (Ramaškónys); gá.î pamegink tu_pàc, má.n gražei. nəpjáeunasi (cf. Belarusian не режацца) ‘maybe you try it yourself; it won’t cut cleanly for me’ (Ródūnia); matūo.ro taisíć nəbaigšù, šã.nden kàp_tai nəgalvójasi (cf. Belarusian не думаяца) ‘I won’t finish repairing the motor (engine); somehow I can’t think today’ (Ramaškónys). The influence of Belarusian can probably also explain one or another meaning of individual reflexive verb forms, which corresponds to the Belarusian meaning but no longer has the same meaning (or does not have quite the same meaning) as in Lithuanian, e.g.: rãgana asipikcino (cf. Belarusian закланаўілася) ir_ažūčeravójo jū.s ‘the witch got angry and bewitched them’ (from a tale, Nočia); vincus mani subarę, tai_aš kat_ra(s)siverkiau (cf. Belarusian расплакалася) ‘Vincas (a brother’s name) scolded me, and then I burst into tears’ (Ramaškónys); prazbūdo ‘woke up, i.e. awoke’, ká.nžojasi ‘bites, i.e. bites’ (said of a dog, cf. Belarusian кусаюцца), kẽ pasi ‘stings, i.e. burns’ (said of nettles, cf. Belarusian пячэцца) (Plikiai). From these and the examples given earlier, one can discern a tendency for more and more “copies” from the local Belarusian dialect to appear in the Lithuanian dialects under study. In other words, the word form is transferred unchanged into Lithuanian, while the Lithuanian word stem is first selected so as to correspond to the Belarusian one (for more on this, see Tuomienė 2006a: 80–86). 2.3. Other Significant Morphological and Derivational Features of Verb Tenses The morphological features of verb tenses are primarily associated with clear phonetic changes in endings, especially the loss of short vowels. This section draws attention to several further, more recent changes: 2.3.1. The endings of the first and second person plural in all tenses, and the final vowels in the third-person singular past frequentative forms of verbs with the suffixes -oti, -ėti, -(i)uoti, -(i)auti, are usually dropped, e.g.: á.udęm, bę̇gǫm, grę̇bęm, turę̇jom, vãžęf, žuvãvǫf and ažãj ‘entered, i.e. he/she entered’, galęį ‘was able, i.e. he/she was able’, nuvęį ‘went away, i.e. he/she went away’, vá.ikščoị ‘walked, i.e. he/she walked’. Nearly all Aukštaitians do this. It has been observed that in Varėnavas Straipsniai / Articles 95 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ relatively older-generation speakers (the oldest local people, aged 70–80 and older) also use longer forms alongside these, for example: cik su_šá.vọ gìrnom grūdus māleme ‘we ground the grain only with our own millstones’ (Ródūnia); ė́jome kǫlkožan ir_dǫvanai. žìrbọme ‘we went to the collective farm and worked for free’ (Plikiai); a.ji.tu. lietuvišku. laĩ.krašti. skai.tęte ‘and you read this Lithuanian newspaper’ (Ra-maškónys); anksčāu. galė́jo pasakìc ‘could say earlier’; lã.nkiškai cæ ni.kas næmokėjọ ‘no one here knew Polish’ (Stanišiai) (cf. LD 336, 341, 343, 353; LKA III 85, map no. 82, 87, 100; Leskaukaitė 2006: 58–59, etc.). As already mentioned, this is how they speak because they wish to speak “correctly” and “grammatically,” imitating Standard Lithuanian. Unlike the relatively younger speakers (only somewhat younger, aged 65–70), informants of this generation had time to learn to read and write Lithuanian in Lithuanian primary schools and reading rooms between the wars. Most read the Lithuanian press and fiction, watch Lithuanian television, and listen to radio broadcasts. Thus, they encounter Standard Lithuanian quite often, but cannot speak or write it fluently (for more details, see Tuomienė 2008: 38–41; 2010: 17–20). 2.3.2. There is another morphological feature of verb tenses: the use of endings from a different stem. For example, the third-person singular forms of the simple past of some disyllabic ā-stem verbs and their derivatives have ē-stem endings, e.g.: brọ́lis àplupę žì.vi. tadù iš_jọ.s pí.ne kã.šūs ‘my brother peeled, that is, stripped the bark, then wove baskets from it’ (Ramaškónys); žmọnà greĩ.ta prìbskutę bù.lbu. ir_pastã.tę vi.řc ‘my wife quickly peeled, that is, peeled, the potatoes and put them on to boil’ (Nočia); mã. mọ́.cina labaĩ. gražeĩ. sukñæs šùve ‘my mother sewed, that is, used to sew, dresses very beautifully’ (Asavà), in_ rañ.ku. sùpe tu. vaĩkã: li, pakõ.l ã.nas ažmìgo ‘she rocked that little child in her arms until he fell asleep’ (Nevėšiai). This feature is fairly widespread in dialects and is also preserved in the Varanavo local varieties under study (cf. LKA III 102, map no. 97; Leskauskaitė 2006: 59–60; 2009: 63). 2.3.3. The Varanavo local varieties have verb prefixes that are interesting in their form, functions, and origin. However, the lexical meaning of most prefixed verbs recorded in these varieties is purely Belarusian. To create this meaning in verbs that have a Lithuanian exterior, a prefix characteristic of Belarusian—usually a Belarusian one or a Lithuanian one corresponding to a Belarusian prefix—has been used (most likely, it is what gives the word its Belarusian meaning), along with various suffixes, most often Lithuanian ones. Here are some of the most frequent: a) the prefix ap-, generally used in verbs in the Varanavo local varieties, corresponds to Belarusian ap-, e.g.: tė́vas àparę lãu.ku., ėĩ.s mì.žù. sé.ć ‘father plowed the field; he will go sow barley’ (Ródūnia); susi.das apkir.po mani. ir_dá.r baŕ.zdu. àpskutę ‘the neighbor cut my hair and also shaved my beard, that is, shaved it off’ (Plikiai); ká.rve apė́.de visùs lapùs ‘the cow ate all the leaves’; apkabino jū. šcipreĩ. ir_pabučã.vo ‘he hugged her tightly and kissed her’ (Ramaškónys). However, there are instances when the prefix ap- is used 96 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje with the meaning of nu-, e.g.: tá.m gai.žu visàs plù(n)ksnas šùvà apróvė ‘the dog plucked all the feathers off that rooster’ (Tūsamonys), ici. ki.mo vaikái. óbuolus má.n aptrá.u-ki.s ‘these village children will strip the apples off for me’ (Ramaškónys). This meaning of the prefix is not characteristic of Lithuanian. It is most likely a morphological calque from local Belarusian (cf. Belarusian абадраць ‘to strip, tear off’, абарваць ‘to pluck off’); b) the prefix at- used in these local varieties corresponds to Belarusian at-, e.g.: atã:jo žebrõ.kas, daváu. jáe.m du_poutù ‘a beggar came; I gave him two eggs’ (Ramaškónys); atěkė.lâu vartùs, invažùr kit‘, acìemâu sá.ʋo dá.iktus ir_išejâu. iš_ti ‘I unhinged the gates; drive in’; ‘I got my things back and left there’ (Nevāšiai). However, many examples have been recorded in which at- is used with the Lithuanian-uncharacteristic meanings nu- or par-, e.g.: atkir.to sáu.su. šá.ku. (cf. Belarusian адрубаў сук) ‘he cut off a dry branch’ (Asavà); afkiñ.kę á.rklus ir_nùvvede klúonan (cf. Belarusian апроч каней) ‘he unharnessed the horses and led them to the threshing barn’ (Nočià); bró.lis cik_rób.to atvažãvo namõ (cf. Belarusian приехал до хаты) ‘my brother got home only in the morning’ (Plìkiai); c) the prefix ažu- / až- (Standard Lithuanian už-) is generally used to mark the completion of an action, e.g.: àžvėrtę gá.lvu. ir_pá.išo in_mani ‘he tilted his head back and looks at me’ (Stenišiai); vidù.-ži.ni. ká.rvi. visadù aždarāu. tvá.rtan ‘at noon I always shut the cow in the cowshed’ (Kargaudai); ažudirbāu. ró.sijoɣ næðãu.gi piniɣũ ‘I earned little money in Russia.’ Sometimes this prefix can also indicate the beginning of an action: ažu-sirgāu., tai_ci.lu. ži.mu. pragulė́ jau (cf. Belarusian захварэу) ‘I fell ill, so I spent the whole winter lying in bed’ (Ramaškónys); gir̃žu, vai.kas ažùverkę (cf. Belarusian заплакаў) ‘I hear the child start crying’ (Asavà). At times it is also used with the meanings of certain other prefixes, e.g.: asilá.ido sá.ulę (cf. Belarusian слониа зайшло) ‘the sun set’; asibai.de arkliñs (cf. Belarusian спалохауся конь) ‘the horse took fright.’ These latter meanings of the prefix až- (ažsi-) are most likely borrowed (cf. in the Gervėčiai and Zietela dialects: Grinaveckienė 1973: 226; Vidugiris 2004: 278); d) the Slavic prefix da- is very common in the Varanavo local varieties and is often used in place of the prefixes pa-, pri-, iš-, nu- (cf. Leskauskaitė 2006: 61–62; 2009: 66), e.g.: dasakík jáu_visku. (cf. Belarusian да(с)кажы) ‘tell / say everything already’; daė́jo ingi_dùru. ir_grùvo (cf. Belarusian дайшоў) ‘he got to the door and fell’; dašó:ko ir_ištá.ukę mani iš_vùpes (cf. Belarusian даскочылі) ‘they jumped over and pulled me out of the river’; dagi.vã̃.no dá.r ik_ìto kã.ro (cf. Belarusian дажылі) ‘they lived on until that (Second World) War’ (all examples from Ramaškónys); e) the prefix pa- expresses the complete ending of an action (usually a repeated one) in the past (or its possible completion in the future). In this case, here, as in many other dialects on the southeastern fringe of Lithuanian, following the Belarusian model, this prefix is also added to other prefixed verbs or is even repeated twice, e.g.: áni.s jáu. visi panumirb (cf. Belarusian павымірау-шы) ‘they have all died out by now’; žù.sis pajíždùvęs (cf. Belarusian павыдыхалі) ‘the geese died’, Straipsniai / Articles 97 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ the world (all the people) dispersed, everyone going their own way (cf. Belarusian паразыходзіціся) ‘the world (all the people) scattered in every direction (pa+raz+si+ėjo)’; they all came together, every single one (cf. Belarusian пазыходзі-ліся) ‘they all came together, without exception’ (all examples are from Plikiai) (cf. Vidugiris 2004: 275–276); f) In the Varanavo dialects, the prefix pri- is also used with the meanings of other prefixes (at-, pa-, ap-), probably as a borrowing, e.g.: I didn’t recognize you right away (cf. Belarusian я ни зразу прызнала цябе) ‘I did not recognize you immediately’ (Tūsamonys); I greeted everyone nicely (cf. Belarusian паприветствовала усіх) ‘I greeted everyone nicely’ (Asavà); both daughters are beautifully dressed (cf. Belarusian абедзве доч-ки прыадзетыя) ‘both daughters are beautifully dressed (adorned)’ (Ramaškónys); g) The verbs of the dialects under investigation also feature the Slavic prefix raz-, used with the meanings of the standard Lithuanian prefixes pa-, iš- and others, e.g.: our people (the locals) bought everything up (cf. Belarusian раскинули) ‘our people (the locals) bought everything’; they dismantled our barn and took it to the kolkhoz (cf. Belarusian разабралі) ‘they dismantled our barn and took it to the kolkhoz (collective farm)’; the cat ran and knocked over the basket (cf. Belarusian развернул) ‘the cat ran and tipped over the basket’ (Ramaškónys) (cf. Vidugiris 2004: 277–279). 2.4. Remnants of Non-finite Verb Forms Among the non-finite verb forms, the Varanavo dialects retain active and passive present and simple past participles, as well as half-participles. For example, active present participles: how many potatoes have rotted this year ‘how many potatoes have rotted this year’ (Pelesà); active simple past participles: and again the sister had come there ‘and again the sister was there, having arrived’ (Nočià); passive simple past participles: a man shot dead lay there for a long time ‘a man lay there for a long time, shot dead’ (Ramaškónys); my uncle, too, was taken to Siberia ‘my uncle, too, was taken to Siberia’ (Plikiai); half-participle: chasing two hares, you will catch none ‘chasing two hares, you will catch nothing’ (Pelesà) (cf. Leskauskaitė 2006: 63). A few forms of converbs with present and simple past meaning have been recorded in Pelesà, e.g.: they left while we were still asleep ‘they left while we were still asleep’; what are you doing there while it is raining ‘what are you doing there while it is raining’ (cf. LD 387) (Asavà). It cannot be ruled out that these instances occur under the influence of the standard language. No converb forms have been recorded in the other enclaves of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect. Nor were examples heard or recorded with past frequentative or future participle, half-participle, or converb forms. Necessity, obligation, and possibility are expressed by syntactic constructions nominative noun or pronoun + modal verb + infinitive, e.g.: the flax must be pulled, the buckwheat must be cut ‘the flax must be pulled, i.e. the flax plants pulled; the buckwheat must be cut’ (Ródūnia); men, I say, must put up new crosses ‘men, I say, new crosses must be erected’ (Tūsamonys); I think, it’s already 98 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje one can dig potatoes now, I think (I think), that it is already possible to dig potatoes (Ramaškónys); first the horse had to be pulled out of the bog, and only then the cart ‘first the horse, i.e. the horse, had to be pulled out of the bog, and then the cart, i.e. the cart’ (Piliakalnis). These old syntactic constructions (especially those with reikėti ‘to need’) have been well preserved by the Eastern and Southern Aukštaitians and by essentially all Lithuanian-speaking enclaves in Belarus (see Ambrazas 2006: 35–36, 331–332). Passive participles serving as the nominal part of a compound predicate agree in number and gender with the related nouns that function as subjects in the sentence, e.g.: your basket is beautifully woven ‘your basket is beautifully woven’ (Pelesà); these are my brother’s clogs, thinly carved ‘these are my brother’s clogs, thinly carved’ (Ramaškónys). However, more often neither the noun’s gender nor its number is taken into account, and general participle forms are used, e.g.: and why is your cellar opened ‘and why is your cellar open’, literally ‘opened’ (Stanišiai); in the middle of the house stands a zaslan, set up ‘in the middle of the house stands a zaslan (a type of bench), set up’ (Asavà); the teeth of the rake have already been made ‘the teeth of the rake have been made, i.e. prepared’ (Ramaškónys). This phenomenon is observed not only in the dialects of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect, but also in other Aukštaitian dialects, especially those near the border (see LD 384–385; Leskauskaitė 2006: 63 et al.). 3. GENERALIZATION 3.1. Sociolinguistic circumstances Unfavourable and difficult conditions for the Lithuanian language existed in the Varanãvo region for several centuries, but changes in the internal structure of the dialects cannot today be considered complete. In this small territory, separated from the core of the Lithuanian ethnographic area, one can observe different stages of what was once a uniform linguistic situation: from bilingualism, preserved only by the oldest inhabitants (the surroundings of Ramaškõnys, Ródūnia and Pelesõs), to the complete disappearance of the language (villages in the surroundings of Asavõ, Pãaradnė, Nočiõ and Nevãšiai), where only a few names for household objects are remembered. These seven dialects of Lithuanian islands in Belarus, although the Lithuanians have rapidly assimilated, have continued to change and are still changing quite consistently. 3.2. Preservation of archaic verb forms Prolonged contact with speakers of other languages and isolation encouraged the Varanãvo dialects to become increasingly conservative. This helped them preserve several layers of features: the contemporary traditional layer, consisting of the dialect’s principal phonetic and morphological characteristics, which took shape over the long centuries of dialect development, and a very faint layer, probably inherited from the distant past, of the Baltic tribal languages, which had taken shape— Straipsniai / Articles 99 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ over the long centuries of dialect development, and a very faint layer, probably inherited from the distant past, of the Baltic tribal languages: dual forms of verbs in the singular first and second persons of the subjunctive mood (bu.tá.u, bu.tá.i ‘I would be, you would be’; eitá.u, eitá.i ‘I would go, you would go’), with archaic stress preserved; remnants of athematic (consonant-stem) verbs in the present tense—mostly third-person singular forms (liẽkma ‘remains’; čẽ.usti ‘sneezes’; sniẽgt ‘it snows’); preserved present-tense forms of the na-stem class (mi.knù ‘I sleep’, mi.knì ‘you sleep’, mì.kna ‘he/she sleeps’), as well as first-person singular forms with the contaminative ending -mu (eimù, skìmu ‘I go, I pick’); the old final stress of third-person singular past-tense forms of reflexive verbs has been preserved (radõs ‘was found’; stõjõs ‘stood up’). 3.3. Innovative linguistic phenomena—the consequences of language contact As a result of continuous interaction with Slavic languages (chiefly with the local Belarusian dialect, and to a lesser extent with the local Polish and Russian languages), the Lithuanian dialects of Voranava have undergone complex structural changes. A clearly new and extensive layer of Slavic influence is readily discernible here, including parallel verb forms, semantic calques, and the like: non-finite verb forms are disappearing; in the dialects, the form yra, normally used in the third person, is occasionally used not only in the third person but also in other persons. The emergence of such a generalized suppletive third-person form is also encouraged by the local Belarusian language, whose present-tense paradigm has identical singular and plural forms—ёčbу ‘is’; the past frequentative tense, used to recount events that occurred often in the past, is expressed by adding the third-person form būdavo. This is one instance in which means of expression from Belarusian are treated as native and readily incorporated into Lithuanian; the reflexive affix of a prefixed verb (most often with ne-) occurs at the end, as in Slavic languages; the Belarusian meaning of the reflexive forms of certain verbs is adopted; a considerable number of verb prefixes are used with meanings foreign to Lithuanian: 1) the prefix ap- is also used with the meaning of nu-, characteristic of the local Belarusian language; 2) alongside its Lithuanian meaning, the prefix at- also has the meanings of nu- and par-, which are foreign to Lithuanian; 3) the prefix až- (ažsi-) can indicate the beginning of an action and can also carry meanings borrowed from certain other prefixes; 4) the Slavic prefix da- is often used instead of the prefixes pa-, pri-, iš-, nu-; 100 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archajiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje 5) following the Belarusian pattern, the prefix pa- is also added to other prefixed verbs or is even repeated twice; 6) the prefix pri- is used with the meanings of the borrowed prefixes at-, pa-, ap-; 7) the Slavic prefix raz- is used with the meanings of pa-, iš-, and other prefixes. LITERATURE AND SOURCES Ambrazas Vytautas 2006: Lietuvių kalbos istorinė sintaksė. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. DLKŽe – Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian: sixth (third electronic) edition. Editors: Stasys Keinys (editor-in-chief), Laimutis Bilkis, Jonas Paulauskas, Vytautas Vitkauskas. Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2006; online version, 2011. Available online: http://dz.lki.lt. DvŽ – Laima Grumadienė, Mikulėnienė Danguolė, Morkūnas Kazys, Vidugiris Aloyzas. Dictionary of the Dieveniškės Dialect 1. Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2005. Grinaveckienė Elena 1973: Kai kurios Gervėčių tarmės veiksmažodžio ypatybės. – Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 14, 221–229. Grinaveckienė Elena 1997: Izoliuotų lietuvių šnektų vertiniai etninėse Lietuvos žemėse Baltarusijoje. – Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 37, 185–195. Grumadienė Laima 2005: Kodų kaita lietuvių tarmėse. – Valoda–2006. Valoda dažadu kultūru kontekstā. Zinātnisko rakstu krājums XVI. Daugavpils: Saule, 42–48. Jaroslavienė Jurgita, Tuomienė Nijolė 2013: Lazūnų šnektos tekstai. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Kardelis Vytautas 2014: Lietuvių kalbos salos: probleminiai aspektai. – Lietuvių kalba 8. Interneto prieiga: www.lietuviukalba.lt. Kaukienė Audronė 1994: Lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžio istorija. Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla. Kaukienė Audronė 2002: Lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžio istorija II. Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla. Kaukienė Audronė, Pakalniškienė Dalia 2002: Veiksmažodžių likti, snigti, migti struktūra ir kilmė. – Vārds un tā pētīšanas aspekti. Rakstu krājums 6, 113–131. Liepāja. Kazlauskas Jonas 2000: Rinktiniai raštai 1, sud. Albertas Rosinas. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. Labov William 1963: The social motivation of a sound change. – Word 19, 207–309. LD – Zinkevičius Zigmas. Lietuvių dialektologija. Vilnius: Mintis, 1966. Straipsniai / Articles 101 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ Leskauskaitė Asta 2006: Kučiūnų krašto šnektos tekstai. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Leskauskaitė Asta 2009: Marcinkonių šnektos tekstai. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. LKA II – Atlas of the Lithuanian Language 2. Phonetics, ed. Kazys Morkūnas. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1982. LKA III – Atlas of the Lithuanian Language 3. Morphology, ed. Kazys Morkūnas. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1991. LKG II – Grammar of the Lithuanian Language 2. Morphology, editor-in-chief Kazys Ulvydas. Vilnius: Mintis, 1971. LKTCh – Bacevičiūtė Rima, Ivanauskienė Audra, Leskauskaitė Asta, Trumpa Edmundas. Anthology of Lithuanian Dialects. Vilnius: Publishing House of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2004. Markevičienė Žaneta 1999: Aukštaičių tarmių tekstai 1. Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla. Mikulėnienė Danguolė 2012: Dėl kalbos archaikos ir inovacijų santykio (Zietelos lietuvių šnektos duomenimis). – Lituanistica, t. 58. Nr. 1(87), 51–62. Vilnius: Lietuvos mokslų akademija. Otrębski Jan 1956: Gramatika języka litewskiego 3. (Nauka i Formach). Warszawa: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. Pakalniškienė Dalia 2004: Bendrieji baltų kalbų veiksmažodžiai. Morfologinė struktūra. – Vārds un tā pētīšanas aspekti. Rakstu krājums 8, 201–210. Liepāja. Palionis Jonas 1967: Lietuvių literatūrinė kalba XVI–XVII a. Vilnius: Mintis. Palionis Jonas 1979: Lietuvių literatūrinės kalbos istorija. Vilnius: Mokslas. Ragaišienė Vilija 2010: Linksniuojamųjų žodžių kirčiavimo variantai pietų aukštaičių ir rytų aukštaičių vilniškių tarmėse. Daktaro disertacija. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Stang Christian 1942: Das Slawische und baltische Verbum. Oslo, 172–173. Šukys Jonas 1960: Būdingesnės Ramaškonių šnektos ypatybės. – Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 3, 177—187. Tamulionienė Aureli̇ja 2013: Neapibrėžtą ypatybės kiekį žymintys būdvardžiai: priešdėlio po- vedinių daryba. – Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 68, 126–145. Trumpa Edmundas 2008: Pelesos šnektos fonemos ir jų variantai. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Tuomienė Nijolė 2006: Ramaškoniškių šnekos kodų kaita. – Kalbos kultūra 79. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos instituto leidykla, 161–172. 102 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Archa jiškosios ir inovacinės veiksmažodžio ypatybės Pietų aukštaičių patarmėje Baltarusijoje Tuomienė Nijolė 2006a: Periferiško lietuvi v iešių izlokšnų kalki. – Valoda – 2006. Valoda dažādu kultūru konteksta. Zināt nisko rakstu krājums XVI. Daugavpils Universitātes akademiskais apgads „Saule“, 2006., 80.–86.lpp. Tuomienė Nijolė 2008: Ramaš konių šnektos tekstai. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Tuomienė Nijolė 2010: Ramaš konių šnektos daiktavardis: sociolingvistinis tyrimas (= Opera linguistica Lithuanica 13). Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Tuomienė Nijolė 2010a: Dvibalsių ie, uo vienbalsinimo tendencijos periferinėse Varanavo šnektose. – Žmogus ir žodis 2(1). Vilnius: Vilniaus pedagoginis universitetas, 62–67. Tuomienė Nijolė 2010b: Pietų aukštaičių šnektos Baltarusijoje: kalbų sąveikos padariniai. – Respectus Philologicus 18(23), Kaunas, 223–234. Vidugiris Aloyzas 2004: Zietelos lietuvių šnekta. Vilnius: Presvika. Zinkevičius Zigmas 1987: Lietuvių kalbos istorija II. Iki pirmųjų raštų. Vilnius: Mintis. ZtT I – Vidugiris Aloyzas, Mikulienienė Danguolė. Texts of the Zietela Dialect 1. Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2005. Лабов Уильям 1975: О механизме языковых изменений. – Новое в лингвистике 7. Москва: Прогресс, 199–228. Archaic and Innovative Peculiarities of the Verb in the Southern Aukštaitian Sub-dialect in Belarus S U M M A R Y The article addresses two-fold peculiarities of verbs of the continuity of the Southern Aukštaitian sub-dialect in Belarus, Voranava district: archaic remains and innovative phenomena. Conjugation, formation and semantics of verbs from the sub-dialects of the boundary micro-areas of Southern Aukštaitian are reviewed in this perspective. The article follows the latest dialectological and sociolinguistic data. It reveals the variation of the use of archaic and innovative verb forms and identifies the direction of their change. Data are analysed at the apparent time. The current situation of language is recorded with local informants more and less fluent in Lithuanian. In other words, the paper aims to determine the peculiarities of verbs which are most stable and most prone to changes as the Lithuanian sub-dialect is generally declining. The material of sub-dialects from 7 small Lithuanian micro-areas analysed in the paper shows that with rapid denationalization of Lithuanians, the changes occurring in Lithuanian have been rather consistent. The small territory, separated from the stem of the Lithuanian ethnographic Straipsniai / Articles 103 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ The region bears witness to different stages of what was once the same linguistic situation: from bilingualism preserved by the oldest residents (the environs of Ramashkantsy, Radun’ and Pelyasa) to the complete extinction of the language (villages in the environs of Asava, Paharodna, Nacha and Niavošy). A long-term foreign environment and isolation led to increased conservation of Voranava sub-dialects. It helped them to maintain several layers of linguistic peculiarities. First and foremost, the contemporary traditional layer of peculiarities made of the main phonetic and morphological features of the sub-dialect that formed over long centuries of development of sub-dialects: a) two-stem 1st and 2nd person singular forms of verbs in the conditional mood with more archaic accentuation; b) remains of present tense athematic (consonantal) verbs (singular 3rd person forms); c) na-stem present tense forms and singular 1st person forms with a contaminated ending –mu preserved; d) the old ending accentuation of the 3rd person past tense forms of reflexive verbs maintained. Due to continuous interaction with Slavic languages, the Lithuanian sub-dialects of Voranava underwent complex structural changes. A clearly new and numerous Slavic cover can easily be identified: a) the growing use of contiguous verbal forms as well as semantic loan translations is recorded; b) non-conjugated forms of verbs tend to decline; c) the form yra (is) usually used in the 3rd person acquires the forms of other persons in sub-dialects; c) past iterative tense when repetitive events in the past are told is expressed by adding a 3rd person form būdavo (used to be); d) as in Slavic languages, the affix of the reflexive form of prefixal verbs is often at the end; the Belarusian meaning of reflexive forms of individual verbs is intercepted; e) a number of verbal prefixes are used in the meaning foreign to Lithuanian. Received on May 16, 2014. NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language 5 Petro Vileišio St., LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] [email protected] 104 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX