Algirdas Sabaliauskas. „Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m.“

WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG T h e P e n n s y l v a n i a S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y Fields of research: Indo-European studies, Baltic, especially Old Prussian, Slavic languages. Algirdas Sabaliauskas LIETUVIŲ KALBOS TYRINĖJIMO ISTORIJA: 1980–2010 M. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2012, 766 p. ISBN 978-609-411-084-91 In the foreword (p. 11) the author writes that this book is a continuation of his earlier books Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: iki 1940 m. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1979 („The history of the research on the Lithuanian language until 1940“) and Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1940–1980 m. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1982 („The history of the research on the Lithuanian language from 1940 to 1980“). As before he considers investigations in Lithuania and those outside of Lithuania’s borders in separate sections. Sabaliauskas begins with a chapter on the large Academy Dictionary (Lietuvių kalbos žodynas), which, in his opinion, is the most important accomplishment of Lithuanian philology (p. 15). This had its beginning in 1902 when the most distinguished investigator of Lithuanian lexicology, Kazimieras Būga, began to prepare the cards from which this dictionary of the Lithuanian Language has its origin. It is accessible online at www.lkz.lt. Although the chapters in this book are not numbered by the author the second chapter is devoted to other lexicographical works (Kiti leksikografijos darbai). In 1993 under the editorship of Stasys Keinys the third edition of the one-volume Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas „Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian“ was published. Sabaliauskas also mentions Laima Grumadienė’s and Vida Žilinskienė’s frequency dictionaries published in 1997 with words in order of decreasing frequency and published in 1998 in alphabetical order. In this chapter Sabaliauskas discusses numerous bilingual dictionaries, all having the second language as a European 1 I should like to thank herewith Prof. Virginija Vasiliauskienė for reading an earlier version of this review and making valuable suggestions. Recenzijos / Reviews 153 WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG language except for Dalia Švambarytė’s Japanese–Lithuanian dictionary (Japonų–lietuvių kalbų hieroglifų žodynas) (p. 32). Chapter 3 (p. 33) describes the history of Lithuanian work on terminology. In 1991 a special terminological division was established in the Institute of Lithuanian Language (Lietuvių kalbos institutas). This division was first headed by Kazimieras Gaivenis and in 2001 the headship passed to Albina Auksoriūtė. In 1994 primarily at the initiative of Stasys Keinys the terminological section began to publish a journal Terminologija. The number and variety of specialized dictionaries is truly amazing. Just sampling the latter Sabaliauskas fills two pages (36–37) with the names of authors and titles beginning with Antanas Buračas’ Anglų–lietuvių kalbų ekonomikos žodynas (English–Lithuanian Economics Dictionary) and ending with Mečislovas Žalakevičius and Irena Žalakevičienė’s Paukščių pavadinimų žodynas (Dictionary of Bird Names). Chapter 4 is devoted to Academic Lithuanian language grammars (p. 38–43). The Lietuvių kalbos gramatika (Vilnius, 1965–1976, I–III) edited by Kazys Ulvydas remains the most exhaustive description of the grammatical structure of the Lithuanian language. The Грамматика литовского языка (Вильнюс: Мокслас, 1985) edited by Vytautas Ambrazas was not just a later version of the earlier three-volume work mentioned above but took into consideration more recent phonological, morphological and syntactical developments. The Lithuanian version appeared in 1994; 2nd ed. 1996; 3rd ed. 1997; 4th ed. 2005. The English edition appeared in 1997 (p. 40). At the Lithuanian Language Institute a group of linguists directed by Axel Holvoet has begun to prepare a new grammar of Lithuanian. According to the new authors, the fundamental theories of twentieth century linguistics – structural, generative and cognitive – have given to grammatical theory many valuable ideas which at the beginning of the new millennium no grammatical description can afford to ignore. One can get an idea of these researches from the four volumes of works on Lithuanian grammar edited by Axel Holvoet and others (p. 42). The fourth chapter takes up the Lithuanian dialect atlas, dialect texts, dictionaries and descriptions (p. 44). At the Lithuanian Language Institute work on the Lietuvių kalbos atlasas was continued. In 1982 the second volume of this work, devoted to phonetics was published. This volume has 112 maps each of which shows two or three phonetic features. The third volume, devoted to morphology, appeared in 1994, although the official date is 1991 (p. 46). In 1995 the dialectologists of the Lithuanian Language Institute undertook in common with specialists in information technology the creation of a web-site on which a part of Zigmas Zinkevičius’ Lietuvių kalbos dialektologija was published. In the year 2000 with the help of UNESCO financing a compact disk, Volume 1 of Lithuanian dialects. Multimedia Dictionary was published (p. 49). 154 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVIII Algirdas Sabaliauskas Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m. In the last few years a number of individual dialect texts have been published by Vladas Grinaveckis, Žaneta Urbavičiūtė-Markevičienė, Elena Grinaveckienė, Aleksas Girdenis, Danguolė Mikulėnienė, and many others (p. 50). Sabaliauskas describes in detail the problems of recording the language of those speaking the dying dialects of Lithuanian. Sabaliauskas (chapter 6) writes that the most important work of recent decades in the field of onomastics is the Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas „Dictionary of Lithuanian family names“ the first volume of which (A–K) appeared in 1985 and the second volume (L–Ž) in 1989 (p. 63). The basis of this dictionary is a file of names in the Lithuanian language institute. The authors divided Lithuania into about 280 points the centers of which are larger inhabited places. The number of families with this or that name is shown. It is interesting to note that only about 21 per cent of Lithuanian surnames are of Baltic origin, about eight per cent are of German origin and 71 per cent are of Slavic origin or names coming through Slavic. Mention should also be made of Kazys Kuzavinis’ and Bronys Savukynas’ Lietuvių vardų kilmės žodynas (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1987) devoted to the origin of Lithuanian given names (p. 65). The Lietuvos vietovardžių žodynas „Dictionary of Lithuanian Place Names“; (Vol. I, 2008) is estimated to reach a total of ten volumes in all (p. 66). Sabaliauskas writes that from the first volume one gets the impression that the most abundant layer of place names is connected with names of trees: alksnis ‘alder tree’, ąžuolas ‘oak’, beržas ‘birch tree’ (p. 67). Brief biographies of distinguished Lithuanian linguists and non-Lithuanian linguists working in Lithuania (žymesnieji tyrinėtojai) occupy pages 74–355. Just a list of the names of these distinguished linguists (most of whom, if not all are well known to Balticists) would take several pages and it wouldn’t add much to this review. I have counted 73 names in the table of contents. This does not include Sergejus Temčinas to whom several paragraphs are devoted on p. 355, but who does not figure in the table of contents. The first author mentioned is Juozas Senkus (1907–1970) to whom only a single paragraph is dedicated. I should note, however, that these brief biographical notes give ample references to longer articles where more information can be located. In particular there are references to Sabaliauskas’ earlier work, Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1940–1980, Vol. II, Vilnius, 1982, p. 74, where most of those mentioned in the book under review have already been described. Those to whom shorter articles are devoted are, it seems to me, those who have accomplished most before 1980. Thus for Juozas Senkus (1907–1970) and Jonas Kruopas (1908–1975) only posthumous editions of their work are mentioned, since their earlier work was already described in Vol. II of this series. Some scholars such as Rǐčardas Mironas to whom an ar- Recenzijos / Reviews 155 WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG ticle more than a page in length (p. 48–49) is devoted in Vol. II of the series is only casually mentioned in Vol. III (once each on p. 197, 198 and 269 in connection with some other scholar). Longer articles are devoted to those whose work falls primarily into the thirty-year period 1980–2010. Thus, for example, more than two pages (75–77) are devoted to Kazys Ulvydas. Only in the first article in (Vol. II, p. 49), do we learn that he was born in 1910 and only in the second article (Vol. III, p. 75) do we learn that he died in 1996. Only one page (p. 79) is devoted to Jonas Kazlauskas whom I remember well until this day, although the last time I saw him was in 1970 (more than forty years ago). I remember he met me at the Vilnius airport and while waiting for the street-car to take us into Vilnius, he began to apologize to me for not coming to lecture at Penn State where we had invited him. I told him that I knew about this and I handed him the xerox copy of the answer (in Russian) we had gotten from the Soviet authorities in Moscow according to which he was too busy with his duties at the University of Vilnius to come to Penn State. Kazlauskas looked at the xerox and said that this was the first time that he had seen the letter. I couldn’t think of the Lithuanian word for nonsense so I used the Russian word ерунда which Kazlauskas quickly corrected for me into niekai. I learned in Sabaliauskas’ article for the first time that in Vilnius there is a street named after Kazlauskas. Sabaliauskas mentions here the book Baltistikos ąžuolas. Jono Kazlausko gyvenimas ir darbai („The oak of Baltic studies: the life and work of Jonas Kazlauskas“) published by the University of Vilnius and the Birštonas’ Municipality. This latter book has many interesting articles, although one might disagree with Aleksas Girdenis’ and Albertas Rosinas’ phrase (p. 29): Gal per aklai sekdamas Romanu Jakobsonu, Kazlauskas manė, kad baltų priegaidės kontrastavo kaip aukštas ir žemas tonas... („Perhaps too blindly following Jakobson, Kazlauskas thought that the Baltic intonations contrasted as high and low tones...“) I can’t imagine that Kazlauskas would have followed anybody blindly. A section entitled Žymesnieji tyrinėtojai („The better-known investigators“) (p. 74–355) has information about 73 well-known scholars working in Lithuania. Among the better known scholars is Giedrius Subačius who has produced good work in many linguistic fields, but in the United States probably best known for his work on the Lithuanian aspects of the famous American novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The following section entitled Kiti tyrinėjimai („Other investigations“) (p. 356–394) is divided up into Lietuvių kalbos istorija („History of the Lithuanian language“) (p. 356–374), Dabartinė kalba („The contemporary language“) (p. 375–387), Gretinamoji kalbotyra („Contrastive analysis of languages“) (p. 387–390), Periodiniai leidiniai. Bibliografija. Enciklopediniai leidiniai (Periodical publications. Bibliography. Encyclopedia publications“) (p. 391–394). 156 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVIII Algirdas Sabaliauskas Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m. The publications about the history of the Lithuanian language are mainly those of younger persons, whose names were not included in the aforementioned biographies. Here are mentioned, e. g., Ona Aleknavičienė’s works on Jonas Bretkūnas’ Postilė; Virginija Vasiliauskienė’s works on the placement of the genitive attribute in Old Lithuanian, etc. Sabaliauskas writes that in recent decades the most important work devoted to the problems of the normalization of Lithuanian is Rita Miliūnaitė’s Lietuvių kalbos gramatikos norminimo pagrindai (Vilnius, 2003). Most of the work in contrastive linguistics is concerned with Lithuanian and English, although some is directed to German and Russian. Among the outstanding specialists in English are Lionginas Pažūsis and Albertas Steponavičius to whose perfect command of English I can personally testify. There is a brief description of the journal Baltistica with the editors Jonas Kazlauskas (1965–1970), Vytautas Mažiulis (1970–1996) and Bonifacas Stundžia (1996–present). Also mentioned are (p. 391) Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai the name of which was changed to Acta Linguistica Lithuanica in 1999 and which is published (under the editorship of the excellent modern syntactician Axel Holvoet; Grasil da Blažienė from 2010) by the Lithuanian Language Institute. Also mentioned is Archivum Lithuanicum devoted primarily to problems of old Lithuanian writings (p. 393). In 1999 the Lietuvių kalbos enciklopedija the goal of which was to be a generalizing work not only about Lithuanian, but also about Baltic linguistics, was published by the Mokslo ir enciklopedijų institutas. P. 397 to 728 are devoted to the investigation of Baltic languages in foreign countries. This begins with a study of the activities of emigré Lithuanians during Soviet times. Most of these ended up in the United States where I knew them either very well or through meetings and correspondence. Sabaliauskas begins this with a few pages about Pranas Skardžius who was extraordinarily productive even though he never had an academic appointment in the United States. Although I have no direct knowledge of this, I was told by friends that Skardžius had indeed received an offer of employment from Alfred Senn to come to the University of Pennsylvania, but that Skardžius refused apparently because of some earlier dispute with Senn in Lithuania. For me it was most interesting to read details about the life of my professor Antanas Salys in Europe prior to his arrival in the United States. For example, I had not known that atrijos Ragana felt deeply insulted when it was suggested that the then young student Salys correct the language of her translation (p. 411). At the University of Pennsylvania under the tutelage of Salys I made my first acquaintance with a Baltic language, viz. in 1951 during the second semester of my first year of graduate school I began the study of Old Prussian using the text-book prepared by Jānis Endzelīns, Altpreussische Grammatik. Recenzijos / Reviews 157 W I L L I A M R . S C H M A L S T I E G In his discussion of Leonardas Dambriūnas (p. 429–435) Sabaliauskas mentions Dambriūnas’, Antanas Klimas’, and my jointly authored An Introduction to Modern Lithuanian. A curious fact is that personally I only met Dambriūnas in person after our joint venture was published. Our collaboration was carried out entirely by U. S. mail (before the days of the internet). The book was printed by the Franciscan Fathers in Brooklyn, New York, and only with the help of a generous financial grant from Rt. Rev. Msgr. J. A. Karalius. None of us authors expected the book to be so popular and none of us expected any financial remuneration. We were just happy that the Franciscan Fathers would publish the book. And I only learned by chance that the book had been reprinted by the Hyperion Press. On looking at the internet one day I saw my name as the co-author of a book on Lithuanian grammar. I was naturally interested to learn the name of this book which I hadn’t heard of before and a further search revealed to me that the title was Beginner’s Lithuanian. Neither of us surviving authors, Klimas or myself have any idea as to the number of volumes finally sold. Sabaliauskas gives a nice description of Klimas’ many contributions to Baltic studies particularly as long time editor of Lituanus. The investigation of the Lithuanian language in foreign countries is the topic of the last part of the book (p. 463–728). The first country studied is, perhaps naturally, Latvia and the first person to be studied was Reinis Bertulis who wrote his dissertation under the direction of Vincas Urbutis on the semantic relationships of Latvian and Lithuanian nouns. I remember Bertulis as a pleasant person who showed me the sights of Riga many years ago. Another important Latvian linguist is Pēteris Vanags (p. 468–471) who has distinguished himself in a number of branches of Baltic morphology. As the editor of the journal Baltu filoloģija since 1996 he has transformed the periodical into an internationally recognized journal for Baltic linguistics. The first person studied in the section on Russia (p. 482–535) is Vladimir Toporov, whom Sabaliauskas characterizes (absolutely correctly in my opinion) as a scholar of extraordinarily broad interests. His publications range from Slavic literature (e. g., Странный Тургенев („The Strange Turgenev“) to classics, e. g., Эней – человек судьбы („Aeneas – man of destiny“) to Sanskrit Древне-индийская драма шудраки глиняная повозка („The Old Indic drama of Shudraka, the little clay cart“). Of his many achievements in the Baltic field Toporov’s Old Prussian Dictionary, although regrettably never completed is probably the most important. Sabaliauskas points out that Toporov (p. 487) had connected the name of Dostoevsky’s hero of The Double, viz. голядкин with the name of the Baltic people galindai. I must confess that I learned about this connection for the first time here. Sabaliauskas continues with a description of Toporov’s friend and collaborator, Vjacheslav Ivanov, also a brilliant scholar of wide interests and originality. Saba- 158 A c t a L i n g u i s t i c a L i t h u a n i c a L X V I I I Algirdas Sabaliauskas Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m. liauskas mentions that Ivanov had worked at the University of Moscow between 1954 and 1958, but had been fired from the university because of inappropriate political and social views. I personally remember that in the spring of 1973 Ivanov showed me this incredible (for an American) document, some details of which I remember to this day. In this document Ivanov was accused of accepting western structural linguistics at a conference in Norway, refusing to sign a document condemning Boris Pasternak’s Doktor Zhivago and arranging a meeting between Roman Jakobson and Boris Pasternak at Peredelkino. I think it would be of great interest for the history of linguistics for Ivanov to allow this document to be published. Other important Russian contributors to Baltic studies include Oleg Trubačëv (p. 504), known primarily for his work on the hydronyms of the Dnepr basin; Tatjana Bulygina (p. 509), Jurij Stepanov (p. 510), known among other things for their jointly authored Theory of Grammar and Grammatical Theory, Jurij Otkupščikov, who in addition to attempting to decipher the Phaistos Disk, did a great deal in the field of Baltic and Slavic relationships (p. 513); Vladimir Dybo, a brilliant specialist in Balto-Slavic accentology (p. 518); Alexander Anikin, an excellent specialist in Indo-European semantic studies (p. 521), Aleksej Andronov, known primarily for the joint publication (with Lidija Leikuma) of Siberian Latvian Songs; (p. 524), Marija Zavjalova, among other things author of an article about Prosper Merimee’s short story Lokis (lokys) („The Bear“) (p. 529). The only modern Ukrainian scholar in the Baltic field was the now sadly deceased Anatolij Nepokupnyj (p. 531), whom I met for the first time at the 2nd All-Union Congress of Baltists in Vilnius in 1970. My review of his book Areal’nye Aspekty Balto-Slavjanskix Jazykovyx Otno enij (Kiev, 1964) had appeared in Vol. XI (1968) of the International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics (p. 173–176) and he had apparently liked it. I was impressed that he had memorized a few lines which he repeated to me in English (although for the most part then and at future meetings we communicated with each other in Lithuanian). Later at the Colloquium Pruthenicum Secundum organized by Wojciech Smoczyński I had occasion to sit next to Nepokupnyj who, at that time, suggested to me that I update my book Studies in Old Prussian: A Critical Review of the Relevant Literature in the Field since 1945 (University Park & London, 1976). Nepokupnyj distinguished himself as an excellent specialist in etymology. I personally am not able to judge the quality of Ukrainian poetry, but according to the opinion of those who can Nepokupnyi was a good poet also (p. 531). Sabaliauskas begins the section on Poland with Wojciech Smoczyński who is characterized as the most active Polish Balticist. I would certainly agree with this and also characterize him as one of the most original and innovative specialists in the Baltic field, even though I might often disagree with him. In recent years he Recenzijos / Reviews 159 WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG has applied the laryngeal theory to a number of Baltic and Slavic phenomena. In my youth I was attracted to this theory and in fact my very first published article, „The Phoneme /v/ in Slavic Verbal Suffixes“, Word, 12, 1956 [12. 255–259] was an attempt to explain the -v- in the Slavic suffix -vati as deriving from the third (labialized) laryngeal *Hw as proposed by André Martinet in his article „Non-Aphonic O-Vocalism in Indo-European“, Word, 1953 [9.254]. Unfortunately with old age comes the skepticism concerning one’s youthful beliefs. In fact I remember that after I had explained the laryngeal theory to a class one of my students said he thought the Indo-European laryngeal theory had the attributes of a deus ex machina. In any case I think that both Smoczyński and his compatriot Witold Mańczak, although they have completely different views, are to be admired for their originality of thought and in many cases refusal to go along with the prevailing paradigm. Sabaliauskas also mentions the contributions of Leszek Bednarczuk (p. 546–548), Michał Kondratiuk, Michał Hasiuk, Czesław Kudzinowski, Roman and Danuta Roszko, Norbert Ostrowski, and Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak. Among the important Czech authors mentioned are Adolf Erhart, author of important contributions on the Indo-European verbal system (p. 562) and Václav Blažek, author of important contributions to Baltic lexicography. Sabaliauskas also mentions the famous Jiří Marvan, who has held academic positions on at least three continents. His last academic appointment in North America was at our Pennsylvania State University. Unfortunately when the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia offered him a position, our academic administration could not find enough money in the budget to keep Marvan (p. 564) here at Penn Sate. The most important Bulgarian specialist occupying himself with Baltic linguistics was undoubtedly Ivan Duridanov, author of Die Beziehungen des Baltischen zu den alten Balkansprachen – Indogermanisch, Slawisch und Baltisch (Munich, 1992). The most important Hungarian contributor to Baltic studies is Endre Bojtáru, author of the book Foreword to the Past. A Cultural History of the Baltic People (Budapest, 1999) (p. 571). Sabaliauskas begins his chapter on German Balticists with Rainer Eckert who began his professional career at the linguistic division of the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic. When the latter organizations collapsed Eckert moved his scientific endeavors to the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald (p. 572) where he was employed until his retirement in 1996. Eckert is a wide-ranging scholar having published important articles on the i-stem nouns to Baltic phraseology. The next author mentioned is Gertrud Bense, who is interested primarily in the history of Lithuanian writing in Lithuania Minor (p. 582). One of the best specialists in European hydronomy was Wolfgang Paul Schmid (p. 583) of the University of Göttingen. In 1970 he and I were the only participants from non-Communist countries at the Second All-Union Congress on Baltic Linguistics in Vil- 160 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVIII Algirdas Sabaliauskas Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m. nius. We had had some scholarly disagreements and when Jonas Kazlauskas met me at the Vilnius airport I mentioned this to him. Kazlauskas said that he was aware of the disagreement, but not to worry because Schmid was, in Kazlauskas’ words a labai linksmas žmogus. I found Kazlauskas’ description completely accurate and neither of us foreign scholars ever mentioned our disagreement to each other. I had the good fortune to spend the academic year 1978–1979 at the University of Freiburg (i. Br.) the same academic institution where an important and creative Balt icist, viz. Alfred Bammesberger (p. 588) was working at that time, although somewhat later he moved to Eichstätt. Bammesberger is also an outstanding specialist in English (who by the way speaks perfect English, as I can attest) and has suggested a connection between Lithuanian (jie) yra and English are. According to Sabaliauskas (p. 591), Friedrich Scholz is an exceptionally broad-ranging scholar who has produced many valuable publications about Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian literature in addition (along with his student Jochen D. Range) to producing authoritative editions of Bretkūnas’ Bible translations. Sabaliauskas also mentions many other German scholars who have contributed to Baltic studies. Probably the most productive contemporary Finnish Balticist is Kari Liukkonen, who draws many completely credible parallels between the Baltic languages and the Finnic languages. The only question, still unsolved in my view, is whether these are borrowed resemblances or whether they reflect a common Finno-Ugric and Indo-European inheritance (p. 616). The Estonian linguist Lembit Vaba has worked extensively on Latvian borrowings in Estonian (p. 622). The Swedish scholar, Lars Gunnar Larsson of the University of Uppsala has worked extensively on Baltic borrowings in Baltic Finnic languages and Torbjörn K. Nilsson has also shown considerable interest in the relationships of the Baltic and Finnic languages. The recently sadly deceased (January 9, 1999) Terje Mathiassen probably occupies first place among the contemporary Norwegian linguists. In addition to important theoretical publications he is known for his pedagogical works A Short Grammar of Lithuanian (Columbus, Ohio, 1996) and A Short Grammar of Latvian (Columbus, Ohio, 1997). His excellent text-book Old Prussian (Oslo, 2010) was published post-humously thanks to the help of the editor John Ole Askedal, the wife of the deceased author Ann-Marie Mathiassen, Peter Locher and others (p. 631). Probably the next most important Norwegian Balticist is Helge Dagfinn Rinholm, who studied at Indiana University in the United States, where he presented his dissertation Toward the Semantic Features of Lithuanian Prepositions and Preverbs: An Invariant Component Analysis (Indiana University, 1980). In recent times Denmark (p. 634) has furnished Baltic studies with the two scholars Jens Elmegård Rasmussen and Thomas Olander, both of whom have made contributions Recenzijos / Reviews 161 WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG to Balto-Slavic accentual studies. The only Icelandic scholar to occupy himself seriously with Baltic studies is Jörundur Hilmarsson (1946–1992) who also received excellent training in Tocharian under the tutelage of the famous specialist, Werner Winter at the University of Kiel (p. 637). In recent years Holland has furnished us with the brilliant Frederick Kortlandt and his talented student Rick Derksen both of whom have contributed greatly to the study of Baltic accentuation (p. 645). Having noted the distinguished history of Baltic studies in Italy as represented by such scholars as Giacomo Devoto, Carlo Alberto Mastrelli, Sabaliauskas notes that although there are other strong scholars such as Alessandro Parenti who has worked on the bilingual Italian–Lithuanian dictionary (Dizionario italiano–lituano, lituano–italiano. Vallardi, 1994) and written extensively on the Baltic definite adjective (p. 677–678) at present the most active are Maria Teresa Ademollo Gagliano, Guido Michelini and Pietro Umberto Dini. Ademollo Gagliano is primarily concerned with vocabulary studies. Although Michelini has distinguished himself in a number of areas I have found most impressive his 1981 monograph La linguistica testuale e l’indoeuropeo: il passivo, Brescia: Editrice La Scuola. He wrote here (p. 54): „Costruzioni di questo tipo [i. e., jo būta – WRS] sono, piú probabilmente, dovute ad ‘analogia’ sulle costruzioni passive corrispondente ad attive con verbo ‘transitivo’“. I had previously assumed, as do others, that these were originally possessive constructions, but Michelini’s monograph convinced me that this commonly held notion is incorrect. The third extremely productive Italian scholar mentioned, Pietro Umberto Dini is vastly erudite. It appears to me that his Le lingue baltiche (Florence, 1997) with published translations in Latvian, Lithuanian (2000) and Russian (2002) and an English translation soon to appear, is the best general introduction to the Baltic languages for foreign students. Dini’s recent book ALILETOESCVR: linguistica baltica delle origini; teorie e contesti linguistici nel Cinquecento (Livorno, Books & Co., 2010) maintains that the early history of Baltic linguistics has hardly been investigated and that one finds references to Baltic languages in unexpected places. Indeed, the title of this book, Aliletoescvr, was coined by Leonhard Thurneysser in his Onomasticum (1583) in order to show the linguistic variety of the Eastern Baltic coast. The word stands for 1. Livonian (Liuiβch); 2. Lettish (Letiβch); 3. Estonian (Oeβ[t]niβch); 4. Curonian (Curiβch). Only the Baltic language Prussian is missing. The most productive contemporary French Balticist is undoubtedly Daniel Petit (p. 683), also a trained classicist, who has made significant contributions to Baltic linguistics, particularly in the fields of verb morphology and ablaut. A worthy continuator of the Swiss tradition of Alfred Senn, Max Niedermann and Ferdinand de Saussure is Jan Peter Locher who, with his students Simon Christen, 162 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVIII Algirdas Sabaliauskas Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m. Bernhard Wälchli and Markus Roduner have made contributions in various fields of Baltic linguistics (p. 690). The Spanish scholar (p. 694) Francisco Villar makes use of Lithuanian data in his works on Indo-European linguistics and Miguel Villanueva Svensson has occupied himself mostly with problems of the history of the Baltic verb. The two Israeli scholars interested in Baltic Studies are Nedda Kameneckaitė and Lea Sawicki, the latter of whom studied Lithuanian with me at Penn State for a semester during Soviet times when the logical choice of Lithuania was excluded for an émigrée (p. 695). Although primarily active as a Celticist Eric Hamp has contributed more to Baltic studies than the average Balticis (p. 704). Sabaliauskas classes Benjamin Jēgers as an American Balticist, since most of his professional life was spent in the United States where he taught the German language and literature in Kentucky and Illinois. He and I prepared the English edition of Jānis Endzelīns’ Baltu valodu skaņas un formas. Another American Balticist of Latvian origin was Valdis Zeps, who authored both Latvian and Finnic linguistic converences (The Hague, 1962) and The place names of Latgala (Madison, 1984). Zeps along with Stephen C. McCluskey invited me to participate in the first publication of the Basel epigram (General Linguistics 1975 (15: 159–165). My friend David Robinson, like me, a former student of Alfred Senn and Antanas Salys is the author of Lithuanian Reverse Dictionary, Ohio, 1976, the first of its kind ever published. A student of Eric Hamp and Bill Darden (a University of Chicago professor interested in Baltic accentology), Steven Young, among other things has made significant contributions to the study of Baltic accentuation. Early on as an exchange student at the University of Vilnius in 1981–1982 Young noticed that the stress placement actually occurring in everyday usage did not always correspond with the norms established in the grammars, a fact which led him to publish his doctoral dissertation The prosodic structure of Lithuanian (New York, London 1991). The University of California professor of Slavic languages, Henning Andersen has made many significant contributions to Baltic studies. One of the first was undoubtedly his paper The dative of subordination in Baltic and Slavic read at the conference on Baltic linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University in 1968 and then published (p. 1–9 in the volume Baltic Linguistics, edited by Thomas F. Magner and William R. Schmalstieg (1970, University Park and London, The Pennsylvania State University Press). Jules Levin wrote his Berkeley dissertation entitled The Slavic Element in the Old Prussian Elbing Vocabulary in Old Prussian (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1974) and has contributed many significant articles since that time. It is only in recent years that Japanese linguists have become interested in the Baltic languages (p. 721) and Sabaliauskas writes that the first and most important Recenzijos / Reviews 163 WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG Japanese specialist in Lithuanian studies is Ikuo Murata who has popularized Lithuanian literature by translating much into Japanese, even including the book of the former president Valdas Adamkus Likimo vardas – Lietuva. The Kobe University of Foreign Studies’ Professor Toshikazu Inoue has published many valuable studies of Old Prussian and Latvian, e. g., Латышский перевод лютеранского малого катехизиса 1586 года, Kobe 2002. Eiko Sakurai is the author of the first pedagogical grammar of Lithuanian in the Japanese language. The most important Japanese specialist in Latvian is probably Kendzi Tanaka who studied in Stockholm and translated into Japanese Velta Rūķe-Draviņa’s The standardization process in Latvian – 16th century to the present (Stockholm 1977). Australia’s foremost Balticist is undoubtedly Trevor Fennell, who has specialized primarily in Latvian. In 1980 Fennell and the Latvian born Henry Gelsen published A grammar of modern Latvian (The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton). Fennell has also produced studies of many Old Latvian literary monuments, e. g., Adolphi’s Latvian grammar (Melbourne 1993), Lettico-Germanicum 1–2 (Riga 2001), etc. In sum this book is too lengthy and packed with information for such a superficial review as this one. I am extremely impressed by the author’s erudition and his ability to compress significant amounts of information into a few paragraphs. He has written a path-breaking and exciting book and is to be congratulated on that. Įteikta 2013 m. gegužės 31 d. WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pa. 16802 [email protected] 164 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVIII