Juozas Aleksandravičius. „Kretingos tarmės žodynas“

ANTANAS BALAŠAITIS Research areas: lexicography, language culture, terminology. Juozas Aleksandravičius DICTIONARY OF THE KRETINGA DIALECT Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2011, 512 p. ISBN 978-609-411-072-6 We should be pleased by the ambitions and work of Lithuanian dialectologists. In 2011, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language published no fewer than two dialect dictionaries: the second volume (608 pp.) of the Dictionary of the Dieveniškės Dialect, prepared by linguists at the institute Danguolė Mikulėnienė, Kazio Morkūnas, and Aloyzo Vidugiris, and Juozas Aleksandravičius’s Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect. The impetus for such dictionaries came from the attention that University of Vilnius lecturers began paying in the postwar years (from 1949 onward) to collecting data on Lithuanian dialects. The sources for this data were students of Lithuanian studies at the university who spoke various dialects and were encouraged to submit descriptions of their native dialects as diploma theses. From these (more than 60), the university’s associate professor at the time, Zigmas Zinkevičius, prepared a comprehensive monograph on Lithuanian dialects, Lithuanian Dialectology (1966), with 75 maps of phonetic data. The first author of a dialect-related degree thesis was Juozas Aleksandravičius (1920–2007), a 1949 graduate and native of Kretinga from the village of Būbeliai. While studying, he was the first chair of the students’ scientific linguistics circle; for further studies, he was admitted to the postgraduate program at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. He was also one of the participants in the first dialectological expedition, to the Prienai district in 1950. Unfortunately, fate was unkind to this gifted pioneer. He was expelled from the postgraduate program (after the authorities discovered biographical details they disapproved of; moreover, his sister had fled to the West). He wrote and defended his dissertation in 1968 while working at the Institute for Teacher Development. Aleksandravičius was the first Lithuanian dialectologist to conceive the idea of preparing a dictionary of his native dialect. He began recording words and sentences while still a student. After teaching for several years, he began writing the dictionary text. He appended more than 3,000 dialect words (without illustrative sentences) to his dissertation on the Kretinga dialect. Thrust by the authorities away from dialectology and toward lexicography, he returned to the work only in old age—in 2004.1 This is what we learn from the dictionary’s introductory article, “The Lithuanian Studies and Pedagogical Work of Juozas Aleksandravičius,” which presents the recollections of his contemporary colleagues (Algirdas Sabaliauskas, Zigmas Zinkevičius, Bronius Dobrovols-1 178 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI Kretingos tarmės žodynas Therefore, when the manuscript of the dictionary was resubmitted to the Institute of the Lithuanian Language in 2007, Prof. Dr. Danguolė Mikulėnienė, head of the Department of the History of Language and Dialectology, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Daiva Vaišnienė undertook to prepare it for publication. Their efforts are described in Vaišnienė’s editorial essay, “Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect: Basic Principles for Presenting the Material.” It notes that, after returning to work on the dictionary following a long break, the author “did not have time to read this dictionary from beginning to end, standardize the presentation of certain words or forms, or make decisions about it; consequently, the scholarly editing had to address many important questions relating not only to technical matters but also to scholarly interpretation.” The dictionary’s editors treated the submitted manuscript with respect, striving to maintain “a harmony between the views of the author and the scholarly editor.” The extensive (16-page) editorial essay discusses the principles for compiling the dictionary, transcription, transposition, and the clarification of meanings. This shows that the editors worked considerably on the dictionary text, seeking to bring it into line with the contemporary standards of dialect lexicography. Following this essay, the author’s even more extensive (18-page) “Introductory Remarks” are presented as the dictionary’s introduction; they discuss the fairly large dialect area (about 600 square kilometers), its inhabitants (including the Curonians), the history of the region, place names, the dialect’s most characteristic features, the selection of words, and more. The author indicates that the dictionary includes characteristic words only from the westernmost part of the northern Samogitian dialect. Thus, the dictionary under review is a fairly large differential dictionary (although it also contains quite a few standard-language words). It contains over 14,000 words in total. In accordance with earlier understanding, it has retained the title Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect, although nowadays there is a tendency to call such works dialect dictionaries. The example of the first such dictionary published, by Vytautas Vitkauskas, is followed. These dictionaries are also given other names: Vito Labutis’s Dictionary of the Daukšiai Region; Klementina Vosilytė is completing the Kupiškėnai Dictionary. The Dictionary of the Mosedis Area, being prepared for publication by Birutė Rokaitė-Vanagienė (1934–2011), will be the third Samogitian dialect dictionary. In discussing the dictionary, one must first mention words characteristic of this and the broader Samogitian region: añs, anà ‘he, she’, bėngti ‘to finish’, drūktas ‘thick’, ėškùs ‘gluttonous, voracious’, gróbas ‘intestine’, ýlinas ‘pointed’, kròkti ‘to cry’, kūlis ‘stone’, kušėti ‘to move, stir’, pýlė ‘duck’, pūrai ‘winter wheat’², raši (and 5 variants) ‘perhaps, probably’, rezginė ‘bast shoe’, sėtinis ‘field horsetail’, šykis ‘time, occasion’, skaūdis ‘pain’, skėderva ‘splinter’, skundžiai ‘in fits and starts’, smagùs ‘heavy’, smeigties ‘to creep in, force one’s way’, šėrė ‘feeding, foddering’, trėšti ‘to run around, romp’, veizėti ‘to look’, vėpūtas, vėpūtinys ‘snowdrift’, (kio and editor Danguolė Mikulėnienė) offer today’s generation of linguists insight into the author’s personality and the conditions of the time in which he lived—“the difficult fate of a Lithuanian intellectual during the Second World War and the postwar years” (Mikulėnienė). 2 Šio nėra LKŽ, bet jo paplitimas nurodytas Baltų kalbų atlaso žemėlapyje (2009: 159). Recenzijos / Reviews 179 ANTANAS BALAŠAITIS žvaizdė ‘star’. Several distinctive adjectives with the prefix ap-: apdurnỹs, apkūnỹs, aplamỹs, -ė ‘a slovenly person’, apsausỹs, apsenỹs, apžalỹs, apžiulikỹs, -ė ‘somewhat crafty’, corresponding to derivatives in the standard language with -okas. The dictionary abounds in adverbs formed in distinctive ways, especially from old locative forms: áudrotie ‘during a storm’, giẽdrotė³, giliẽ, kaitrotie, lýnantie, lýtotie, ser̃gantie, snìngantie, spéiguotie, šaltie, šãrpie ‘quickly’, šiltie, šiõkie, šlãpie, tam̃sie, tõlie, vėjuotie, vėtrotie. The dialect is characterized by the formation of adverbs with the prefix pa- and ending -iuo, corresponding to standard-language -ui: padieniuõ, paeiluiõ, pagauriuõ, pakarčiũo, pakeliuõ, paplaukiuõ, paporiuõ, parindžiuõ, pasauliuõ, paskypuõ, pavandeniuõ, pavėjuo, paviršiuo. Interesting adverbs of time include: užtáipernai ‘the year before last’, užtáivakar ‘two days ago’. The dialect also has derivatives with derogatory meanings formed with the prefix na- or the suffix -alis, -ė: nãkabis ‘someone not very good for anything, a scoundrel’, nãkažis ‘someone insignificant, no good’, navėkšlis, -ė ‘someone inept, no good’. The suffix -alė seems to be used without a derogatory meaning for unmarried women, whereas the standard words have a derogatory meaning: butãlis ‘a poor-quality house’, kelãlis, kẽšalis ‘a small, insignificant hillock’, kūtãlis ‘a poor-quality barn’, lovãlė, mergãlė, mūrãlis ‘a poor-quality stove’, nosãlė, numãlis, pelkãlė, snopãlė ‘a fool’, šnekalãl, švãmalis ‘a good-for-nothing, a failure’, trobãlė, žardãlis. Family-member names have the opposite, affectionate meaning: mamãlė, tėvãlis, vyrãlis and dievãlis. The distinctive dual number is still alive in the Kretinga dialect: katrūdu, katridi ‘which two’, pačiūdu, patidi ‘the two themselves’, vėdu, vėdi ‘the two of us’, šiūdu, šidi ‘these two’: vėdo sȯ anõu keik ė lga lãi kuovũos ‖ vėdėms abėdėms tuoks pȧt lekėms ‖ vėdo ėtãu nõmėj ‖ šėke tãu e_ jọdõm dõusọ po_saldãini ‖ The past frequentative is expressed using the auxiliary verb liuob with an infinitive and other forms: kliẽtė ǐõubãm mėigũotė ‖ The dictionary also shows the use of the prefixed particles iš, nu, pri, už—a feature not unique to this region’s dialect—in affirmative answers to a question, in place of the whole verb: a_ jau ėšveriet pėitus? ‖ – ėš ‖ a_priválgė? ‖ – pri ‖ ar_ožėsi pri_mõnes? ‖ – ož ‖ One of the dictionary’s great strengths is its illustrative sentences. They are varied and often short (similar ones sometimes appear together); alongside these, longer sentences recorded from conversations are included, as are proverbs, sayings, and song fragments (including children’s jingles). Compared with Kupiškėnų žodynu, there are considerably fewer examples: most words have just one short sentence. Reading the dictionary, one can picture the everyday life, concerns, and moods of people in the postwar years. I would like to quote a dozen or so (for practical reasons, they have been transposed): The best medicine is to live sensibly. Whoever has a lot of work has no time even to die. As the life is, so is the death. Hunger bends iron. Time won’t wait even for your own little child. What time is it now? However much has stuck, that much time has passed. Love is like spit: it lasted a moment and fell. When a swallow flies— 3 A different ending is questionable. 180 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI Kretingos tarmės žodynas along the low-lying areas, there’ll be rain. If it’s crooked, make it a little straighter. If you want the beans to grow, you have to put your fingernail to them. Black and white, but cooked through. If you don’t sow, you’ll go hungry, and if you go hungry, you’ll be skinned alive. Joining the collective farms didn’t suit us: it ruined everything. For a whole week I felt unlike myself when they took the land away. Protali, protali, when will you come home? What is born grey will grow old grey. May the Grim Reaper take you! A few remarks in conclusion. Comparing the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽ) with dialect dictionaries reveals changes in the structure of dictionary entries. Following the pattern of LKŽ, adverbs derived regularly from adjectives (with the suffix –ai) and diminutive nouns used to be included under the entry for the adjective or noun, whereas in the Kretingos tarmės žodyne they are given a separate headword. This approach was prescribed by a resolution recorded in the minutes of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language meeting on December 21, 2006, since these forms are considered independent words. In the dictionary under discussion, as the manuscript facsimile shows, the author did not list such adverbs separately, while diminutive nouns were presented in separate subentries. Editor Vaišnienė discovered that this had not been done consistently, so everything had to be revised in accordance with the VLKK recommendations. This increases the number of words in dictionaries. On the other hand, adverbs formed irregularly had previously been given separate entries. Thus, both types are now evaluated equally from a lexicographic perspective. On definitions of meanings. It seems that several everyday terms needed more precise explanations. Langinė is a room at the other end of a farmhouse. It would have been appropriate to add ‘the less desirable one’. It would have helped to consult LKŽ, as would have been useful in explaining pārlaidinis, a part of a cart. It would have been appropriate to add ‘connecting’, cf. perlaidinys. It is unclear why pyragiūkas is defined in the plural as ‘buns’. Kamūnija is not the sacrament of Confirmation. Gūnė is not merely a sheet for carrying hay, cf. LKŽ. Among the many borrowings included, it is doubtful whether ekspirinas, pājamas, balatorija are traditional dialect words, or whether the financial neologisms pināusai, pāršuietamojī mean ‘X-ray room’, didelis āčiuo. In the preface, the author wrote that he had compiled a differential dictionary. So should the editors not have suggested that he exclude standard-language words that have no meanings specific to the dialect, for example: girdyti, grėbti, greitas, gulėti, raidė, rugsėjis and so on? It is doubtful that stalnė and sumnėnė should be considered hybrids—they are Slavicisms, as is stainė. Lelijėlės should no longer be considered a hybrid. Only the Druskininkų tarmės žodyne marks lelija as a Slavicism, whereas LKŽ does not include it. In concluding this essay, I am pleased that the Institute’s dialectology department so benevolently welcomed Aleksandravičius’s major work—a monument to the history of the Samogitian dialect and language. Beautifully published with an appropriate introduction, it has taken its place among the dialect dictionaries. The injustice suffered under foreign rule did not break the steadfast Samogitian. Removed from the institute he had dreamed of, he returned, having swallowed his grievance, with a gift to Lithuanian linguistics. Recenzijos / Reviews 181 ANTANAS BALAŠAITIS LITERATŪRA Baltų valodų atlants. Prospekts = Baltų kalbų atlasas. Prospektas = Atlas of the Baltic Languages. A Prospect, sudarytojos ir įvado autorės: Danguolė Mikulėnienė, Anna Stafecka; žemėlapių komentarų autorės: Ilga Jansone, Anna Stafecka, Rima Bacevičiūtė, Asta Leskauskaitė; žemėlapių kompiuterinį variantą parengė Edmundas Trumpa. Rīga: Latvijas Universitātes Latviešu valodas institūts, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2009. Dieveniškių šnektos žodynas. N–Ž. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2010. Kretingos tarmės žodynas. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2011. Įteikta 2012 m. kovo 3 d. ANTANAS BALAŠAITIS Didlaukio 27-64, LT-08320 Vilnius, Lietuva 182 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXVI