Acta Linguistica Lithuanica

LIV (2006), 107 – 126

Remarks

Remarks

A Few Minor Points Regarding Minor Points 5, 6

Vytautas Vitkauskas’s observations on individual cases in the study of marsh names¹ prompted me to take out once again the cards, put away in the archive quite some time ago, containing Lithuanian marsh names collected from spoken language, and to analyze the problematic issues he mentioned—especially since a decade ago some things may have been overlooked, as it was necessary to identify and conduct a thorough study of more than 10,000 hydronyms in this class.

In Minor Point 5, V. Vitkauskas argues that the marsh names Gelžėlė and Gelžikė from the Raudėnai area, presented in my dissertation and article², are new, ad hoc, metaphorical names; that is, after the great Gelžė marsh was drained after the war, local people called it Gelžėle and Gelžike only when speaking with place-name collectors, and young female onomastic fieldworkers took these to be genuine variants of the marsh name Gelžė.

A fresh examination of the spoken-language data shows that only the form Gelžėlė can be regarded as a new marsh name, having arisen well after the war; as V. Vitkauskas correctly writes, it was recorded in 1982 in the village of Švendriai. The object named, according to the fieldworker, was a former marsh of about 100 hectares. Thus it is clear that Gelžėlė is a late variant of the original marsh name Gelžė. However, the claim that this is merely an ad hoc, inauthentic name remains doubtful: first, this cannot be verified or proven; second, Lithuanian spoken-language toponymy, and thus hydronymy, encompasses place names collected over nearly the whole of the 20th century.

The origin story of the marsh name Gelžikė is quite different. It is certainly neither a new place name—that is, one recorded at the end of the 20th century—nor an ad hoc or metaphorical one. It was recorded twice during the interwar period³. In 1936, the land of the Raudėnai forestry district

¹ See Remarks. Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 51, 2004, 113–114.

² See Bilkis, L. Lithuanian Suffixal-Formation Marsh Names. Doctoral Dissertation, Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, Vytautas Magnus University, 1998; Bilkis, L. Lithuanian Suffixal Diminutive Marsh Names. Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 41, 1999, 51–95.

³ Incidentally, according to V. Vitkauskas, the forms Gelžėlė and Gelžikė were recorded in Švendriai village in the Raudėnai area, but in fact only the former was documented in that village.

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The gazetteer record states that Gelžikė is a 2.5-hectare ⁴moss-covered bog (i.e., a wetland – L. B.), bordering the large bog (i.e., wetland – L. B.) Gelžė, which extends into the forest in square 10⁵. This wetland name was recorded once again on a card in the file of names of uninhabited places collected from spoken language, compiled by the Commission on Surnames and Place Names, which operated during the interwar period; the card states that the bog is near the village of Paraudžiai. Thus, Gelžikė is an old, authentic bog name, and the young gazetteer collectors are in no way to blame here.

In Remark 6, V. Vitkauskas criticizes me for having included polysyllabic derivatives with the suffix -ėlis in the aforementioned studies of wetland names from Samogitian and Vilnius Highlander areas, even though in these dialects only the suffix -ėlis is used in derivatives formed from both disyllabic and polysyllabic words. He also criticizes the suggestion that Latvian and Slavic languages may have influenced the emergence of some polysyllabic wetland names with -ėlis, and concludes by saying that specialists in toponymy are unfamiliar with the geographical distribution of diminutives in -ėlis, -ėlis.

First, I would like to say that I know the geographical distribution of the aforementioned suffixes very well⁶. The issue here is quite different. A considerable number of polysyllabic wetland names recorded in the aforementioned areas appear in the place-name file with the suffix -ėlis. Even linguists recorded them this way, so when studying wetland names it was impossible to determine why they were presented in this form rather than as heard in spoken language. Perhaps the place-name collectors themselves standardized them, especially since in standard language such toponyms have traditionally⁷ been given with -ėlis, e.g., Švenčionėliai, Gedžiūnėliai, Mielagėnėliai. On the other hand, some wetland names, particularly those recorded as late as the second half of the 20th century, may also have been pronounced with -ėlis by local residents themselves, under the influence of standard language. Thus, this is not only a linguistic but also a sociolinguistic problem, and researchers must decide whether to reconstruct a wetland name as it ought to be, based on the established areas of use of the suffixes -ėlis, -ėlis, or also to take into account the data provided by collectors⁸.

⁴ Cf. — the area of the Gelžė bog was several hundred hectares in the interwar period!

⁵ These data were recorded by forester Stasys Rimkevičius and provided by forest ranger Benys Taraškus.

⁶ I myself come from that area (Linkmenys), where the suffix -ėlis is used in both trisyllabic and polysyllabic words, and I know my native dialect well.

⁷ This tradition was already established during the interwar period by Antanas Salys, Juozas Balčikonis, and others.

⁸ For example, studies of oikonym formation in synchronic perspective analyze standardized place names; accordingly, only the suffix is identified in oikonyms formed from polysyllabic words—

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It should also be added that V. Vitkauskas misinterprets my conjecture about the influence of Latvian or Slavic languages. First of all, I nowhere claim that the -elis of Samogitian and Vilnius Aukštaitian helonyms is the result of the influence of Latvian and Slavic languages, respectively. I am simply trying to find an explanation for why polysyllabic helonyms with -elis are recorded even in those places where the diminutive suffix -ėlis would otherwise be expected: in southern and northeastern Lithuania and in the area around Želva, Alanta, and Rūdninkai⁹. At least some such helonyms in -elis (-elė) could indeed have arisen through Slavicization; cf. the recording in Slavic sources of Lithuanian settlement names and personal names of similar structure: Tra[f]zkunele¹⁰ 1744, 1771, Traszkunele 1775, 1784 = Lithuanian Troškūnėliai (cf. Troškūnai eldership), Wilunele 1784 = Lithuanian Vilūnėliai (village, Jieznas eldership); Vanagelis¹¹ 1689 (Skaruliai) = Lithuanian Vanagėlis, Wederelis 1626 (Kaunas) = Lithuanian Vėdarėlis, Zemoytel 1628 (Kaunas) = Lithuanian Žemaitėlis, etc.

Laimutis Bilkis

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

P. Vileišio g. 5, 10308 Vilnius, Lietuva

On New Searches for Third-Person Verb Endings

It has long been known that the Lithuanian third-person verb forms, which are not differentiated by number, correspond to pure vocalic stems and show no traces of ever having had endings. Pisani, Toporov, Ivanov, Schmalstieg, and many other researchers consider this feature of Lithuanian especially significant for reconstructing the original state of the verb and for linguistic typology. It is clearly reflected in the synchronic system of the Lithuanian verb, where vocalic third-person stem-final elements form the basis for the formation of many forms.

ga -ėlis (see Razmukaitė, M. Lithuanian Suffixal Oikonyms. Doctoral Dissertation, Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, Vytautas Magnus University, 1998, 34–35, 36–40).

⁹ See Bilkis, L. Lithuanian Suffixal Diminutive Helonyms. Acta Linguistica Lituanica 41, 1999, 70.

¹⁰ Historical place names are drawn from the Historical Place Names Card Index of the Onomastics Section.

¹¹ Historical personal names are drawn from the Historical Personal Names Card Index of the Onomastics Section.

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