Pietro Dini. „Le Lingue Baltiche“

bleme and Perspektiven, p. 409-416) he reviews the current situation of the study of the Baltic mythology, attempts to form the most important directions of its study. Magdalene Huelmann, who recently published a valuable monograph on Lithuanian-Latvian labour songs ir (The Lithuanian and Latvian Work songs. Ein Vergleich, Miinchen, 1996)? summarizes the results of his research in ir the book we are discussing (Aspekte des litauischen und lettischen Work songs, p. 417—426). The book ends with an article by the famous German Baltist Rainer Eckert (Brauchtum und Folklore im Eastern Baltic States: Zum St. John's Day (lett. Jan: lit. Joninės, and the zu Johannisliedern, p. 427-455), which, after a brief overview of the most important problems of the study of folklore of Baltic peoples, analyzes the reflections of the Ionian festival in Latvian folk songs. Iš in fact, we probably will not nė find so many beautiful poems dedicated to this holiday in the folk creation of another nation. We cannot fail to welcome this valuable publication. It remains to sincerely thank the organizer of the conference, the compiler of the publication, Professor Alfred Bammesberger of the Catholic University of Eichstatt, who, in the preface to the book, recalled certain ir connections of his city in Lithuanian words. be ir su Lithuania: “After the war, a group of Lithuanians settled in our district. Ir now we want to extend the contacts between Eichstatto ir Lithuania, but once šį only absolutely peaceful®.’ As mentioned, the work was published by the famous Carlo Winter's Tale. Deréty recalled that this publishing house began publishing and distributing Lithuanian books in 1879. So in this field has no equals. ji Algirdas Sabaliauskas PIETRO DINI. Looking at Pietro Dini’s bookshelf of Lithuanian and Baltic books, it seems that these books are brought to him by eagles. Greta L'anello baltico (Genoa, 1991), H. J. Lysius, Katekizmas (Vilnius, 1993), L'inno di Sant’Ambrogio di Martynas Mažvydas (Rome, 1994), Repubbliche baltiche (Milan, 1994), greta žeminin2 Plg. Kudirkienė L. Lituanistica, 1997, 3 (31), p. 141-143. In 1945-1949, a Lithuanian high school was opened in Eichstatt. Professor A. Bammesberger, wishing to mark the anniversary of the gymnasium, addressed former students and teachers of this gymnasium in the Lithuanian press in the United States of America and Canada. After this appeal, “very good feedback began to flow: both former teachers and former pupils told their impressions and memories” (Darbininkas, 28 May 1998). It should be mentioned that well-known Lithuanian scholars Stasys Barzdukas, Izabelė Matusevičiūtė, Sergejus Treigys worked at the Eichstatt Lithuanian Gymnasium. Art education was taught by our famous architect Vytautas Žemkalnis (Landsbergis). Among the 55 graduates of the first class on 14 May 1946, the current President of the Republic of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus, cf. Rudys S. Eichstaeto Lithuanian Gymnasium, Lithuanian education in Germany. Red. V. Liulevičius, Chicago, 1969, p. 322-341. 253 kų of other ir literary translations of poetry į into Italian, today on the shelf falls another original: Le Languages Baltic (in Belarusian), Firenze: La New Italy. 1996 Publishe1997, r, turinti XXII ir 531 page. If we count the days from the last In 1994, the book was published in a 400-page volume, which was published in 1996 in a 100-page volume. po Of course, if he took breaks, he would write more during the day. ir Le Languages Baltiche was conceived as one iš Emanuele Banfi edited series of books on European languagir es published as the fifth book in the series (after the previous volumes for English and ar Russian ir languages in general). Dad Dini’s book on the Baltic languages came out before, say, someone’s work on the Romance languages in general, on the so-called great languages of German, French, ar Polish, etc. — ir The self-esteem of today’s Baltic people who want to be remembered in the European cultural spines can be caressed. In the preface the author writes that „so far there was a lack of more general works in Italian on the Baltic philology languages“ ir (p. XVII). However, iš it must be said at once that there is no work of such completeness in ne Italian, but in no other ir language, even in the Baltic ones. First, about the structure of the book. Ji consists of iš ten parts, each covering an average of pages of text, so each has po 50 many subsections. ir The parts are as follows: 1) “The Baltic ir Prehistory of Linguistics”, 2) “The Outlines of the Baltic Protolanguage- ”, “Linguistic 3) Context”, “The Baltic 4) Territory Among Pagan Christianity”, 5), “The ‘Little’ ir Baltic Languages”, “The Prussian Language of 6) the Prussians”, “The Baltic ir Languages 7) Among the Reformation of Catholicism”, “National ir Revival, 8) Independence and Sovietization of the Baltic Peoples”, 9) “The Baltic Languages and the New Independence Among Autochthonous and Immigrants”, 10) “Texts”. In addition, the book is accompanied by an extremely detailed bibliography, covering more than sixty pages (pp. 445-515), which in itself is a book within a book. Some of these sections are simply synchronous sections of a certain period. One section that Dini reconstructs is the common period of the Baltic proto-language (chapter two). He describes vocalism, consonantism, prosody, differences between nouns and verbs, syntactic features, lexicon, phraseology, onomastics. In a very similar way, the features of Lithuanian and Latvian are presented in the seventh chapter. It only falls to the eye that the proto-Baltic language is given much more attention. This is quite understandable — expanding the seventh chapter would mean starting to write Lithuanian and Latvian grammar, 0 the author's goals are quite different. This choice also shows the author’s unquestionable priority for history. In part, Dini’s book reminds somewhat of Zigmas Zinkevičius’ 7-volume History of the Lithuanian Language. However, although both works evaluate theories about the relations of Baltic languages with other languages, and although both authors discuss the development of writing, the emphasis is placed on something else: Zinkevičius writes only about the history of the Lithuanian language, paying more attention to the development of the language itself than to its study. Dini describes all three major (and other minor) Baltic languages in parallel, and besides the development of languages he is particularly interested in the changing perspectives of language researchers. 254 tų It involves a į much broader exploration of history than the introductory work on the Baltic į languages would require. For example, Dini presents at least three authors Baltic name etymologies (Giuliano Bonfante, Gertrudos Benze ir Vladimiro Toporovo, p. 7-8), he is not satisfied with one etymology that is more plausible to him, but he tries to see the good side of all etymologies, not to impose a single opinion. Nevertheless, Dini gently shows that Toporov's hypothesis is the most promising, allegedly based on t. y. Bonfante's, Bense's earlier thoughts Toporovas „exposed the hypothesis that the to original pamphlet. *whitesignificance has been ‘closure sea zone’ also means: ‘baltas’ ar 'pebbled, ballot'.' This presentation of problems ne is a coincidencOo e, the principle of the book. Here again, speaking about the reconstruction of vocalism and consonantism in the proto-Baltic language, Dini mentions traditional hypotheses, presents table schemes, but indicates non-traditional views ar ir (p. 55—72). The mere fact that only the word hypothesis is used, shows He does not want to be a — severe judge, he just wants to show the current state of research. However, the selection itself is also an assessment. Such a hierarchical presentation, separating traditional concepts from innovative ones, gives the work only a historical ne dimension, but orients the beginner Baltist well. ir It is said that a good author of an etymological dictionary, when writing the vocabulary of the dictionary, should not allow himself to etymologize. Otherwise, the temptation to make hasty conclusions may be too great for her to resist. As you can see, Dini is careful enough and understands such a danger. A sign of caution may also be the fact that the 16th-century manuscript published by Vincent Drotvin, Clavis Germanico-Lithvana, is still called anonymous by Dini, although Drotvin’s opinion that its author was Frydrich Pretorijus is already taking hold in Lithuania. Dini’s caution is also evidenced by the discussion between Zigmas Zinkevičius and Jonas Palionis on the existence of a dialectal koinė in Vilnius and Kėdainiai in the 16th century, formed on an interdialectal basis, which is described at pp. 301-303. After presenting two different opinions, Zinkevičius’s affirmative and Palionis’s denial, Dini only says that “future research will allow to clarify various aspects, which in turn may confirm the inter-dialect hypothesis or outline new explanatory models” (p. 303). Dini himself is generally very interested in the historiography of the paleo-comparative period of linguistics. He has published studies on individual concepts of Baltic languages by European authors: Konrad Gesner, P. F. Giambullari, Angelo Rocca and others. These are new discoveries by Dini, which from now on should be included in the introductions to Baltic philology. Therefore, it is natural that when the presentation of these theories begins, the word hypothesis disappears from the text, Dini describes his own thoughts. He is one of those who seriously analyzes the once widespread theory that Lithuanians are of Roman origin. There is no doubt that it is important to investigate the theory, not to laugh at it as if it were a pseudo-scientific one (the last time I heard Dr. Jurgis Gerulaitis laughing at it was at the Newberry Library in Chicago, USA, on October 25, 1997, during his solemn lecture on the first Lithuanian book). The theory of Roman origin, according to Dini, have the following aspects: a) in all known sources the Romance origin of Lithuanians is supported by linguistic arguments, linguistic arguments are given priority (at best parallel evaluation) over other arguments, the differences between Latin and Lithuanian are attempted to be interpreted only as the differences between related but identical languages 235 b) — c) ir ne ir (p. 309). So it is primarily a linguistic theory, of that, was nė most be prevalent ji only in the central In Europe ir among the Eastern Slavs. However, as established by Dini, Italian Rocca, who took over many of the ideas of the Baltic languages iš Matthew Michovita chronicles, wrote nothing about the Lithuanian origin of iš the Romans, although Miechovita had talked about it. Apparently, such a theory of Lithuanian origin For Rocco it was too drastic, unbelievable, perhaps even ir reckless, for him to want to believe. ja Dini discusses ir different types of origin theories (p. 312314). He distinguishes the semi-Latin theory of Mykolas Lietuvis (unfortunately, he does not mention the universally accepted name of the real author, Vaclovas Mikalojaitis) about the semi-Latin Lithuanian language, and finds some reflections of this theory (not named) in the texts of Teodoras Biblianderis. The third is Dini's theory of the quad language (linguarium guadripartitum). From the excerpt of the chronicle of Miechovita on pp. 277—278 it is clear that the quadruple nature of the Baltic languages is symbolised by four parts: Jotvingian, Lithuanian with the Žemaites, Prussian, Latvian. The theory is known from the works of Miechowita, Bibliander, Gesner and Rocca. In general, it is an important look at the Baltic countries not only from within, but also from outside, showing how the Baltic languages were imagined in foreign lands during the Renaissance. However, it is obvious that these theories originated mainly in Central Europe, in the eastern Slavic lands, and were not original in Western Europe. In some places more precise formulations could be missing, for example, p. 273 speaks about the entire long time of existence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1236—1795 years. However, in theory, the Grand Duchy still existed at the beginning of the 19th century, after all, the Russian Emperor Alexander I still titled himself Grand Duke of the LDK, among all other titles. Vilnius University was also closed not in 1865 by Alexander II, as it is written in the book (p. 347), but in 1832 by Nicholas I. The magazine Mūsų kalba (Our Language) is mentioned as if it were still published, but it became the Mother Tongue in 1990. In presenting the main features of the Žemaičių dialect on p. 289 it is said that the Žemaičiai have d, ¢ instead of the common language č, dž, but this is a very approximate determination, because far from all positions, not all Žemaičiai use £, d instead of ¢, dž equally (first of all in the endings, the coastal Žemaičiai most widely, the central and eastern Žemaičiai — only somewhere). In a work of this kind, it would have been enough to say that in certain or some positions the Samogitians do not have a common language č, dž. In the book there are very nicely presented maps, diagrams, other illustrative material. Here, for example, are very simple and convincing schemes of individual authors’ conceptions of the genetic connection of the Balts with the Slavs (p. 128, 130). However, the map of Lithuanian dialects on p. 290 could have been somewhat more consistent: if Lithuanian dialects outside Lithuania in Gudija (Rodūnia, Ramaškonys) have already been marked, then it would be quite logical to expect that other Lithuanian dialects would also be drawn: in Gudija, Poland, 256 Latvia. All the more so that the author himself devoted a whole chapter to the description of Lithuanian islands and traces in Gudija and Poland (pp. 386-388) and mentioned there the unmarked dialects. In addition to the notes, it can be added that on p. 420 the exact spelling of Daukanto Būdas has not been preserved: instead of Daukanto i (a diacritic similar to a circumflex), signifying a special Žemaičių extended sound i [e], everywhere it is marked i (before birth). It is not possible to distinguish the circumflex from the diacritics. However, for the Italian reader, such marking will not differ at all from the adjacent page (p. 421) of the song Mėnuo saulužę vedė žodžiai anksti, the first of the words interspersed with the left strikethrough (gravi). In addition, the word jau has been omitted in the translating of the Žemaičių text (p. 421, 1 e.). Proofreading errors are very few, although they occur (p. 296 instead of Drotvinas is Drotivine, p. 440 Ramoniene instead Ramonienė, p. 511 "Vanagienė" (in Lithuanian). All comments should not detract from the work, they will be important to take into account in future editions. By the way, among Baltic linguists it is becoming banal to say that Dini’s work is being translated. Introductions to Baltic philology were written by Ernstas Fraenkelis (in German, and translated into Lithuanian by Simas Karaliūnas), Jonas Kabelka. However, Dini’s book is a much broader, more detailed work. From what has been said, it is clear that Dini is familiar with sociolinguistic approaches, as the titles of some of the subsections show: “Limited Linguistic Purism”, p. 365, “Interference with Russian”, p. 369, “Language Contacts”, p. 381. The book does not do without presentation of cultural theories (Vytautas Kavolis, Tomas Venclova, pp. 298—300), without archaeological data (Maria Gimbutienė, Rimutė Rimantienė, G. Cesnis, V. Šimėnas, pp. 12-16, 188-190). Today, in the absence of encyclopedias of Baltic languages, we could use Dini Le Lingue Baltiche as a preferred encyclopedia. By the author’s own nature, the work has encyclopedic ambitions. Therefore, just as it is impossible to cover everything in a review of any encyclopedia, all Dini’s reviews of Le Lingue Baltiche are doomed to remain incomplete. No other language has published a book of this level on the Baltic languages. Therefore, at the risk of being banal, I would say that it would be important to translate it at least into those languages in which Baltic studies are most often published: Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Polish, German, English. It is a representative book of Baltic philology studies. University of Illinois at Chicago RŪDOLFS GRABIS RECORDING Latvian linguists have honored their older colleague Rūdolfs Grabis on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday by publishing an interesting collection of articles “Savai 257