LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXXI (1994)

KALBOS NORMALIZACIJOS KLAUSIMAI

SIMAS KARALIŪNAS

LINGUISTIC NOTES*

9. Dial. arūnas

Arūnas, “sponge, sponge-like plant,” is a narrowly used eastern Lithuanian dialect word (Tvr, Dglš, Slk) (LKŽ II 261, I² 323). Northwestern Belarusian dialects have apýn “sponge, sponge-like plant,” derived from *горун and associated with Slavic *gorěti “to burn”¹ (for semantic connections, cf. German Zunder “tinder, sponge” alongside zünden “to ignite, kindle”). Lithuanian dialectal arūnas must therefore also be a borrowing (for the loss of g-, pronounced spirantically as [h], cf., e.g., adynà “hour” < Belarusian годзіна; arielkà “vodka” < Belarusian горелка; ãdnas “worthy” < Belarusian годный).

10. Brāvaras, Briaūnis

The hydronyms Brāvaras (a river, Vilkija), Bravar-ātis (a river, Jurbarkas, a right-bank tributary of the Mituvà), Bravar-iukas (a river, Kražiai, a tributary of the Kražantė), Bravar-upis (a river, Laižuva, a left-bank tributary of the Vadakstis), and Briaūnis (a lake, Semeliškės), as well as Briaun-iukas (a lake, Semeliškės)², appear to conceal within them the most ancient name of one of the most vital concepts of the Indo-Europeans—the spring: the Proto-Indo-European name *bhṛēu̯-j-, with an alternating n-stem *bhṛēu̯-n- (Greek φρέαρ, -ατος < from Proto-Greek *φρήαρ, Armenian albīwr, albęwr “spring,” perhaps also Middle Irish tipra “spring,” if from Old Irish *tiprar < *to-ek’s-bhṛēu̯, gen. sing. tiprat < *to-ek’s-bhṛēu̯n-tos). The stem of Briaūnis corresponds exactly to Proto-Indo-European *bhṛēu̯-n- (ēu became iau in Baltic), but has a changed root accent (PIE *bhṛēu̯-n- > Baltic *briáun-). Brāvaras and the like differ from the Proto-Indo-European proto-form *bhṛēu̯-r in their vowel grades—the zero grade of the root vowel (*-ēu-: *-au- > Lithuanian -av-) and the full grade of the stem-final vowel (*-r-: *or- > Lithuanian ar). This distribution of root and stem-final vowel grades accords with the rule established by E. Benveniste for the most ancient PIE nominal type: if the stem-final consonant has a full-grade vowel, the root has a zero-grade vowel, and vice versa³. The PIE name for ‘spring,’ it appears, belonged to the heteroclitic declension, characterized not only by the alternation of different

* For the beginning, see Questions of Lithuanian Areal Linguistics: Lithuanian Linguistic Questions. V., 1977. Vol. 17. P. 207—209; continuation: Problems of Lithuanian Lexicon and Terminology: Lithuanian Linguistic Questions. V., 1991. Vol. 29. P. 65—79.

¹ Этымалагічны слоўнік беларускай мовы. Мінск, 1985. Т. 3. С. 65.

² Lietuvos TSR upių ir ežerų vardynas. V., 1963. P. 21, 22. — Brāvaras, Bravār-upis ir kt. siejimas su slavizmu brāvoras, brāvaras „spirito varykla ar alaus darykla“ (Vanagas A. Lietuvių hidronimų etimologinis žodynas. V., 1981. P. 69) yra liaudies etimologija.

³ Бенвенист Э. Индоевропейское именное словообразование. М., 1955. С. 50, 205 т.т.

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stem-final consonants (r/n), but also by ablaut and accent mobility within the paradigm (*bhrēu-r / *bhrau-ōr: *bhrēu-n-). This explains the variation in accent position in Lithuanian: Brāvaras / Bravār-upis.

If these arguments are correct, Lithuanian should have preserved the Indo-European name for ‘spring,’ and for the lexical system of the Baltic proto-language we could reconstruct *brau-ár / *brēu-n- “spring,” since the current names for springs—šaltinis, šaltinys, šaltynas (from šaltas ‘cold’), verdenė, versmė < *verd-smē (cf. Latvian verdēt “to spurt, bubble”)—are relatively recent.

11. Dial. swan’s neck

In “Vilniaus žinios” (1905. No. 279), the word swan’s neck is used to mean “rifle stock” LKŽ III 705: “... we ignoramuses beat them with our fists and with rifle stocks.” F. Kursaitis, in his “German—Lithuanian Dictionary” (1874), gives to fit a stock, “to put a rifle into a wooden casing (schäften eine Flinte)” (II 146).

swan’s neck “rifle stock,” together with its derivative to fit a stock, as well as swan’s neck “a carpenter’s tool, chisel,” listed in the “Lithuanian Encyclopedia” (V 1326), are probably Germanisms that have become altered in Lithuanian. The word kūlbė, used in many dialects and meaning “a cut-off piece of log; a threshing tool, rammer; (of a rifle) butt end, stock…” LKŽ VI 820 (which is borrowed from German kolbe “(of a rifle) stock…”)⁴, cf. also Lithuanian dialect kólba LKŽ VI 307, could easily have become swan’s neck through voicing assimilation (k—b > g—b). Thus, gulba “kulba,” found in Radviliškis and Biržai, may have arisen in place of kūlba “a box placed on a sleigh” (from the same German Kolbe).

The change of consonant k- to g- was facilitated by the fact that Lithuanian has cases in which voiced and voiceless consonants alternate at the beginning of the root of related or otherwise semantically similar words⁵; cf., for example, gaurai: kaurai, gur̃bas “basket, hamper”: kur̃bas “same,” gūoga “stick, club with a thick end”: kioka “same,” griaūnos: kriaūnos.

12. *Ištymas, *ištinti

LKŽ IV 153 gives istymas “treatment” and istinti “to treat.” But in the illustrative sentences taken from “Naujasis keleivis” (1881. No. 5. P. 27), the forms are everywhere paistymas and paistinti, which the LKŽ authors explain as “healing” and “to heal.” Thus, there are good reasons to doubt this kind of morpheme division (prefix pa- and root ist-). That the forms here are in fact paistymas “treatment” and paistinti “to treat,” and therefore have the root paist-, is clearly shown by paistyti (-o, -ė) “to treat, medicate” and paistas “medicine,” found in the manuscript of A. Juška’s dictionary “Słownik polsko—litewski.” “Naujasis keleivis” paistymas was formed from the latter verb with the suffix -mas.

Like vaistyti (-o) “to treat,” váistas < *vaid-(s)t- are assigned to the word family of Prussian waidimai “we know,” Old Church Slavonic věděti “to know,” and ultimately Lithuanian iš-výsti (-výdo) “to see,”

⁴ Frischbier H. Preussisches Wörterbuch. Ost- und Westpreussische Provinzialismen in alphabetischer Folge. Berlin, 1882. Bd. 1. S. 403.

⁵ Plačiau — Būga K. Rinktiniai raštai. V., 1958. T. 1. P. 448.

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veizdėti (véizdi) ‘to look, search’ likewise appears to be related further to paistinti, paistyti, paistas, as well as to páistyti (-o) ‘to talk nonsense, chatter, ramble; think, ponder; pay attention, heed…’, and páisyti (-o) ‘to pay attention, react; look, observe; try to grasp, understand.’

On this occasion, one should also recall peistúoti (-úoja, -ávo) ‘to recommend, procure’ and piestúoti (-úoja, -ávo) ‘the same’ J (LKŽ IX 748, 927) as possible representatives of this root.

13. Kėvė

Kėvė ‘an ordinary, lean animal; a nag’ (High Lithuanian), kėvinas, kėvīnas ‘a poor horse, a nag’ Vkš (Būga RR I 310; III 820; LKŽ V 672, 677) are more likely cognate with kėvalas, kėvėlas ‘shell, husk; grain husk, awn’, kėvetas, kėvatas ‘shell, husk’, than borrowed from Livonian kėv ‘mare’⁶ — semasiologically compare Old Icelandic skjáta fem. ‘dried skin; a poor, worthless thing; a lean sheep, a lean horse’, alongside Old Icelandic skjár masc., skjá fem. ‘translucent skin (used for windows instead of glass)’, Norwegian skjaa ‘translucent skin, membrane’⁷. As for Latvian kėve, kėve ‘mare’ with k-, these should be regarded as borrowings, most likely from Lithuanian dialects. In Latvian, derivatives were formed from them: kēvene, kēvēne, kēvēna, kēvēns, kēvēns ‘a small, lean mare’; kēvine ‘(young) mare’ (an affectionate diminutive of kēve); kēvele ‘(derogatory) mare.’

14. Latv. kursts

Latv. kursts² ‘a small wood, a grove (meža pudurītis, ein Wäldchen)’ EH I 679 and Old High German horst, hurst masc. ‘bushes’, Middle Low German horst, hurst ‘the same’, Old English hyrst masc. ‘forest’, and Norwegian dialectal rust ‘grove, small wood’ agree both in form (except for the stem endings of some Germanic words, e.g. Old English hyrst) and in meaning. Whether these words are related by ancient inheritance (Urverwandtschaft), or whether the Latvian lexeme was borrowed from Germanic languages, can hardly be determined at present. The question is further complicated by the fact that the syllabic sonorants of Indo-European l̥, r̥, m̥, n̥ became ul, ur, um, un in Germanic, while in Baltic they changed to il, ir, im, in, or, less commonly, according to some scholars, after velar consonants⁸, to ul, ur, um, un. In the word under consideration, r̥ did indeed occur after a velar consonant. Thus, if the words are related, their regular phonetic development in Baltic and Germanic yielded the same result.

⁶ Fraenkel E. Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg—Göttingen, 1962. Bd. 1. S. 248; Sabaliauskas A. Baltų kalbų naminių gyvulių pavadinimai // Baltų ir slavų kalbų ryšiai: Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai. V., 1968. T. 10. P. 158.

⁷ For the Old Icelandic words and meanings, see Jóhannesson A. Isländisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern, 1956. S.809.

⁸ Kurylowicz J. O jedności językowej bałto-słowiańskiej // BPTJ. 1957. T. 16. S. 81—94; Курилович Й. О балто-славянском языковом единстве // Вопросы славянского языкознания. 1958. Т. 3. С. 23—24.

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15. Dial. svýnas

In the northern dounininkai dialects (Trš, Akm, Lž, Trk, Mžk) and the Samogitian-border Highlander dialects (Škn), the unusual word svýnas is used for a pigsty LKŽ XIV 363. It is found in A. Juška’s manuscript dictionary. Being a narrowly localized dialect word, it has otherwise gone unnoticed by researchers, so it is understandable that its origin is also unknown.

From a historical-comparative perspective, this word can be characterized by the fact that Lithuanian dialectal svýnas exactly corresponds to the Germanic word for ‘pig’: Gothic swein, Old Icelandic svín, Old English swīn (English swine), Old Frisian and Old Saxon swīn (Dutch zwijn), Old High German swīn (German Schwein) < Germanic *swīnam. Both the Baltic and the Germanic word have a long root vowel—the Baltic one also acute—and an o-stem. They differ in gender—the Baltic form is masculine, the Germanic neuter—and somewhat in meaning (‘pigsty’: ‘pig’). Could Lithuanian, in the word svýnas, have preserved the old, admittedly dialectal, Indo-European name for ‘pig’, *su-ino-? The semantic shift (‘pig’ > ‘pigsty’) would be quite understandable, given that Lithuanian came to use the neologism kiaulė for this purpose, which initially apparently denoted an animal without tusks and horns in general, as its etymological counterparts in South Slavic languages and Carpathian Ukrainian dialects suggest: Slovene čūla ‘pig, boar’, Serbo-Croatian čūla ‘sheep with small ears; earless sheep’, Bulgarian dialectal čýla ‘sheep with small ears’, чу́ло ‘animal without ears’, чула ‘one whose ears have been cut off’, Ukrainian dialectal чýнú ‘one without ears or with small ears (of animals); one without horns or with small horns’ (< Proto-Slavic *kiaul- < Indo-European *keul-). It has been observed that in many cases a neologism—a lexeme in the same semantic field—takes over the meaning of an old lexical item, while the old lexeme changes its meaning in order to survive. The case under discussion conforms precisely to this general tendency in lexical-semantic change. This semantic shift would have enabled the word in question to survive in a small corner of the Lithuanian-speaking area.

The neuter gender, as is well known, disappeared in the eastern Baltic languages, where it was replaced mainly by the masculine gender; compare, for example, Prussian assaran, Old Church Slavonic jezero neut.: Lithuanian ežeras, dialectal ažeras, Latvian ezers, ezars masc.; Finnish heinä ‘hay, grass’ < Baltic *šeina neut., Slavic *sěno: Lithuanian šienas, Latvian siens masc. Thus, in place of the earlier Baltic *svīna(n) ‘pig’ neut. (= Germanic *swīnam), we now regularly have masculine svýnas. Consequently, the characteristics of the lexical and grammatical development of the word under discussion, together with the exact correspondence in form between the Baltic and Germanic words, make it a credible assumption that Lithuanian dialectal svýnas ‘pigsty’ is the exact etymological counterpart of Germanic *swīnam ‘pig’, and also the old dialectal Indo-European name for ‘pig’, characteristic of Germanic and Slavic languages. In addition to the Germanic words mentioned above, compare Old Church Slavonic svinija, Serbo-Croatian svinja (plur. svinje), Czech svině, Polish świnia, Russian свинья, etc., which are probably remodeled forms of the old feminine noun *svīni ‘pig’⁹. The exclusive character of this isogloss shared by Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic becomes especially clear when one considers that the name for ‘pig’ in the languages mentioned arose through substantivization of the adjective *su-ino- (Latin suīnus ‘of pigs, pig-like’, Old Church Slavonic svinъ ‘the same’, Latvian svīns ‘dirty, soiled’),

⁹ Фасмер М. Этимологический словарь русского языка. М., 1987. Т. 3. С. 579.

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formed with the suffix *-ino- from the IE name for ‘pig’ *sū-/*su- (Avestan huš, Greek šs, Latin sūs, S. Old High German sūi, Tocharian B suwo < *sū-o)¹⁰. Latvian has also preserved IE *sū-, but added the suffix *-ēno- to it, thereby slightly changing its meaning: Latvian dialectal suvēns ‘piglet’, which in most dialects was phonetically (uv > iv¹¹) transformed into sivēns, derives from Proto-Baltic *sū-ēno-; in other words, it has IE *sū- ‘pig’ and the suffix -ēno-, as in, for example, telēns, vēršēns (alongside telš ‘calf’, vēršis ‘ox’).

Having found in Lithuanian an old dialectal IE name for ‘pig’, one can more confidently treat the corresponding Prussian data as ancient inheritances as well, although they are, to tell the truth, rather obscure. Prussian swintian ‘pig’, which some wish to regard as borrowed from Kashubian svinća¹², and more recently also from Germanic languages¹³, rather contains *svīn(a)- (= Lithuanian svỹnas) and a certain formant -tian, apparently added later on the model of parstian ‘piglet’ and werstian ‘calf’¹⁴. If -ew- instead of the expected -uw- had crept into the written form from German sewstal¹⁵, Prussian seweynis ‘pigsty’ could conceal IE *sū- ‘pig’¹⁶ and have the suffix -eynis¹⁷, denoting a place (cf., for example, Lithuanian buveinė, ‘a place of dwelling or residence; a homestead site’) and added to *sū- ‘pig’ in the same way as, for example, in forming place names Clynteyne, Zan-seynen (: clynth ‘cow’, sansy ‘goose’)¹⁸.

If this interpretation of the Prussian data is correct, both IE names for ‘pig’ would have survived in Prussian—*sū- and *sūna-. Latvian would have preserved *sū- ‘pig’ and the adjective derived from it, svīns ‘dirty, soiled’ (< *su-ino-), while living Lithuanian has retained only svỹnas ‘pigsty’ (< *‘pig’).

LINGUISTIC NOTES

Summary

Lith. dial. arūnas “tinder” is evidently a loanword from Belarusian. The Lithuanian hydronyms Brūvaras, Bravār-uppis and Brūainis are supposed to be continuations of IE. *bhreu̯-r / *bhreu̯-n- “spring”. Lith. dial. gulbė “butt-stock” with its derivative i-gulbinti “provide with a shaft” is

¹⁰ Pokorny J. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern und München, 1959. S. 1038; Fraenkel E. Op. cit. S. 255.

¹¹ Endzelīns J. Latviešu valodas gramatika. Rīga, 1951. 50. lpp.

¹² Levin J. F. The Slavic Element in the Old Prussian Elbing Vocabulary. Berkeley—Los Angeles—London, 1974. P. 105 (su literatūra).

¹³ Smoczyński W. Elbing Vocabulary: Emendations, Readings, and Etymologies // Balto-Slavic Studies 1987. Moscow, 1989. P. 39. Note 28.

¹⁴ Plg. Endzelīns J. Senprūšu valoda. Rīga, 1943. 260. lpp. — Todėl pr. swintian taisyti į *swinitan ir kildinti iš vid. vok. žem. swīn „kiaulė“ visai nereikia. W. R. Schmalstiegas (Studies in Old Prussian. University Park and London, 1976. P. 25) mano, kad vokietis raštininkas šiuose žodžiuose, gerai jų nesuprasdamas, raidėmis s bus parašęs fonemą š, kas taip pat nereikalinga.

¹⁵ Endzelīns J. Op. cit. 246. lpp.

¹⁶ W. Smoczyński considers Prussian sew- borrowed from German dialects (see Смочиньский В. Указ. соч. С. 38–40).

¹⁷ Endzelīns J. Op. cit. 46. lpp.

¹⁸ Therefore, there is little reason to emend -eynis to *eynis (cf. Lithuanian kinis ‘an animal’s (usually a pig’s) bed, lair’), as W. Smoczyński does, following A. Bezzenberger (see Смочиньский В. Указ. соч. С. 38–40).

9. Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai, XXXI

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borrowed from Germ. Kolbe “butt-stock”. *Istymas “(medical) treatment” and *istinti “cure” appeared in the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” (IV 153) through misunderstanding of paistymas “(medical) treatment” and paistinti “cure”. The fact that Lith. kėvė “jade, wretched nag”, kėvinas, kėminas “id.” are rather cognate with kėvalas, kėvelas “shell”, kėvatas, kėvetas “shell; rind, peel” than borrowings from Livian kēv “mare” is supported by a semantic parallel of Olc. skjàta “dry skin, hide; poor thing; lean, meagre, sheep or horse”. It is now hardly possible to decide whether Latv. kufts “wood” and OHG horst, hurst “bush” are old cognates or the former borrowed from the latter. Lith. dial. svýnas “cover, hole of a pig” most likely continues IE. dialectal (Germanic and Slavonic) denomination of a swine.