LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXX (1993) PERIFERINĖS LIETUVIŲ KALBOS TARMĖS

Ю. Ф. МАЦКЕВІЧ, Е. И. ГРЫНАВЕЦКЕНЕ

THE ADVERBIAL PARTICIPLES IN –(У)ШЫ IN BELARUSIAN FOLK DIALECTS

The dialect card index of the “Dictionary of Belarusian Dialects of Northwestern Belarus and Its Borderlands” contains a considerable amount of material that has not yet been used, and which extensively reflects the use and functions of past-tense adverbial-participle constructions with the suffix -(ў)шы. They are all formed from transitive and intransitive verbs of perfective and imperfective aspect (including reflexive verbs, as well as those with the negative particle не-). According to their functional characteristics, they fall into three groups that differ from one another in the features of their formation.

The first group comprises constructions in -(ў)шы used as predicates without the linking verb ёсць. They denote the result of a past action, a result that persists in the present, e.g.: The curls have grown shaggy with grass. Kudelionys (Kudelionys), Šalčininkai district; God has blessed us with good husbands. Maliai, Astravyets district; The son and daughter-in-law have taken over the bedroom. Valyntsy, Vitebsk–Dvina region; You have broken off a leaf from my flowerpot. Maliai, Astravyets district; Beat the brother, and the brother’s wife has retreated. Vialikaje Sialo, Vitebsk–Dvina region; She has worked herself to the bone. Akhramavtsy, Brest region; The tree has fallen into the swamp. Losk, Valozhyn district; The hen has become sluggish. Alkhoyka, Navahrudak district; The cucumber has not been passed over. Maliai, Astravyets district; I have not spoken that way. Staryya Smilhi, Voranava district; Zarechcha has not yet reached the vegetable garden. Maliai, Astravyets district; The hay has not yet dried. Hrauzhishki, Ashmyany district.

This group also includes added constructions characterized by a definite result of the resulting action, e.g.: She has gone out to the doctor. Vialikaje Sialo, Vitebsk–Dvina region; I myself used to work as a milkmaid. Yeldavichy, Brest region; Where have you put the shirt?. Zhydevichy, Iuye district.

In similar cases, determiners are also often encountered, e.g.: I was once a person, but now I am an old widow. Kudelionys, Šalčininkai district; I used to winnow flax, but that was long ago. Ragulishki, Daugai district; I have already grown gray. Hrauzhishki, Ashmyany district; I have been without a husband for a long time. Maliai, Astravyets district; She has put this dress on. Maliai, Astravyets district; Now he has put it on to go to sea. Vialikaje Sialo, Vitebsk–Dvina region.

There are instances of adverbial-participle constructions conveying a sequence of completed actions, e.g.: I did not put it down, and covered it with pillows. Bashty, Iuye district; The dog barked at the rooster and tore out its feathers. Hrauzhishki, Ashmyany district; He mowed the hay, but it had not dried. Zhili, Iuye district; They lived in Latvia and went there. Ragulishki, Daugai district.

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The second group comprises verbal constructions in which the conditional marker a is expressed by the verb ‘to be’ in the past tense. They convey a completed action limited in time, e.g.: I was a squad leader for the Germans. Losk, Valozhyn district; They had sentenced him to five hundred rubles. Staryya (Sauliai), Šalčininkai district; The light dew had soaked the rye. Lisna, Vitebsk–Dvina region; I had been a student and had gotten frostbite. Akhramavtsy, Brest region; The partisans had entered the battle. Zhili, Iuye district; We had obtained the money. Kreva, Smorgon district; We had pickled a few mushrooms. Slawnia, Trakai district; The cat had climbed into the cupboard. Palatskishki, Voranava district; A spider had climbed into the trap. Valshyn, Vitebsk–Dvina region; She had remained in the forest. Vishneva, Smorgon district; It had not healed. Palatskishki, Voranava district; I had not been watching. Maliai, Astravyets district; The piglets had not finished weaning. Alkhoyka, Navahrudak district.

As in the first group, verbal constructions are also frequently used here as part of a description, e.g.: I had already been pickling. Staryya Trakai (Senieji Trakai), Trakai district; I had already gotten married. Budy, Vitebsk–Dvina region; Yesterday I still had not found it. Alkhoyka, Navahrudak district; I had been treating patients. Akhramavtsy, Brest region; He had been drunk as a child. Vishneva, Smorgon district; He had gone there for a while. Nistanishki, Smorgon district; Almost four days, the leg was sore all day. Valshyn, Vitebsk–Dvina region; That year it had dried early. Hruzdava, Pastavy district.

The third group consists of adverbial-participle constructions in complex sentences. The largest subgroup among these is formed by complex sentences with conditional clauses. Such constructions express not a real but a conditional-desiderative-optative meaning, e.g.: If I had been there, I would not have let him get married. Maliai, Astravyets district; If he had married at once, he would not have been killed. Maliai, Astravyets district; And he would have stayed well, if he had not fallen ill. Yedlavichy, Brest region; If I had lived for three days, I would have raised some old woman, at least. Akhramavtsy, Brest region; If I had not had the operation, I would have lived. Akhramavtsy, Brest region; If Dad had given it to me, I would have made a hide too. Zhili, Iuye district; If he had not taken it, he would not have been drinking. Palatskishki, Voranava district; If I had been listed with Verka, I would have been raised to conductor. Akhramavtsy, Brest region.

Besides the adverbial-participle constructions in the main and subordinate clauses, cases are also noted in which one of the clauses uses a past-tense verb form, e.g.: She wanted them to give her a house. Maliai, Astravyets district; It is good that he shut it; otherwise his eyes would have popped out. Palatskishki, Voranava district; Yesterday I did not see any pancakes; I would have given them to the dog. Hrauzhishki, Ashmyany district; I had no papers then; I would have written it down. Soly, Smorgon district; If you had lived well, you would not speak like that. Yedlavichy, Brest region; If he had said so, she would have given him a handkerchief. Palatskishki, Voranava district; And I would have come to an agreement, if I had known that they gave me the hundreds. Salanove, Vilnius district.

Occasionally, we find similar constructions with a nuance of wishing: Wouldn’t it have been better if Bozhanka had taken me away? Palatskishki, Voranava district; She wanted them to have given her a house. Maliai, Astravyets district.

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Syntactic constructions of similar forms are generally also known in neighboring Belarusian dialects (ДАБМ. Карта № 205; Каментарыі, 741 і наст.). Constructions in -/вши used as predicates in northwestern Russian dialects have been studied in detail in the well-known work by I. B. Kuzmina and E. V. Nemchenko (Кузьмина, Немченко. СПФР, 116–223, 295–297). The constructions under consideration are also known in neighboring Polish dialects (Nitsch. DJP, 461; Turska. JJCh,56), as well as in Polish and Russian dialects in Lithuania and Latvia (Semjonova,320; Новгородов, 369–389; Паршута, 80–86; Немченко, 82). Constructions of this type are widely known in the Lithuanian literary language, where they are normative (Aš ten ilgai gyvenęs = I lived there for a long time; Jis buvo tris dienas nevalgęs = He had not eaten for three days; Jei būtume žinoję, būtume nedavę = If we had known, we would not have given [it]), in Lithuanian dialects, in ancient Lithuanian monuments, and also in Latvian folk folklore (Sliziēne. SAVF, 81–93; Sliziēne. SVFS, 63–84; LKG, T.2, 141–161; ГЛЯ, 215–217; Ambrazas. LKDĮS, 173–174; Амбразац. ССПБЯ, 186; Endzelins. LVG, 1013–1014; MLLVG, T.1, 590).

The constructions under consideration have deep roots. They are characteristic of the language (Кузнецов. ИГРЯ, 195 і наст., 244–248). The corresponding Lithuanian constructions go back to the perfect tense forms of Old Greek (LKG, T.2, 150). Following the statements of various scholars, one can assert that in both East Slavic and Baltic languages they developed independently as distinct constructions and undoubtedly constitute an ancient common feature of the Balto-Slavic languages. However, their more marked preservation and use in the northwestern Belarusian area (especially in the Belarusian-Polish-Lithuanian border region) grounds the supposition that these constructions are either the result of a Baltic substrate, or of linguistic contacts between neighboring territories, or of both.

Abbreviations of sources and literature

I

Astr. – Astravets District: Mali

Ashm. – Ashmyany District: Hrauzhyshki

Bras. – Braslaw District: Akhremavtsy, Yedlavichy

Valozh. – Valozhyn District: Losk

V.-Dzv. – Verkhnyadzvinsk District: Budz, Valyntsy, Vyalikaye Syalo, Lisna

Vil. – Vileyka District: Salatsoye

Voran. – Voranava District: Polyatishki, Staryya Smilginy

Daug. – Daugavpils District: Ragulishki

Iuyev. – Iuye District: Bashty, Zhydevichy, Zhyli

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Navahrudak District: Alchouka

Past. — Pastavy District: Hruzdaŭa

Smorgon District: Vishneva, Kreva, Nistenishki

Trakai District: Old Trakai (Senieji Trakai)

Šalčininkai District: Kudzyantsy (Kudelionys), Straltsy (Šauliai)

II

Ambrazas LKDIS — Ambrazas V. Lietuvių kalbos dalyvių istorinė sintaksė. Vilnius, 1979.

Endzelins LVG — Endzelīns J. Latviešu valodas gramatika. Rīgā, 1951.

LKG — Grammar of the Lithuanian Language. Vol. 2. Vilnius, 1971.

MLLVG — Grammar of Modern Latvian Literary Language. Vol. 1. Riga, 1959.

Nitsch DJP — Nitsch K. Dialects of the Polish Language // Grammar of the Polish Language. Kraków, 1923.

Semjonova — Semjonova M. On one feature of the Russian dialects of Latgale // Publications of the Institute of Language and Literature of the Latvian SSR Academy of Sciences. Vol. 6. Riga, 1958.

Sližienė SAVF — Sližienė N. On compound perfect forms of verb tenses and moods in the Lithuanian literary language // Morphological Structure of the Lithuanian Language and Its Development. Vilnius, 1964.

Sližienė SVFS — Sližienė N. The structure of compound verb forms in the Lithuanian literary language // Grammatical Structure of the Lithuanian Language. Vilnius, 1967.

Turska JJCh — Turska H. Język Jana Chodźki. Wilno, 1930.

Ambrazas SSPYA — Ambrazas V. Comparative Syntax of Participles in the Baltic Languages. Vilnius, 1990.

DABM — Dialectological Atlas of the Belarusian Language. Minsk, 1963 (and Commentary).

ГЛЯ — Грамматика литовского языка. Вильнюс, 1985.

Кузнецов П. С. Историческая грамматика русского языка. Москва, 1953.

Kuzmina, Nemchenko SPFRG — Kuzmina I. B., Nemchenko E. V. The Syntax of Participial Forms in Russian Dialects. Moscow, 1971.

Nemchenko — Nemchenko V. Russian Old-Timers of Lithuania and Their Dialects // Kalbotyra. Vol. 7. Vilnius, 1963.

Novgorodov — Novgorodov M. A. The Formation and Use of the Adverbial Participle in the Russian Old-Timer Dialect of Dagda District, Latvian SSR // Scholarly Notes of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. Moscow, 1959. Vol. 134, 369-389.

Parshuta — Parshuta Yu. M. The Use of the Adverbial Participle in -szy, -wszy as a Predicate in the Polish Dialect of the Vilnius District of the Latvian SSR // Kalbotyra. Vol. 8. V., 1963.

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PAST ACTIVE PARTICIPLES WITH THE SUFFIX -(ųšy IN BELARUSIAN DIALECTS

Abstract

The article examines the syntactic functions of past active participles with the suffix -(ų)šy, used in the northwestern Belarusian dialects and recorded in the Dictionary of Belarusian Dialects of Northwestern Belarus and Its Borderland (“Слоўнік беларускіх гаворак паўночна-заходняй Беларусі и яе пагранічча“. Т. 1-5, Минск, 1979-1986). Three groups are distinguished.

The first group comprises constructions without the copula ёсьць, denoting a past action that continues into the present (e.g., Ку́дры абро́шшы траво́й); the second comprises constructions with the copula быў (быўшы), indicating an action that took place in the past (e.g., быў пацук забраўшыся ў пастку); the third comprises constructions with the conditional copula быў бы (была бы, быўшы бы), describing a hypothetical or desired action (e.g., Хацела, каб хату ёй былі пацаўшы).

The article demonstrates with concrete examples that analogous syntactic constructions are also used in some other Belarusian and Polish borderland dialects in Lithuania and Belarus. They have not been recorded elsewhere in the Slavic languages. Syntactic constructions of this type are actively used in Lithuanian dialects and are standard in the literary language. The article’s conclusions support the view that this is an ancient feature shared by the Baltic and Slavic languages. It is also argued that this feature may have survived in the Slavic dialects under discussion either because of their geographical proximity to Lithuania and close linguistic contacts, as a Baltic substrate in these dialects, or as a result of both factors.

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