LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987)

VYTAUTAS VITKAUSKAS

J. BALČIKONIS’S VIEWS ON INHERITED VOCABULARY

Prof. J. Balčikonis did not set out these views, like many other theories that guided him, anywhere specifically; they must be pieced together bit by bit.

We must begin with recollections. In 1954, during various holidays, I wrote down more than 200 words and gave them to the professor. Those notes were examined, and a few days later the professor commented on which words were good and which were unnecessary for the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language¹. Anything not learned from one’s parents (what a shortcoming: krá.utuvie rä·da trú·kuma) was unsuitable and poor: “Words and forms that come from village homes are important for the dictionary and for scholarship.”

In the summer of 1954 I happened to be near Žvirždaičiai, and a few things were written down there as well. In autumn everything was submitted to the professor. He sets one slip aside and says, “Are you sure you heard that? It is a Samogitian word, and it is stressed differently.” We were talking about the noun dudrd: an elderly Suvalkian had indeed said audra; it differed from the Samogitian áudros. This stress pattern seemed very strange to me, so I wrote it down as something new. “In the village, people learn all sorts of things from the radio and newspapers and say them for the time being, but that is not the wealth of the dialect, not something learned from one’s parents.” He taught this consistently, including in the special course in lexicography during the autumn semester of 1953: words and forms used since ancient times (that is, inherited ones) are historically valuable. Lexicographer A. Lyberis recalls that Prof. J. Balčikonis would always reject slips, even those containing sentences with such novelties (1985.V.28).

The Professor maintained this view of dialect vocabulary throughout his life. This is also demonstrated by the first two volumes of the first edition of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language: one cannot find dialect innovations, transient or momentary facts here.

This view emerges from the Professor’s remarks at dissertation defenses. RR I 299 states explicitly that ligoninė, stiklinė, dėnpinigiai, juodlubės, lygsvara, savamokslė, savimeila, p. 300 ańtspauda, filma, kombáinga, p. 301 krautuvė, pamoka, stalius are not words of the dialect of the Mituvos river basin, but have come from outside and are unsuitable for examining the structure of the dialect’s morphology.

He also speaks about elements foreign to dialects in “Druskininkai Songs”: “Some songs, it seems, have come from other dialects, and so words and forms occur that have not become fully established in that dialect and are used variously by the singers. For example, the words customary in that dialect are motulė, motkė, but the word motina is more foreign to it, and it is pronounced in various ways—

¹ Our Language, 1985, No. 1, p. 28.

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for instance: móčina, mócina, motina, etc. The reader will also notice other things foreign to the dialect.”²

The two volumes of the LKŽ prepared by J. Balčikonis also provide inherited vocabulary used by at least several generations of dialect speakers (the exceptions are few: armija – LKŽ I 252, ánglas – LKŽ I 111, biblija – LKŽ I 657, centas – LKŽ II 7, čementas – LKŽ II 7, fabrikañtas Gs – LKŽ II 847, fazañdas Gs “such a bird” – LKŽ II 848, ferma Slm – LKŽ II 849; further exceptions are perhaps ánstolis Mrj – LKŽ I 124 and ánstolis LKŽ I 141 “court official,” átmušas “photograph” Smn – LKŽ I 330, marked neol., biznis Kp, marked sv. – LKŽ I 711, bánka and bánkas, marked germ., sl. – LKŽ I 526, bañkieta and bañkietas, marked sl. – LKŽ I 526, bankrótas from Gs, marked sl. – LKŽ I 527, byla, marked neol. Kn – a collection of office documents, etc.).

The LKŽ conceived by J. Balčikonis was a collection of spoken-language (dialect) vocabulary. The vocabulary was to be inherited, used in spoken language by at least several generations. The historical character of the vocabulary made it highly suitable for various kinds of research, since only inherited vocabulary has isoglosses and is of greater importance to scholarship (historical grammar, etymology, history, ethnogenesis, etc.).

In fact, J. Balčikonis had an excellent understanding of the state of dialect vocabulary and always emphasized that, alongside the vocabulary learned from one’s parents—that is, inherited vocabulary—people speaking in dialect know how to use many words, forms, and constructions learned from newspapers, radio, district and county documents, and meetings. In his dictionary he avoided these innovations by every means, regarding them as not part of the dialect’s wealth but as a temporary phenomenon. Finally, village speech is even influenced by jargon, the poor speech of village intellectuals, or the standard language*, etc.

Here we face a major and important problem. Should all speech be recorded, or should we take account of its historical character and inheritance? For a village-dweller who speaks in dialect, it all amounts to the same thing—if a word is needed, they use it. Should we publish everything we hear in the dialects? How should we interpret it all?

There are two views. Some publish everything they are able to record. One example is the Latvian dialect dictionary, E. Kaganė and S. Ragė’s “Ērģemės vardnīca” (vols. 1–3)³; another is the “Słownik gwar polskich,” currently being published by Polish lexicographers: absolucja (1.1, 25), absolutnie (1.1, 25), absolwent (1.1, 25), abonament (1.1, 24), abstynent (1.1, 26), administrator (1.1, 35), adiu (1.1, 34), adiutant (1.1, 34), agresja (1.1, 48), agrotechnika (1.1, 54), algebra (1.1, 94), balansować (1.2, 308), balustrada (1.2, 318), etc.⁴

The LKŽ, conceived and initially published as a spoken-language dictionary, presented the inherited vocabulary of the dialects. From volume III onward, as the dictionary’s type changed somewhat (the thesaurus principle was followed strictly), all vocabulary was included, and the treatment of dialect data changed as well

^² Druskininkų dainos / Užrašė Juozas Balčikonis. – V., 1972, p. 9.

* In this volume, the synonymous terms literatūrinė kalba ir bendrinė kalba have been retained as used by the authors of the articles. – Editorial Board.

^³ Apie tai žr. Vitkauskas V. (Rec.) – Baltistica, 1981, t. 17, p. 102—104; Rekēna A. (Rec.) – Latviešu valodas kultūras jautājumi, – Rīga, 1978, 14 laid. 217—223. lpp.

^⁴ On the unsuitability of such words for dialect dictionaries because they are ephemeral and lack a history, see Филин Ф. Проект „Словаря русских народных говоров“. – М., 1961, с. 34. (Folk distortions of borrowed words also become more numerous in the volumes of the LKŽ; see ramãtas, raperãcija and others.)

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treatment. The number of words and forms found only in speech, not in dialect—that is, items that are not inherited—began to increase (especially from Volume VI onward). When these are presented alongside old, inherited forms (and without any labels), researchers less familiar with the vocabulary of a particular Lithuanian dialect may become thoroughly confused (and sometimes do!). The belief that a dictionary contains dialectal, that is, inherited, words can be especially misleading. After all, etymology often relies on the geographical distribution of words:

baldas, baldai is given in the sense “furnishings” with a sentence from Prienai: Toks stalas sulūžėlis — nereikalingas baldas — LKŽ I¹ 589. Almost all of Lithuania now uses the word this way (baldai, baldai — Žml is also a recent usage). The inherited word baldai was found only among the Samogitians (as shown by the writings of S. Daukantas and M. Valančius, and the examples from Krtn, Grg, Vkš given in LKŽ I 481). The recent Žml and Prn attestations came from the standard language, so they are features of speech, not of dialects, and may seriously mislead etymologists and historians of the word. The word is used this way in dialects too, but as an entirely new usage, and this should have been indicated.

dėglas “torch” is listed as a neologism in LKŽ II 248 (the Professor, a witness to the strengthening and development of the standard language, understood such matters very well), whereas LKŽ II¹ 366 already records it as an attestation from the Viekšniai dialect. Perhaps Viekšniai speakers do say it this way under the influence of the standard language, but presenting it without any labels gives various researchers considerable cause for reflection. The history of the “torch” meaning of this word is as follows: neol. → dialectal speech. Failure to mark that it is recent distorts the word’s history.

mišrainė, tas „Gimtosios kalbos“ (GK 1934, 85) naujadaras, LKŽ VIII 291 pateiktas sakiniu iš Viekšnių: Nevalgyk sausos mėsos, dėk į mišrainę. Tai visai naujas žodis tarmėje (tikrinta 1984 m. pavasarį), kultūrinis terminas, be jokių pažymų LKŽ gali visai supainioti kalbos istorikus. Dabar naujai mišrainę vartoja bemaž visa Lietuva, net Švendubrės k. į pietus nuo Druskininkų, bet tai jau šnekos faktas, ne šnektos.

mūgė, which meant “the last large market before Shrove Tuesday,” according to LKŽ VIII 382, now means a large market in general in the standard language. People in the dialect regions know this word too, but usually use it only in conversations with speakers of the standard language. The sentence from Skr (LKŽ VIII 381) probably shows just that; but without some label (nj or the like), one can draw all sorts of conclusions and, in the course of research, damage the history of the word.

The neologism paskolà spread widely throughout Lithuania after the war; even its stress changed (pãskola). Since LKŽ IX 487 does not indicate its historical character, its entirely recent origin, it is placed alongside inherited dialect words. That is not quite right.

The attestation of pasimėsti “to become confused, lose one’s composure” from dialects (Užp, Kps) is highly questionable. The southern dialects of the Western Aukštaitian dialect area energetically—one might say—adopt slang (apsivesti, randasi, gaunasi, etc.), so this too is probably a recent urban usage, given without comment; it can mislead and even bewilder many (see LKŽ VIII 68). J. Balčikonis himself always corrected this use of pasimėsti, and K. Ulvydas also condemned this meaning several times on the radio. Since DŽ¹ 515 recommended using pasimėsti in this sense, it began to spread rapidly, and even J. Baltušis and other writers started using it.

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The word rankenūkas, recorded from Jurbarkas in L.K.Ž XI 164, is a modification of A. Salys’s neologism ranki-nūkas⁵, and is merely an accidental attestation, of interest, if at all, from a sociological perspective.

The neologism reikmuõ was recorded in Brs and listed in L.K.Ž XI 387 as a dialect word. Its recent origin (even elderly people do not know it now and cannot produce it when asked) should have been indicated somehow.

The neologisms degtuką, laikrodį, mokyklą, raidę are now used by all Lithuanians, but their origins are known to us, as they are to Balticists and Lithuanianists in other countries (it should only be added that mokyklė, recorded from Šilutė in L.K.Ž VIII 320, is erroneous: the l pronounced in German and the somewhat fronted a following it should be regarded as a realization of an ė-stem). Here, failing to indicate that the forms are recent is not a major defect (though doing so would still be useful).

The verb ruõštis came from written sources into Samogitian (pronounced ruõštėis, ruõšti's, with the phonetics unchanged); its intonation was altered here (let us recall K. Būga’s remarks on this kind of “metatony”—RR III 789). The forms riõšti from Kl, Lk, Lc, Všv, Prk in L.K.Ž XI 974–980, given without any labels, are entirely recent usages that have not been recognized as such (ruõšmininkas, -ė from Užv—L.K.Ž XI 974—is some kind of occasionalism, since it proved impossible to hear or elicit it, even in the same village of Talȧniai where it was recorded: there, even ruõštis is not used, only apyvoką eina, žygiuojas; and it was impossible to elicit a noun for describing such a worker, while local people of educated background had never heard one).

Or, for example, this entire sentence from Padubysys: Toks žvejotojas išsirengia nuogas—L.K.Ž XI 451. In that region there is neither rengtis nor nuõgo—these words came from the standard language; they are not part of the dialect’s vocabulary or heritage. The form rengti with the new “metatony,” rẽngti, recorded from Pp and Vlkš (again without any label), may cause etymologists and dialectologists all sorts of trouble.

A long list of such items could be compiled. It would also include dialect words that have strayed somewhere by chance: būras in Užv (L.K.Ž I 958; L.K.Ž I¹ 1172), Samogitian kūlis in the Ignalina region (L.K.Ž VI 837), krūpis in the Kapsukas and Ukmergė regions (L.K.Ž VI 716), krūpis in the Rokiškis region (L.K.Ž VI 652), some Samogitian nibrė in Kapsukas and Krakės (L.K.Ž VIII 769), and the Aukštaitian dialect animal rūpūžė in Kaltinėnai (L.K.Ž XI 837). This is a separate question that should also be examined. Much of this will be the work of students who wanted to please the Professor.

The same applies to many facts of stressuation (and word usage in general). For example, the new stress pattern audra, audrā, for the word was not given at all in L.K.Ž I 375. In the second edition, aud-rà (4) is given only from DŽ, and this is entirely correct (we all know that in many places dialect speech already has final stress under the influence of the standard language, but this is probably of little importance for historical research—it is a matter for sociology, and something that must be known for the future of accentology).

There are no new variants of art (L.K.Ž II² 222) — urban art, art; ýda (L.K.Ž IV 7) — urban ydà; kárdas (L.K.Ž V 271—272) — urban kárdas; 2 buckets (L.K.Ž V 725) — urban bucket; to bet (L.K.Ž VII 216—217) — urban to bet; bettor (L.K.Ž VII 216) — urban bettor; funds (L.K.Ž VII 381) — urban funds; lúomas (L.K.Ž VII 691) — urban luõmas, and so on.

In other cases there is considerable inconsistency. For example, óda (1), that Samogitian and Prussian Lithuanian word, has a variant recorded from the dialects, odà (4), from Skr, Plv, Gs (it seems to be given without any labels,

⁵ Salys A. Rinktiniai raštai. — Roma, 1976, t. 1, p. XIX.

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that it has been used since time immemorial, just like in Samogitia and Prussian Lithuania, and may confuse researchers, especially those less knowledgeable about current language-change phenomena). Incidentally, the derivatives ododbirbys, ódaraugis and others have only a fixed-stress root (LKŽ VIII 994 et al.).

Compare also the word prógą, a word of accentuation class 1 since ancient times; some users of the standard language now stress it according to class 4. This is quite a recent development, dating back only a decade or so in the dialects, so the examples given without a note—progóš Kžž, progà Škn, Pv – LKŽ X 785—may give any historian of accentuation or etymologist plenty to puzzle over.

rūšis (1): in Samogitia and Prussian Lithuania rūšė Lk, Pvn, Pgg, rūšis Šv, Sg – LKŽ XI 1029–1030; (new word) rūšis (4) Sb, Žln; this should have been flagged to avoid difficulties in etymologizing or describing the history of the word (rūšiuoti ‘to sort’ is a neologism in general, and examples from the dialects, especially from Ig, Ar and other places, should have been reduced).

skarda: long established in Slnt, Krš, Sv (the example from Pls is unexpected); skardà Rs (the kitchen utensil is a neologism in GK 1934, 86)—a note was essential here, as this matters for ethnography and other fields of science (the derivative skárdas has only one variant).

kaina, that old Samogitian and border-Aukštaitian word, which fortunately made its way into the standard language, is now stressed by some as kainà. LKŽ V 57 gives kainą from Als (J. Jablonskis’s notation?), but this too lacks historical validity; perhaps it reflects a failure to hear the circumflex accent, whose break also falls on the second component of the diphthong (as every researcher of the Samogitian dialect knows).

There are many more such examples. Dialects have learned a great deal from cities and towns, but this does not make it entirely their own. A closed dialect cannot be imagined; this is how it should be, but such innovations must be characterized (as in LKŽ I 368, atvirūkas, which is labeled a neologism); then everything becomes clear and convenient for researchers. (LKŽ stopped marking established new words with neol., so this is no longer indicated.)

K. Būga’s words apply to all these examples of accentuation: “Our intellectuals pronounce words (áudra, áuklėti, dailė, etc.) inhumanly, that is, they place the stress where the speech of the people does not have it” (K. Būga, RR III 785).

It does not matter how we view the historical character of dialect facts (each is important in its own way); either way, a historical dictionary such as LKŽ must always indicate the nature and novelty of a word or construction. Dialect facts are often presented as though they all belonged to the same period: inherited lexicon and lexicon newly adopted from the standard language are presented alike. Our dialects are now, as it were, strained through the sieve of the standard language; their lexicon is highly mixed (the old, inherited vocabulary is visibly receding)—the layer of borrowings from the standard language, if one may put it that way, is substantial. We should therefore be glad when the abbreviation nj. begins to appear in volumes of LKŽ, for example with saldainis (LKŽ XII 62), which will show scholars the true state of words and their history. Without this, anyone might take šalmą (nj.), šarvą (nj.), šiaurę (nj.) and the like for who knows what. Innovations in the card index are multiplying at an extraordinary rate: even careful collectors have recorded the Samogitian and Samogitian-border form šiaurė in Kč, Kpč, Švnč, Vrn and elsewhere, where until quite recently there was only žiemai (and the old people still say this). And šie-ndinio (K. Gaivenis’s coinage), spyruoklės, sumuštinio, sviestainio and the like—these come in whole clusters. Lexicographers must be shrewd dialectologists, able to understand the dialect’s repre-

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to ask about the age of some novelty. Rural people always tell the truth, so lexicographers must warn dictionary users when a fact is new.

J. Balčikonis always insisted on the truth of the facts and the reliability of dialect data (the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language is now quite deficient in this respect, as the card index grows more varied, knowledge of dialects declines, and dialects are fading). The Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language should mark dialectal neologisms more firmly and consistently, as is already done in volumes XII–XIII.

Today, dialect facts must everywhere be assessed historically. Otherwise, we will find in dialects whatever we wish. J. Balčikonis always strove for the historical treatment of dialect facts

J. BALČIKONIS’S VIEWS ON INHERITED LEXICON

Summary

J. Balčikonis’s views on inherited lexicon were never clearly formulated by him anywhere, but he always taught that one must study and record only those facts of dialect systems that have been inherited from generation to generation.

This can be judged from his lectures, the articles published in „Selected Works“, his editing of the first volumes of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, and the principles governing the compilation of its card index. To study language from a diachronic perspective (etymology, language history, etc.), it is necessary to record native, inherited dialect lexicon, since a large number of words from the standard language (especially words denoting the sphere of culture) constantly intrude into dialects; such words generally have a recent history of use (several decades or a few years) and therefore often distort an accurate picture of long-established areal patterns. This is a transient phenomenon; the presence of such words in a dialect does not constitute a fact of the language, and they are most often used in conversation with visiting „cultured people“. Therefore, in order to convey the true state of the dialect system and avoid any confusion, lexicon that is not inherited in the dialects must be marked with a special indicator in dictionaries (the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and dialect collections).