LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987)

PRANAS KNIŪKŠTA

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LITERARY LANGUAGE AND LIVING LANGUAGE

The centenary of Juozas Balčikonis’s birth is an important event in our linguistics and a celebration of language culture. It is symbolic that the years elapsed since his birth span the entire history of contemporary Lithuanian literary language. J. Balčikonis came into the world when the press had finally established the foundations and principles of the standard language, later consolidated and developed by Jonas Jablonskis. J. Balčikonis grew and matured alongside the standard literary language. His views were shaped partly by J. Jablonskis’s works and ideas, and partly by the same social conditions that also influenced Lithuanian literary language.

The principle of J. Jablonskis’s that resonated most with J. Balčikonis was that the foundation of literary language is living language. J. Balčikonis applied it to every area of language practice—translation, language correction, and language teaching in secondary and higher education—and adhered to it throughout his life. Over the six decades of his work, Lithuanian literary language was finally formed and developed; it and its theory changed somewhat, as did, ultimately, its relations with other areas of language, but nothing shook the professor’s confidence in living language.

J. Balčikonis’s strategy was simple and clear: speak and write as your parents and neighbors speak. Viewed from today’s perspective, such an attitude toward literary language may seem somewhat one-sided, but the professor applied it very fruitfully: it suited the circumstances and needs of that time. He had arrived at this method when literary language drew almost all its means of expression from the people’s spoken language, and nearly all members of society began their linguistic journey from dialects and local varieties. Literary language and its users had no other reliable support. From outside, it was invaded mainly by foreignisms and syntactic tangles, primitively constructed on the model of other languages. Above all, J. Balčikonis was concerned to protect the younger generation from that disease, as they had to cross the crossroads between dialect and standard literary language. Living language could provide the best immunity against it, while the professor’s exercises were like therapeutic gymnastics, for which no factory-made medicines can substitute. The professor taught through concrete examples and, even more, by cultivating intuition and a feel for language. When the position of living language is strong, it can be relied on without rules or proofs.

Literary language has never been limited to the principle “that’s how people talk.” Over time, it increasingly began to need other kinds of support and other arguments as well. Social circumstances, society’s needs, and changes in language create new linguistic problems, and language practice becomes more complex. Innovations emerge that can no longer be regarded as a simple negative counterpoint to living language. Literary language is no longer satisfied

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with what is taken directly from traditional language. Following its example, new words and expressions are created, and the resources of word formation and syntax are expanded. Literary language becomes a more independent system, increasingly relying on its own resources and looking to its own models and rules. The spontaneous life of language begins to be regarded as a lower level, while grammar, with its rules that must be learned and remembered, occupies the higher one. The direct influence of living language loses its decisive importance and can no longer overshadow the deliberate regulation of language. The speech of rural people either lacks the necessary equivalents or no longer meets the expanded needs of language. Language produces new offshoots that must be assessed by other means.

The principle of traditional living language is also becoming limited because the number of people who grew up without it is increasing. They cannot learn from “how people talk.” For a time, the interests of users of non-dialectal language can be ignored, but in the long run something must be done about them too. Left unattended, the urbanization of their language begins to affect the language as a whole. J. Balčikonis regarded it as an unavoidable evil and, as his letter to L. Dambriūnas shows, dramatized it excessively: “I fear what will become of our language when its fate is taken into the hands of the generation that has grown up in cities—with no dialect, no living feel for language. What will happen was vividly depicted by Dr. Algirdas Margeris in his work ‘Lithuanian Americans and a Dictionary of English Loanwords’¹.

The professor’s rhetorical question is becoming quite real for us, but neither linguistically nor socially can we accept the answer to it dictated by polemics. Life itself requires us to look at the matter through the eyes of the present and draw our own conclusions.

Even now, the generation that grew up in cities is engaged in various kinds of work related to language practice. We have quite a few writers and journalists, Lithuanian-language teachers and literary critics, and editors who do not speak a dialect.

In essence, the professor’s concern about the weakening feel for language was justified. From the press, and especially from unpublished writing and spoken language, we can see that the number of people beginning to lack it is growing rapidly. Ever-new distorted meanings of words and strange, artificial syntax are being concocted; incompatible word forms and meanings are being combined. The weakening grasp of language is clearly reflected in the improper use of adjectives with the suffix -iškas (gyveniškas patyrimas) and the blind attachment of the suffix -inėti to verbs (Likus penkioms minutėms, atsilikimėjome penkiais taškais). A person with a feel for language will say without hesitation—buvome atsilikę. The use of compound forms (or inability to use them) is a good indicator of a person’s grasp of language overall. The same can be said of the instrumental case in the predicate and the use of adjectival words as nouns (iš pasakyto matyti, nurodytą reikia vykdyti). Linguistic deafness is shown by verb forms used in this way: Nuvykau stebėti Duisburge įvykusias pasaulio pirmenybes. How can one watch something that has already happened?

The distance of the urban environment from the sources of living language is undoubtedly partly to blame for such language problems. But to equate the city with bad language and lay all the blame on it—

¹ Balčikonis J. Rinktiniai raštai. – V., 1982, t. 2, p. 260—261.

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it would be both insulting and unjust to attribute these woes to them. We find linguistic rubbish in the writings of authors of rural origin, too, while in today’s countryside one can hear such linguistic trash that, to quote K. Saja, “it is even embarrassing to listen”². What is becoming more important now is not the opposition between town and country, but that between living and artificial—or, more importantly, genuine and distorted—language. The greatest danger comes not from artificial language as such, but from language distorted ineptly.

It is no longer enough to say that the basis of literary language is living speech. Moving away from it does not necessarily mean that we are committing a mortal sin. The once-dominant view was unsettled by the theory of functional styles and by the practical language of specialized fields. However well one knows living speech, and however resourcefully one uses its features, without drawing on specialized terms or the syntax of specialized styles, one cannot consider problems in the scientific fields of cosmonautics or political economy, write the “Civil Code,” or translate the “Road Traffic Rules.” Here the opposition between living and specialized—in other words, artificial—language is determined not by the language user, but by functional style.

A generation that has grown up without the direct influence of living dialects is seeking its own path to the general literary language. They cannot rely on the speech of their social environment. They receive a solid foundation at school, but school squeezes people into the dry framework of norms. The advice found in grammars, textbooks, and prescriptive works does not provide everything that a conscious and educated language user needs. They seek their own relationship with language, adapting it to their psyche and needs and striving to shape it in their own way. They look for ways to avoid clichés, trying somehow to fill the gaps left by the loss of expressive resources of living speech. From the reserves available to them, they create new combinations: they alter shades of word combinability, bring together phenomena from different fields and historical periods, and move from expressive synthetic forms toward logical analytic descriptions. In various ways, they create the illusion of expressive and flexible language, offering consolation and satisfaction to those who had no contact with the wellsprings of living speech in childhood, yet wish to express themselves through language and speak a creative word.

It is no wonder that the influence of living speech on literary language is gradually weakening. This is an objective and inevitable phenomenon, like the decline of living nature under the impact of chemistry or the weakening of muscles in the age of technology. Yet, alongside objective contradictions, people’s subjective attitudes further complicate the relationship between old and new linguistic phenomena. We are accustomed to speaking distrustfully of innovations simply because traditional language did not have them. Advocates of nontraditional language forms struggled long and hard to gain equal rights with everyone else.

Now we are beginning to sense the opposite as well: living speech is beginning to be looked down upon, as though it were an outdated thing. More than one person criticized for an artificial style is already preparing to retort that they wrote in a novel, “European” way. Some even dare to declare in the press that “the language of peasants” is to blame for the current troubles of the Lithuanian language. In J. Balčikonis’s time, in the milieu shaped by his ideas, such a thought would have been hard to imagine; now, however, serious linguists begin their polemic with the author of such a view by saying that they, too, “have often asserted exactly the same thing,” although in fact they have not. After all, one thing is the various functions of literary language, which ordinary speech alone cannot perform, and quite another—

² Saja K. Atsakymai į „Kalbos kultūros“ klausimus. — Kalbos kultūra, 1976, sąs. 31, p. 7.

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the unlimited creative potential of belles-lettres language. It is one thing to seek ways to broaden and enrich living speech, and quite another to turn away from it in disdain.

An attitude against living speech can do a great deal of harm. Once we declare traditional language outdated, we can easily justify every kind of departure from it, disregard its laws, and write whatever comes into one’s head. As contemporary writings show, a great deal of individual linguistic creativity does in fact exceed permissible limits and violate the spirit of the Lithuanian language, and sometimes even its binding rules. When an author no longer feels a connection with living speech, even ordinary language norms have to be checked against the recommendations of grammars and written guides. A writer either begins creating an individual language by going beyond general norms and tendencies, or writes in a grammatically impeccable style that lacks verve and an individual character.

The surest way to create a flexible and natural individual style is to make creative use of what exists in living speech. We need to delve into the substratum of language, explore paths still untrodden, untangle the knotted loops of usage, and fashion new knots ourselves from everyday words. And everything must be done delicately, so as not to sever the roots that the word we have moved has put down in the language system. We need to sense what has taken shape here over the centuries and how, what may be disturbed and what we must not lay a finger on. Traditional rural speech continues to cultivate this sense better than anything else. It has gathered up the nation’s outlook, way of thinking, and taste, and has been least affected by stereotypes and foreign influences. We value the speech of country people not out of habit or sentiment, but because it most closely corresponds to the essence and foundations of our entire language. For those who must take side roads to reach literature, folklore and classical literature, as well as the word nurtured in the family, are the best substitutes for living speech. All this helps cultivate a sense and feeling for language, without which it is difficult to find the right relationship between individual language and both the rules and the living speech that is not bound by them. Of course, folklore cannot replace functional styles or meet people’s immediate everyday communication needs; it only helps cultivate and sustain a feeling for language, which we are increasingly beginning to miss.

Linguists, too, already experience certain conflicts with living speech, although they understand and acknowledge its importance perfectly well.

J. Balčikonis did not speak of contradictions between ordinary language and rules: he either treated living speech as evidence that needed no further explanation, or relied on a rule derived from it. He most often repeated the rule that the dative with an infinitive is appropriate when the means of performing an action is being stated. Perhaps it did not cover every instance of living speech, but it had clearly been derived from examples of it. Whenever living speech did not agree with some more general rule, J. Balčikonis upheld actual usage. That was the sum of his practical work in language cultivation. He set out this position theoretically when writing about the name of Lake Bilsas: “as it is pronounced in living speech, so it should be used,” and then adds ironically: “In the face of facts, even the laws of metatony must fall silent”³. J. Balčikonis, like K. Būga, did not question authentic linguistic facts

³ Balčikonis J. Selected Writings. — V., 1978, vol. 1, p. 384.

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and did not prohibit their use in literary language, whether or not they were covered by the rules for written usage.

Today, the work of language standardization has become stricter and more rational. We now insist on measuring everything against rules, codifying it according to them, and evaluating what is used in practice. The rules are becoming more formal, broader, and more artificial. Understandably, this makes it easier to regulate new linguistic phenomena. It also makes it easier to standardize specialized modes of expression, for example, the means of forming terms and the set phrases of legal or administrative language. The work of systematization expands until it reaches a point where it begins to clash with living language. The danger of excessive normalization is that we want to fit every linguistic phenomenon into the rules, and whatever does not fit, we try to “correct” or declare nonstandard. The most harmless facts of living language are included among them. The plural numeral form vieni, which lacks the suffix -er-, has already been practically driven out of print. Objections are raised to the pronominal forms of the adjectives pirmutinis, paskutinis, on the basis of the general claim that adjectives with the suffix -inis do not have pronominal forms. The stress pattern of the words mašina, Europą is classified as a violation of the norm, although this pattern is more widespread than mašiną, Europą. New alleged errors are continually sought and found; for example, melioracija is pronounced without them.

Language loses more than it gains from such activity. It has never fitted, and still does not fit, into formal rules. K. Ulvydas put it well: “No rules, even if drawn up by dozens of scholars over dozens of years, can encompass, exhaust, and resolve in their entirety all the countless possible instances of spoken-language usage”⁴. To ensure that work on language culture and codification does not clash with living language, a balance must be maintained between codified and actual usage. We must treat cautiously what exists in language in practice but does not conform to written rules. A phenomenon that seems irregular on the surface may prove entirely natural if we look at it from another perspective. Another rule—no worse, merely less formal and direct—can readily connect it to the system of the language.

The numeral vieni without the suffix -er- can also be understood as a collective numeral, since the plural is characteristic of all collective numerals. This is clearly seen in the dative and instrumental of the second numeral in the sequence: their simple (basic) forms are dual—dviem, dviem—while the collective forms are masculine and feminine plurals—dvej iems, dvejoms; dvejais, dvejomis. The same holds for the third numeral in the sequence: trims — trejiems, trejoms; trimis — trejais, trejomis. These numerals are further distinguished by the suffix -ej-, which gives collective numerals the necessary phonological form. Some forms are hardly possible without it at all, e.g., dv(e)joms, dv(e)jais. Starting with “four,” the forms of both basic and collective numerals are plural, so their only distinguishing feature becomes the suffix -er-, e.g., penki, penkios — penkeri, penkerios. We begin to imagine it as necessary for all collective numerals: we remodel the numeral vieni

⁴ Ulvydas K. Dabartinės lietuvių literatūrinės kalbos skyrybos principai. — Kalbos kultūra, 1963, sąs. 5, p. 15.

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into vieneri, while in Krėvė’s “Gilsė” we find an similarly remodeled numeral, trejeri: “After thirty-three years I will remember…”⁵ There is no doubt that this is an invented, accidental form. In the same passage, six lines later, we find trisdešimt treji metai, and a few pages later, vieni meteliai. The numeral vieni does not need the distinguishing suffix -er-: the number form clearly distinguishes it from the basic numeral. Because of its meaning, the basic numeral vienas cannot have a plural; it is needed only as a collective form.

The pronunciation and stress of the word Europa have been made artificially difficult. We have a rule that the vowel o in international words is pronounced short, and therefore the stress must shift from it to the short final syllable: prozà, sofà, and, for the sake of consistency, Europà as well. Many dialects have Lithuanianized the word, pronouncing it with a long o and placing acute stress on it—Európa. The rural pronunciation Európa is just as regular as the standardized Europà, and, most importantly, more natural and convenient, since it prevents errors of stress.

When normal facts that exist in language do not fit a formulated, unbroken rule, we need to be more tolerant of variants in the norm. Editors and proofreaders need not insist on turning vieni into vieneri. We can confidently answer the greeting labą dieną with the accusative form lãbą diẽną. International words with a long acute o, such as Európa and sofà, can readily be justified. And mãšina is widespread not by chance, but because living language tends to stress the first syllable of three-syllable international words. This tendency has not been studied or described, but is clearly perceptible. Words such as tãlentas and prõcentas illustrate it. Therefore, the widespread stress variants kònkursas, tránsportas, trìmestras, vàgonas are entirely understandable; like mãšina, they raised no doubts for J. Balčikonis. A person should not be called an ignoramus for pronouncing these words that way. In the name of excessive “correctness,” we forbid people to ride in a taksìu and to walk in a pensnè.

By attacking the innocent words of living language, we undermine people’s confidence in their own language and damage their sense of language. Not understanding why their speech is being corrected, people begin to speak differently from what they are used to and make far greater errors. As long as the standard language can still draw on living language and linguistic intuition, it should be supported, not suppressed.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LITERARY LANGUAGE AND FOLK SPEECH

Summary

The basis and source of the literary language is folk speech. J. Balčikonis was a passionate advocate of the popular character of the literary language. He built language practice and fostered a sense of language on examples of folk speech. He successfully applied the principle of the popular character of language in all areas of linguistic activity.

For the modern literary language, this is not the only principle. The literary language also has resources of its own and develops according to its own regularities and rules.

⁵ Krėvė V. Apsakymai ir padavimai. — V., 1955, p. 31.

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A significant portion of the new generation acquires the literary language without the mediation of traditional folk speech, seeking new paths to the literary language and new ways of developing its own speech. The opposition between the language of the village and the language of the city is now losing its meaning; the opposition between natural and anti-literary language is becoming relevant.

However, this does not give us the right to underestimate the importance of folk speech or, still less, to treat it with disdain. Such attitudes can only do harm: they may promote the spread of nonstandard phenomena in the literary language or lead to its impoverishment. The language’s possibilities may also be restricted by its super-normalization and super-standardization, that is, by attempts to eliminate from the literary language everything that does not conform to rigid, straightforward rules. First, such phenomena are often conditioned by other, less formal regularities; second, isolated facts of folk speech may exist in the literary language as a norm, and even more so as a variant of the norm...