Dėl leksinės interferencijos kalbos saloje (remiantis Gervėčių apylinkių leksika)

LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987) ANA ROMANČIUK ON LEXICAL INTERFERENCE IN A LANGUAGE ISLAND (based on the vocabulary of the Gervėčiai area) The lexical system is the most variable part of language and, owing to its ability to respond dynamically to extralinguistic factors, is, according to Weinreich, the domain most receptive to borrowings1. Studies of interference in language islands are of particular interest. They make it possible to establish, to some extent: a) the history of interaction between these language systems; determining the functions of the interacting languages at various stages is significant here (such linguistic phenomena can be discussed by studying them diachronically); b) the current stage of assimilation of the island language and the social status of the languages in contact (through synchronic study); and c) the prospects for the future functioning of these languages. This article seeks to analyze lexical interference in the Lithuanian language island of the Gervėčiai area, drawing on the vocabulary of one thematic group—the names, in Lithuanian and Belarusian, for dwellings and farm buildings and their parts, stoves, and fences. The article’s material was drawn from the following sources: Lithuanian data—from Part I (“Lexicon”) of the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language, Vilnius, 1977 (hereafter LKA), and the dialectology collections of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR; Belarusian data—from sources on Belarusian dialectology: «Дыялекталагічны атлас беларускай мовы», Мінск, 1963 and «Слоўнік беларускіх гаворак паўночна-заходняй Беларусі і яе пагранічча», vols. 1–4, Мінск, 1979–1984. In addition, data for both languages were collected in the Gervėčiai area. The Lithuanian vocabulary of the Gervėčiai dialect, with its richness and archaism, has long interested Lithuanian linguists2. Prof. J. Balčikonis visited the Gervėčiai area several times—a fact recalled with gratitude by J. Kardelytė, author of a monograph on the Gervėčiai dialect3. Owing to the long-term encirclement by surrounding Slavic languages, “a considerable number of archaic features of morphology, syntax, and vocabulary seem to have been ‘preserved’ in the Gervėčiai dialect; on the other hand, however, the specific conditions of isolation and close contacts with Slavic languages have led to the emergence of many new morphological forms, especially word-formation forms (...), new syntactic constructions, and, in particular, various lexical innovations—native words, borrowings, calques, and shifts in the meanings of old words”4. 1 Вайнрайх У. Языковые контакты. — М., 1979, с. 95. 2 See Lipskienė J. Phraseologisms of the Gervėčiai dialect. — In: Lexical Studies (Questions of Lithuanian Linguistics). V., 1972, vol. 13, pp. 111—141; Vidugiris A. From the Gervėčiai dialect’s semantic dialectisms. Ibid., pp. 19—29; Vidugiris A. Lexical dialectisms of the Gervėčiai dialect. — Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR. Series A, 1974, vol. 1(46), pp. 117—125. 3 Kardelytė J. Gervėčių tarmė. Fonetika ir morfologija. — V., 1975, p. 4. 4 Vidugiris A. Iš Gervėčių tarmės semantinių dialektizmų. — Kn.: Leksikos tyrinėjimai (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai). V., 1972, t. 13, p. 20. 140 Judging from the numerous, rather contradictory accounts by authors writing at the end of the previous century and the beginning of our century, more than a hundred years have passed since the Gervėčiai area became separated from the main Lithuanian-language continuum5. Nevertheless, Lithuanian and Slavic languages have a long history of contact in the present-day southeastern borderland between Lithuanian and Belarusian, and this could not, of course, fail to leave its mark through interference in the Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Polish dialects functioning here. In discussing interference in the Lithuanian dialect, we will also highlight certain features of this process in the vocabulary of the local Belarusian dialect. Since Polish is used in the Gervėčiai area only on rare occasions—in conversations with visiting Poles, in exchanges among local Belarusians or Lithuanians as a means of linguistic expressiveness, and in the confessional sphere—its data are not addressed in this article. The lexical group under consideration is characterized by the fact that it reflects the results of historical development. Moreover, because Belarusian had a higher status than Lithuanian (probably not only after the Lithuanian language enclave became separated, but much earlier as well), lexical interference manifested itself more strongly in Lithuanian than in Belarusian. It should be noted that the names of the principal realities included in this lexical group are native in the dialects of both Lithuanian and Belarusian, for example: ašlàmas ~ Belarusian дёгрына, панадёбрак “yard”; Lithuanian daržinė ~ Belarusian адрына “hay-storage building”; Lithuanian namai, pirkia ~ Belarusian xáma “dwelling”; Lithuanian pirtis ~ Belarusian лазня “bathing building,” “room for drying flax”; Lithuanian tvorà ~ Belarusian плот “fence.” Each of these languages also has its own names for the principal parts of these structures, for example: Lithuanian abūslėte ~ Belarusian засланка “oven cover”; Lithuanian ažudarinys ~ Belarusian задародка “livestock enclosure”; Lithuanian dangtis (daŋgstis) ~ Belarusian стpaхá “roof”; Lithuanian jāuja (also used trisienis) ~ Belarusian трысуче́нник “place in the barn where hay is cut” (flax was dried in separate buildings—the bathhouses); Lithuanian klojimas ~ Belarusian ток “barn floor”; Lithuanian laītas ~ Belarusian спад “oven base”; Lithuanian lāpė ~ Belarusian закрутка—“a type of door latch”; Lithuanian lūbos ~ Belarusian сталяганне “ceiling”; Lithuanian pirkia ~ Belarusian xáma “room in a dwelling”; Lithuanian prienė ~ Belarusian се́ні “entryway”; Lithuanian stūmė (variant stūmiklis) ~ Belarusian засаўка “a type of door latch”; Lithuanian šalinė ~ Belarusian засапоро̄нка “a board or log separating the grain-storage area from the barn floor”; Lithuanian šūlas ~ Belarusian слуп “a log to which fence rails are attached”; Lithuanian varai ~ Belarusian жэрдкі “pole fence,” “longitudinal fence poles to which boards are nailed”; Lithuanian žemė ~ Belarusian зямля “earthen floor.” Some of the Lithuanian names listed have Slavic doublets, e.g.: barn – adrynià6, ažudarinys – záharadka, lāpė – zákrutka, but the use of these doublets is determined by the speakers’ age (the borrowings adrynià and zákrutka are much- 5 Гаучас П., Видугирис А. Этнолингвистическая ситуация литовско-белорусского пограничья с конца XVIII по начало XX вв. – Lietuvos TSR aukštųjų mokyklų Mokslo darbai. Geografija, 1983, t. 19. p. 44–50. The palatalization of n in the word adrynià probably occurred in the Lithuanian dialect as a result of contamination between Belarusian адрына and Lithuanian daržinė, and subsequently spread into the Belarusian dialect (on the distribution of this word in Belarusian dialects, cf. “Дыялекталагічны атлас беларускай мовы”, p. 794, map 236).6 141 (or other features (e.g., -ažudarinys generally denotes an enclosure for livestock in a barn, whereas žāharadka denotes one in a field). In the Belarusian dialect, the word cėhi sometimes also means, in addition to the sense given above, the second, unheated side of a dwelling, which usually contains a storeroom. In the Lithuanian dialect, this part of the building is called pirkāite, singular nominative pirkāitė. There are few Belarusianisms in the Belarusian dialect within the lexical group selected for this study: апыд “granary,” круння “stone-built stove in a bathhouse,” крэйка “roof ridge,” свіран “granary,” марна “place in a barn where hay is stored,” “hay stored in a barn” (all these words are also used with the same meanings in the Lithuanian dialect; cf. aruodas, krósnis, kriekùs, svìrnas, terpùpėdis). Historical sources attest these borrowings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the territory under consideration, on the border between ethnographic Lithuania and Slavic lands, was an active zone of Baltic–Slavic language contact. These borrowings, however, are not unique to this territory; they are widely distributed: апыд is found in Belarusian, Polish, and Russian; круння and крэйка in Belarusian and Polish; свіран in Belarusian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian; марна in Belarusian, Polish, and Russian7. No more recent borrowings were found in the selected lexical group, owing to the already established system of this part of the vocabulary; the status of Lithuanian and Belarusian also played a considerable role here. It can be concluded that the process of lexical interference in this lexical group has come to an end in the Belarusian dialect. Lexical interference in the Lithuanian dialect of the Gervėčiai area is much more varied than in the Belarusian dialect. From a diachronic perspective, several stages in the borrowing of Slavic vocabulary can be distinguished here. The Slavic origin of the word tūlnas “fence made of barrel staves” is universally accepted. This is the oldest borrowing from the Slavic languages in the lexical group under consideration. In distinguishing subsequent stages of borrowing, we consider it useful to determine how widely these loanwords occur in other Lithuanian dialects. The following Slavicisms, also characteristic of the Lithuanian dialect of the Gervėčiai area, are the most widespread in Lithuanian dialects: fundāmentas “foundation” (for its distribution, see LKA, p. 35), gōnkos “porch” (LKA, p. 39), kriùkas (krūkas) “hook on which a door is hung” (LKA, p. 56), pėčius “bread oven” (LKA, p. 42), and derivatives: pėčiùkas “heating stove” (LKA, p. 42), pėcdangtė “oven cover” (LKA, p. 44, map 8); also the borrowings pōdmurkas (pādmurkas, padmùrkas) “foundation” (LKA, p. 36), sklepėnia “oven roof (vault)” (LKA, p. 43)8, štankietas “type of fence” (LKA, p. 60), zoviėšai “door hinges” (LKA, p. 56). These borrowings are more widespread in some areas and less so in others throughout Lithuania, so they may be presumed to have entered Lithuanian earlier than the others. The range of the other lexical group under consideration comprises the eastern, southeastern, and southern parts of the Aukštaitian dialect area, as well as the Lithuanian-language enclaves in the BSSR9. In these areas the following are found 7 Лаучюте Ю. А. Словарь балтизмов в славянских языках. — Л., 1982, с. 27, 46, 22, 33. 8 In the Gervėčiai area (in both the Lithuanian and Belarusian dialects), this word has another meaning as well—“vault-shaped ceiling in a granary.” 9 Of the vocabulary of the Lithuanian enclave of Punsk (LLR), only one term is shared with this group—žėmė “earthen floor.” 142 names: adrynìa (and variant) “hay storage building” (LKA, p. 57), dzedziñčius (and variant) “large yard,” “manor yard” (LKA, p. 45), pavõlas (and variant) “vault-shaped granary ceiling” (LKA, p. 49), padlõgas (padlogà) (and variant) “floor” (LKA, p. 37), pãlai (and variant) “washstand” (LKA, p. 59), pripėckas (and variant) “stove hearth ledge” (LKA, p. 44, map 7), staliavõnia (and variant) “type of ceiling” (LKA, p. 36), žõsauka (and variant) “door latch” (LKA, p. 41). A small proportion of the Slavicisms found in the Lithuanian dialect of the Gervėčiai area is distributed only in a narrow strip along the Lithuanian–Belarusian linguistic border and in Lithuanian islands in the Belarusian SSR; e.g.: kūmykas (and variant) “henhouse” (LKA, p. 52); mėkinyčia (and variant) “chaff house” (LKA, p. 54, map 15), padnebenìd (and variant) “stove vault (roof)” (LKA, p. 43), padmurõuka (and variant) “foundation” (LKA, p. 35), pečkà (and variant) “stove firebox” (LKA, p. 44); zascėnkas (and variant) “small village” (LKA, p. 46). The word pavõlas (pavõlas), “vault-shaped granary ceiling,” is found only in the Gervėčiai area (LKA, p. 49), but this may be an accidental usage, since I have not heard this word in speech. The names for realia associated with collective-farm life, e.g. kaniùšna “collective-farm stable” (for the distribution of variants of this word, see: LKA, p. 51), karõuny kas “collective-farm cowshed,” kuriàtnykas “collective-farm henhouse” (and variant; for distribution, see LKA, p. 52), sušìlka “collective-farm grain-drying premises,” svinàrnykas “collective-farm pigsty” (for distribution, see: LKA, p. 52), valõuny kas “collective-farm ox stall” (for distribution, see LKA, p. 50), are considered the most recent borrowings from Slavic languages in the Lithuanian dialect of the Gervėčiai area. Unlike older Slavic loanwords, which entered Lithuanian mainly from Polish via Belarusian or directly from these languages, the more recent loanwords entered Lithuanian from Russian via Belarusian (or directly from Russian). Speakers of Lithuanian in the Gervėčiai area regard these words as barbarisms, that is, as foreign to their language, and therefore, in conversations with visiting Lithuanians who speak the standard language, they replace them with a word they consider “more neutral,” e.g., fėrma. In everyday speech, these words have no doublets. When borrowed, they were only slightly adapted to the phonetic and morphological systems of Lithuanian; for example, sušìlka—the hard š is pronounced softly in the villages of Girios and Knystuškės, where consonants are not palatalized. These words in the Lithuanian dialect of the Gervėčiai area indicate a stage in the dialect’s development as an island, when, lacking internal resources to enrich its vocabulary with native words or formations, the dialect appropriates words from a foreign language. This phenomenon can probably be explained by the fact that, given the large influx of newly appearing objects, it was simpler simply to adopt their names from the language that already had them, namely Belarusian. This shows the increasing assimilation of Lithuanian in the island, although its core vocabulary remains native. Thus, it can be concluded that, in the development of lexical interference, considerably more Slavicisms entered Lithuanian in the Gervėčiai area than Lithuanianisms entered Belarusian. In both cases, we see the results of the already completed lexical interaction between Lithuanian and Belarusian; in the course of this process, certain “correspondence rules” became established between these languages, that is, a kind of “Lithuanian–Belarusian lan- 143 a dictionary,” known to all bilingual speakers of the dialect. This process took place in several stages—as can be seen from the distribution of words in the lexical group under consideration across Lithuanian dialects. Lexical interference in the Lithuanian speech of the Gervėčiai area was a continuation of this process, which had taken place in other dialects. ON THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING LEXICAL INTERFERENCE IN AN ISLAND DIALECT (based on the vocabulary of the area around the village of Gervėčiai) Summary In the lexical group under study, used in the area around the village of Gervėčiai (which includes names for residential and auxiliary agricultural buildings, ovens, fences, and their parts), the results of lexical interference can be observed in historical sequence. The stages in the borrowing of Slavic vocabulary into Lithuanian are distinguished with regard to its distribution in other Lithuanian dialects. The following areal patterns are identified for the vocabulary in this group used in the area around the village of Gervėčiai: a) relatively consistent distribution throughout Lithuania (borrowings such as, for example, fundamentas “foundation,” gõnkos “veranda,” pėčius “oven,” etc.); b) the eastern, southeastern, and southern parts of the Aukštaitian dialect area (adrynia “hay-storage room,” padlõgas “floor,” staliavonìa “type of ceiling,” etc.); c) the Lithuanian-Belarusian border region and Lithuanian-speaking enclaves in Belarus (kùrnykas “chicken coop,” mėkinyčia “a place in the threshing barn for pouring chaff,” padmūroka “building foundation,” etc.). The most recent borrowings from Slavic languages are names for things associated with collective-farm life (in this group, names such as karõunẏkas “collective-farm cowshed,” sušìlka “grain-drying facility,” etc.). Borrowings from Lithuanian into Slavic languages in this lexical group are very few and are mentioned in written records from the 15th–16th centuries. The status of these languages in the area under study played a considerable role in the uneven course of lexical interference between Lithuanian and the Slavic languages. Lexical interference in the Lithuanian dialect of the area around the village of Gervėčiai in this lexical group now appears to us as a completed process that took place across a broader area of Lithuanian dialects.