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

REGINA VENCKUTĖ

A. BARANAUSKAS’S THEORY OF THE STANDARD LANGUAGE

At the beginning of 1985, two anniversaries significant for Lithuanian linguistics and national culture as a whole coincided meaningfully: commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of A. Baranauskas, who stood at the origins of our professional language scholarship, and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Prof. J. Balčikonis, a distinguished scholar of the Lithuanian SSR, we paid tribute to their contributions to Lithuanian studies. It is perhaps unnecessary to seek direct links between these linguists, whose education and eras differed—their connection lies in the continuity of scholarly development—yet certain parallels between Baranauskas’s and Balčikonis’s views on the standard language could undoubtedly broaden the overall picture of the history of Lithuanian linguistics.

Not only the formation of our professional linguistics (through K. Jaunius and K. Būga), but also the development and standardization of the standard language (through K. Jaunius and J. Jablonskis) draw on Baranauskas¹. Reflecting on Balčikonis’s place in Lithuanian linguistics, bearing in mind his ties with Būga and Jablonskis, as well as the difficult circumstances of the first postwar years, we must acknowledge that at the time he was the authority in our language scholarship on whom these same lines of work, which he fostered, relied and from which they vigorously branched out and expanded².

A. Baranauskas’s contribution to specific areas of Lithuanian linguistics (first and foremost dialectology, accentology, the history of the standard written language, and others) has already been thoroughly examined and duly assessed³, but his linguistic views have scarcely been interpreted in the context of the development of linguistic thought⁴. Meanwhile, the general theoretical stance adopted by this gifted autodidact linguist remains worthy of attention today, both in relation to the history of Lithuanian linguistics and to its present.

Baranauskas’s linguistic views took shape under the influence of three nineteenth-century linguistic trends—Naturalism, the Young Grammarians, and the Kazan School; he was thus strongly influenced by German comparativists and Russian linguistics (chiefly through J. Baudouin de Courtenay).

Perhaps the greatest initial influence on the maturation of Baranauskas’s linguistic talent and methodological principles came from the views of A. Schleicher, founder of the Naturalist trend, since already at the Varniai Seminary the future investigator of his native language received an immense

¹ Zinkevičius Z. A. Baranauskas kalbininkas. – Kn.: Literatūra ir kalba, V., 1986, t. 19.

² Pupkis A., Mažiulis V. Juozas Balčikonis. – Kn.: Balčikonis J. Rinktiniai raštai, V., 1978, t. 1, p. 23–35.

³ Sabaliauskas A. Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija. – V., 1979, p. 166–171; Salys A. A. Baranauskas. – Kn.: Lietuviškoji enciklopedija. K., 1934; Zinkevičius Z. Min. veik.

⁴ Venckutė R. Antano Baranausko kalbinių pažiūrų ištakos. – Kn.: Ženklas ir prasmė. V., 1986.

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The theory of the “genealogical tree,” which explained the formation of the Indo-European language family, made an impression on him, and later so did Schleicher’s “Grammar of the Lithuanian Language” and other works by this leading mid-nineteenth-century Indo-Europeanist. Baranauskas’s personal contacts with Schleicher, though brief, were important in this regard.

From Schleicher’s works, Baranauskas learned the ABCs of the comparative-historical method, that is, how to apply the laws of sound change to reconstruct the archetypes of linguistic elements. From Schleicher he had also adopted the idea of language as an organ of the human spirit, and used it as the theoretical basis for his views on the causes of the dialectal fragmentation of language and his reflections on the common (inherited) and partial (i.e., specific, formed later) elements of language. In his most important published study, “Notes on the Lithuanian Language and Dictionary,” Baranauskas wrote: “The common element in language arises together with the tribe, at the earliest stage of the tribe’s existence, and persists as a substratum beneath historically formed dialectal differences. Such elements in language are roots, stems, forms, primary inflections, and the system of combinations of words used identically in all dialects and subdialects; differences among particular dialects and subdialects constitute the specific element of language”⁵. Adhering to this view, Baranauskas generally characterized correctly the significance of each of these strata for the study of language, and went on to write: “Words on the lips of the people become smoothed over time like pebbles turned by the current or waves <…>, word endings wear away, beginnings and middles contract and become uniform, and syllables grow shorter <…>. Since <…> the full forms of words shorten through prolonged use, which wears away etymological elements, the common element of language turns into subdialectal features; therefore, for detailed comparison of pronunciations, full forms are more valuable than shortened ones <…>”⁶. Influenced by Schleicher’s view of the word root as the primary and most important cell of the “organism of language,” Baranauskas, in explaining the differences among Lithuanian dialects, devoted much attention to the patterns of change in root sounds (especially vowels) and emphasized that the same sounds change more quickly at the end of a word or may disappear altogether. That is why, when classifying Lithuanian dialects, he focused on complexes of vocalic features, often not even specifying a particular distinguishing feature⁷; and, in devising Lithuanian orthography based on the principle of dialectal coordination—that is, in establishing normative forms for the standard written language—he consistently maintained the view that “the full inflectional ending” (that is, ending. — R. V.) is better than the shortened form⁸. Later, detailed research into our dialects confirmed this theoretical position of Baranauskas: it turned out that it is precisely those dialects whose root (or, rather, word-medial) and ending (or, rather, word-final) vocalism coincide that preserve the most archaic phonetic system. Meanwhile, Baranauskas (in his lifetime the dialects had hardly been studied) draws an insightful conclusion in “Notes on the Lithuanian Language and Dictionary”: “The R₂ and R₃ subdialects (that is, R₂ — ‘Mū-”

⁵ Translated excerpts from the study were published in Mūsų kalba. Here and below, citations are from: Venckutė R. From the Linguistic Legacy of Antanas Baranauskas. — Mūsų kalba, 1975, No. 1, p. 41.

⁶ Cited work, p. 42.

⁷ Girdenis A., Zinkevičius Z. On the Classification of Lithuanian Dialects. — Kalbotyra, 1966, vol. 14, p. 139.

⁸ Baranausko laiškas H. Vėberiui. Cituojama iš: Baranauskas A. Raštai. — V., 1970, t. 2, p. 186.

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shos river basin,” R₃ — the eastern part of the Panevėžys dialect, “pure puntininkai” — R. V.), which have many reduced <…> sounds and syllables in their endings, are already the beginnings of a future phase in Lithuanian phonetics⁹.

Baranauskas studied Lithuanian dialects out of practical necessity; however, apparently under the influence of the Young Grammarians, he recorded the slightest dialectal differences so meticulously and professed, in his own way, the “cult” of fact and living speech¹⁰. His exceptionally conscientious attitude toward linguistic facts and firm conviction that scientifically reliable conclusions cannot be drawn without thoroughly investigating them were also shaped by his personal qualities as a researcher¹¹. Nevertheless, his ability to generalize his observations systematically protected this perceptive linguist from the minute fact-description characteristic of the Young Grammarians and enabled him to approach a modern structural view of language, by which he had considerably outpaced his own era—the period of the Young Grammarians’ universal dominance (they were often called atomists). The innovative ideas of Baudouin de Courtenay (with whom he had close contact) undoubtedly also contributed to this.

From Baudouin de Courtenay, Baranauskas adopted the principle of clearly distinguishing facts of written and spoken language. We find this principle, formulated vividly, in Baranauskas’s letter to Weber: “A book is one thing, the mouth another: in a book, language is half-dead, but in the mouth it is fully alive”¹². This conviction apparently underlay Baranauskas’s rather skeptical attitude toward the unsettled Lithuanian written language of the mid-nineteenth century, which was not underpinned by clear rules of codification (this emerges from the letters of the author of “The Forest of Anykščiai” to J. S. Dovydaitis, J. Jablonskis, H. Weber, and others). The distinction between written and spoken language as two forms of existence of a national language also apparently shaped Baranauskas’s conviction that Lithuania needed a standard written language, while all dialects were suitable for ordinary communication (as spoken language). At first glance, this assertion may seem paradoxical to us, but in essence it is neither theoretically nor practically incorrect: modern language-culture theory by no means rejects the native dialect; it regards it as an important traditional means of everyday communication (in the family and in other neutral, informal situations). Only the use of dialects in public life and mass communication (fiction, the press, school, radio, etc.) is more strictly limited. All this, it seems, permits the well-founded conclusion that Baranauskas understood the relationship between the standard language and dialects in a fairly clear-eyed and modern way. “Translated” into contemporary linguistic terms, his reflections make it clear that, for Baranauskas, both the standard language and the dialects, which generally function only in spoken form, are relatively independent communicative systems, clearly distinguished by their spheres of use and by phonetic, lexical, morphological, and syntactic features shaped by the specific laws of their internal development.

⁹ Venckutė R. From the Linguistic Legacy of Antanas Baranauskas, p. 44.

¹⁰ Baranauskas understood living language primarily as the spoken language of rural people, that is, “the language of the village.”

¹¹ Venckutė R. The Linguistic Correspondence of Antanas Baranauskas. — In: Literatura ir kalba. V., 1986, vol. 19.

¹² Baranauskas A. Cited work, p. 248.

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While teaching Lithuanian at the Kaunas seminary, Baranauskas keenly felt the need for a practical (normative) grammar and set about writing one himself, hoping that he could make use of the example of Schleicher’s scientific grammar of Lithuanian, which was oriented toward diachrony. However, he soon realized that he had to “mark out the boundaries and not go beyond them” (he mentions this several times in his letters to Weber). “Marking out the boundaries” meant not only describing Lithuanian as it was spoken by its users, without embarking on reconstructions of the distant past, but also finding a way to reconcile the differences among the many dialects—that is, to create a written standard language needed by all Lithuanians. With these specific, clearly understood tasks in view, Baranauskas chose the principle of dialect reconciliation, grounded it in the theoretical proposition that there is a common element and a particular element, and developed a distinctive theory of the standard language. The main aim of his “language science” (as Baranauskas called his grammar) was to find the basis of different dialect forms by comparing them—in other words, to restore the original form from which they had developed. Baranauskas called the etymological basis of different dialect forms a “word-root” and, following Schleicher’s “family tree” theory, maintained: “The word-root is the stump from which the branches of the dialects have grown”¹³; “to learn the whole Lithuanian language well, one must learn all its dialects well, from a good comparison of which the true word-root becomes clear”¹⁴. In reconstructing “word-root” forms, Baranauskas did not reach far into the past: he regarded as normative the least altered word forms recorded in the dialects, for example, dirba, galvomis, sėdi, rather than dirb, galvom, sėd; Baranauskas did not include in his written standard language forms found in old texts but no longer preserved in the dialects, and therefore did not regard them as normative (he explained to Weber that he did not wish “to detach spelling from the living language”¹⁵). In accordance with this theory, Baranauskas’s written texts were, in fact, a transformation of eastern Aukštaitian forms into western ones. He himself acknowledged this unequivocally: “My language here is dialect R₁ (eastern Aukštaitian Anykščiai dialect, ‘rotininkai.’ — R. V.), corrected and supplemented by comparison with other dialects, and written not according to pronunciation but according to the word-root”¹⁶.

The written standard language Baranauskas developed according to the principle of dialect reconciliation was close to the Prussian Lithuanian (western Aukštaitian) dialects recorded in Schleicher’s grammar. It remains only to add that he arrived at such a convergence of his standardized written language with the western Aukštaitian dialect purely theoretically, on the basis of the regularity of the laws of dialectal sound change. Knowing most of these laws well enough and consistently following what we would now call the methodology of internal reconstruction, Baranauskas reduced the phonetic differences among the dialects to the most archaic phonetic system, which had been best preserved precisely in the southern western Aukštaitian dialect (Kaunas dialect). A letter to Weber says: “<…> I cannot admit that I invented a new language, spoken nowhere, but intelligible to all Lithuanians <…>. I did not invent a language, but I invented a spelling system for the Lithuanian language; or, indeed, I did not invent a new spelling system, but corrected one that already existed and was known”¹⁷; “My language

¹³ Baranauskas A. Op. cit., p. 185.

¹⁴ Quoted from: Archivum Philologicum, 1937, vol. 6, p. 50.

¹⁵ Baranauskas A. Op. cit., p. 186.

¹⁶ Op. cit., p. 185.

¹⁷ Op. cit., p. 187.

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has a basis in words and is thus written, but when pronounced according to the dialects it cannot be called a dead language, but a living one”},{¹⁸. That is why Baranauskas most often simply calls the standardized written language “spelling”: when reading, everyone can pronounce the sounds as they are pronounced in their native dialect, since letters are multivalent symbols for sounds that have changed differently across the dialects. For example, ranką, taking into account the regular change of an and ą in the dialects, can be read [rañką, rañkų, ruñkų, rõnkª] and in other ways as well. According to Baranauskas, phonetic spelling would be impractical, because “one would have to devise as many spelling systems and as many grammars as there are dialects. Yet there must be one grammar, one spelling system, and also a demonstration of how Lithuanians from each dialect should pronounce those letters”¹⁹. It proved not so simple to formulate specific rules that would make it possible to easily convert forms in the written standard language into dialect forms: Baranauskas’s “language science” contains no clear instructions on how to read the “common” forms dialectally, especially those that differ across dialects in more than just the pronunciation of sounds. This rather complex theory of Baranauskas’s did not take root in the practical creation of the standard language; nevertheless, scholars of the history of the standard language acknowledge that it played a role in the establishment of the western Aukštaitian dialect, which, from the late 19th century onward, became the basis of the present-day spoken and written standard language²⁰.

In establishing the “common” (normative) forms of the written language, Baranauskas faced the problem of linguistic purity. Here he proved to be a cautious norm-setter: he did not endorse “pure purism” (he criticized it in his letters), but he avoided obvious foreignisms. He explained this latter position in a letter to Weber: “Apparently, one should take care not to introduce foreign things into one’s own language, whether words or formations: I search for a way to express that thought in a distinctly Lithuanian way. If I cannot find a clearer formation or some word, I do not reject one that is doubtfully native”²¹.

For his contemporaries, Baranauskas was an undisputed authority on the Lithuanian language, having earned this recognition through the vivid and expressive language of “The Forest of Anykščiai” and his excellent knowledge of his own native dialect and other Lithuanian dialects. Prominent Russian and Western European Indo-Europeanists, as well as most figures in Lithuanian national culture, consulted him on a wide range of questions concerning the meanings of Lithuanian words, the usage of word forms, and so on. We know relatively little about Baranauskas’s specific corrections (the information he provided was mostly theoretical rather than practical), but comments found in his linguistic correspondence suggest that this linguist was not only an excellent knower of his native language, but also a devoted cultivator of it. A passage from one of his letters to Weber is valuable evidence in this regard: “I do not much care for the name ‘Lithuanian Society of Writers’ <…>. Would it not be better to call it the ‘Society of Lovers of Lithuanian Writing,’ or the ‘Lithuanian Writers’ Society,’ or something else, since it is not writings but writers who are members of a society”²².

¹⁸ Op. cit., p. 185.

¹⁹ Archivum Philologicum, 1930, vol. 1, p. 76.

²⁰ Jonikas P. The Idea of a Standard Lithuanian Written Language in the Pre-dawn Period. – In: Archivum Philologicum, 1937, vol. 6, p. 52; Palionis J. History of the Lithuanian Literary Language. – V., 1979, p. 197.

²¹ Baranauskas A. Op. cit., p. 186.

²² Op. cit., p. 207.

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Baranauskas, much like Jablonskis and Balčikonis later on, highly valued a good command of one’s native dialect; when collecting dialectal data, he focused on the speech of ordinary rural people. This is what he wrote about it to Baudouin de Courtenay: “Lithuanian teachers, speaking Polish themselves and not having learned Lithuanian well, <...> have corrupted the Lithuanian language in some places, especially in written texts, and in living speech in towns and manors. Thus, the more remote a corner of Lithuania is, the farther it lies from a town, a manor, or a highway, the purer and more beautiful its Lithuanian language”²³.

In the context of the formation of professional Lithuanian linguistics, Baranauskas’s theory of the standard language is significant, in addition to the points already mentioned, for the following reasons:

1. Being directly connected with the need for a practical grammar, it demonstrated a clear prospect for creating a normative grammar, foregrounded the importance of data from living (spoken) language, and in its own way stimulated more intensive research into dialects and vocabulary (cf. the Jaunius—Būga—Jablonskis line).

2. By establishing in Lithuanian dialectology the principle of comparing complexes of dialect features, it brought Lithuanian language researchers closer to a structural approach to language and laid the groundwork for reliance on internal reconstruction. It began to become clear that there is (and should be) no gap between historical and descriptive (normative) grammar, since firmer norms cannot be established without a basic knowledge of the history of linguistic facts (scientifically grounded norms for standard Lithuanian were later presented in Jablonskis’s Lietuvių kalbos gramatika [Grammar of the Lithuanian Language], 1922).

3. He contributed to the formation of certain criteria for the codification of standard Lithuanian, of which systematicity, the geographical distribution of linguistic facts, purity, and perhaps, in part, expediency should be mentioned first. These criteria remain relevant in the practice of language standardization today; moreover, it should be added that Baranauskas’s clear orientation toward spoken rather than written language led to the marked predominance of living (“village”) speech in our earliest standardizing works (cf. the positions of Jablonskis and Balčikonis).

When assessing Baranauskas’s views in the context of contemporary Lithuanian linguistics, it would be useful to examine his principles for classifying dialects, his theory of three vowel lengths (the so-called “mora theory”), and his specific reflections on the history of certain Lithuanian linguistic phenomena (which were often both highly perceptive and clearly erroneous). However, because of the article’s limited length, only his theory of the standard language has been discussed here. This is entirely sufficient to relate Baranauskas’s theoretical views to nineteenth-century linguistics in general and to show how, through this talented self-taught linguist, the most advanced linguistic ideas of the time entered and flourished in Lithuanian linguistics as it was taking shape.

A. BARANAUSKAS’S THEORY OF THE LITERARY LANGUAGE

Summary

The progressive ideas of the naturalist movement and the Kazan Linguistic School, which had a fruitful influence on the development of national Lithuanian linguistics, made their way into it primarily through the distinctive theory of a common national (literary) language developed by A. Baranauskas in the second half of the nineteenth century.

²³ Min. op., p. 133.

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