IŠ LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS ISTORIJOS

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XX (1980)

A. SABALIAUSKAS

K. BŪGA – ETYMOLOGIST

To Simonas Daukantas, the word pyrāgas seemed to derive from the words pūrai ‘winter wheat’ and rāgas (since people drank from horns, eating wheat bread as an accompaniment); he associated kalėdās with the word kálti (because, as the year draws to a close, the householder hammers a nail into a beam of the house); to him, Liepōja derived from the verb līpti (it is easy to climb ashore from the sea at this place)¹. To Mikalojus Akelaitis, sūris, siauras, svīrnas were related words. He also thought vagā, angā, lāngas had a common origin. He grouped the words pjáuti, piemuo, píeva² together. “With the help of nature, I have made discoveries hitherto unknown to linguists. If God grants it, I shall make them known to the world and point out the rules by which, through learning one language, all living and dead languages can be understood,” wrote this mid-nineteenth-century figure of our culture in a letter³.

Such is the “prehistory” of our etymology. In fact, it differs little from the first explanations of word origins recorded in the writings of Latvians, Poles, Russians, Germans, and many other peoples.

Such of our writers and cultural or scholarly figures as Jonas Basanavičius, Vincas Pietaris, and Antanas Šmulkštys (Paparonis) also attempted to explain the origins of Lithuanian words. But lacking specialized linguistic training, they too could achieve little more than those earlier-mentioned “homegrown etymologists,” to use K. Būga’s vivid term.

The first prominent Lithuanian researchers of the Lithuanian language were also mostly self-taught or had rather limited specialized linguistic training. They quite often took an interest in problems of etymology as well.

Andrius Morkus Ugianskis (1816—1870), a graduate of Kazan University and later a professor of classical philology at that same university, was compiling a large Lithuanian dictionary, which was also to contain etymological notes⁴.

Jonas Juška (1815—1886), who had completed a degree in classical philology at Kharkov University, encouraged by his former professor Izmail Sreznevsky, attempted to write a “Dictionary of Lithuanian Roots” (“Литовский корнеслов”). As can be seen from J. Juška’s letters and the sample dictionary entries sent to the aforementioned Russian scholar, this

¹ Daukantas S. Raštai. V., 1976, t. 1, p. 421, 471, 547; Būga K. Rinktiniai raštai. V., 1958, t. 1, p. 199 (toliau: Būga).

² Akielewicz M. Gramatyka języka litewskiego. Głosowania. Poznań, 1890, p. 48, 57, 65; Kruopas J. M. Akelaitis leksikografas. – LKK, 1970, t. 12, p. 167–168.

³ Janulaitis A. Mikalojus Akelaitis. V., 1969, p. 65.

⁴ Drotvinas V. Andrius Morkus Ugianskis. – Literatūra ir menas, 1970.X.10, p. 13; Drotvinas V. A. Ugianskio 100-sioms mirties metinėms. – Kalbotyra, 1971, t. 23(1), p. 110–112.

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which was intended to be a comparative dictionary of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Old Prussian, with equivalents from the Slavic languages. A small dictionary of Lithuanian–Sanskrit correspondences compiled by J. Juška has recently been discovered in I. Sreznevsky’s archive (“Словарь литовско-санскритских соответствий”)⁵.

No manuscripts of A. Ugianskis’s dictionary have survived, so it is difficult to say anything about the value of his etymological notes. However, they could hardly have stood out among the attempts in this field made by other Lithuanian linguists of the period. The aforementioned manuscripts of J. Juška, too, are attempts of interest only to historians of Lithuanian linguistics and otherwise lacking in serious scholarly value.

Friedrich Kurschat and Antanas Baranauskas achieved great successes in particular areas of Lithuanian linguistics. However, they showed almost no interest in etymology: they were more interested in other aspects of the Lithuanian language and, perhaps, felt that they were not sufficiently prepared for this branch of linguistics.

The self-taught linguist Jonas Spudulis also took some interest in problems of etymology.

The first of our linguists to be particularly concerned with etymology was Kazimieras Jaunius. K. Jaunius was also partly a self-taught linguist, but his linguistic education surpassed that of all our earlier linguists. Besides Greek and Latin, which he knew very well, K. Jaunius was the first Lithuanian linguist to become well acquainted with the principal language of Indo-European studies at the time—Sanskrit—as well as Hebrew; he studied Finnish independently and thoroughly studied Latvian and Old Prussian. On the other hand, however, K. Jaunius, having studied at religious schools, could not receive systematic theoretical foundations in linguistics, which were already being taught at the best universities in Russia and Western Europe. Jaunius, despite being a very talented autodidact, was unable to fill these gaps in his education. He devised sound-change laws unsupported by factual evidence and attempted to derive from a single underlying form words that were semantically similar but differed considerably in their phonetics.

K. Jaunius also aroused an interest in etymological problems in his young student Kazimieras Būga. The principles of K. Jaunius’s etymologizing were clearly reflected in K. Būga’s first substantial work, “Aistiškuose studijuose” (St Petersburg, 1908), written in 1905. As the sources cited and the corresponding bibliography show, the book’s author and, undoubtedly, his teacher K. Jaunius were familiar with the most important literature of the time concerning problems in the etymology of Indo-European languages. Yet, in investigating the origins of Lithuanian words, they drew only isolated facts from that literature, paying no attention at all to the research methods used there or to the phonetic laws that had by then been more or less established and observed in etymological works. To give a clearer picture of K. Jaunius’s etymologies and K. Būga’s earlier etymologies, we will provide several examples taken from “Aistiškuose studijuose” (spelling simplified).

⁵ Венедиктов Г. К. Материалы к истории литуанистики из архива И. И. Срезневского. — ЛКК, 1975, т. 16, р. 203—224.

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Lith. arklys < *arv(a)-k(a)lij-: Skt. árvā ‘swift-footed (Renner)’⁶, OPr. arwaykis ‘young horse’ (p. 51).

Lith. gurbas ‘firm’ < *gu-rabā-: gu- ‘ox, bull, cow (βοῦς)’ + raba- ‘roof, house (tectum)’: Gr. ὀροφός ‘covering (deckend)’ (p. 52).

Lith. lopšys, lopišys < (š)lop-išys < *slop-išys: Goth. slēps ‘sleep (Schlaf)’ (p. 52).

Lith. marti < (di)marti < *dam-arty ‘she who has come into the household’: Gr. δάμ-αρ(τ) ‘mistress of the household (Hausfrau)’ (pp. 52–53).

Lith. brikas ‘two-seated carriage’ < *dvi-br-ikā from *dvibra-s = Gr. δίφρο ‘carriage (Wagen)’ (p. 55).

Lith. meleta ‘picus viridis’ < *mélē-ta ‘spoken with the tongue (linguata)’: Lat. mēle-liežuvis (lingua) < *mēlēm < *mēlām < nom. *mēlā < mālā: molata > mola ta ‘picus viridis’ (p. 65).

Lith. tarnas < tar(u)nai < *teruna-s = Osset. thūryn ‘boy (Knabe)’: Skt. taruna-s ‘young, tender (jung, zart)’, Gr. τερίωνης ‘weak, worn down (schwach aufgerieben)’, Lat. tener ‘tender, soft (zart, weich)’ (p. 72)⁷.

Lith. kipšas < *kap(ro)-šō-: Lat. caper ‘goat’ (p. 102).

Lith. kiškis < *kaškys: *qasqos ‘gray (grau)’ = Lat. cas-cu-s ‘old-fashioned (altersgrau)’: Lat. cānus ‘gray, ash-colored, gray-haired, old (grau, aschgrau)’ < *cas-no-s, Anglo-Saxon hasu ‘grayish brown (graubraun)’ (p. 102).

This is how the origin of the city of Ukmergė is vividly “explained,” and it continues to provoke much debate even today.

U(r)k-mergė < *Urk(a)-mergė (dissimilation of the two r’s) = Vilka-mergė, Old Lithuanian Wilke-merge, 1384, Scriptores rer. prus. II 694: vilka- from virka (: dissimilation r–r > l–r) = urka- ‘embankment’, Latvian virdze ‘heap (Haufe)’, Latvian Virkus–muiža+-mer-gė ‘surrounding area (Grenzgebiet, Bezirk)’, Old High German marka ‘border, frontier (Grenze, Grenzgebiet)’, Gothic marka ‘border (Grenze)’, Welsh bro ‘surrounding area, region (Bezirk, Land, Gegend)’, Latin margo ‘edge, rim (Rand)’; Vilka-mergė — ‘a city with an embankment or castle within its walls’ (p. 178).

As we know, K. Būga sharply criticized his “Aistiški studijai,” calling it “an inept, thoroughly erroneous piece of writing.”

At the end of 1909, K. Būga published, at his own expense, a self-critique of “Aistiški studijai,” in which he refuted the laws of sound development devised by K. Jaunius and stated that his work “может послужить лишь материалом для совершенно других выводов”⁸.

Despite this severe self-criticism, K. Būga’s “Aistiški studijai” entered the linguistic literature; its abbreviation is frequently found even in today’s most prominent works on Baltic studies. The enduring value of this book lies not only in its factual material but also in its interesting observations and comparisons in particular cases.

⁶ The explanations of meanings given by K. Būga are indicated in parentheses.

⁷ Many researchers still accept this etymology of Lithuanian tarnas, but the phonetic changes proposed here for the Lithuanian word cannot be explained by any sound laws.

⁸ For a fuller discussion, cf. Zinkevičius Z., Kabelka J. Kazimieras Būga. – In: Būga K. Rinktiniai raštai. V., 1958, vol. 1, p. 31.

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For instance, the Finnish linguist V. Kiparsky wrote in a very interesting paper on the chronology of lexical relations between Finnish and Slavic, read at the IV International Congress of Slavists in Moscow in 1958: „Regarding these three words (ies, kimalainen, hirsi.—A. S.), Kalima takes a position that is not entirely clear: he rejects the comparison hirsi ~ жердь only because there are no other equally ancient borrowings… It is known, however, that hirsi, as the Lithuanian scholar Buga already pointed out in 1920 (it should be 1908. — A.S.) (Aistiški studijai I 29 and 189), and as some other scholars have recently confirmed, can readily be explained from the Baltic languages, where Lithuanian žardis ‘a plot of field enclosed by a pole fence, a horse pasture’ and Latvian žurds ‘a trestle or a fence made of forked poles’ are found, and where *žirdis may also have existed with approximately the same meaning“⁹.

In 1911, that is, before completing university, K. Būga published a substantial article, “Baltica,” which, alongside various topics in historical phonetics, also presents several dozen etymologies of words from Lithuanian, Latvian, and Old Prussian¹⁰. During his studies, K. Būga wrote two more major articles, devoted chiefly to problems of etymology—“Slavic-Baltic Etymologies”¹¹ and “Lituanica”¹².

These articles cannot be compared with “Aistiški studijai” even remotely. They are the work of a serious scholar, one who not only knows the enormously rich factual material of the Baltic languages and the varied etymological literature exceptionally well, but is also highly capable of applying a rigorous research methodology. True, here and there in these articles one may still discern traces of K. Jaunius’s influence, but this may also reflect K. Būga’s own boldness—a quality much needed by an etymologist. For example, in seeking to connect words of similar meaning, he sometimes operates rather too boldly with various phonetic changes. Compare:

„kuilỹs, kūilio = Latvian kūilis ‘the boar’: kūkis ‘hog’, kũkė ‘pig’ Akielewicz Głosownia 114, kĩkut’ voc. ‘piglet’ in Dusyaty: kiaũ-lė ‘pig’ from keu- Prussian skew-re Voc. 865 ‘sow’: Latvian cūka ‘pig’ from *k’ū-kā with a ‘soft’ k from kiau-< keu-“ (Būga, I, 296—297).

Or, for instance, the Lithuanian words linked without any reservations: kui-nas, kui-kė, ku-m-ėlė, kū-žis, kužiukas (p. 297). Lithuanian pūka ‘flower’, as a native word, is linked with Latvian puķe ‘flower’, Lithuanian pokštė (a word from F. Nesselmann’s dictionary; it should be puokštė — A. S.), Sanskrit pūš-pa- ‘flower’ (p. 300). Lithuanian karštas, as a word of native origin, is linked with Latvian šķirsts ‘box, coffin’, Sanskrit kartā- ‘pit, cave, hole (Grube, Loch)’, which, in K. Būga’s view, would correspond to the Proto-Lithuanian form *kartas ‘trough, tub (корыто)’, from which Finnish kartta ‘tub, trough (der Trog)’ would have derived: Lithuanian pra-kartas ‘tub, trough; manger’

⁹ Кипарский В. О хронологии славяно-финских лексических отношений. — Scando-Slavica, 1958, т. 4, р. 128.

¹⁰ Буга К. К. Baltica. — РФВ, 1911, 65, с. 302—326; 1911, 66, с. 218—255; atskiru leidiniu — Варшава, 1911; Būga, t 1, p. 273—322.

¹¹ Буга К. К. Славяно-балтийские этимологии. — РФВ, 1912, 67, с. 232—250; Būga, t. 1, p. 323—338.

¹² Буга К. К. Lituanica. — Известия Отделения русского языка и словесности Императорской академии наук, 1912, 17 (1), с. 1—49; atskiru leidiniu — СПб., 1912; Būga, t. 1, p. 339—383.

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(Būga, I, 308). K. Būga relates the Belarusian borrowing aršūs, as a native word, to Greek ἔρχομαι ‘I go’ and Sanskrit rèčhāti ‘I hit, reach (trifft, erreicht)’ (Būga, I, 355).

K. Būga himself later abandoned some of these similar etymologies.

A considerable number of K. Būga’s etymologies published in these articles have stood the test of time, and are still presented in the etymological literature as plausible connections; this is especially true of material from the Baltic and Slavic languages. Examples of such etymologies include:

Lith. aukšlė ‘a kind of fish’; Rus. уклея (Būga, I, 274). Būga also discussed this etymology in later works (Būga, I, 490; II, 643). As one that raises no doubts, it was included in the major works on Baltic and Slavic etymology (Trautmann, 18; Fraenkel, 26; Machek, 668; Фасмер, IV, 156).

Lith. būrýs ‘a rain or snow squall, or a wave of some kind of weather’ was considered a borrowing from the Slavic languages by A. Brückner and E. Berneker (cf. Rus. буря ‘storm’, etc.). K. Būga argued convincingly enough that Lith. lietaũs būrýs ‘rain squall’ is inseparable from žmonių (pauǩščių, avių) būrýs ‘a group of people (birds, sheep)’, and that the new meaning of būrýs arose from the expression lietaũs būrýs (Būga, I, 306).

Lith. glusnùs ‘obedient, submissive’ was linked by K. Būga to Slavic глухъ ‘deaf’ (cf. Rus. глухой), with the semantic comparison of Samogitian klūsas ‘hard of hearing’: Lith. klausýti (Būga, I, 306–307). This etymology by K. Būga is included in R. Trautmann’s (Trautmann, 91) and M. Fasmer’s dictionaries (Фасмер, I, 417).

Lith. godóti ‘to think, dream’, which E. Berneker considered a Slavic borrowing, was shown by K. Būga to be a native word (Būga, I, 307). Later etymologists likewise have no doubt about the word’s origin (Fraenkel, 159–160; Фасмер, I, 381).

Perhaps for the first time in the etymological literature, K. Būga discussed at length the relationship between Lith. lópa ‘paw’ and Slavic лапа (cf. Rus. лапа) (Būga, I, 312–313; cf. also Fraenkel, 339–340; Trautmann, 160; Фасмер, II, 458).

K. Būga gives a very elegant explanation of the origin of Lith. umedė, connecting the first component of this mushroom’s name with Lith. ūmas ‘green, moist, undried’, ūmùs, and the second with Lith. ėsti, pointing to the semantic parallel in Rus. сыроежка ‘umedė’ (Būga, I, 382–383; cf. also Fraenkel, 1162; Фасмер III, 819).

K. Būga was perhaps the first to link Lith. žiáunos with Bulgarian ჟуна ‘lip, mouth’ (Būga, I, 383; cf. also Trautmann, 372; Fraenkel, 1302–1303; Фасмер, II, 39–40).

The origin of Lith. žlùgtas ‘clothes soaked for washing, laundry; laundry tub’ is examined in great detail and convincingly (: Lith. žlùgti, žlūginti, žlūgsóti ‘to be wet’, žliūgė ‘a plant of the carnation family’, etc.). Here Būga also noted that Belarusian жлукто ‘laundry tub; one who drinks and eats a lot (много пьющий и обжора)’ and Polish żłukto ‘laundry tub’ are borrowings from Lithuanian (Būga, I, 320–321; cf. also Fraenkel, 1318; Фасмер, II, 58).

The article on Lith. taūras and Slavic туро́ (Būga, I, 375–378) is distinguished by its wealth of factual material, both linguistic and historical.

K. Būga’s attempt to explain the origin of Lith. laĩvas is interesting. He tried to connect this word with Lith. lovýs, luõtas (Būga, I, 309–311). It is true that the origin of Lith. laĩvas has still not been definitively explained (it may be a borrowing from the Baltic Finnic languages), but the connection between Lith. laĩvas and lovýs is quite plausible in terms of both meaning and phonetics.

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While still a student, K. Būga wrote a highly valuable study of Lithuanian personal names¹³, which also frequently addresses problems of etymology.

An important etymological work by K. Būga was the study “Slavic–Baltic Etymologies”¹⁴, published in the journal „Русский филологический вестник“ in 1913—1916. In this study, K. Būga presents etymologies of words common to the Baltic and Slavic languages (325 in all). Some of these etymologies are additions to and corrections of E. Berneker’s “Slavisches etymologisches Wörterbuch” (Heidelberg, 1908—1913).

Among the more interesting etymologies published here by K. Būga, the following may be mentioned:

For the Slavic word duda (cf. Russian dialectal dyda ‘bagpipe’ and others), K. Būga identified the exact Lithuanian counterpart *dauda, cf. the diminutive form daudýtė ‘little pipe’: Lithuanian dudénti ‘to knock, rumble softly, speak’ (Būga, I, 327, 437; cf. also Fraenkel, 84; Trautmann, 46—47; Фасмер, I, 550).

K. Būga connected Lithuanian dailė ‘art’, dailùs with Slavic dělo (Russian дело ‘matter, thing, enterprise’, etc.). This etymology remains highly controversial. Slavicists do not accept it (cf. Būga, I, 436—437; Фасмер, I, 496—497; Sławski, I, 190; Trautmann, 48). More recently, B. Jėgeris revived this etymology of K. Būga¹⁵.

This study proposes a relationship between Lithuanian piētūs and Slavic pirō (cf. Russian пуп ‘feast’, etc.), piti (cf. Russian numь ‘to drink’, etc.). This, too, is a highly controversial, but possible, etymology (Būga, I, 473; Fraenkel, 587—588).

For Slavic razь (cf. Russian раз ‘time, occasion’, etc.), K. Būga identified the exact Lithuanian counterpart rūožas (Būga, I, 476; cf. also Trautmann, 245; Фасмер, III, 432—433).

The relationship between Lithuanian slaugýti and Slavic sluga (cf. Russian слуга ‘servant’, etc.), and Slavic slu žiti (cf. Russian служить ‘to serve’, etc.) is discussed at length (Būga, I, 484; cf. also Trautmann, 268; Фасмер, III, 676). K. Būga had already drawn attention to the relationship between these words in an earlier work (Būga, I, 316—317).

In early written sources, K. Būga found an exact counterpart for Slavic stryjb (cf. Polish stryj ‘uncle (father’s brother)’, etc.) in Lithuanian strùjus ‘grandfather’ (Būga, I, 486; cf. also Trautmann, 290; Фасмер, III, 780; Трубачев, 79—81).

The origin of Lithuanian talkà is explained (cf. telkti), and the word’s counterparts in the Slavic languages are identified (Būga, I, 488; cf. also Fraenkel, 1053—1954; Trautmann, 322; Фасмер, IV, 73).

Discussing the relationship between Lithuanian vénteris ‘a type of fishing net’ and corresponding Slavic names with the same root (Russian вятерь, Polish wiecierz, etc.), K. Būga was perhaps the first to suggest that the Slavic words might be borrowings from the Baltic languages (Būga, I, 491; cf. also Fraenkel, 1223—1224; Фасмер, I, 292, 376).

Many of the ideas proposed by K. Būga in this study found an echo in later etymological literature; they are especially often cited by E. Frenkel, R. Trautmann,

¹³ Būga K. Apie lietuvių asmens vardus. — Lietuvių tauta, 1911, t. 2, p. 1—50; atskiru leidiniu — Vilnius, 1911; Būga, t. I, p. 201—269.

¹⁴ Буга К. К. Славяно-балтийские этимологии. — РФВ, 1912, 67, с. 232—250; 1913, 70, с. 100—108, 248—256; 1914, 71, с. 50—60, 464—471; 1914, 72, с. 187—202; 1915, 73, с. 335—343; 1916, 75, с. 141—156; Būga, t. I, p. 323—338, 433—495.

¹⁵ Jēgers B. Verwandte Bedeutungsverwandtschaften baltischer Wörter. — KZ, 1966, B. 80, p. 81—87.

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in M. Fasmer’s dictionaries. Even when they disagreed with K. Būga’s etymologies, later researchers often drew on the valuable factual material on the Lithuanian language, which, as K. Būga himself noted in a letter to the editors of the journal „Русский филологический вестник“, had been collected mainly “from living spoken language” (Būga, I, 433).

K. Būga examined a particularly large number of etymological problems in his work „Kalba ir senovė“ (K., 1922). This work includes such well-known articles of his as „Visuomeniniai lietuvių santykiai su germanais“, „Marios ir jūrės“, the entire series of articles „Mūsų žodžių giminaičiai“, and others.

Among the more interesting etymologies by K. Būga, published in „Kalba ir senovė“, the following are worth noting:

Lith. kūdikis: Lat. kūdīt ‘to excite, urge’, cf. the semantic parallel vaikas: veikus ‘quick’, vikrūs, veikti, vykti (Būga, II, 43; Fraenkel, 304, 1214).

Lith. rambùs ‘träge, i.e. one who needs to be struck with a whip (рубнуть)’, rėmbėti, rùmbėti ‘to get welts, покрываться рубцами, заживать’, rìmbas ‘a plaited whip lash used to strike (рубить) a horse’, Latv. rùmba ‘hub, i.e. a piece cut from a tree trunk (обрубок)’, Slavic rąbiti, etc. (Būga, II, 111; Fraenkel, 696).

Lith. gãtvė, Latv. gatva, whose original meaning was ‘a cattle drive, an enclosure for driving livestock to pasture’, is considered to derive from Gothic or North Germanic gatwō. If Lith. gãtvė were an inherited native word, it would today be pronounced *gadve” (Būga, II, 136—139; Fraenkel, 139—140).

Lith. õras ‘Luft, das Freie’; in K. Būga’s view, its original meaning was ‘plowed land’, ‘arable field’, and thus the word is related to the verb árti (Būga, II, 256—257; Fraenkel, 17, 518). K. Būga had already put forward this idea in part in „Aistiškuose studijuose“ (cf. pp. 97, 207).

Lith. našlė: Lat. nex ‘killing’, necare ‘to kill’, nocēre ‘to harm’, Skt. našati ‘perishes, dies’, Av. nasu- ‘corpse’, Gk. νέκυς, νεκρός ‘corpse, deceased’ (Būga, II, 299; Fraenkel, 486). Interestingly, this etymology was later also published by the American linguist F. R. Preveden. He is also credited as its author in K. D. Buck’s dictionary of Indo-European synonyms (Buck C. D. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indoeuropean Languages. Chicago, 1949). The distinguished Soviet etymologist O. Trubachev wrote on this subject: „справедливость требует указать, что на самом деле эта интересная этимология впервые была предложена К. Бугой, умершим в 1924 г. В печатном виде эта этимология фигурировала в достаточно известном труде К. Буги (turima galvoje „Kalba ir senovė“. — A. S.) (Трубачев, 114).“

Lith. spãnguolė: Lith. spãngas ‘one whose eyes are inflamed, a bleary-eyed person’, and other words from the root speng- ‘to shine, gleam’ (Būga, II, 310; Fraenkel, 860).

In general, it should be said that K. Būga touches on etymological problems in nearly every one of his articles. A great deal of valuable material for an etymological dictionary of the Lithuanian language can be found especially in his study „Priesagos -ūnas ir dvibalsio uo kilmė“ (Būga, II, 331—376) and in the posthumously published work on metatony in Lithuanian and Latvian, „Die Metatonie im Litauischen und Lettischen“ (Būga, II, 386—483). Many etymological notes can also be found in the published fascicles of the „Lietuvių kalbos žodynas“ (Būga, III, 9—480).

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Būga’s monumental etymological work was published thirty-five years after the author’s death: notes and additions to A. Preobraženskij’s etymological dictionary of the Russian language—„Замечания и дополнения к этимологическому словарю русского языка А. Преображенского“ (Būga, II, 499—688). This unfinished work consists of 413 such notes and additions, which are sometimes several or even a dozen times longer than the entries in A. Preobraženskij’s dictionary itself.

In this work, K. Būga points out many interesting lexical correspondences between Baltic and Slavic languages; new factual material supplements his earlier etymologies, identifies inaccuracies concerning Baltic languages in A. Preobraženskij’s dictionary, and presents entirely new etymologies of Lithuanian words. It is a great pity that such an excellent study by K. Būga was published so late, and that M. Fasmer could not make use of it when writing his etymological dictionary of the Russian language.

As a particularly important contribution by K. Būga to Baltic etymology, his work on R. Trautmann’s “Dictionary of the Baltic-Slavic Languages” (“Baltisch-Slavisches Wörterbuch”. Göttingen, 1923) should be mentioned. Published more than half a century ago, the work of the German linguist has lost none of its relevance even today. Researchers of the ancient relations between Baltic and Slavic languages return to it on various occasions (cf. the works of Chr. S. Stang, A. Nepokupno, J. Safarewicz, F. Sławski, and others).

There are probably not many examples in the history of linguistics of a scholar helping a colleague as K. Būga assisted R. Trautmann. As we know, K. Būga read the proofs of the entire work and sent the author his notes, written on separate scraps of paper. Thus, in R. Trautmann’s dictionary, alongside numerous references to K. Būga’s works, we find many abbreviations, B. or Būga, denoting our linguist’s proof corrections.

A conscientious scholar, R. Trautmann dedicated his dictionary “To K. Būga, the distinguished expert on his native Lithuanian language,” and described K. Būga’s assistance in the preface as follows: “First of all, I must be grateful to K. Būga, to whom I dedicated the book in order to express my sincere gratitude: with extraordinary care, he read the tedious proofs alongside me, corrected Baltic words wherever necessary, drawing on his immense knowledge, and, with rare liberality, provided me with material from his inexhaustible collections” (p. VII).

Since, owing to the publisher’s opposition, R. Trautmann could not take all the notes into account, K. Būga had planned to write a supplement to the dictionary and publish it in the periodical “Tauta ir žodis” (cf. Būga, III, 779—781).

K. Būga’s talent as an etymologist is especially vividly revealed in his works on onomastics, but that is a subject for a separate article.

Unfortunately, K. Būga did not live to complete his most important etymological work: after his death, a card index for an etymological dictionary of the Lithuanian language remained, compiled over a period of several decades and comprising some twenty thousand cards. It contains excerpts from the principal etymological works of the time and from various linguistic studies that may in one way or another be connected with the origins of Lithuanian words, as well as factual material from Lithuanian and Latvian dialects and monuments of the ancient Baltic languages, often accompanied by the author’s relevant notes.

K. Būga was not a linguist particularly concerned with linguistic theory or research methodology; nowhere did he formulate his linguistic views. Thus K. Būga

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He was unlike his great teacher Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. K. Būga was a practical researcher. The Neogrammarian method of inquiry was closest to him. In this respect, K. Būga’s works particularly remind us of those of his distinguished friends Jānis Endzelīns and Max Vasmer.

Nowhere did K. Būga discuss the methodology of his etymological research specifically. It is true that from time to time he touched on these questions in passing. “A Lithuanian who has taken it into his head to trace the origin of any word must immediately, as soon as he has pulled some little word out of a dictionary, with no connection to anything else, go rushing off to distant India, Greece, and (very much in fashion today) even Armenia. First of all, in etymology, we seek an explanation for the word in question in a Lithuanian dictionary. Having finished with the dictionary of our own language, we turn to our linguistic brothers, the Latvians and Prussians. From there we proceed to the land of the Slavs. And only after finishing here do we earn the right to glance at the dictionaries of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Germanic, Celtic, and other related languages,” K. Būga wrote in his review of H. Hirt’s “Indo-European Grammar” (“Indogermanische Grammatik”. Heidelberg, 1921, vol. 2) (Būga, II, 260).

When reading K. Būga’s etymological works, what first strikes one is the extraordinary abundance of factual material drawn from spoken language and old written sources. It is true that other etymologists also made extensive use of material from old Lithuanian texts (for example, E. Fraenkel). Yet no one could match him in facts from spoken language and dialects. In investigating the origin of individual words, K. Būga also paid close attention to the history of the actual objects and phenomena; compare the explanations of Lithuanian taūras (Būga, I, 375—378) and Lithuanian karštas (Būga, II, 192—195). In this respect, his works sometimes resemble the investigations of etymologists in the “Words and Things” (“Wörter und Sachen”) tradition.

Over the past decades, Soviet Lithuanian linguistics has achieved many fine successes in various fields of Lithuanian language studies, including etymology. Yet even today, more than half a century after his death, Kazimieras Būga remains the most distinguished Lithuanian etymologist.

It is gratifying that the exemplary publication of K. Būga’s “Selected Writings” (edited by Z. Zinkevičius) has made our great linguist’s etymological research accessible to a broad circle of specialists. It may be expected that, together with E. Fraenkel’s “Lithuanian Etymological Dictionary” (“Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch”) and the academic “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” they will provide a solid foundation for a future Lithuanian etymological dictionary, of the kind recently published by our neighboring nations (Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians).

Abbreviations in the bibliography:

Būga — Būga K. Selected Writings. Vilnius, 1958—1961, vols. 1—3. Fraenkel — Fraenkel E. Lithuanian Etymological Dictionary. Heidelberg — Göttingen, 1955—1966. K Z — Journal of Comparative Linguistic Research in the Field of Indo-European Languages. Berlin, 1852. LKK — Questions of Lithuanian Linguistics. Vilnius, 1957. Machek — Machek V. Etymological Dictionary of the Czech Language. Prague, 1968. Sławski — Sławski F. Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language. Kraków, 1952—1969, vols. 1—3.

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Trautmann — Trautmann R. Baltisch-Slavisches Wörterbuch. Göttingen, 1923.

РФБ — Russian Philological Bulletin. Warsaw, 1879—1918.

Trubachev — Trubachev O. History of Slavic Kinship Terms and Certain Ancient Terms for Social Structure. Moscow, 1959.

Vasmer — Vasmer M. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language. Translated from German and supplemented by O. N. Trubachev. Moscow, 1964—1973, vols. 1—4.

А. САБАЛЯЎСКАС

K. BŪGA — ETYMOLOGIST

S u m m a r y

K. Būga, an outstanding researcher of the Lithuanian language, was the first Lithuanian linguist to study problems of etymology using a rigorous scientific method.

In K. Būga’s early etymological studies, the influence of the flawed methodology of his teacher K. Jaunius is still evident, but as early as 1911 he published several works that characterize him as an excellent specialist. K. Būga pursued questions of etymology throughout his scholarly career. Many of K. Būga’s findings were incorporated into the etymological dictionaries of E. Fraenkel, R. Trautmann, M. Vasmer, F. Sławski, V. Machek, and others. K. Būga intended to write an etymological dictionary of the Lithuanian language. To this end, he compiled a large card index, but his work was cut short by his sudden death (in 1924).