Активизация и ретардация употребительности исконных слов в иммигрантском яызке (на материале литовского языка в Северной Америке)

SOCIALINĖS LINGVISTIKOS PROBLEMOS LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XIX (1979) Lionginas PAŽUSIS ACTIVATION AND RETARDATION OF THE USE OF NATIVE WORDS IN THE IMMIGRANT LANGUAGE (based on the Lithuanian language in North America) The emergence and existence of immigrant languages in North America (the United States and Canada) are inextricably linked, on the one hand, with a radical change in the external environment of their speakers and in the conditions under which these languages function and, on the other, with interference from English (more precisely, the American variety of English), which under these sociocultural conditions occupies the position of an official, dominant language, narrowing the domains and spheres in which they are used and turning them into contact dialects (for this term, see Haugen, 1977) or varieties. In other words, when studying the processes of change in these languages, one must contend with two kinds of external factors: 1) extralinguistic, i.e. those lying outside language, and 2) linguistic, i.e. those confined to language but lying outside its own structure (for this classification of external factors, see Avrorin V. A., 1975; Gukhman N. M., 1964). The aim of this article is to identify the effects of these two kinds of external factors on the usage of inherited words in the contact variety of Lithuanian in North America. We are interested in the degree to which inherited vocabulary is used not as a statistically determined quantity, but only from the perspective of the two opposing tendencies that may characterize its change, namely, the tendency toward activation (expansion) and retardation (reduction) of usage (see Žluktenko Yu. A., 1974). An inherited word is understood as any word of the given language belonging to its original, i.e. pre-emigration, lexical stock. Thus, our point of departure was the actual language spoken by Lithuanian emigrants at the time of emigration. Родоначальник современной лингвистики Ф. де Соссюр (1933), который считал, что по природе своей язык бессилен обороняться от различных факторов, действующих на его структуру, заметил: „Каковы бы ни были факторы изменяемости, действуют они изолированно или комбинированно, они всегда приводят к сдвигу отношения между означающим и означаемым“. Так как слово является двуплановой единицей языка (т. е. единством означаемого и означающего) и может иметь связь с вышеупомянутыми внешними факторами через означаемое и/или означающее, изменение в употребительности исконного слова прослеживается именно в рамках отношений между этими факторами и двумя планами слова. The radical change in extralinguistic reality subjects the inherited lexical stock of an immigrant language to a test of social relevance from the very initial stage of its development. Extralinguistic (i.e. non-linguistic) factors come into play through their connection with a word’s signified: the signifieds of some words lose their former social relevance, while those of other words, conversely, acquire new social relevance. A change in the social relevance of a signified manifests itself as activation or retardation in the usage of a word: words 5* 67 with low usage frequency enter circulation, while words with high frequency fall out of use. Considering, for example, only the fact that the old Lithuanian labor emigration to the United States and Canada consisted mainly of illiterate and poorly educated peasants who became workers in mining settlements and industrial cities, it is not difficult to imagine the extent of the inherited vocabulary whose usage underwent change. Entire semantic fields of everyday vocabulary passed into the passive stock, while, at the same time, many units from the passive lexical stock became part of everyday usage. Such changes can be demonstrated concretely only within more narrowly defined semantic microsystems. For example, an interesting situation arose when Lithuanian immigrants switched to the English system of measurement. In terms of the social relevance of their signifieds, familiar old names such as kvorta “quart,” mylia “mile,” pėda “foot,” svaras “pound,” came to fit this system; they are still widely used there, whereas the imported, more recent names for metric units of measurement have undergone retardation. The full scale of changes in the usage of inherited words in an immigrant language, brought about by the conditions under which it functions, can be grasped only by studying its forms of existence, environments, and domains of use (for these concepts, see Avrorin V. A., 1975). Given the social conditions in which the Lithuanian immigrant language functions, particularly the conditions of widespread one-sided Lithuanian-English bilingualism, which narrow the actual needs and opportunities for its use, retardation can apparently be discussed retrospectively and prospectively as the dominant tendency in changes to the usage of inherited words, that is, a tendency encompassing fairly large strata of inherited vocabulary. In many studies devoted to the problems involved in the adaptation of immigrant languages to new extralinguistic conditions of functioning, the inadequacy of inherited vocabulary is usually treated only as a perceived lexical “deficit” (lexical “gap”), while the need to redistribute the usage of inherited words goes unnoticed, despite being an equally important regularity of this process. On the other hand, when confronted with the problem of the retardation of inherited words in immigrant languages, linguists explain it by referring to a process of “forgetting” (see Haugen, 1970; Clyne, 1972) or to a “general weakening of the language instinct” (Sprachgefühl – Seaman, 1972), thereby emphasizing only the psycholinguistic aspect of this process and overlooking its sociolinguistic aspect. Changes in the usage of inherited words brought about by the other kind of external factors, namely linguistic factors, can be traced more concretely. The activation or retardation of inherited words is itself the result of interference from the language in contact. Under conditions of subordinative Lithuanian-English bilingualism, English lexical items are used in the immigrant language not only to fill a lexical “deficit”: immigrants’ speech also features so-called synonymous and duplicative English borrowings, phonologically and morphologically integrated into the system of the native language, as well as English words introduced through code-switching. Thus, the signifieds of inherited words acquire new signifiers. This kind of interaction between languages was noted as early as by L. V. Shcherba (1958) and called a “mixed language with two terms.” Mixed usage- 68 The coexistence of a native word and an English word causes the former to become less frequent: it must now share its usage with a word from the contact language. In other words, activating a borrowed synonym or using an English word through code-switching occurs at the expense of the native word. In the conditions of bilingualism in which immigrant languages function in North America, the free variation of borrowed vocabulary with native words becomes a communicative norm (see Haugen, 1977, for the term), not only in immigrants’ speech but even in the press they publish. Here are a few examples from among numerous newspaper sentences in which native and English words are used in parallel (one of them, usually the English one, is given in parentheses): Beveik visi iš piliečių išrinkti mokesčiai (taksai) nueina į valstijų bei federalinį iždą. L 75 28. Pastaruoju metu labai išsiplėtė atėmimas iš moterų piniginių (pursių)... LB 65 1. Namelius atima už skolą – morgičių. V 60 171....miesto taryba nutarė ištirti (investiguoti) policijos veikimą. V 61 124. Dailidžių (karpenterių) unijos lokalas 79 jau du mėnesiai streikuoja. L 7131....pasiėmė įsisūnyti (adoptinti) 3 mėnesių amžiaus vaiką. L 71 3. Kaip paaiškinti pagrobimą (kidnepinimą) milijonierių Hearstų dukros Patricijos? L 74 23. Dabar sėja pupeles (binsus) ir kitus javus. LB 75 12. In these sentences, the English word functions as an integrated borrowing, but in many other sentences it is used in its original English spelling, e.g.: Dinamitas ir detonatoriai buvo sukrauti kluone (barn) ant grindų. LB 69 9. Tėvai ir abiejų tėvukai (grandparents) labai džiaugiasi, sulaukę naujo šeimos nario. LB 75 4. Kranklys (vulture) pakliuvo į helikopterio sparnus. LB 66 7. Paimk ketvirtą dalį svaro miežių (barley) ir sumerk į kvortą šalto vandens. V 62 35.... visos banko durys užplombėtos (sealed). V 60 4.... teisėjai neduoda perskyrų (divorse)... V 60 18. Tik gerai įsitėmykite dieną, kovo (March) 18. V 61 26.... paimk gerą žiupsnelį petruškų (parsley)... V 62 80.... visi kambariai užpildyti tinkamais gražiais baldais (furniture). V 62 179.... šių metų derliui žiogai (grasshoppers) daug daugiau padarys žalos kaip pereitą metą. V 60 160. Jis sako, nutarė kreiptis prie pašalpos (relief)... V 61 231. Iš aguonų (poppies) yra daromas opiumas. V 60 10. Reikalingas pečkurys (fireman). L 49 152. Such frequent parallel use of native and English words points to the functional weakness and insufficient social integration (for this term, see Hasselmo, 1969, p. 126) of many native words within the immigrant community. This is caused by the conditions of bilingualism, immigrants’ differing familiarity with the vocabulary of their native language, the absence of lexical norms, and the fact that the immigrant community also includes members of newer generations whose language skills were not formed in a monolingual native-language environment. The efforts of the immigrant intelligentsia, especially newspaper editors, to revive and expand the native vocabulary of the immigrant language using resources from contemporary standard Lithuanian will not succeed: the social integration of such words does not reach a level at which they can be used without the parallel support of an English word or borrowing. For example:... pagamino smuštinius (sandvičius)... L 76 20.... įdėkite jas šlapias į šaldytuvą (refrigerator). V 62 35. AguIys (tumor) plačiai apėmęs kepenis. V 62 145. Eismas (trafikas) abelnai sulaikytas. V 60 245.... perka klasikinės muzikos plokšteles (rekordus). V 61 25.... traktoriaus padanga (tyre) buvo sugadinta. V 61 179.... dienomis palikdavo jį vaikų lopšelyje (nursery)... V 61 179. An important role in changes in the frequency of native words in the immigrant language is played by interlingual identification of lexemes, which is based on two types of dialexemic relations: homonymic and syno 69 nymic (a combination of homonymy and synonymy, which, following classical works on the theory of language contacts, we shall call a homological relation). Еще Benson (1957) заметил, что в речи русских иммигрантов США из двух собственных синонимов часто более употребителен тот, который своим звучанием подобен соответствующей английской диалексеме. Аналогичные примеры могут быть приведены и из речи литовских иммигрантов. Так, из-за звукового сходства с соответствующими английскими диалексемами старые варваризмы, такие как interesingas (ср. англ. interesting), mizernas (ср. англ. miserable), palocius (ср. англ. palace), pasažierius (ср. англ. passenger), plecius (ср. англ. place), rundinas (ср. англ. round), serioziai (ср. англ. seriously), vakacijos (ср. англ. vacation), velyti (ср. англ. wish) не только остались в употреблении, но и получили права гражданства в газетах: Kiekvienas pasakė po interesingą prakalbėlę. L 66 96.... jūrininkai skursta gaudami mizernas algas... LB 63 3. Nuolatiniai jo palocius saugo 400 parinktųjų. V 62 45... pasistatyti automobilį tam tikslui įrengtuose pleciuse. V 61 183.... lėktuvas su 24 pasažieriais iškrypęs iš kelio... V 69 29.... dėl pobuvio su moterų grupe prie rundino stalo. V 60 120. Vis dėlto neimkite poną senatorių serioziai. V 61 130. Kitą savaitgalį važiuojam vakacijų. Veliname drauge greito pasveikimo. V 60 143. Межъязыковым отождествлением, в основе которого лежит большее звуковое сходство, объясняется и активизация таких старых дублетных форм, как arpa „арфа“ (ср. англ. harp), krizis „кризис“ (ср. англ. crisis), orkestra „оркестр“ (ср. англ. orchestra), Francija „Франция“ (ср. англ. France) за счёт таких общеупотребительных, более новых форм, как arfa, krizė, orkestras, Prancūzija. As is well known, on the basis of homophonic, synonymic, and homological dialexemic connections, native words can acquire new additional meanings. Expansion of a word’s meaning naturally leads to its increased use, which is a frequent phenomenon in the contact variety of Lithuanian in North America. So-called international words typically enter into interlingual relations that are homophonic, or more often homological. Many of them are used quite actively in standard Lithuanian as well, but in the immigrant variety, as a result of semantic interference from English, they acquire new meanings and, consequently, their use increases. For example: authorities “representatives of authority” (< authorities)... Berylno authoritetai pasiuntė protestą... LB 64 1. Autoritetai skuba evakuoti žmones iš pavojingų vietų. LB 63 26. decorate “to award with orders and medals” (< decorate)... lakūnus dekoravo medaliais... V 62 234. examine “to examine, inspect” (< examine) Tuojau duokite savo akis egzaminuoti. GK 59 2/3. Kai daktaras egzaminavo vaikus, jo piktumas augo. LB 62 6. credit “praise, honor; academic credit” (< credit) Ir už tai didelis kreditas tenka laikraščiui. LB 72 21. Mokytojai atitenka didelis kreditas už tokį puikų išlavinimą. LB 63 26.... gimnazijoje išeiti dalykai ir gauti kreditai normaliai užskaitomi kitų kraštų mokyklose. Dr 76 27. nickel “five-cent coin” (< nickel) Jos 17 mėnesių dukrelė Kim prarijo nikelį... V 62 167.... jis surinko nemažą nikelių. ED 278. original “initial” (< original) Originalus reikalavimas buvo labai didelis... LB 74 4. Originali paveikslo kaina $ 392, 000. V 61 171. 70 partija “a gathering, a party” (< party) At one party, a guest suggested entertaining those present. LB 63 34.... a party was organized for her niece... LB 66 30. prizas “an award” (< prize) Whoever finds it first will receive the Nobel Prize... V 61 199. Cyrus Eaton received the Lenin Peace Prize. V 60 131. The activation of words genuinely indigenous to the Lithuanian language is usually prompted by a synonymous expansion of their meanings, for example: ačiū “thanks to” (< thanks to) Thanks to my efforts, many ordinary people gain knowledge. V 62 177. This has all been carried out successfully thanks to great determination. V 60 230. galia “state power” (< power) The militarists drove her out and seized power themselves. LB 63 15.... the party does not want to let power slip from its hands. LB 63 15. nelaimė “a catastrophe, an accident” (< accident) ... the saboteurs are responsible for the train accident. LB 72 7.... to support someone injured in a car accident. Dr 76 9. proga “an opportunity” (< chance) ... the committee studied opportunities for American children in education and learning. L 74 13.... there is no chance of her recovering. L 75 39. If you are over 40 and have no job, you have very little chance of finding work. LB 65 7. šaltis “a cold” (< cold) ... she had a bad cold. L 57 29.... was ill with a cold. L 57 26. A cold is an almost everyday illness. V 60 17. Interlingual lexical identification caused by purely semantic similarity (i.e., when the meanings denoted by the dialectal forms partially overlap) sometimes also activates, and thereby preserves, a usage of an indigenous word that was rejected by the norm of the Lithuanian standard language in its subsequent development, for example: atgal “back” (adverb of time) (< ago) Her husband Juozas died 15 years atgal. LB 75 6. A few years atgal this story was brought up, but nothing came of it. LB 75 2. How long atgal were the two of them together on U.S. television? LB 75 16. atsitikimas “case” (< case) Atsitikime of a dispute between two unions, the matter will be decided through mediators. LB 63 25. Thus, in this atsitikime, a person can travel several times on one ticket… LB 72 13.... this happens in very rare atsitikimuose. LB 75 2. laikyti “to hold” (< hold) ... allows meetings to be laikyti in all the parks. LB 63 15.... it is inconvenient to laikyti a meeting without them... V 75 112.... the party laiko its congress in its hometown of Chicago. L 75 26. Laiko intensive consultations with government leaders. L 77 34. Homophonic, synonymic, and homological expansion of the meanings and use of a native word also has negative consequences. It cannot fail to lead to the retardation of other native words that serve the same denotative domain. S. V. Semchinsky (1973), in the abstract of his doctoral dissertation, writes about “negative semantic borrowings, i.e., the loss by a language of some inherited words or the simplification of a word’s semantic structure as a result of foreign-language influence.” We do not venture to cite examples of the complete annihilation (for the term, see Zhluktenko Yu. A., 1974) of native words in Lithuanian immigrant speech (its development has not lasted long enough), but their retardation as a consequence of the semantic or functional expansion of other interrelated words can be demonstrated with many examples. 71 For example, the Lithuanian noun jėga “strength” acquires the meaning “state” in immigrants’ speech under the influence of English power and causes the retardation of the synonymous native word valstybė:... to maintain the occupation by the four jėgų in Berlin... LB 62 30. Addressing the leaders of the great jėgų, he warns... LB 63 16. It is the only great jėga in the world that has not yet had a year of peace. LB 65 6. Like other verbs with a broad semantic range, the English verb make “to do” imposes a semantic shift on its Lithuanian synonym, which is realized in its collocations with nouns. The Lithuanian verb daryti acquires the ability to combine with abstract deverbal nouns and restricts the use of the corresponding native verbs, for example:... the Vietnamese will not quickly padarys nusileidimų in the negotiations. L 67 48.... daryti pastangas to gather them all and extract... Dir 76 28.... we will have to daryti pasirinkimą... LB 63 1. I have to daryti prisipažinimą. LB 66 5. He tried to daryti gyvenimą by growing beans. V 60 38. In Lithuanian, possessive pronouns are of two types: possessive and reflexive savo. The reflexive possessive pronoun savo indicates possession by any of the three persons, but only by the subject of the action. English has no such reflexive possessive pronoun that would indicate universally in the same way that an object belongs to the subject of the corresponding predicate. To express these relations, the so-called attributive possessive pronouns (for the term, see Quirk, 1974) must agree with the subject in person and number, and in the third-person singular also in gender. English-language interference in the speech of Lithuanian immigrants is expressed through the removal of the Lithuanian reflexive possessive pronoun savo and its replacement by native personal possessive pronouns, which provide this agreement. For example: Važinėja visur, tik Elena ne visur gali su jos pasu. In. Aprodė jų pačią mamą ant upės kranto. In. Anglija... sužinojo karinius laivus apginti jos žvejųinius laivus. L 75 50.... she was dissatisfied with the conduct of jos superiors. V 62 175.... the patient has the right to know, if he wishes, the whole truth about jo health condition. L 77 23. Such a semantic expansion in the use of Lithuanian personal possessive pronouns occurs through the removal, i.e., retardation, of the reflexive savo. English-language interference causes the activation and retardation of other function words (e.g., prepositions) and of individual word-formation classes of native words as well. Such a restructuring of immigrant languages in the course of contact with English largely determines their development, which is oriented toward convergence. Литература Benson M. American influence on the immigrant Russian press. — American Speech, 1957, v. 32, No 4. Clyne M. Perspectives on Language Contact. Melbourne, 1972, p. 79. Hasselmo N. How can we measure the effects which one language may have on the other in the speech of bilinguals? — In: Description and Measurement of Bilingualism/Ed. by L. G. Kelly. University of Toronto Press, 1969. Haugen E. Linguistics and dialinguistics. — In: Bilingualism and Language Contact/Ed. by J. E. Alatis. Georgetown University Press, 1970. Haugen E. Norm and deviation in bilingual communities. — In: Bilingualism: Psychological, Social and Educational Implications/Ed. by P. A. Hornby. Academic Press, Inc., 1977. Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A Grammar of Contemporary English. Longman, 1974. Seaman P. O. Modern Greek and American English in Contact. Mouton, 1972. Аврорин В. А. Проблемы изучения функциональной стороны языка. — Л., 1975, с. 20. 72 Гухман М. М. Социология языка. — В кн.: Теоретические проблемы современного советского языкознания. М., 1964. Жлуктенко Ю. А. Лингвистические аспекты билингвизма. — Киев, 1974, с. 158. Семчинский С. В. Семантическая интерференция языков (на материале славяно-восточно-романских языковых контактов). Автореф. докт. дис. — Киев, 1973, с. 40. Соссюр Ф. де. Курс общей лингвистики. — М., 1933, с. 84. Щерба Л. В. О понятии смешения языков. — В кн.: Избранные работы по языкознанию и фонетике. Л., 1958. Ч. I. Кафедра английской филологии Вильнюсский госуниверситет им. В. Капсукаса Список сокращений Dir — Dirva, Cleveland. Dr — Draugas, Chicago. GK — Gimtoji kalba, Chicago. In — информант. L — Laisvė, Brooklyn, N. Y. LB — Liaudies balsas, Toronto. V — Vilnis, Chicago. ED — Emigranto dalia, lietuvių beletristikos rinkinys. V., 1973. Примечание. Первая цифра указывает на год, а вторая — на номер периодического издания. ATSIVEŽTINIŲ ŽODŽIŲ VARTOJIMO AKTYVIZACIJA IR RETARDACIJA IMIGRANTŲ KALBOJE Reziumė Straipsnio tikslas — aptarti ekstralingvistinių ir lingvistinių veiksnių įtaką atsivežtinių gimtosios kalbos žodžių vartojimo intensyvumui Šiaurės Amerikos (JAV ir Kanada) imigrantų kalboje. Per ryšius su žodžio turiniu ir/ar forma šie veiksniai tampa jo vartojimo dviejų priešingų kitimo tendencijų — aktyvizacijos ir retardacijos — priežastimi. Dėl pasikeitusių funkcionavimo sąlygų vieni atsivežtiniai žodžiai vartojami dažniau, kiti — rečiau. Turint omeny lietuvių imigrantų gyvenimo socialinių poslinkių mastą, retardacija ypač paliečia didelius atsivežtinės leksikos sluoksnius. Jos vartojimą taip pat gerokai apriboja turinio atžvilgiu dubliuojantys integruoti angliški skoliniai ir anglų kalbos žodžiai, lietuvių-anglų bilingvizmo sąlygomis atsirandantys dėl kodo kaitos. Daugelio atsivežtinių žodžių aktyvizacija ir retardacija yra pasekmė anglų kalbos interferencijos, kuri reiškiasi per anglų ir lietuvių kalbų žodžių homofoninius, sinoniminius ir homologinius ryšius. 75