Kalbotyrinės pastabos

LINGUISTIC NOTES 1. Lithuanian gaibjė Lithuanian gaibjė ‘herd’ (LKŽ III 15) may perhaps belong to the same semantic-derivational pattern, “obtain, acquire, take” → “(obtained, acquired) property” → “domestic animals (|| herd),” as do the names for cattle (and their herds) in many other languages1. The corresponding verb could be ap-giėbti (-ia) ‘encompass, embrace’ (Mielagėnai) (cf. also the further semantic development of nu-, su-giėbti, -ia ‘to know somewhat, have some idea, be able’ (Mielagėnai, Skirsnemunė))2. Its Germanic cognates are apparently Norwegian dialectal keiva ‘left hand’ and keiv ‘crooked, twisted’ (IE *geibh-). Lithuanian į-gyti (-gyja) ‘obtain, acquire for oneself’ and nu-gyti (-gyja) ‘obtain’ (LKŽ III 357–8), apparently of the same root but without the formal element, also belong here. That gaibjė ‘herd’ was probably not an invented word but a living word in Lithuanian dialects (even if used narrowly) is suggested simply by its attestation in old Prussian Lithuanian dictionaries: Gaibje, ės (like Gauje, ės)3. It is quite clear that it is recorded here as it was pronounced, that is, gaibjė, gaibjės, gaibjei etc. (like gauje, gaujės, gaujei etc.). Thus gaibjė (like gaujė; cf. gaujė in Kretinga) shifted to the ē-stem owing to the neutralization of the distinction between the ǽ- and ē-stems after palatal consonants, a feature of more than one western Lithuanian dialect4. Consequently, this word actually belongs to the ǽ-stem (i.e. gaibja <*gaibjā), which also includes words with collective meanings (e.g. gaujā). 2. Baltic *galvā The semantic connection between the Baltic word for ‘head’ *galvā and Baltic *gala(n) ‘the end’ is fairly clear, since it recurs in other Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages as well5. The derivational relationship between these words is less clear (stem ending -ā, element -v-, long root vowel, or acute accent). It may be assumed that in Proto-Baltic dialects the word for ‘head’ was a feminine u-stem (or ū-stem) noun *galus (or *galūs), like the not uncommon names for body parts in other Indo-European languages (cf. feminine Latin manus ‘hand’, Gothic handus ‘the same’, Greek γένυς ‘jaw’, Sanskrit bhruḥ ‘eyebrow’). The preposition galū and numerous compounds (galūardis, galūdaržė, galūdienis, galūdirvis, galūgalvis, galūkai-mė and others6), whose first component galū- is most likely a pure u-stem, would suggest that alongside the o-stem noun *gala(n) ‘the end’, Proto-Baltic dialects also had a u-stem word *galu- ‘end, top, head’. A characteristic of this stem was that in feminine nominal paradigms, especially in oblique-case forms, alongside *-eu- / -ou- there also appeared the stem-final ablaut grades *-ue- / -uo-; compare, for example, Sanskrit genitive and ablative singular dhenoḥ, dhenvāḥ, dative singular dhenāve, dhenvāi, etc. (nominative singular feminine dhenūḥ ‘cow’). That the latter 1 Этимология 1971, Москва, 1973, p. 281 tt. 2 LKŽ III 286. 3 For more details, see A. Sabaliauskas, Iš baltų kalbų gyvulininkystės terminologijos istorijos, LKK XII 18. 4 Plg. J. Gerullis ir Chr. Stangas, Lietuvių žvejų tarmė Prūsuose, Kaunas, 1933, p. 31. 5 V. N. Čekman, Baltiyskoe i slavyanskoe *galvā, — Third All-Union Conference on Baltic Linguistics. Abstracts of papers, Vilnius, 1975, pp. 154–5; cf. also “Baltistica,” VI, 1970, pp. 47–8. 6 LKŽ III 72 tt. 207 That inflection of a type u (or ū) stem existed in Proto-Baltic dialects as well is indicated by such Prussian infinitives as dātwei ‘to give’, girtwei ‘to praise’, etc.7 As the feminine u-stem (and ū-stem) disappeared in the Baltic languages, the easiest path for the feminine noun *galus (or *galūs) was to shift to an ā-stem, since other names for body parts were also ā-stems (cf. rankà, rùoka, rancko, nagà, Pr. nage ‘foot’, Sl. noga, kója, kàja, etc.) and u-stem forms of the type *galua- / *galue- existed, providing the basis for generalization. During thematization, the opposition between the base word and the derivative apparently also led to the lengthening of the vowel in the derivative’s root (*galu- / *galua- / *galue- → *gā-luā) (or, if this occurred after the emergence of intonations, its root acquired an acute accent), and to its assignment to the mobile paradigm. Since no feminine u-stem nouns have survived in the Slavic languages either, a similar process may be envisaged for Proto-Slavic dialects as well. 3. Pr. — karkis There is no need to emend the second element, -karkis, of the Prussian compound birga-karkis ‘kelle (a larger ladle, a scoop, a dipper)’ either to *karikis8 or to *kartis9, since it could correspond to Lithuanian kárka ‘the shin of a pig or sheep, the joint of the leg; the leg from the knee to the thick part; the ham bone on which it is hung for smoking; an animal’s heel’10. A similar semantic relationship is found, for example, in Lithuanian káušas ‘a wooden dipper with a short handle for scooping mash, water, grain, flour, etc. …; the protrusion at the bend of the hind legs; heel, ankle’ (cf. kojų káušas ‘instep of the foot’, Alsėdžiai) LKŽ V 445–6 (cf. also krãjus ‘the sides of a sieve or riddle, the rim; the rise of the foot’s instep; the part of a shoe at the instep’; Latvian puõds ‘the pot; the kettle’ puõdikis9 ‘an instep (of the foot)’). 4. Pr. baytan To establish a cognate relationship with Lithuanian sietas and Latvian siēts, V. Mažiulis emends Pr. baytan ‘zeeb (sieve)’ to *saytan11. This is quite possible, given the frequent orthographic inaccuracies and even errors in Prussian written sources. Nevertheless, it should be noted that, first, owing to the fragmentary nature of the texts, the polysemy characteristic of a living language has been entirely lost for Prussian, and, second, the (primary) meaning of a word often derives from a meaning that has no historical connection with its familiar meaning (cf., for example, the Lithuanian rėtis, rėtỹs meanings ‘sieve’, ‘basket’ (in K. Sirvydas’s dictionary), ‘armor’, and their Lithuanian cognates rėtis, rėtis, rėtỹs ‘a healed wound’s mark, scar; a nick made by a knife, a splinter, a chip’, Latvian rēta, rēte ‘the scar, wound’, rēsti, reñta, retēti, -ēja ‘to become sparse; to become loose, with gaps …’, rēsti, rēta, -ē, retēti, -ēja ‘to grow stronger as it heals; to grow during healing; to become sparser, to become knobby’12). Then perhaps Pr. baytan ‘sieve, riddle’, like Pr. -karkis, represents a semantic chain that— 7 Plg. V. Mažiulis, Baltų ir kitų indoeuropiečių kalbų santykiai, Vilnius, 1970, p. 272 tt. 8 J. Endzelīns, Senprūšu valoda, Rīgā, 1943, p. 151. 9 V. Mažiulis, Prūsų etimologijos, „Baltistica“, XI, 1975, p. 84. 10 For further discussion, see E. Fraenkel, LEW 222. 11 V. Mažiulis, op. cit., p. 85. 12 E. Fraenkel, LEW 724–5. 208 The end of the root would be Latvian biete ‘a lime- or clay-beater’ ME I 306. The relationship between the vocalisms of their roots would be like that found, for example, in Old Prussian playnis: Lithuanian plienas, Latvian pliens, while the semantic link connecting them would perhaps be Latvian bite ‘the provisions sack, the food bag’ ib. 304 (cf. further the verbs bit ‘to push’, bi-d-id ‘to push, move, shove while pushing’). S. KARALIŪNAS ON THE INTERPRETATION OF TWO PHONETIC PHENOMENA 1. The literary Lithuanian ie, uo equivalents in the dūnininkai dialect That already in the 16th century the dūnininkai i˙ ~ y and i˙ ~ ie had merged in pronunciation is clearly shown by the evidence in J. Sprogis’s dictionary¹. Here, alongside Samogitian forms with u (=Samogitian i˙, standard Lithuanian ie), place names from the dūnininkai area, recorded in Russian, are often also given with e, ie (=standard Lithuanian ie), for example: Сетова (p. 289), Ситова (p. 290) ‘a river connecting Paršėžeris with Lūkstas’; Скабя пиева (p. 290) (Pavandenė district), Кявлес пивас мишкас (p. 159) (Karšuva district), Жардинветис (p. 112) ‘a field in Kražiai district’, Жардинвиты (p. 112) ‘a field in Karšuva district’, and many others. Forms with e, ie (=standard Lithuanian ie) are most likely the result of Lithuanianization of the place names. That this is probably indeed the case is indicated by the hypercorrections found in the dictionary’s place-name forms, i.e. writing e (=ie) instead of i˙ ~ y, for example: Ежня (p. 108) = Ėžnė ‘a river in Karšuva district’, alongside Поижни (p. 246) = Payžnys ‘an estate in Karšuva district’; Пекойти (p. 225) = Pykaičiai ‘an estate in Pajūris district’, alongside Пикойти (the same), etc. Thus, already in the 16th century speakers of the dūnininkai dialects could not distinguish the standard Lithuanian y and ie (as well as ū and uo) that had merged in those dialects. The first references to the reflexes of the diphthongs ie, uo as į, ū in Samogitian dialects are already found in A. Schleicher’s Lithuanian grammar². J. Juszka³ later made this claim more specific and detailed. It is clearly attested also in the works of all the linguists who studied the dūnininkai dialects of Samogitia—K. Jaunius, A. Salys, J. Gerulis, P. Jonikas, V. Grinaveckis, Z. Zinkevičius, A. Balašaitis, V. Vitkauskas, and others—and in the texts of these dialects recorded with relative care in the publication “Lithuanian Dialects”⁴. However, the linguist A. Girdenis does not accept this merger. In his article “What the dūnininkai have in place of the literary language ie, uo”⁵, he seeks to determine whether “the literary Lithuanian ie, uo equivalents in the Samogitian dūnininkai dialect are long monophthongs į, ū, indistinguishable from long į, ū = y, ū” (p. 143). For this purpose, as the article’s author states, “word pairs were selected that in the standard language and Aukštaitian dialects differ only by the oppositions ie: i, uo: ū: grūodas: grūdas, kuodas: kūdas ‘thin’, liėti: 1 See Географический словарь древней жомойтской земли XVI столетия, Составленный Иваном Яковлевичем Спрогисом, Вильна, 1888, 363 стр. 2 Žr. Handbuch der litauischen Sprache von August Schleicher, I, Grammatik, Prag, 1856, p. 5. 3 See Jon’s Juszka, Kalbos lėtuviško ležuvo’oir lėtuviškas statrazimas arba ortografija, Peterburge, 1861, p. 12, 14. 4 See LKT, pp. 93–129. 5 See A. Girdenis, Ką turi dünininkai vietoj literatūrinės kalbos ie, uo, “Baltistica” VI(2), 1970, pp. 143–146. 14. Užs. Nr. 1026 209