LIETUVIŲ KALBOS MORFOLOGINĖ SANDARA IR JOS RAIDA

LIETUVOS TSR MOKSLŲ AKADEMIJA

THE HISTORY OF THE FORMS OF THE PLURAL INESSIVE IN THE EASTERN HIGHLAND DIALECTS

K. MORKŪNAS

There is a well-founded view that the present-day Lithuanian locative, also called the present internal locative, or inessive, was formed with the postposition *-én. The dialects provide the primary evidence for this. All Eastern Highlanders and Dzūkians, having changed the old word-final *-en (or *-ę) to -i, pronounce the singular inessive laukì¹ < *lauk-én (> in the standard language laukė), that is, like the singular instrumental žemì, which arose from *žem-én (> Lith. žemė); compare also the singular inessive forms in old Lithuanian texts written on the basis of the Eastern Highland dialect: sudeimi AK² 22¹¹, tami septyneti AK 48²⁴, raszty PS³ I 15⁹, giwenimy PS I 43¹⁸ alongside the singular instrumental galybi AK 52¹⁸, galiby PS I 15³.

To demonstrate that the plural inessive forms of present-day (standard) Lithuanian lauk(u)ose, šakose derive from *laukuos-én, *šakos-én, linguists also quite often cite forms from the Eastern Highland dialects laukuosi, šakosi, assuming that their -i, too, developed from *-én. However, the origin of the latter forms is in fact not as straightforward as it may seem at first glance.

The plural inessive in -i—lauk(u)osi, šakosi, žievėsi (žėvėsi), pirtysi—is now found only among the southwestern Eastern Highlanders: in the areas around Panevėžys, Krekenava, Ramygala, Truskava, Pagiriai, Siesikai, Pabaiskas, and Gelvonai (see the map—Fig. 1). Another southern part of the Eastern Highland area—the areas around Lyduokiai, Molėtai, Širvintos, and Musninkai—uses forms of this case with -e: lauk(u)ose, šakose, žievėse, pirtyse; such

¹ In singular inessive forms with other stems, the postpositional vowel has disappeared in the Eastern Highland and Dzūkian dialects; compare: galvo, pievo, žemė (Panevėžys), medy, vago, sąuji ‘in the handful’, dabė(i) ‘in the pit’, upij ‘in the river’, pirty (Gelvonai, Pabaiskas), ruńkoj ‘in the hand’, valdžioj, akmeny (Debeikiai), kely, šakoj, duobėj, aky, turguj (Linkmenys), lóvoj, gerklėj, širdzì, nósij (Kaniava, Varėna district).

² The Polish Catechism of Ledesma and the Lithuanian catechisms of Daugša and the Anonymus of 1605, edited interlinearly from the Krakow originals and Wolter’s reprint by Ernst Sittig, Göttingen, 1929. AK=Text of the Anonymus Catechism of 1605, DK=Text of M. Daukša’s Catechism of 1595.

³ PS=Syrwids Punktay sakimu (Punkty kazań), Teil I: 1629, Teil II: 1644, litauisch und polnisch mit kurzer grammatischer Einleitung herausgegeben von Dr. Franz Specht. Göttingen, 1929.

10. Lietuvių kalbos morfologinė sandara ir jos raida

145

Fig. 1. Distribution of plural inessive endings—[šako] -su, -sui, -se, -sa, -si, -sbl, -s’, -s—in the Highland dialects. In the area marked with dashes, word-final short e becomes i through reduction. Vk—Western Highlanders. Vd—Central Highlanders. R—Eastern Highlanders. Dz—Dzūkians. The abbreviations for place names are the same as those in the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (I—VI, Vilnius, 1941—1962). (The map was made on the basis of dialect material collected for the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language and held at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature of the Lithuanian SSR Academy of Sciences.)

146

Forms (with -e) are also found in individual Dzūkija subdialects—Dūkštas, Valkininkai, and Daugai. Throughout the northern (largest) part of the East Aukštaitian dialect area, shortened plural instrumental forms are now used, e.g.: didelios (-s’ =soft -s), gerios, miškios, svečios, geros, pačios, šakos, didelės, akys, pirtys (Linkuva, Joniškėlis, Pakruojis, Šeduva); didelios, geruos, miškuos, svečiuos, geros, pačios, šakos, didelės, akys, pirtys (Biržai, Vabalninkas, Kupiškis, Pandėlys, Rokiškis, Zarasai, Dusetos, Anykščiai, Utena).

One may ask whether the plural instrumental forms in -e in the East Aukštaitian and Dzūkija subdialects mentioned above are not recent, or whether they entered those subdialects from the literary language. The old monuments of the Lithuanian language show that this is not the case. In K. Širvydas’s writings, the plural instrumental in -e is used predominantly, e.g.: knigose szwyntose PS I 3₂₅, linksmybese ne išsakitos PS I 7₁₁, piktuose iu darbuose PS I 31₂₆–₂₇, namuose PS I 32₁₄, ażudraustose PS II 4₁₉, gardibese PS II 4₁₉, s’ir dise PS II 47₇. In F. Specht’s view, the genuine plural instrumental in K. Širvydas’s dialect had -i (-y), while the forms in -e arose under the influence of the written language⁴. Specht did not know that the latter forms are still used in East Aukštaitian dialects⁵. However, the fact alone that all 229 plural instrumental forms in Part I of the “Punktų sakymai” (across all parts of speech and all stem types) have the vowel -e, while in Part II, of the 143 forms in this case, 129 have -e and 10 have -a (runkosa 1₁₄, 254₅, kuriosa 94₂₆, dienuosa 95₂₇, žadžiosa 149₁₆, piktibesa 168₃, kitosa 201₂₈, wietosa 202₁, tamsibessa 243₂, knigosa 254₁₆) and only 4 have -i (pasnikuosi 6₅, taukuosy 94₁₉, kuriosy 94₂₂, reykauosy 96₂₇), gives reason to doubt the correctness of his view. Thus, the statistical data presented show that the genuine plural instrumental forms in the dialect of the author of “Punktai” were not with the vowel -i (or -a), but with -e. Also noteworthy is the fact that forms with -i and -a occur only in Part II of “Punktai,” where elements from other dialects occur more frequently than in Part I⁷.

Thus, the plural instrumental forms in -e in East Aukštaitian dialects did not arise recently (under the influence of the literary language in recent decades); they were already used much earlier. What is the origin of these forms?

If we accepted the view that the direct prototype of the plural instrumental now used in East Aukštaitian (and part of Dzūkija) had the postposition *-én, it would be unclear why it yielded -i in some places and -e in others. Perhaps in places where forms of this case have -e, the tautosyllabic n had earlier disappeared from the postposition? However, there is no basis for this assumption, since when en became the diphthong in, the *-én of other forms was still preserved in all eastern dialects (cf. the singular instrumental of those dialects already mentioned, žemį

⁴ Cf. Sirwyds Punktay sakimu (Punktų kazan)…, herausgeg. von. Dr. Franz Specht, p. 16*, 31*.

⁵ Cf. ibid.

⁶ Cf. the diphthongs am, an, em, en (amžinu II 36₄, apįtamsenemis II 142₂, brangiu II 207₄, žemčiuogose II 179₃₁, ažuodentu II 18₂, nendres II 99₈, niopkenčia II 142₂₃), which occur rather rarely in “Punktai,” instead of the East Aukštaitian um, im, in (umžūnon I 6₃₀, tumsibi II 142₃₀, brungiu I 29₁₃, žimčiugus II 36₂₃, ažudinge II 18₂₂, nindres II 99₁₀, niopkinčia II 143₁).

⁷ Part II of “Punktų sakymai,” published 15 years after K. Širvydas’s death, appears to have been more extensively revised by the publishers.

10*

147

< *on the ground and the singular inessive in the forest < *in the forest). It is also possible to suppose that the plural inessive forms with -i and -e had different postpositions; however, there is currently no evidence to support this supposition either. For this reason, let us consider whether the aforementioned forms could not have arisen phonetically from a single form. It appears that the word-final vocalism of the East Aukštaitian dialects does not in fact contradict this view. In dialects that now have the plural inessive in the fields, in the branches, short e in open and closed word-final syllables has changed into i as a result of the reduction of ending vowels; compare the vocative singular boy and the accusative plural carts, cats, halves, branches in these dialects. In dialects where the inessive forms are in the fields, in the branches, the aforementioned e has remained unchanged; compare: boy; carts, cats, halves, branches (compare also K. Širvydas’s accusative plural forms: people PS I 260₉, kingdoms PS I 273₂₇, difficulties PS II 37₂₈, holes PS II 39₇). This shows that the -i in the inessive forms in the fields, in the branches could also have arisen from short -e⁸. However, if this origin of the aforementioned forms is accepted, it would also have to be acknowledged that the older plural inessive forms *laukuos-en, *šakos-en (or *laukuos-ę, *šakos-ę) were never used at all in those East Aukštaitian dialects. Could this have been the case?

Alongside the singular inessive formed with the postposition *-én, in some Lithuanian dialects the plural inessive with the old (common Indo-European) ending continued to be used for a long time, for example: laukuosu, šakosu (compare Old Indic āśveṣu, āśvasu, Old Slavic dušexъ, rъkarъ). This type of plural inessive is found in all sixteenth-century Lithuanian publications from Königsberg—in the writings of M. Mažvydas, B. Vilentas, and J. Bretkūnas⁹. As late as 1653, D. Kleinas also writes in his grammar (“Grammatica Litvanica”): “There is no agreement among Lithuanian writers concerning the endings of the plural locative ablatives. Some think that their ending should be fu, others se, and still others sa”¹⁰. The plural inessive in -u is also found in early texts written on the basis of the East Aukštaitian dialect. For example, all 24 forms of this case in the Anonymous Catechism of 1605 (AK) have -u (Metūsu _7₂₄, paskundósu _41₁₈, dungūsu _43₃₃, 44₂₇, dunguosu _46₃₃, Dunguosú _48₆, Kitósu _50₂₁, dalosú _50₂₁, kuriosu _60₁₂, tosu _63₄, dienosu _63₄, kuriosú _63₄, szwintūsu _63₁₂, darbusu _70₁₅, gerybesú _70₁₅, szwintosú _70₁₈, szwintésu _76₃₀, Gierūsu _78₃₀, derunciusu _78₃₀, dayktūsu _78₃₀, iósú _87₁₅, métūsu _87₂₄, metūsu _87₃₀, nusideimūsu _106₁₂).

⁸ K. Būga’s “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” gives the plural inessive form akysi, noting that it occurs in the speech of the older generation in the Anykščiai and Kupiškis dialects (cf. K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, III, Vilnius, 1961, p. 359). Deriving this form from *akysēn (cf. ibid.) is highly questionable. When giving the abbreviations An. (=Anykščiai) and Kp. (=Kupiškis) alongside akysi, K. Būga did not specify the smaller settlements where the form had been heard. In fact, a little to the southwest of Anykščiai and Kupiškis (e.g. around Kavarskas and Karsakiškis), today, alongside shortened plural inessive forms (e.g. akys), forms with final -i (akysi) also occur; this -i could have arisen from -ē through reduction (in Anykščiai itself, and likewise in Kupiškis, word-final short e does not change to i).

⁹ Daugiskaitos inesyvas daugiausia su -u yra ir tuo metu (pvz., 1578, 1589 m.) lietuvių kalba paskelbtose Prūsijos valdžios įsakymuose, plg. Prūsijos valdžios gromatos, pagraudenimai ir apsakymai lietuviams valstiečiams, Vilnius, 1960, Nr. 1; Senieji lietuvių skaitymai, Kaunas, 1927, p. 59, 61 tt.

¹⁰ Žr. Pirmoji lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius, 1957, p. 434. D. Kleinui rūpėjo raštų kalbos norminimas. Dėl to jis siūlo vyriškosios giminės daugiskaitos inesyvo formas vartoti su se, o moteriškosios giminės — su sa (plg. ten pat); tos taisyklės jis pats ir laikosi savo gramatikoje.

148

The plural inessive with the postposition *-ėn appears to have come into use earliest in the Central and some Western Lithuanian dialects. Already in the first publications to appear in Lithuania (Catholic and Reformed), written on the basis of the Central Aukštaitian dialect, forms in -e predominate. For example, in M. Daukša’s “Catechism” (1595), all (61) plural inessive forms have -e; among the 244 forms of that case in the first 100 pages of his “Postil” (DP¹¹), 237 have -e, 5 have -a (pacžiosa 27₅₀, wálosa 30₃₄, szirdissa 30₃₄, szwėtessa 33₃₅, ritūsa 58₁₂), and one each have -u and -i (wistiktūsu 35₁₀, dienosi 58₃₈); in M. Petkevičius’s “Catechism”¹², 98 of 103 forms have -e, while 5 have no final vowel (námuos 76₁₇, WIsuos 90₇, sunkibes 116₅, baisibes 135₉, pamokštuos 148₂₁).

From the Central Aukštaitian dialects, the plural inessive in -e may also have spread to the East Aukštaitian dialects¹³. The supposition that these forms spread from west to east appears to be supported by the eastern Lithuanian dialects themselves (Linkmenys, Švenčionėliai, Švenčionys, Adutiškis, Tverečius, Gervėčiai, Lazūnai), where the plural inessive with the old ending is still used today¹⁴, for example: krūmuosu, miškuosu (alongside krūmuos, miškūos), šakosū, duobėsū, akisū (alongside akysū, akysu), tūrguosu (alongside tūrguos) (Linkmenys); šakāsū, dūlkėsū, žievėsū, nỹcysu (Tverečius), juosu, Smurgāinysu (Gervėčiai), vār tuosu, ūpėsu (Lazūnai). Admittedly, other plural inessive forms also occur in particular eastern subdialects. For instance, in the Adutiškis subdialect, alongside shortened forms (e.g. miškūos) or forms in -u (e.g. piev asu, akýsu), there are also forms: miškuosū (or miškuosī) ilgiōsb, akýsb, šakāsb (b₁ = with retracted i). The plural inessive miškuosū could have arisen from *miškuosēn, as could the singular instrumental pusī from *pusēn in the same subdialect. Yet this is unlikely to have been the case. Forms of the same case in two variants cannot have been used within one subdialect since ancient times—one of the two is probably a later innovation. The age of the forms with -b- is not demonstrated by the plural illative (the directional interior locative), which in the Adutiškis subdialect, as in neighboring subdialects, is formed from the plural inessive by adding -n¹⁵ on the model of the singular illative; compare: miškuosun, žirniu osun, šakāsun, dūlkēs un, durysun. The plural illative miškuosōn does not occur in the Adutiškis subdialect. This allows us to suppose that the plural inessive miškuosī in that subdialect...

¹¹ DP = Postilla Catholicka. Tai est: Ižguldimas Ewangeliju kiekwienos Nedelos ir szwętes per wissūs metus. Per Kūningą Mikaloiv Davkszą Kanoniką Mednikų, iš lękiško pergūldita. Wilniui Drukārnioi Akademios, 1599. (The numbers following the examples indicate pages and lines.)

¹² On the dialect of this monument of the Lithuanian language, see J. Kruopas, Dėl M. Petkevičiaus Katekizmo (1598 m.) tarmės, „Lietuvos TSR Mokslų akademijos darbai“, series A, vol. 2 (3), 1957, p. 191 ff.

¹³ Cases of morphological forms migrating between Lithuanian dialects do in fact occur; compare Dzūkian verb forms that are widespread in neighboring East, Central, and West Aukštaitian dialects: audžiau “I wove,” matiau “I saw” — Musninkai, Ciobiškis, Padaigai (Upninkai area), Gegužinė, Palomenė, Žasliai, Navininkai (Kalvarija district); būtau “I would be,” sakytau “I would say,” turėtau “I would have” — Užuguostis, Jieznas, Punia; aitai “you would go,” kàstai “you would dig,” sakýtai “you would say,” sėdėtai “you would sit” — Jieznas, Prienai, Kapsukas, Kalvarija.

¹⁴ In other dialects, only an occasional adverbialized form with the old locative ending occurs; compare netoliesu (Subačius).

¹⁵ The plural illative formed in this way is also found in some southwestern East Aukštaitian dialects (Gelvonai, Pabaiskas); compare: miškuosin, šakosin, pirtysin (<plural inessive miškuosi, šakosi, pirtysi + n on the model of the singular illative miškan, šakon, pirtin).

149

is new. In fact, forms of this type (with -bl) are more commonly used by the younger generation. In the Tverečius dialect and neighboring dialects, singular inessive forms clearly influence the development of plural inessive forms. Following the singular inessive šakoj, žemėj, -j is also added to the plural inessive forms of the same stems¹⁶; cf.: jaunėsu, šakašu, dūlkėsu, žievėsu (Tverečius). Later, the ending -ui was generalized in some places to the inessive of other stems as well; cf.: miškūsu, geruūsu, kituūsu, trijuūsu (Sekonai, Ignalina district). The influence of the singular inessive may also have affected the plural inessive in the Adutiškis dialect. Here, however, the ending -bl was generalized for all nominal stems, following singular inessive forms of that dialect such as: galb (< *galėn), kaklb, mėšlb, stalb, šilb, aukšb, balsb, kimšb ‘in a sieve’. Lazūnai plural inessive forms with -i or -bl may have arisen in a similar way, e.g.: mėtuosi, juosbi¹⁷.

The supposition that the plural inessive in -e spread from west to east seems to be contradicted by the forms of M. Daukša, a representative of the Central Highland dialect: kuriose DP 10₁₁, anosė DP 10₁₅, reikalusė DP 18₃₇. In the view of some linguists ¹⁸, the -ę in these forms indicates that at that time (the end of the 16th century — the beginning of the 17th century) the vowel of the inessive postposition was pronounced with nasalization. Let us examine whether the postposition in the plural inessive was everywhere represented by the letter ę in M. Daukša’s writings, or whether that letter actually denoted a nasal vowel.

In the 237 plural inessive forms in the above-mentioned “Postil” (pp. 1–100), the postpositional vowel e is written as follows: ę — 72 forms (one of them with -ę — kuriose 52₃₄), ia (anosia 8₃₇, mariosia 11₂₅, daiktūsia 22₃₆) — 54, ė (kuriūsė 2₂₅, namūsė 3₄, nēteisibėsė 3₃₉) — 37, and e (kuriosė 2₂₅, gūlusė 5₅) — 74; in the “Catechism”: ę — 20, ė — 24, and e — 17. It is noteworthy that ia and ė are never written with the nasalization mark. A closer examination of Daukša’s orthography shows that these ia and ė did not need the aforementioned (nasalization) mark, since the letter ę denoted not a postpositional e pronounced with nasalization, but an ordinary broad e¹⁹. That this is indeed the case is shown by the same notation of broad (inflectional and stem) e in other instances; cf.: bitōiomė DK 60₂₆, turimė DP 1₃₄, and gėidzemė DK 61₁₄, wadinamė DP 2₄₂; passakikité DP 1₁₂, Passakikite DP 1₁₄, and Eikite DP 10₄₁; (singular instrumental) mētu DP 2₂₄ and metú DP 2₀; teisus DP 2₄₇, meile DP 3₁₅, and nuteisinimo DP 1₃₄, weigdą DP 10₃₈; ižgėlbėtoio DP 1₃₆ and ižgėlbėtoio DP 1₃₇. Daukša also did not distinguish the narrowed a from broad e; for this reason he likewise

¹⁶ Cf. K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, III, p. 359.

¹⁷ Researchers of the Lithuanian dialect spoken in the Lazūnai area have recorded very diverse plural inessive forms, cf.: kūruosu, ažaruosu, ūpesu, juosu; palācuosa (see P. Arumaa, Litauische Mundartliche Texte aus der Wilnaer Gegend mit grammatischen Anmerkungen, Dorpat, 1930, p. 33, 34); mokyklosu, nastruosu; vaštuosu, keturuosu “four together”; Valdziķuose, dviejose; Bebrėnuosa; trijuosai “three together”; Lazūnuosi, Titkrėnuosi; juosbi (see J. Senkus, Kai kurie Lazūnų tarmės ypatumai, “Lietuvos TSR Mokslų akademijos darbai”, serija A, vol. 1 (4), 1958, p. 187; Lazūnų tarmės tekstai, “Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai”, vol. 2, Vilnius, 1959, p. 216 ff.); vaftuosai, dzvijosi, jāu-iosoj (see E. Grinaveckienė, Tarmių medžiagos rinkimas lietuvių kalbos atlasui, “Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai”, vol. 3, Vilnius, 1960, p. 193).

¹⁸ Plg. J. Otrębski, Gramatyka języka litewskiego, III, Warszawa, 1956, p. 27.

¹⁹ By marking broad e with separate signs (the variation in signs may also have resulted from a printing error), Daukša sought to distinguish that vowel from narrow e (=ę). Narrow e is nowhere marked with a nasalization sign in Daukša’s writings, cf.: padarė DP 1₁₇, uždėjo DP 1₁₈, wirszutenemis DP 1₂₉, gerbtių DP 1₃₄. The occasional ę (or ę) in place of e in one word or another in such cases is a proofreading error (in the “Postil” such errors were sometimes corrected in the errata).

150

is likewise written in various ways, cf.: tabiausė(i) DK 61₂₉, saldžėuses DK 127₂₀, saldžėusėmė DK 86₁₇, Wireusės DK 133₂₆; gėrėus DP 2₁₃, gėrėus DP 2₂, džėugsmū DP 2₁.

Thus, there is no basis for supposing that Daukša used the letter ę to represent a nasalized plural inessive postpositional vowel -e. M. Petkevičius did not mark the nasality of this vowel anywhere in his “Catechism” (though he did mark nasal vowels very rarely and inconsistently); D. Kleinas said nothing about the nasality of the postposition -e (in his grammar he discussed nasal vowels separately and marked them ²⁰). This shows that -e had lost its nasality much earlier²¹. Consequently, the plural inessive in -e could have entered the eastern Highland dialects even before the appearance of the earliest written monuments based on those dialects.

The spread of plural inessive forms in -e (a front vowel) across a large area of the eastern Highland dialects may have been due chiefly to the fact that they conformed better to the singular inessive than did the older forms of that case (with -u).

The data from old Lithuanian writings and modern dialects presented here, and their analysis, lead to the conclusion that the eastern Highland plural inessive forms laukuose, šakose are older than the forms laukuosi, šakosi used on the southwestern fringe of that dialect area. The -i in the latter forms arose, through word-final vowel reduction, from an already shortened -e (< *-ēn), not directly from *-ēn.

FROM THE HISTORY OF THE PLURAL INESSIVE FORMS

IN THE EASTERN AUKŠTAITIAN DIALECT

К. МОРКУНАС

Summary

According to the traditional view, the immediate antecedent of the plural inessive currently used in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect of Lithuanian had the postposition *-ēn. Dialectal inessive forms of both the singular and the plural supposedly confirm this view. However, whereas singular inessive forms with the vowel -i (e.g., miški < *miškēn >, in Standard Lithuanian miškė ‘in the forest’) are characteristic of the entire Eastern Aukštaitian dialect area, plural inessive forms with the same vowel (e.g., miškuosi—in Standard Lithuanian miškuose ‘in the forests’) are used only on the southwestern edge of this area, that is, around the settlements of Panevėžys, Krekenava, Ramygala, Pagiriai, Šešikai, Pabaiskas, and Gelvonai. The other Eastern Aukštaitian dialects are characterized by shortened plural inessive forms, e.g.,

²⁰ Cf. Pirmoji lietuvių kalbos gramatika, p. 418 ff.

²¹ That the plural inessive in the central and western Lithuanian dialects formerly had the postposition *-ēn is shown by the plural adessive forms (the present exterior locative) derived from it, e.g.: bediewiūsemp DP 44₅₃, izmintigesniūsemp DP 66₂₈, žmonėsemp DP 67₉, tūšemp DP 67₁₆. It may be added that the Anonymous 1605 catechism has no plural adessive forms at all, while in K. Sirvydas’s “Punktai” we find only a few pronominal forms of that case (muspi PS I 53₄, 101₂₁, 335₂₇, II 60₄, 115₂₆, 135₂₈, 236₁₅, 240₃₁, iusp PS II 20₃₀, iuspi PS II 24₁₂₄), from which we learn nothing about the older pronunciation of the plural locative postposition in Eastern Aukštaitian dialects. Nor do we find such data in present-day Lithuanian dialects. The plural adessive form jūšemp reported from Lazūnai (see A. Laigonaitė, Pašalio vietininkai dabartinėje lietuvių kalboje, “Kai kurie lietuvių kalbos gramatikos klausimai”, Vilnius, 1957, p. 30), with the diphthong -em-, apparently cannot be regarded as a relic of a somewhat deeper antiquity in that dialect.

151

mišk(u)os’ (Linkuva, Joniškėlis, Pakruojis), miškuos (Vabalninkas, Pandėlys, Rokiškis, Utena), and forms with the vowel -e, e.g., miškuose (Musninkai, Širvintos, Balninkai, Molėtai). Forms with -e (mišk(u)ose or miškuose) are also found in some Dzūkian dialects (Alovė, Onuškis, Vabalninkas, Dūkštas), in which the singular inessive ends in -i, e.g., miški.

The monuments of Old Lithuanian show that plural inessive forms with the vowel -e in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect should not be considered new forms that arose under the influence of the standard language. For example, in Part 1 of K. Širvydas’s “Punktay sakimu” (the author was a representative of the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect), all 229 forms of this case have the ending -e. How, then, can the emergence of such forms in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect be explained? In this dialect, alongside singular inessive forms formed with the postposition *-ēn, plural inessive forms with the ending of the ancient (Proto-Indo-European) locative -su were still used for some time, e.g., miškuosu. This is confirmed by Old Lithuanian monuments and the eastern Lithuanian dialects (Linkmenys, Švenčionėliai, Tverečius, Lazūnai), in which inessive forms ending in -su are still used today. Judging from the evidence of Old Lithuanian monuments, plural inessive forms with the postposition *-ēn first appeared in the Central Aukštaitian dialect and in some western Lithuanian dialects. Thus, one may suppose that forms of the same case ending in -su in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect could have been displaced by forms ending in -e, borrowed from the Central Aukštaitian dialect after tautosyllabic n in the postposition *-ēn had disappeared. (The article criticizes the view of some linguists that M. Daukša, a representative of the Central Aukštaitian dialect, often used the sign ę to indicate the postpositional vowel of the inessive and thereby supposedly reflected the nasal pronunciation of the vowel -e that existed at the time.) The spread over a comparatively large area of this dialect of plural inessive forms with the vowel -e, that is, a front vowel, is explained by the fact that such forms agreed better with singular inessive forms. On the southwestern edge of the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect area, forms of the type miškuose gave rise, through reduction of ē at the end of the word, to forms such as miškuosi, cf. the following forms in the same dialects: singular vocative vaiki instead of vaike ‘child’; plural accusative kā́rvis instead of kārves ‘cows’; mis instead of žemės ‘lands’.