J. Jablonskis – lietuvių literatūrinės kalbos ugdytojas

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, IV LIETUVOS TSR MOKSLŲ AKADEMIJA J. JABLONSKIS — DEVELOPER OF THE LITHUANIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE1 K. ULVYDAS The last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century are extraordinarily significant in the history of the Lithuanian literary language: it was then that the process of forming the Lithuanian nation and national language proceeded most intensively and was finally completed; the Lithuanian literary language, which had begun its course of development in the middle of the 16th century, rose at that time to a new, national-language stage, and a new stage in the development of the national Lithuanian literary language began. Among linguists, J. Jablonskis occupies the most prominent place in the history of the formation of the national Lithuanian literary language. His contributions to Lithuanian language culture and Lithuanian linguistics are so significant and substantial that comprehensive monographic studies would be needed to shed light on them. It was not for nothing that he was often called the father of the Lithuanian literary language, its greatest cultivator. Indeed, all his creative work, from his university years to his final breath, was devoted to revitalizing and cultivating the Lithuanian literary language and advancing the study of the Lithuanian language. Born on December 30, 1860, in the village of Kubiliai, near K. Naumiestis, into a Lithuanian peasant family, he spent his infancy and early childhood in his birthplace; from the age of 12 to 17 (at least during summer holidays) he lived in Meištai, right near K. Naumiestis, and later returned for holidays to Rygiškiai, in the vicinity of Griškabūdis, where his parents had bought a farm. J. Jablonskis’s frequently used pen name, Rygiškių Jonas, derived from the name of the village of Rygiškiai. Thus, J. Jablonskis spoke his very first words in the dialect that history had destined to form the basis of the national Lithuanian literary language. J. Jablonskis remained close throughout his life to his native western Southern Aukštaitian, or Suvalkian, dialect, from which he drew most of the material for all his practical and scholarly work on language. To bring out more clearly the strength of character of J. Jablonskis as a child and young man, it is important to recall the state of the Lithuanian language and the study of Lithuanian at that time. 1 An abridged version of a paper delivered on December 24, 1960, at a scholarly conference organized by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR to commemorate the 100th anniversary of J. Jablonskis’s birth. 5 Forgotten and scorned by the gentry, Polish-influenced priests, and most of the urban population, and persecuted and suppressed by the tsarist authorities, the Lithuanian language was heard only beneath thatched roofs. Here, since time immemorial, melodious and wistful folk songs had accompanied and eased the difficult steps of working people’s lives, lifting their spirits and inspiring them with the hope of a better and brighter life; here, on long winter evenings, often by the light of a burning splinter, the most fantastic tales were told, the most vivid riddles posed, and the inexhaustible wit of the folk rang out. There were extraordinarily few schools, and Lithuanian was not taught in them. Only at the Marijampolė (now Kapsukas) Gymnasium (which J. Jablonskis graduated from in 1881) had the tsarist authorities permitted one optional weekly Lithuanian lesson, in an effort to draw Lithuanian children studying there away from Polish influence. Although, during J. Jablonskis’s childhood and youth, works by such important classics of Lithuanian belles lettres as K. Donelaitis’s immortal “Metai,” A. Baranauskas’s “Anykščių šilelis,” M. Valančius’s “Palangos Juzė,” and others had already appeared, they had nonetheless been disseminated so sparsely and were so difficult to access and obtain that there is no need even to speak of their influence on the young J. Jablonskis. In Western Europe, Lithuanian had been brought to prominence by A. Schleicher, who in 1856 wrote the first scholarly grammar of the Lithuanian language. Exactly 20 years later, that is, in 1876 (when J. Jablonskis was attending gymnasium), F. Kurschat published a comprehensive and very meticulously written Lithuanian grammar. Lithuanian was regarded as one of the most important and topical subjects of study not only by the most prominent linguists of Western Europe but also by those of Russia—representatives of the comparative-historical study of Indo-European or Slavic languages such as A. Potebnia, F. Fortunatov, I. Baudouin de Courtenay, and, somewhat later, A. Shakhmatov, among others. Among Lithuanians themselves, A. Baranauskas and his student, the phenomenal linguist K. Jaunius, were the most deeply engaged in studying their mother tongue. With all this in mind, one must not forget that tsarist reaction stifled every expression of Lithuanian identity; simply reading Lithuanian books printed in Lithuanian letters was considered a grave political crime, punishable with the utmost severity. The Church forced upon the people the language in which “Broma, atverta ing viečnastį,” “Živatai šventųjų,” “Pekla,” hymnbooks, and other ecclesiastical books had been written. And even that was the best-case scenario, for in many parts of Lithuania, especially central, eastern, and southeastern Lithuania, and perhaps mostly in the Vilnius region, a large proportion of the priests had become completely Polish, were unable to communicate with the people in Lithuanian, and the people were forcibly Polonized, their national consciousness suppressed. Even at the Marijampolė Gymnasium itself, which was otherwise an important center of culture in Lithuania, a reactionary spirit prevailed, and Polish bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism had taken root. Many children of Lithuanian peasants began to feel ashamed of their parents and their language; over time, they completely renounced their nationality and mother tongue. 6 It is understandable that J. Jablonskis had already developed a strong character at a young age and took life seriously. Urged by his parents and relatives, he did not enter a seminary but began studying classical philology at Moscow University, hoping to obtain a teaching post in Lithuania after graduating. If, while at gymnasium, he had still been captivated by the romantic views of T. Narbutt, A. Mickiewicz, and I. Kraszewski on Lithuania, and had sometimes considered himself the kind of Lithuanian best characterized by the well-known old formula gente lituanus, natione polonus, then, while studying at Moscow University, nurtured by progressive Russian professors and surrounded by the university’s healthy, creative atmosphere, and also influenced by the rising Lithuanian national movement, he finally resolved to devote all his efforts to advancing Lithuanian culture. Thus, after receiving his diploma in 1885, he returned to Lithuania, hoping to take part in educating the people. But with his university studies completed, J. Jablonskis’s turbulent, eventful, and creative life began—a life full of hardship, sorrow, disappointment, suffering, and struggle for enlightenment and education. He obtained a teaching post only after several years, not in Lithuania, as he had dreamed, but in Latvia, at the Mitau Gymnasium. Having displeased the tsarist authorities, he was transferred even farther from Lithuania, to Tallinn. The Russian Academy of Sciences assigned him to edit the greatest and most significant Lithuanian lexicographical work of the time, A. Juška’s dictionary. While checking and supplementing the dictionary’s materials, he returned to Lithuania during the summer holidays. In the summer of 1900, while living in Lithuania, he and P. Avižonis wrote “Lietuviškos kalbos gramatiką,” published in 1901, which played an enormous role in the history of the Lithuanian literary language. Merely because a letter from the Palanga physician L. Vaineikis, addressed to V. Mickevičius-Kapsukas, a prominent figure in the Lithuanian revolutionary movement, mentioned that Lithuanian books could supposedly be obtained from J. Jablonskis, and the letter fell into the hands of the tsarist gendarmes, he was dismissed from his job and, the following year, exiled farther from Lithuania. His eldest son went into exile with him (Konstantinas Jablonskis, academician of the Lithuanian SSR Academy of Sciences, who died in 1960). The other members of the family remained in Lithuania. In exile, J. Jablonskis settled in Pskov. It is worth noting that in exile, as earlier at university and in Tallinn, he continued to receive the support of progressive Russian scholars: the Russian Academy of Sciences, at the instigation of academicians F. Fortunatov and A. Shakhmatov, granted him a monthly salary of 100 rubles for editing A. Juška’s dictionary. That same Russian Academy of Sciences secured permission for him to return from exile to Lithuania. In 1903, he settled in Šiauliai. Having moved with his family to Vilnius in 1904, J. Jablonskis tried to take up work in publishing, but, exploited by bourgeois publishers, he could not even support his family. He therefore taught Lithuanian for a time at Vilnius gymnasiums, receiving for this work only small allowances collected by the public. Later, he took up a position as a privately employed teacher at the Panevėžys Teachers’ Seminary, where he taught Lithuanian. Because of the director’s intrigues, he had to move to Brest, where he obtained a salaried post as a Latin teacher. When his health deteriorated badly there and his chronic kidney disease worsened, he moved to Grodno. In 1911, he published another exceptionally significant grammatical work— 7 “The Syntax of the Lithuanian Language.” When the First World War broke out, he worked for a time in Veližė, in Vitebsk Governorate, and later in Voronezh, where many Lithuanians, especially school students, had been evacuated. Here his illness had progressed so far and left him so incapacitated that he could no longer walk and was taken to his lessons in a wheelchair. While teaching Lithuanian, he and other teachers prepared two volumes of reading material for “The School of Hardship”; in addition, he published “Our Spelling” and other works on language. In the summer of 1918, J. Jablonskis returned to Lithuania and settled in Vilnius, where the German occupiers were still raging. Exhausted by illness and without any property, he once again found himself and his family in poverty. Yet less than half a year later, Soviet power was proclaimed in Lithuania. In recognition of J. Jablonskis’s contributions to the culture and scholarship of the Lithuanian nation, the Communist Party and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Soviet Lithuania granted him a substantial one-time allowance and a regular salary. While living in Vilnius, he published an expanded “Grammar of the Lithuanian Language” in 1918. But he did not enjoy the working conditions that had been established for him for long. Soviet power in Lithuania was suppressed. In the summer of 1919, J. Jablonskis moved from Vilnius to Kaunas, where he taught Lithuanian in teacher-training courses; in 1922, he was elected honorary professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the newly established University of Kaunas. Although illness had confined him completely to a wheelchair, he was not content with the title of honorary professor and, for as long as he could, taught students a course in the literary Lithuanian language. When he could no longer even hold a pen, he dictated his thoughts to others. Despite working in difficult conditions and suffering from severe ill health, J. Jablonskis published the full “Grammar of the Lithuanian Language” in Kaunas in 1922, “A Lithuanian Language Textbook for the First Grades of Secondary Schools” in 1925, and “Cases and Prepositions” in 1928. In addition to these works, during the last years of his life J. Jablonskis continued the prolific press work he had begun in 1883: he wrote and published many articles on various issues of language culture, linguistics, and public life, as well as on literary and pedagogical topics, and many book reviews. J. Jablonskis died in Kaunas on February 23, 1930, leaving his family no property, no houses or farms, but having erected an imperishable monument through his work. Only with great effort did the administration of the University of Kaunas secure a subsistence allowance for his widowed wife. The greater and most significant part of J. Jablonskis’s written legacy has been published in the form of a five-volume collection of his writings2 and a two-volume selection of his writings3. The other part—for example, “A Lithuanian Language Textbook for the First Grades of Secondary Schools,” volumes I and II of the reading material “The School of Hardship,” “A Brief Description of the Earth,” “Fables,” “Society’s Lodgers,” “The Terrible Giant,” “The Caveman,” “A Few Student Translations,” and a whole series of other translations and works4, which demanded much of J. Jablonskis’s time and strength, is not even included here— 2 Jablonskis’s writings (edited by J. Balčikonis), 1—5, Kaunas, 1932—1936. 3 J. Jablonskis, Selected Writings (compiled by J. Palionis), 1—2, Vilnius, 1957—1959. 4 For a bibliography of J. Jablonskis’s works, see “Archivum philologicum”, 2, 15—37, Kaunas, 1931. 8 …continues. Jablonskis had chosen collective translation of a text and its discussion with students in the classroom or lecture hall as one of the means of teaching language. Although some of those translations may now be considerably outdated in content, at the time they played a major role in developing the Lithuanian literary language and establishing its orthographic, morphological, and syntactic norms; from the standpoint of language, they have not lost their significance even today, and therefore they can hardly be compared with just any translations produced by many other translators. In his lifetime, J. Jablonskis also carried out a great deal of language work of major importance for developing the Lithuanian literary language—work whose extent cannot be expressed in volumes, pages, or sheets. What is meant here are his daily consultations and his long-standing, fruitful pedagogical activity, which demanded a great deal of health and strength. Now, a hundred years after J. Jablonskis’s birth and more than 30 years after his death, he stands before us as one of the greatest figures not only in the history of the Lithuanian literary language, but also in the cultural history of the Lithuanian nation. If we recall his constant, involuntary transfers from one city to another, his exile and persecution, his arduous struggle for a crust of bread—which quite literally ruined his health—and his illness, which progressed over many years right up to his death, and at the same time consider the vast field of work he undertook in developing the Lithuanian literary language and advancing Lithuanian national culture, we must surely wonder where he—his body worn out so early and wholly infirm—found the unceasing will, energy, self-sacrifice, and spiritual strength for his work, and what throughout his life inspired his resolve to work for the development of the Lithuanian literary language and the study of the Lithuanian language. His entire difficult but noble life and all his work show that he valued and loved nothing more than truth in scholarship and his native land and its people. Love for his native land and its people gave him the moral strength to fight, as he himself wrote, for bread, enlightenment, and freedom for the exploited people. That love also gave his character such humanity, nobility, and charm that everyone who came into closer contact with him was struck by it; those who learn even a little about his life and work are still struck by it today. In public life, J. Jablonskis was not aligned with any bourgeois parties, of which there was no shortage in his day. However, like many other intellectuals of that period, the limitations of his social and political views kept him from understanding either the class struggle or the significance of the working people’s revolutionary movement. He sincerely believed that the people could be made happy through education alone. In characterizing J. Jablonskis, it should also be added that he loved not only his native language and his own nation, but also the languages of other nations, the people who spoke them, and their cultures. It is not only his former Lithuanian students who speak of him with great respect, but also representatives of other nations. J. Jablonskis, in turn, spoke with extraordinary respect of his professors at Moscow University—the foremost Russian linguists, Academician F. Fortunatov and especially Professor T. Kors. He was grateful to them for championing the Lithuanian language and encouraging him to devote himself to its development and study. 9 At the same time, he greatly valued Russian linguistics, literature, and progressive Russian culture. Russian linguistics helped shape him as a Lithuanian linguist. The principal source for J. Jablonskis’s work on language, and the criterion for the norms of the national literary language he sought to cultivate, was the people’s spoken language. He himself states this clearly in the preface to his first grammar, in these words: “...a writer who wishes to compile a language textbook must first properly investigate spoken language, since written language, or the language of texts, should be based only on its laws... when drawing on people’s speech as well as the works of writers, one must be very careful: from those works, grammarians should take only such small details as have been directly drawn from the people’s speech and are grounded in the laws of that language.” Even when using the people’s speech for the purposes of grammar, one must be careful: from ancient times our nation has suffered all kinds of foreign influences, which have considerably corrupted the language of the nation as well. In short, much in the people’s own speech is based on foreign languages: from foreign languages there have entered our language not only many foreign words, but also quite a few features that thoroughly pollute the speech of our people. Thus, alongside genuinely Lithuanian words and features, used among the people since ancient times, our spoken language contains much that is mere refuse. One must know how to separate this refuse from the grain, for grammarians should use only the grain of the people’s speech5. J. Jablonskis describes the very foundation of the national Lithuanian literary language, as well as the relationship between dialects and the literary language, as follows: “The truths of written language are always acquired by one dialect or another; other dialects contribute only their best small details... If a word known only from other dialects is lacking in the written dialect, the writer must use that word, wherever he finds it; if the written dialect lacks certain genuinely Lithuanian features used in other dialects, the writer must draw on those other dialects; if the writer knows that a word he uses will be understood differently almost everywhere, he must adapt as far as possible to his readers and always take care to be understood by the majority. By proceeding in this way with the other dialects and writing in a single dialect, one may hope that the language of texts will be understood by readers and acquire all the qualities of a ‘written language.’ Thus the language of this grammar will be the ‘ordinary Suvalkija dialect,’ but, where needed, it will also be strengthened and reinforced by other dialects”6. Almost the entire period of J. Jablonskis’s creative activity coincided with the formation of the national Lithuanian literary language. In this way, he was able to observe the process of that formation directly and to take an active part in it. Because of the linguist’s great erudition, sound judgment, and deep intuition, his contribution was highly fruitful and significant. Of course, we should not exaggerate J. Jablonskis’s role by considering him the sole cultivator of the Lithuanian national literary language, or even its father, as he was sometimes called; nevertheless, we must not forget that Lithuania had no other linguist of such energy and ingenuity, so well prepared in theory, and so devoted to the work of developing the Lithuanian national literary language. 5 Petras Kriaušaitis, Grammar of the Lithuanian Language... 1, Tilžė, 1901. 6 Ibid., 1—2. 10 there was none. In this sense, J. Jablonskis had far surpassed the other two celebrated Lithuanian linguists, A. Baranauskas and K. Jaunius, who were unable to sense the living and broad needs of the emerging Lithuanian nation and did not know how to relate them to their research. In the sense discussed here, even K. Būga, the youngest representative of that celebrated quartet, could not equal J. Jablonskis. While A. Baranauskas and especially K. Jaunius and K. Būga were scaling the heights of linguistic scholarship and astonishing authorities in language studies in both Western Europe and Russia with the novelty and originality of their conclusions, J. Jablonskis devoted himself to the simplest everyday questions of the practice of the national Lithuanian literary language. The further course of development of that language, and its refinement, depended greatly on how quickly, efficiently, and on a sound scholarly basis those questions were resolved. Bourgeois researchers sometimes called J. Jablonskis an eclectic linguist. It should be noted that this characterization is inaccurate and unjust, for although he gathered linguistic facts from various dialects and writings and explained them, he followed a strict system, always had a clear objective in view, and throughout his life was guided by a single criterion for testing literary-language norms: the uncorrupted spoken language of the people. Although realism and practicality predominated in his work, it would nevertheless be inaccurate to call him merely a practical linguist, as is often done. It is true that he is the greatest and most productive practical linguist in the entire history of the Lithuanian literary language, and no one has yet equaled him in this respect; but just as A. Juška was and remains the most distinguished Lithuanian lexicographer among individual authors, K. Jaunius the sharpest phonetician and a rigorous systematizer of phonetics, and K. Būga the most notable comparative etymologist, accentologist, and lexicologist, so J. Jablonskis remains an unsurpassed syntactician. In other words, he was not only a practical creator of the literary language, but also a theoretical syntactician. It is true that some of the self-important and conceited have accused J. Jablonskis’s works on syntax, and still accuse them, of lacking originality, of failing to distinguish between categories of logic and grammar, of following outdated Russian syntax textbooks, and so on. But these arrogant critics should be told that, despite working under different and better conditions, they were still unable to write more original works on syntax in which matters of logic and grammar were not confused. Many school textbooks on Lithuanian syntax published after J. Jablonskis’s (by M. Durys, P. Klimas, Z. Kuzmickis, P. Meškauskas, and others), although their authors sometimes had much to say in prefaces and other articles about various outdated and new approaches to syntax, and sprinkled their textbook texts with phrases such as Previously (for example, concerning sentences with homogeneous parts) it was thought that..., but scholarship (some abstract, undefined “scholarship”!) has demonstrated that things are otherwise, and the like, are nothing more than reworkings of J. Jablonskis’s works on syntax, in which even the very same illustrative material—those same linguistic examples gathered by J. Jablonskis—is most often repeated. It is safe to say that all of J. Jablonskis’s grammar works published as separate books have retained their value down to our own day, if not always practical, then at least theoretical and historical. In all of J. Jablonskis’s written 11 legacy, his grammar works occupy the most prominent place. They were of greatest importance to the cultivation of the Lithuanian literary language, because they were the most widely used, read, and reworked. Their frequent reworking and imitation should chiefly be explained by the fact that none was properly adapted to the needs of schools. It was truly difficult for an uncreative teacher to teach from them, especially in the lower grades. Not one of them contains any exercises or a rigorous system for organizing material by topic and method. Yet, because of their concise content, clear and correct language, consistent terminology, and simply exemplary choice of examples, for many years they were an inviolable means of teaching and learning the mother tongue, both at school and in life more generally. Of all J. Jablonskis’s works, they contributed the most to the spread and establishment of norms in the phonetics and spelling, morphology, and syntax of the Lithuanian literary language. To better appreciate the progressiveness of J. Jablonskis’s grammar works and the clarity and simplicity of their language, let us look at how the noun is defined by 1. A. Baranauskas, 2. K. Jaunius, and 3. J. Jablonskis. 1. “A noun is a word formed by joining two words: daikto-vardis [thing-name], which becomes one word: daiktovardis. A noun is the naming or designation of any thing whatsoever. Things are some living, which by their own will can move from one place to another, such as: a person, a beast, a bird, a worm, and others...; while others are lifeless, which by their own will cannot move from one place to another: a tree, a table, a house, the sun, iron, and others... There are also things that are understood by the mind, such as: God, the soul, an angel, a spirit, cold, patience, and so on. Thus things are divided: some are living, while others are lifeless.” Living: God, an Angel, and so on. Lifeless: heat, cold, love, truth, etc.7. 2. “A noun or entity-name (nomen substantivum); the words of this section denote the names of visible and invisible things, such as man, woman, horse, sheep, oak, stone, reason, wisdom, and so forth.8” 3. “Words that denote the name of a thing are called nouns or substantives.” Things may be living (a person, an animal, a bird) or lifeless (a building, or a farmhouse, land, a lake), visible (a person, land) or invisible (God, reason, memory). The name of each such thing is a noun9.” Although the sources of the quotations given here are not far apart in publication date, their language and spelling are very different. It is true that the sources differ more in the dates when they were written, but even that, it seems to me, does not account for their linguistic differences. These brief quotations already show that the language of J. Jablonskis’s book is the simplest and most accessible to us, even though, as we know, the book was the result of work done in great haste: it was written in just one summer, on the basis of the manuscript of P. Avižonis’s short grammar. 7 The Science of the Lithuanian Language, published by LL in Tilžė in 1896, 22. 8 K. Jaunis, Grammar of the Lithuanian Language, Lithuanian original and Russian translation, 47, Petrograd, 1908—1916 (Lithuanian section). 9 Petras Kriaušaitis, Grammar of the Lithuanian Language, 8, Tilžė, 1901. 12 J. Jablonskis’s great advantage (compared with other linguists) was that in his work he was able to distinguish and bring to the fore what was progressive and vigorous in the development of the Lithuanian national literary language. He strove at once to identify and eliminate any obstacles to that process. He understood that the language of church writings, full of ecclesiastical jargon and imposed on the people by clergymen for centuries, could by no means be taken as the foundation of a national Lithuanian literary language. Elements of that church-writing language, contaminated by jargon, were still especially abundant in the clerical press of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nor was the language of the bourgeois liberal press pure gold. Although oriented toward the western subdialect of the southern Aukštaitians (Suvalkiai), it nevertheless required considerable supervision and improvement. It still teemed with lexical foreignisms and unsuccessful neologisms such as parėdkas, rėdytojas, rėdikas, tavoras, metturgis, nabas-ninkas, grekonis, rymionis, kritikuoti, ateitinė (ateitis), apšviestūnas, tamsūnas, sandarbininkas, antgalvis, guodojimas, šėnavojimas, mokslinyčia (mokykla), mokslainė (t. p.), mokslinčius and so on, and such syntactic errors and clumsy constructions as einu ant vakzalo, mokėjo ne brangiau trijų rublių, iš priežasties sausos vasaros, apsivedė su latvėmis, tyčia ilgai tęsia (giedodami), kad neduoti lietuviams giedoti, važinėja šiluose kailiniuose, atsiduoḍa nuomon malūnas mieste Radviliškyje, kalbėti prigimtoje kalboje and so on. J. Jablonskis fought resolutely against such linguistic ills for about half a century. And, it must be acknowledged, he cleansed the Lithuanian literary language of them. Having thoroughly studied the classical, Slavic, and other languages, he was quick and skilled at sensing what had been imposed on Lithuanian from outside, what was alien to it, and what harmed and distorted its national character. Although he held in exceptionally high regard the spoken language of the people, unspoiled by foreign influences, and regarded it as the criterion for literary-language norms, J. Jablonskis did not disregard the language of the best Lithuanian writers—the classics. He particularly valued K. Donelaitis, S. Daukantas, M. Valančius, Žemaitė, J. Biliūnas, and other writers. The language of works of fiction was another important source for his linguistic work. He regarded the sources for his research and practical work very critically, testing everything by the same criterion—the spoken language of the people, cleansed of foreign accretions. Throughout his life he persistently sought unity and purity in the Lithuanian literary language and would not tolerate any anarchy in linguistic practice. Perhaps for this reason, some people with a weaker linguistic education sometimes reproached him for adhering too strictly to self-made canons and for constraining the literary language excessively with those canons. But, given the instability and fluctuation of literary-language norms at the time, J. Jablonskis’s strictness should be considered a progressive phenomenon. Without his firm line, it would hardly have been possible to eradicate such lexical, phraseological, and syntactic shortcomings as betvarkė (netvarka), bedarbė (nedarbas), belaisvė (nelaisvė), priparodyti, prisiųsti (atsiųsti), kiaulių užlaikymas žiemą, virš dešimties, įsitėmyti, skaityti ką kaltų, pirmšėdis, įteikti pinigus sulig nurodyto adreso and a great many others. Had these shortcomings not been eradicated in time, it is truly hard to say where the course of development of the Lithuanian literary language might have led. 13 Whereas J. Jablonskis, in his grammar works published as separate books, chiefly brought out and helped establish the norms of phonetics, spelling, morphology, and syntax, in his articles and reviews he cleansed the lexicon and syntax of the literary language of foreignisms and other shortcomings. Those articles and reviews form a kind of chronicle of the development of the Lithuanian literary language, spanning almost half a century and showing what its ailments were, how they were remedied, and what hindered or fostered the growth of the literary language. J. Jablonskis made a major contribution to Lithuanian terminology. His view was that specialists in individual fields of science should coin and propose terms, while linguists could serve only as consultants. As the national Lithuanian literary language was taking shape, the shortage of names for various new phenomena of life and abstract concepts was especially keenly felt (when, in fact, is such a shortage not felt?). Terms and other words that seem most familiar to us today, such as mokykla, ligoninė, turinys, įspūdis, įtaka and many others, sometimes had several or even a dozen variants. What is interesting is that J. Jablonskis was better than anyone else at choosing the most suitable among all those variants—precisely the ones that took root most successfully. Even today, we can vividly feel J. Jablonskis’s influence in the field of terminology. He himself coined and introduced a considerable number of terms. One might say that he created most of the grammar terms now in use, for example, in morphology: vardininkas, kilmininkas, naudininkas, galininkas, vietininkas; asmenavimas, asmenuotė; vienaskaita, daugiskaita; esamasis, būtasis kartinis, būtasis dažninis, būsimasis, ištisinis, sudurtinis laikas; jungtukas, jaustukas, ištiktukas, prielinksnis, dalelytė and many others; and in syntax: veiksnys, tarinys, pažyminys, papildinys; pagrindinis, šalutinis sakinys; kablelis, klaustukas, šauktukas and so on. Other Lithuanian linguists (A. Baranauskas and K. Jaunius) also worked intensively on coining grammar terms, but their work in this field was not fruitful. Many of the terms they coined were not only unsupported by the word-formation laws of Lithuanian but often incomprehensible; compare, for example, A. Baranauskas’s terms: rašteilis (raidė), siaudis (priebalsis), lankstygaliais (galūnė), savivardžiai daiktavardžiai (tikriniai daiktavardžiai), skundalankis (galininkas); and Jaunius’s: tarsnis (garsas), santara (priebalsis), santaika (sintaksė), apysaka (tarinys), apskųstinis (galininkas), and so on. Even many terms from the natural and mathematical sciences that are in universal use today were coined by Jablonskis, for example: deguonis, dauginamasis, daugiklis, sandauga and others. Throughout his life, J. Jablonskis also worked to standardize and unify spelling. Thanks to his efforts, the diphthongs ie and uo came to be written in place of other spellings using į and ū. He also introduced the marking of ū (long) alongside the y that had already become established. Some of his proposals did not take root, for example, the spellings vezdamas, mezdams. J. Jablonskis’s contribution to the development of the language of Lithuanian literary works must also be mentioned. Indeed, to a considerable extent, he brought the writer Žemaitė into Lithuanian literature. With his perceptive corrections and guidance 14 He made Žemaitė’s works accessible and easily understandable to all Lithuanian society. He devoted his whole life to the linguistic cultivation of Lithuanian works of belles-lettres. In conclusion, it should be recalled that, alongside the growth and improvement of the Lithuanian literary language as a whole, the individual language of J. Jablonskis’s writings also continually improved and grew richer. If the language of his writings during the first decade of his work differed little, or not at all, from that of other cultural figures and writers of the time, then, as time went on, the distinctiveness and originality of his language and style became increasingly apparent—sometimes so pronounced that one could readily sense and identify the author from a single sentence. Such a trait is usually characteristic only of great writers, who have devoted considerable effort to refining the language of their works. It is therefore no coincidence that examples of J. Jablonskis’s language are used in various works on linguistics and language practice alongside examples from the language of the most eminent writers. The influence of J. Jablonskis’s work is still keenly felt today, both in the cultivation of Lithuanian literary language and in the advancement of Lithuanian linguistics. THE ROLE OF J. JABLONSKIS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LITHUANIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE К. М. УЛЬВИДАС Summary The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries were an exceptionally important period in the development of the Lithuanian literary language. During this time, the process of forming the Lithuanian nation proceeded most intensively and reached completion. The Lithuanian literary language, whose development had begun as early as the middle of the 16th century, rose during this period to a new stage—the stage of development of a national literary language. J. Jablonskis (1860–1930) holds the most significant place in the history of the formation of the Lithuanian national literary language. He devoted all his knowledge and strength to revitalizing and developing the Lithuanian literary language and enriching Lithuanian linguistics. Through his entire creative activity, J. Jablonskis was closely connected with the development of the Lithuanian national literary language. The greater and most significant part of J. Jablonskis’s creative legacy was published in a five-volume edition of his works1 and a two-volume edition of selected works2. 1 Jablonskio raštai (redagavo J. Balčikonis), 1—5, Kaunas, 1932—1936. 2 J. Jablonskis, Rinktiniai raštai (sudarė J. Palionis), 1—2, Vilnius, 1957—1959. 15 The Lithuanian vernacular was the most important source for J. Jablonskis’s linguistic works and the criterion guiding the national literary language of Lithuanian that he developed. Almost the entire period of J. Jablonskis’s creative activity coincided with the period in which the Lithuanian national literary language was taking shape. Thus, he was able to observe the process of its formation directly and to influence it actively. It should be emphasized that this influence was highly fruitful and significant, given his great erudition, profound intuition, and linguistic insight. At that time, there was no other linguist in Lithuania as energetic, so well prepared theoretically, and so passionately devoted to his work as J. Jablonskis. In this respect, he far surpassed the two other outstanding Lithuanian linguists, A. Baranauskas and K. Jaunius, who had failed to grasp more deeply the living, broad interests of the Lithuanian nation as it was taking shape. Even K. Būga, the youngest member of this distinguished quartet of Lithuanian linguists, could not match J. Jablonskis in this respect. While A. Baranauskas, and especially K. Jaunius and K. Būga, scaled the heights of linguistic scholarship and astonished both Russian and Western European linguists with the novelty or originality of their conclusions, J. Jablonskis remained close to everyday language practice, devoting much attention to questions of speech culture. The course of further development of the Lithuanian literary language depended to a great extent on the prompt, scientifically grounded resolution of these issues. Although realism and practicality predominate in all of J. Jablonskis’s works, it would nevertheless be wrong to regard him merely as a practical linguist, as has often been done and still is. J. Jablonskis is undoubtedly the most productive practical linguist in the entire history of the Lithuanian literary language. But just as A. Juška is the most outstanding lexicographer among Lithuanian linguists, K. Jaunius the phoneticist, and K. Būga the comparative etymologist, accentologist, and lexicologist, so J. Jablonskis remains, to this day, an unrivaled syntactician. Thus, J. Jablonskis was not only a practical linguist but also a theoretician. It can be confidently asserted that all of J. Jablonskis’s grammatical works published as separate books3 retain, if not always practical, then at least theoretical and historical significance. In J. Jablonskis’s entire creative legacy, his grammatical works occupy the most important place. To a greater extent than the wor- 3 The following works by J. Jablonskis are meant: 1) Lietuviškos kalbos gramatika... Petras Kriaušaitis. Tilžėje 1901; 2) Rygiškių Jono Lietuvių kalbos sintaksė pirmoji dalis, Seinai, 1911; 3) Rygiškių Jono Lietuvių kalbos gramatika... Kaunas, 1922 (The first edition of this book—P. Kriaušaičio ir Rygiškių Jono Lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius, 1919); 4) Rygiškių Jono Lietuvių kalbos vadovėlis, Kaunas, 1925; 5) Rygiškių Jono Linksniai ir prielinksniai, Kaunas, 1928. 16 ks of J. Jablonskis, contributed to the dissemination and consolidation of phonetic, orthographic, morphological, and syntactic norms of the Lithuanian literary language. A great strength of J. Jablonskis’s creative work was his ability to discern, distinguish, and identify what was most enduring and progressive in the development of the Lithuanian national literary language. He immediately eliminated everything that obstructed this process. J. Jablonskis understood well that a language cluttered with jargon from ecclesiastical literature could not serve as the foundation for the Lithuanian national literary language. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the language of the Lithuanian clerical press was rife with the jargon of ecclesiastical literature. The language of the bourgeois-liberal press differed in no essential respect from the latter; although oriented toward the West Aukštaitian (Suvalkian) dialect, it still needed to be standardized and improved. In short, written Lithuanian at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries contained whole series of barbarisms or unsuccessful lexical coinages, such as parėdkas (cf. Russian порядок, ‘order’; in modern standard Lithuanian tvarka), tavoras (cf. Russian товар, ‘goods’; in modern standard Lithuanian prekė), meturgis (cf. Russian ярмарка, German Jahrmarkt, ‘fair’; in modern standard Lithuanian preky metis), nabašnikas (cf. Polish nieboszczyk, ‘deceased’; in modern standard Lithuanian velionis), rymionis (cf. ‘Roman’, Polish rzymianin; in modern standard Lithuanian romėnas), kritikavoti (cf. ‘to criticize’, Polish krytykować; in modern standard Lithuanian kritikuoti), šėnavojimas (cf. ‘honoring’, Polish szanowanie; in modern standard Lithuanian gerbimas), ap šviestūnas ‘intellectual’ (in modern standard Lithuanian šviesuolis, inteligentas), sandarbininkas (cf. ‘colleague’; in modern standard Lithuanian bendradarbis), antgalvis (cf. ‘title’, Polish na(d)główek; in modern standard Lithuanian antraštė), mokslinyčia ‘school’ (in modern standard Lithuanian mokykla), mokslinčius ‘scholar’ (in modern standard Lithuanian mokslininkas), and so on; as well as solecisms such as einu ant vakzalo (cf. ‘I’m going to the station’; in modern standard Lithuanian einu į stotį), jis mokėjo ne brangiau trijų rublių (cf. ‘he paid no more than three rubles’; in modern standard Lithuanian jis mokėjo ne daugiau kaip tris rublius), jis važinėja šiltuose kailiniuose (cf. ‘he travels in a warm fur coat’; in modern standard Lithuanian jis važinėja apsivilkęs šiltais kailiniais), atsidavoda nuomon malūnas mieste Radviliškyje (cf. ‘a mill is offered for rent in the town of Radviliškis’; in modern standard Lithuanian išnuomojamas malūnas Radviliškyje), and kalbėti prigimtoje kalboje (cf. Polish mówić w ojczystym języku, ‘to speak in one’s native language’; in modern standard Lithuanian kalbėti gimtąja kalba), and so on. J. Jablonskis waged a determined struggle against this kind of corruption of the Lithuanian literary language, and it must be acknowledged that the struggle was successful. J. Jablonskis made a major contribution to Lithuanian terminology. During the formation of the Lithuanian national literary language, there was a great shortage of terms in particular branches of science. 2. Kalbotyros klausimai, IV 17 Alongside such words (which have today become established as uniform terms) as mokykla 'school', ligoninė 'hospital', turinys 'content', įspūdis 'impression', įtaka 'influence', and many others, several variants of each were in use. What is interesting is that J. Jablonskis was better than anyone else at selecting the most successful options from among all these variants—precisely those that took root most readily in the literary language. Even today, J. Jablonskis’s beneficial influence on Lithuanian terminology is still felt. He coined and established most of the Lithuanian grammatical terms in use today, for example vardininkas 'nominative case', kilmininkas 'genitive case', galininkas 'accusative case', vietininkas 'locative case', asmenavimas 'conjugation', vienaskaita 'singular', esamasis, būasis kartinis, būasis dažninis, būsimasis laikas 'present, simple past, frequentative past, future tense', jungtukas 'conjunction', jaustukas 'interjection', prielinksnis 'preposition', veiksnys 'subject', tarinys 'predicate', pažyminys 'attribute', papildinys 'object', etc. Other Lithuanian linguists (A. Baranauskas, K. Jaunius) also coined terms, but with very poor results. Many of these terms are not only unjustified by the word-formation rules of Lithuanian, but also entirely incomprehensible; compare, for example, A. Baranauskas’s coinages raštėlis 'letter', siaudis 'consonant', lankstygalis 'ending', skundlankis 'accusative case'; and K. Jaunius’s tarnis 'sound', santara 'consonant', santaika 'syntax', apysaka 'predicate', apskūstinis 'accusative case', etc. J. Jablonskis coined many terms in mathematics and natural science that are still in use, for example deguonis 'oxygen', dauginamasis 'multiplicand', daugiklis 'multiplier', sandauga 'product', and others. J. Jablonskis also made a significant contribution to Lithuanian orthography. He replaced the inconvenient į and ų with the more convenient ie and uo. He also introduced ū (alongside y). Throughout his life, J. Jablonskis concerned himself with the growth of Lithuanian belles lettres. He carefully edited the works of the writer Žemaitė, thereby making them accessible to the public. The beneficial influence of J. Jablonskis’s works can still be seen today both in language practice and in Lithuanian Soviet linguistics.