Ką seka „sekantis“?

PRANAS KNIŪKŠTA Institute of the Lithuanian Language WHAT DOES FOLLOWING? FOLLOW? The case of the participle following is long and contentious; it was prompted for recollection by Dainius Razauskas’s article “On the following question.” It reviews, one might say, the entire history of corrections to this participle, and puts forward quite a few new ideas. Many of the author’s arguments deserve attention, but some points are debatable and need clarification. All the more reason to respond to the reproaches directed at linguists. The main subject of the article is the participle following. It begins with doubts about which of its meanings are acceptable and unacceptable; these are discussed further, and at the end its use in the sense “subsequent, coming after something” is vigorously defended. The verb to follow is examined in a similar way. We too will begin our discussion here with it. The verb to follow can indeed be compared with the verb to go, but they should not be treated as equivalent, nor should one be substituted for the other indiscriminately. The relations between their meanings are intricate and complex. The first (main) meaning given for the verb to follow is “to go, travel behind” (DŽ 1993 and DŽ 2000 684), “to go, travel behind, in someone’s footsteps” (LKŽ XII 338), and it is best illustrated by these dictionary examples: Please follow me; The dog follows the person (DŽ); All I need do is beckon with one finger, and she will leave him and follow me; As he came down the mountain, many people followed him (LKŽ). Here, the verb to follow means not merely walking behind someone else in terms of location, but also a kind of dependence on the one walking in front, submission to that person’s will, or moving along with them. The one in front leads those who come after, or, more precisely, takes them along. Consider an example: the hen walking at the front takes along the ducklings; the ducklings walking behind her follow her, while the ducklings merely walk one after another, but do not follow one another. Several other meanings of this verb are similarly two-sided, for example, “to investigate by following tracks, to try to find the direction someone has taken”: The dog follows the hare’s tracks (LKŽ XII 339); “to watch a moving object”: The children fell silent, watching the little squirrel only with their eyes (ibid.). Here, too, there is or was a moving “agent,” and another follows it. 236 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 comes after. Here, the secondary meanings overshadow the act of walking, are more important, and are presented as separate, independent meanings of this verb. One may say that the verb to follow is justified by the subsidiary or more distant meanings it has alongside the notion of walking. However, under the first meaning of the verb to follow, LKŽ also gives examples in which walking behind something is described without any additional meaning of dependence, or where that meaning is very unclear: The fox followed the bull to the yard; After them a white puppy followed the carts (LKŽ XII 338). Still other LKŽ examples use the verb to follow figuratively: Misfortunes [...] follow one another; Trouble follows trouble (LKŽ XII 338). Here there is no spatial sense of walking behind at all; rather, the examples describe events that occur one after another in time. One can also discern a causal connection between phenomena that occur successively—misfortunes and troubles may be related and arise from one another. That subsidiary meaning justifies the verb to follow here. Seen this way, its meaning “to result, become apparent” may also be justified: From this followed the conclusion... But for present purposes, the concern is not so much the verb’s meaning as its ability to express coming after something in time. We must agree with D. Razauskas that the verb to follow, in its primary meaning “to walk behind,” can readily be transferred from space to time, since the verb to go can also refer to the passage of time. His rhetorical question is logical, too: “But if trouble may follow trouble, and misfortune misfortune, why could joy not follow joy, happiness happiness, and one ordinary (neutral) event another, or simply one occasion follow another? And so a gathering follow a gathering, a meeting a meeting, the (newly published) issue of a newspaper follow the (previously published) issue, and so on—follow?” And further: “On what basis are some examples distinguished from analogous ones and deemed unacceptable?” (see p. 230 of this volume). One can discern this distinction: some cases may indicate both temporal succession and a causal connection (they may be related to one another—troubles and misfortunes, joys and happiness); others indicate only a later object or phenomenon, with no causal connection between them—such as several issues of a newspaper and neutral events. The verb to follow is suitable for the former, whereas for the latter it is imposed artificially. Ordinary existence or occurrence after something, without additional meanings or associations, is expressed in living speech by the verb to go or its synonyms: one issue of a newspaper comes out (is published) after another, one bus comes (travels) after another, one day follows another, month after month, year after year. Likewise, the future comes (arrives) after the past (and the present). In living speech one does not say day follows day, much less the incorrect expression the future follows the past. P. KNIŪKŠTA. Ką seka sekantis? 237 Reasoning about two kinds of movement—both spatial and temporal—proves nothing and changes nothing. Whether buses pass by someone standing on the road, or roadside poles rush past someone riding on a bus, they still go one after another. It makes no difference whether, metaphysically speaking, we move through time (years gone by) or units of time rush past us (years that have passed): we are still talking about going, not following. These lines occur in a translation of a poem by Rilke:...it seemed to us that years were passing, but in truth it was only we who passed (Rilkė 1975: 133). One cannot say: it was not the years that followed us, but we who followed the years. When speaking of two kinds of going and following, the meanings of these actions (going and following) are fundamentally different: a person objects or events follows from the sidelines—as buses pass by or roadside poles rush past, as days go by one after another or years follow years; the observed things or events go one after another. Going after something should not be confused with observing things as they go by. Nor should the observer be placed alongside the objects being observed, and conclusions drawn from this about the verb to follow and events that follow one another. Quite apart from using the verb to follow to describe coming after something, language is not content with the verb to go either; it may be replaced by more expressive and vivid synonyms. For instance, years after years glide, days after days run or fly, clouds after clouds drift or float. And in Maironis’s “Trakų pil yje” (MairRR I 65), wave drives wave is far more vivid than wave goes after wave, while wave follows wave would be quite poor. Or consider the stanza from the poem “Evening on the Lake of the Four Cantons”: How many memories, happenings, Once alive, One after another glimmered and shone Beyond the boundary! (MairRR I 129) Can we infer here that memories followed memories, or events followed events? We can, but what would that achieve or prove? Artificially contrived expressions with the verb to follow cannot be considered decisive arguments with which to justify the participle following. The participle following is, of course, formed from the verb to follow, but not every instance of its use can be compared with that verb or derived from it. The meaning of the participle is determined just as much by other factors. The most important thing is to distinguish two meanings of the participle following, or, more precisely, two ways in which it is used. In some cases, this participle denotes something that comes or occurs after something else, when that thing has been mentioned earlier or is otherwise clear: the following day 238 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 na is after the previous day; the next bus is after the previous bus. In other cases it is not associated with things that came before; rather, it simply emphasizes what is said next: Tai rodo sekanti (i.e., the following) lentelė (there was no other table before it); Komisijos sudėtis sekanti (no commission with a different composition is being discussed). Linguists clearly distinguish these meanings and evaluate them differently. J. Jablonskis began correcting this participle; he mentions both meanings and corrects both—the first with the pronoun kitas, the second with the pronouns šis, toks, štai kas. Antai sekantį šeštadienį he corrected to kitą šeštadienį (JablR IV 107; J.JablRR II 108), while kiaules gydyti sekančiu būdu was corrected to gydyti šiuo būdu (JablR V 159, 161; J.JablRR II 448, 450). Later, in notes on Viktoras Kamantauskas’s Kalbos netaisyklingumų žodynėlis, he quotes that dictionary, which gives both corrections, but says that, “for his own purposes,” he is accustomed to using the first meaning as “the next in sequence” (kitas is added in parentheses, apparently because he had doubts whether it would suffice) (JablR V 202). All linguists consider the second meaning an error and correct it by consensus. It has been corrected repeatedly in the publication Kalbos kultūros. Klementina Vosylyte (KK 35 50) and Kazys Ulvydas (KK 51 6) mention both meanings in articles published in Kalbos kultūroje, but evaluate them differently there—the first is accepted (sekantis laikraščio numeris, sekanti stotelė), while only the second is corrected: Tai rodo sekanti (= ši) lentelė; Darbų tvarka sekanti (= tokia). The emphatic meaning of this participle is considered an indisputable error. In another, earlier article, K. Ulvydas showed that the participle sekantis, used emphatically, can even be used as a noun (without a modified word), or can be used to form an adverb with an emphatic meaning, sekančiai: Tai rodo sekantį, corrected to: Tai rodo štai ką; Darbai paskirstyti sekančiai, corrected to: Darbai paskirstyti šitaip (KK 23 26). These are serious errors, showing where blind use of this participle on the model of other languages (in this case, Russian) can lead. Nemirėdami pirmosios reikšmės, pabrėžiamąją reikšmę vartojamą dalyvį sekantis taiso Kalbos praktikos patarimai: Vilniuje dabar veikia sekančios (= šios) parodos; Gydyti galima sekančiu (= šiuo, šitokiu, tokiu) būdu (KPP 256–257). Ten pat taisoma daiktavardinė to dalyvio vartosena ir iš jo sudarytas prieveiksmis: Atsakydamas į jūsų raštą, pranešu sekantį (= pranešu štai ką); Lėšos sunaudotos sekančiai (= taip). Tokios dalyvio sekantis ir prieveiksmio sekančiai klaidos įrašytos į Kalbos komisijos patvirtintą Didžiųjų P. KNIŪKŠTA. Ką seka sekantis? 239 of the language (KKN 145). There should be no doubt about the emphatic meaning of the participle sekantis—such usage is indefensible. Discussion is possible only about the use of the participle sekantis in the sense “being immediately after something, coming immediately after something.” This is indeed debated, or, where it is not debated, opinions vary. Some consider this use of the participle an error, others accept and defend it, and still others say nothing. Apart from J. Jablonskis, Juozas Balčikonis was among the more influential linguists who corrected the participle when used in this way. First, it is worth noting that in 1935, in Gimtojoje kalboje, he corrected sekančią savaitę į kitą savaitę (J.BalčRR I 145) and on this point debated with Edvardas Viskanta, who defended sekančią dieną and sekančią savaitę on the grounds that “linguistic precision” required them (ibid., 155–156). In 1939, the editors and publishers of Kalbos patarėjo, Leonardas Dambrauskas, Antanas Salys, and Pranas Skardžius, wrote about this participle much as E. Viskanta had (except that they wrote not sekantis, o sekąs, sekanti); in their words, it “cannot be replaced by the pronoun kitas,” because “kita diena may also be a day other than the one that immediately follows the day under discussion” (KP 111). Later, in 1959, Jonas Palionis repeated a similar idea in notes on J. Jablonskis’s corrections (J.JablRR II 522–523). However, J. Balčikonis stuck to his position and continued correcting the participle (J.BalčRR I 225, 288). Linguists’ disagreements naturally unsettle the public, but what confuses it most is that prescriptive works evaluate this use of the participle differently: Kalbos patarėjas (1939) and the first two editions of DŽ (1954, 1972) accept it, whereas from the third edition of DŽ (1993) onward it is corrected to the pronoun kitas. All those who defend the participle give the same reason—that the pronoun kitas may not suffice as a substitute, because the pronoun need not mean something that immediately follows something else. None of the linguists mentions that the participle is used on the model of the corresponding verb sekti; this meaning of the participle is not derived from the verb. Here it is not the verb that determines the participle’s meaning, but the reverse—the verb’s meaning is reconstructed from the participle. The expressions sekantis autobusas, sekanti diena (“the next bus,” “the following day”) are more necessary and acceptable than seka autobusas, seka diena. Taking everything together and weighing it, we must acknowledge that the participle sekantis in the sense “coming immediately after something” should not be considered a language error. But neither is it a natural, traditional form of Lithuanian. It appeared in Lithuanian under the influence of other languages and first occurred in old written texts. As Kalbos patarėjas writes, this usage “has been shaped not by popular speech, but by the practice of the written language” (KP 111). Incidentally, as the examples in LKŽ show, entirely inappropriate uses of this participle also occur in old texts, when it is used- 240 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 to explain the meaning: And the Lord helped them and confirmed the word with the following miracles (LKŽ XII 318). In living speech, this participle was used neither for something that comes after something else nor, still less, for something being emphasized. LKŽ provides not a single example of such a participle recorded from the dialects. There are almost none in folklore either. In both everyday speech and folktales, the pronoun kitas is customary in this sense. Later editions of DŽ (1993, 2000 308) give the meaning “coming after something” for this pronoun, with the example Ar lipsite kitoje stotelėje?. LKŽ also gives examples with this meaning: Kitus metus ar eisi (mokyklon)?; Cit neverk, neraudok, jaunoji mergele, aš tave parvesiu kitą rudenėlį (LKŽ V 902). We find fine examples of this pronoun in J. Balčikonis’s translations of Brolių Grimų pasakose, where it can only be understood as “the nearest, the first to be there”: Atėjo kitą dieną žmogelis, ir jį pradėjo spėti jo vardą (Pasakos 1966: 278); Kareivis sutiko ir visą kitą dieną nuo širdies dirbo (ibid., 302); Kitą rytą karalius išsiuntė žmones ieškoti pėdsako... (ibid., 305). Similar sentences occur in the folktales prepared for publication by Salomėja Nėris: Kitą dieną Jonukas vaikščiojo lyg durnaropių apsivalgęs (S.NėrR III 190); Kitą naktį saugojo kitas tarnas (ibid., 226). In these folktales, what comes immediately after something is also expressed in other ways, but there is not even a trace of the participle sekantis. When more things are listed, they are indicated by the numerals antras, trečias: Antrą dieną griovakasys lieka pietų virti; Trečią dieną virtuvėje lieka jau kalvis (ibid., 218). The expression rytojaus dieną: Rytojaus dieną <...> bernas, pasiėmęs rožančių, išėjo į pakelę ir laukia (ibid., 269) has the same meaning. It is interesting and telling that it is not sekantį but rytojaus dieną that we find in an administrative text—the Civil Code: Terminas prasideda rytojaus dieną nuo nulis valandų nulis minučių (Art. 118). There are other ways of expressing this as well. One is tolesnis, which dictionaries use to explain the corresponding meaning of the pronoun kitas (ateinantis is unsuitable here, since the thing being described may already have come and gone). paskesnis could also be used, but artimiausias: lipsiu artimiausioje stotelėje, terminas prasideda artimiausią dieną. would probably be more suitable. The participle sekantis is not as necessary as its ardent defenders claim, nor is the pronoun kitas so unclear that it would hinder communication. In most cases it is obvious (clear from the context) that the thing denoted by this pronoun comes immediately after another thing of the same or a similar kind. All the cases mentioned above are like this: lipsiu kitoje stotelėje, kitą dieną vaikščiojo, kitą naktį saugojo. Sekantis reika- P. KNIŪKŠTA. Ką seka sekantis? 241 ble only when several listed things occur one after another—for example, when several people are called somewhere in turn. In other cases, even if it is not considered an error, it is unnecessary. One may agree that the expression ar lipsite sekančioje stotelėje is not a language error. But there is nothing wrong with asking: Ar lipsite kitoje stotelėje? O sekanti stotelė has not been banished from transport announcements; it was never widespread there. A more Lithuanian, more suitable option for the language was simply chosen—kita stotelė. That sekantis is needlessly inserted wherever it happens to fit is clear from examples corrected by J. Balčikonis. He replaced artificial expressions with this participle by living-speech equivalents using the pronoun kitas, and these substitutes cannot be faulted for any lack of clarity or ambiguity: Sekančių (= kitų) metų pavasarį barkūnas buvo patręštas (J.BalčRR I 307); (bitė) palypėjo žemyn prie sekančio (= kito) žiedo (ibid., 288); dar sekančią (= kitą) dieną dvidešimt vyrų <...> turėjo stoti į dvarą (ibid., 292). The substitutes here are not only more customary but also clearer than the expressions being corrected: the spring in which the sweet clover (a kind of meadow grass) was fertilized may be not just any other spring, but the most recent one; the bee climbed from one flower onto another, that is, the first flower in the sequence. In the second example, not only is sekantis žiedas inappropriate, but palypėjo žemyn is illogical too—one can climb only upward. Likewise illogical and unjustified is sekantis with the particle dar: dar sekančią dieną, – dar sekantis is not what comes immediately after something else. Here the looser expression dar kitą dieną. is precisely the right one. The use of the participle sekantis in the sense “coming immediately after something” cannot be considered in isolation from the questions that arise in specific cases: why is this participle needed, what does it contribute, and how does it fit the context and style? Its ardent defenders tend to forget these questions; to them everything seems very simple, and they think linguists either do not understand this or are evading the issue. On the other hand, the later editions of DŽ probably did not act wisely. Kalbos praktikos patarimai had found a better solution: it corrects the universally recognized error involving this participle, recalls its traditional usage, and diplomatically leaves the disputed meaning unmentioned—it does not attempt to correct it, nor does it seek to promote it. One may wish a guidebook of recommendations to answer every question, but it is inappropriate to demand this of the List of Major Language Errors approved by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. It identifies only the major errors involving this participle; anything not classified among them is absent from the list and should be. The Commission’s position should be stated in the Kalbos patarimų booklet devoted to word meanings. 242 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 LITERATURE AND SOURCES J.BalčRR I – J. Balčikonis. Selected Writings 1, Vilnius: Mokslas, 1978. DŽ – Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian, Vilnius: State Publishing House of Political and Scientific Literature, 1954; 3rd revised and expanded edition, Vilnius: Science and Encyclopaedia Publishing House, 1993; 4th edition, Vilnius: Institute of Science and Encyclopaedia Publishing, 2000. JablR IV, V – Writings of Jablonskis 4, 5, Kaunas: Ministry of Education, 1935, 1936. J.JablRR II – J. Jablonskis. Selected Writings 2, Vilnius: State Publishing House of Political and Scientific Literature, 1959. KKN – Kalbos komisijos nutarimai 1977–1998. 3 pataisytas ir papildytas leidimas, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 1998. KKP – Advice on Language Practice. Compiled by Aldonas Pupkis. 2nd revised and expanded edition, Vilnius: Mokslas, 1985. KP – Language Advisor. Prepared by L. Dambrauskas, edited by A. Salys and Pr. Skardžius. Kaunas: Lithuanian Language Society, 1939. LKŽ V – Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language 5, Vilnius: State Publishing House of Political and Scientific Literature, 1959. LKŽ XII – Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language 12, Vilnius: Mokslas, 1981. MairRR I – Maironis. Selected Writings 1, Vilnius: State Fiction Publishing House, 1956. S.NėR III – Salomėja Nėris. Writings 3, Vilnius: State Fiction Publishing House, 1957. Pasakos – Brolių Grimų pasakos. Vertė J. Balčikonis. Vilnius: Vaga, 1966. R i l k ė R. M. 1975: Poetry, Vilnius: Vaga. U l v y d a s K. 1972: Netaisyklinga gerų žodžių vartosena. – Kalbos kultūra 23, 12–30. U l v y d a s K. 1986: Penkiasdešimt „Kalbos kultūros“ sąsiuvinių. – Kalbos kultūra 51, 3–6. V o s y l y t ė K. 1978: Meanings of the verb sekti. – Language Culture 35, 48–50. Received 2008 09 01 P. KNIŪKŠTA. Ką seka sekantis? 243 WHAT FOLLOWS THE FOLLOWING Summary The participle sekantis (Eng. ‘following’) has aroused and still arouses a large amount of discussion. There are quite a few issues to be solved in its relation to the verb sėka (sėkti). The verb sekti is ambivalent: it means going after someone or something and depends on the one who/which goes before him/her/it. It is thus possible to follow sb or sth (sekti) in space or time, e.g.: Šuo seka paskui žmogų (Eng. lit. ‘The dog follows after a man’); Nelaimės sekė viena kitą (viena po kitos) (Eng. lit. ‘Misfortune follows oneNomSg anotherAccSg/one after another’). Going one after another with no relation of dependency or causality is expressed by the verb eiti (Eng. ‘to go’) or another verb in the same meaning, e.g.: dienos eina (slenka) po dienų (Eng. lit. ‘Days go/drag after days’), autobusas eina (važiuoja) po autobuso (Eng. ‘A bus goes after a bus’ <one after another>). The participle sekantis is not fully compatible with the normative use of the base verb sekti. The participle can also refer to sb or sth going after another, but the causative relation can be excluded, like in the following: sekanti diena (Eng. ‘the next day’), sekantis autobusas (Eng. ‘the next bus’). There are also cases with no reference to previous events, rather, the focus is on further developments, e.g.: Darbu tvarka sekanti (Eng. ‘The work sequence is the following’). Such use is clearly deviant and is unanimously corrected. However, the first two examples (sekanti diena and sekantis autobusas) are debatable: some linguists replace the participle by the pronoun kitas (autobusas) (Eng. ‘another bus’), others tend to justify the given usage without any implied causality, because the pronoun kitas could equally refer to the immediate as well as any further item in a sequence. Traditional actual use has never accepted the participle sekantis in such utterances; it cannot be used in the language of formal register. However, it should not be treated as a gross and indisputable mistake either. PRANAS KNIŪKŠTA Institute of the Lithuanian Language P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius 244 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81