SAULIUS AMBRAZAS

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

JUOZAS KARACIEJUS TURNS 60

Associate Professor Dr Juozas Karaciejus celebrated his 60th birthday in 2008. He was born on 12 January 1948 (according to the documents, on 28 October) in Cimaniūnai, Lazdijai District. On this occasion, even if we briefly look back, in many places we will see deeply etched, indelible marks he left, or dotted lines pointing towards the future.

Of particular significance to historical linguistics is the dissertation for the Candidate of Philological Sciences degree (now the doctoral degree), defended at Vilnius University in 1987; its final version was written in Russian, as required at the time: История социальных терминов литовского языка (на материале письменных памятников XVI–XVIII вв.), supervised by Algirdas Sabaliauskas. It is a fairly substantial work in two parts (over 200 typescript pages). It examines the origins of old Lithuanian social terms and, most importantly, assembles from various sources evidence of their use in old Lithuanian writings. It is a pity that this work, so valuable in many respects, has not been published as a separate book¹.

Only a few short articles on the subject have appeared, scattered across various publications and unable to stand in for the dissertation as a whole: on earlier explanations of the origins of the terms liaudis, šeima, tauta (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 19, 1979, 125–130); on the form of the ancient, now obsolete term rykūnia, “chief steward of affairs” (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 22, 1983, 124–127); on the history of the words draũgas, bičiulis (Mintis ir ženklas, 1983, 104–110), svẽčias / svetỹs, viešnia (Ženklas ir prasmė, 1986, 62–75), bėrnas, mergà (Žodžiai ir prasmės, 1991, 36–40); on the use in Konstantinas Sirvydas’s writings of the words kiemas, “village,” kiemionis, “villager,” and kiemystė, “rural coarseness” (Kalbos kultūra 33, 1977, 81–82); and on the use of giminė, gentis, šeimyna, valdonas, “subject,” in Konstantinas Sirvydas’s writings (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 20, 1980, 101–107).

¹ One can take comfort only in the fact that this fate befell many dissertations written during the Soviet era. After all, the doors of publishers opened wider to works of this kind only a few years ago, when the Institute of the Lithuanian Language began publishing a book series, Opera Linguistica Lithuanica.

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Also related to these are articles on the history of the kinship term vėsti(s), “to take as a wife” (LTSR MA darbai 2(95), 1986, 113–117); on the origin of the word sėbras (Baltistica 29(2), 1995, 184–187); on problems in compiling a historical and etymological dictionary (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 37, 1997, 209–214); on the etymological notes in Pranas Skardžius’s work Lietuvių kalbos žodžių daryba (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 38, 1997, 21–26); and reviews of Algirdas Sabaliauskas’s book Lietuvių kalbos leksika (Baltistica 27(2), 1994, 100–102), Konstantīns Karulis’s Latvian etymological dictionary (Baltistica 29(2), 1994, 215–217), and Daniel Petit’s monograph Apophonie et catégories grammaticales dans les langues baltiques (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 53, 2005, 111–116).

It should also be emphasized that from 1987 to 1996 Karaciejus, together with others at Vilnius University, compiled a card file for a Lithuanian etymological dictionary. The work was supervised by Vincas Urbutis. This laid the foundations for a new etymological dictionary. In addition, for the bibliography published in Linguistica Baltica, Karaciejus spent several years (vols. 1–8) collecting information about works on Baltic studies published in Lithuania.

Another important area of the linguist’s work is the study and publication of old writings. He published the Wolfenbüttel Postil² (1995), Kiprijonas Lukauskas’s Sermons³ (1996), and Martynas Mažvydas’s Christmas Hymns (1997). The scholarly edition of the early eighteenth-century manuscript collection of sermons Contiones Lituanicae, which has long been held up at the publisher, should appear shortly. Other manuscript collections of sermons are also being prepared for publication (cf. Naujasis židinys 9, 1996).

Karaciejus also contributed to the anthology of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Lithuanian church hymns, Giesmės dangaus miestui (1998). He is now assisting Vincentas Drotvinas in preparing Jokūbas Brodovskis’s dictionary for publication.

Karaciejus reviewed editions of various old texts prepared by Jonas Palionis (Baltistica 32(1), 1997, 131–132; Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 45, 2001, 187–201), Vincentas Drotvinas (Archivum Lithuanicum 1, 1999, 171–178), Guido Michelini (Baltistica 32(2), 1998, 307–309; 36(2), 2002, 320–324; Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 53, 2005, 116–125), and Dainora Pociūtė (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 51, 2004, 115–121), with detailed, analytical reviews of their editions.

² The work was based on a photocopy, however, and the manuscript itself of this unique sixteenth-century monument of the Lithuanian language, preserved in Wolfenbüttel at the Duke August Library (Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, shelfmark Cod. Guelf. 11. 2 Aug. 2⁰), was unfortunately not yet accessible to Karaciejus. It is currently being studied in depth by Jolanta Gelumbec kaitė, who defended her habilitation in Germany in 2007.

³ A computerized concordance of the forms in this manuscript was compiled together with Vytautas Zinkevičius. An index of words is being prepared on its basis.

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permissions. He reviewed Jochen D. Range’s work Bausteine zur Brete-Forschung (Linguistica Baltica 2, 1993, 251–252), and Jono Palionis’s book Lietuvių rašomosios kalbos istorija (Darbai ir dienos 4(13), 1997, 223–225).

On Karaciejus’s desk lies a monograph, begun but not yet completed, on the language of eighteenth-century church writings in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Several articles on this subject have already appeared (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 39, 1998, 134–139; Žmogus ir žodis 2, 2000, 24–26; Acta Baltico-Slavica 30, 2006, 173–179). These gradually make it clear that there was no such great decline in Lithuanian writing in the eighteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania⁴ as is often portrayed; that the traditions of a written language based on the central interdialect (though with an increasingly strong Samogitian layer), which had arisen in the time of Mikalojus Daukša, continued during that period; and that most of the Slavicisms used in the period under study are essentially the same as those found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, their greater frequency being due to the “macaronic” language characteristic of the Baroque era.

Articles worth noting include those on Martynas Mažvydas’s Katekizmas (Darbai ir dienos 4(13), 1997, 93–98; an English translation was published in Martynas Mažvydas and Old Lithuania, 1998, 159–172); and on the principles behind compiling Jurgis Gerulis’s Senųjų lietuvių kalbos skaitymų and its significance for Lithuanian studies (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 36, 1996, 25–29).

Dialectologists should be grateful to Karaciejus for translating into Lithuanian Robert Gauthiot’s (Gotio’s) (1876–1916) monograph Buvydžių šnekta (1990). In a separate article, he also discussed the little-known account of an 1900 journey to Lithuania (Kalbos istorijos ir dialektologijos problemos 1, 2005, 224–240). Other important works by this French scholar, whose life ended tragically, are also being prepared for publication.

Karacijus also took an interest in the attempts by the Swiss linguist Adolf Pictet (Piktė) to etymologize Lithuanian words (Kalbos kultūra 39, 1980, 95–97), translated into Lithuanian Antoine Meillet’s (Antuano Mejė’s) review of Kazimieras Būga’s Aistiškus studijus (Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 20, 1980, 50–52), published a collection of Būga’s letters on his own (ibid., 86–96) and together with Algirdas Sabaliauskas (ibid., 54–86). He wrote about the significance of Būga’s work for standard-language orthography (Kalbos kultūra 28, 1975, 42–48) and on topics relevant to contemporary language culture (Kalbos kultūra 26, 1974, 38–39; 27, 1974, 53–55).

⁴ This was also pointed out as early as the Soviet era (in 1981, in an internal review of Jono Kabelka’s textbook Baltų filologijos įvadas) by Aleksas Girdenis (Kalbotyros darbai 2, 2000, 393). More recently, the number of scholars taking a more balanced view of the writings of that period has generally been growing (cf. the literature cited in Archivum Lithuanicum 5, 2003, 378, n. 3). Nevertheless, comprehensive studies covering the subject in its entirety are still lacking.

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Karaciejus has also contributed to the education of a new generation of Lithuanianists at Vilnius University and Vytautas Magnus University. However, his roots are most deeply bound to the Department of the History of the Lithuanian Language and Dialectology at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. It was here that he matured as a scholar, and it is here that he continues to work successfully.

In conclusion, I would like to wish my dear Colleague that, despite all the storms and gales, new, ever-fresh fruits of scholarship will continue to ripen for a long, long time in the garden of his spirit.

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