Kazimieras Gaivenis – lietuvių kalbos puoselėtojas

209Terminologija | 2014 | 21 Kazimieras Gaivenis – the promoter of the Lithuanian language RASUOLĖ VLADARSKIENĖ Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitetas KEY WORDS: lexicon, terminology, language standardization, dissemination of language recommendations Kazimieras Gaivenis entered into the history of Lithuanian linguistics as one of the most famous Lithuanian terminologists. The consolidation of Lithuanian terminology in the second half of the 20th century, the preparation of terminology dictionaries, and matters of terminology management are associated with this linguist, and he is presented in the Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia (VLE VI), the Lithuanian Language Encyclopedia (LKE 2008: 180), Algirdas Sabaliauskas’ History of Lithuanian Language Research (2012: 233–235), and other publications. This bar was the most important for him, and it was here that he worked most of his time. The extensive list of his publications in the index of K. Gaivenis’ bibliography (KG 2003), published in 2003, testifies to the versatility and at the same time to the purposefulness of this linguist. All his works revolved around terminology and everything related to it: lexicon, syntax, pronunciation and pronunciation, nomenclature, scientific and clerical language, translation. In both his considerations of the theoretical problems of terminology and practical matters of terminology, K. Gaivenis was first and foremost a promoter of the Lithuanian language. The article discusses the normative and educational activities of this terminologist in the Lithuanian language. K. Gaivenis was a diligent worker of language culture. And not only because he wrote about 60 articles for the journal of Language Culture, contributed to the preparation of the publication and was a long-time member of its editorial board. K. Gaivenis cared about language culture all the time, he devoted his entire life to it, so that the language would be as cultural as possible, so that people would know the possibilities offered by the language and be able to use them properly. It was important to him not only the correctness of the Lithuanian language, properly composed terms, but also the visuality, attractiveness, accuracy, clarity, aesthetic, as well as ethical properties of the language – language etiquette. 210 Rasuolė Vladarskienė | Kazimieras Gaivenis – a promoter of the Lithuanian language From volume 36 to 74 (1979–2001), i.e. for 23 years, K. Gaivenis was a member of the editorial board of the journal Kalbos kultūra. At the time, the purpose and task of this publication was to improve and improve the mother tongue so that it could best meet the needs of society. Language culture determined and consolidated the direction of the post-war normalization of Lithuanian common language and the nature of language culture work. It was the first post-war periodical published in Lithuania dedicated to language practice. The nature of the writings was determined by one of the most important tasks of Language Culture at the time – to provide language consultations to the public in a more popular, accessible and understandable form (Kniūkšta 2002). The ideas spread by the collaborators and authors of this publication were acceptable to K. Gaivenis, so he willingly participated in language culture activities. His first publication in Language Culture – the article “Inaccuracies in the use of nominative participle constructions” was printed in the fourth volume in 1963, it was one of his first articles, in the second – fifth volume appeared two of his articles, and so constantly every year several articles for thirty years, until 1994 a separate terminology journal was started. The majority of the linguist’s articles (over 33) published in Language Culture, of course, were devoted to terminology – here he discussed general terminology problems and practical questions of the structure of compound terms, the correctness of names, and the translation of terms. However, K. Gaivenis was not limited to terminology alone. Likewise, his activities as a linguist were not limited to the journal Language Culture. He wrote about language not only in journals of linguistic science and practice, but also in other publications for a wide range of readers: in general publications Vakarinės naujienos, Lietuvos rytas, Nemuno kraštas, Gimtasis kraštas, Kalba Vilnius, Tarybinė moteris, Moteris, Tarybų darbas, Laikas ir įvykiai, in the newspaper of his native Utena district; Agriculture, Cooperative, Owner, Council school, Library work, Construction and architecture, Sport, Our nature, Our gardens, Health protection, Lithuanian physics collection, Physics knowledge; in cultural publications Literatūra ir menas, Kultūros bars, Pergalė; in publications for people interested in science: Mokslas ir gyvenimas, Mokslas ir technika, Už sovietinį mokslą (Kaunas), Mokslo Lietuva; in publications for students Lithuanian pioneer, Moksleivis. From such abundance and variety of publications it is clear that all his activities K. Gaivenis tried to contribute as much as possible to the education of society, its sense of language 211Terminology | 2014 | 21 education, he therefore sought to spread his word as widely as possible, to reach as many people of different professions as possible and to have as great an impact on them as possible. There are a few things that should be mentioned, which come to mind when looking through K. Gaivenis’s works, which give language recommendations. As already mentioned, the linguist wrote mainly about terminology and terminology issues, especially those that he saw as important at the time, a large number of his articles arose because of the answer to one or another uncertainty that arose. The Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature (since 1990 – Lithuanian Language Institute) until 1995, when the staff of the State Lithuanian Language Commission began to consult the public, provided telephone consultations on language issues to institutions and individuals. There were very frequent requests for terms, which meant that the Institute’s terminologists had to do a lot of extra work. K. Gaivenis was happy to advise both interested parties and younger colleagues on the appropriateness of terms. K. Gaivenis dealt not only with terminology but also with other lexical problems. Having an excellent sense of language, the linguist drew the public's attention to more special lexical phenomena that could mislead it and harm the language culture. For example, in one article he warns about insidious words – paronyms, which denote completely different things, but sound like furious labai panašiai. Tokie žodžiai suklaidina ne tik moksleivius, bet ir patyrusius spaudos darbuotojus, jis atkreipia dėmesį į žodžių junginį šokti pasamba, because sambo is a kind of self-defense, he corrects him by saying to dance furious samba; advises not to confuse the meanings of the words afektas and efektas, kompanija and kampanija (Gaivenis 1980). The linguist was attracted by the curiosities of lexicon, he shared his observations about word clutter with readers in the booklet Margas žodžių pasaulis, about the diversity of words he wrote: „[w]ords can be secrets and secrets. In addition to clear and unambiguous words, there are hundreds of thousands of associatively erroneous words. Sometimes they are interesting and sometimes they are painfully instructive” (Gaivenis 1987a: 79). It was precisely the deception of such words that he revealed to the users of the language, teaching them how not to fall into the trap of words. K. Gaivenis paid particular attention to the accuracy of translations, in the article “Several lexical inaccuracies in prose translations” he rebuked even experienced translators for the inappropriate choice of botany and zoology terms. He gave an example from the translation of I. Bunin’s short story The Love of Mythius: “velvety black-and-red wasps carefully nestled in the flowers… Wasps are striped like zebras and do not nest in the flowers at all. Looking at the original, 212 Rasuolė Vladarskienė | Kazimieras Gaivenis – Lithuanian language promoter it becomes clear that it is bumblebees, and it was necessary to translate samanės or kamanės. Furthermore, this article argumentatively criticizes other unsuccessful accurately translated terms, translators are advised to take into account scientific terminology and nomenclature, it is indicated that the grey sparrows were translated inaccurately, because the composite species term grey sparrows is not used by ornithologists, since in a certain sense grey is also the singing sparrow and the amaline sparrow. The story had to translate the arrowheads. Drawing attention to the inaccuracies of the translation, the linguist not only quotes the definitions of the dictionaries, but also teaches the readers to use them, especially when the word is polysemic or used in phraseology, so that instead of dusk there is no conditional darkness, and sparkling beer does not turn into sour cabbage (Gaivenis 1966a: 25–28). Being a terminologist he knew very well the peculiarities of terms and saw how they penetrate into common usage, and here he also saw a certain danger. In the article “Several remarks on the use of technical terms and professionalisms in figurative sense” (Gaivenis 1966b: 55–56) the author points out that the use of technical terms in figurative sense must be easily perceived by the reader and logically justified, i.e. motivated, e.g.: “It is good that our poets finally freed the e n e r g ij ą, hidden in the atoms of thought <...> In this book there is also more cold admiration of the originally constructed image”. However, the term is used to refer to a person who is not in possession of the necessary knowledge, such as "a person who is not in possession of the necessary knowledge". The terms are used in the scientific language, K. Gaivenis was very important and in what context, in which sentences the terms will be found. Perfectly realizing that only correct terms are not sufficient for the development of the scientific language, he wrote about the laws of the scientific language in general, and about other specific matters on which the state of the scientific language depends, advised how to properly combine Latin and Lithuanian terms, how to indicate the number or order of objects with numbers; taught the forms of numerals, correctly read the numbers raised by degrees. He acknowledged that the language of scientific works has a number of peculiarities. K. Gaivenis’s thoughts about the development of the Lithuanian language in science are very relevant today: “This scientist even says that our language is poor, inflexible, that when you say or write in another language – you can neither add nor subtract. Actually it is illusion, deception. What we lack is not terms, not special structures, but often respect for the mother tongue. Everything can be expressed 213Terminologija | 2014 | 21 Lithuanian words to formulate the most difficult problems, to say the most significant thoughts. You just have to be not afraid to say something that no one has said before, to say it intelligently, logically and most importantly – in Lithuanian. Therefore, the language of science must be created, no one will create it for us” (Gaivenis 1987b: 19). In response to the needs of the public, K. Gaivenis advised how to avoid the defects of the clerical language, how to write business letters and meeting minutes correctly. In describing the peculiarities of the clerical style, he wrote that although this style "is not characterized by verbality and visuality, but it is not necessary to artificially impoverish it, to try to deal with one word, when there are at least a few more accurate equivalents. For example, who does not know that discipline and rules are violated, the oath is broken, peace is disturbed, order is broken. These verbs are also used to make names of characters, e.g.: discipline, rules – violator, oath – breaker, peace – disturber, troublemaker, order – destroyer.” The linguist thinks that it is wrong when, following the example of Russian, which uses one word in these cases, the Lithuanian word offender begins to push its listed neighbors (Gaivenis 1967: 71). He was concerned not only with the correctness of written language, but also with the peculiarities of spoken language, raising the problems of farmers' language: unpresentable values, spelling and pronunciation errors. In the newspaper Soviet teacher discussed how to develop the spoken language. His educational articles for pupils in the Lithuanian Pioneer reveal that K. Gaivenas was a great teacher and an interesting storyteller. They were put together and published in the booklet Wonderful Light of the Word (Gaivenis 2014). Although the articles were written in the years 1979-1988, they are so attractive that they should also appeal to the digital generation of children, because language changes very slowly and many of the things described are still relevant today. In them, the linguist very vividly, vividly, in a language understandable to children, tells about the parts of the language, explains the origin of words, the diversity of the grammar and lexical history, introduces the languages of neighboring (Latvian, Gypsy) and further nations, bases the affinity of languages on their similarities and differences, explains how surnames appeared, teaches polite words, tells about the names of mushrooms, birds, colors. In order to make the complex language phenomena more understandable to pupils, K. Gaivenis inventively compares them with things known to children. For example, here is how masterfully reveals the contextual meaning of the word: "Wo- 214 Rasuolė Vladarskienė | Kazimieras Gaivenis – Lithuanian language promoter dis somewhat resembles a jellyfish. She looks beautiful, natural only in water. If you pull a jellyfish out of the water, it will only be a lump of jam. The irgi gyvas tik sakinyje, tam tikrame kalbos stiliuje“ (Gaivenis 2014: 126). Iš kiekvieno straipsnelio matyti siekis sudominus moksleivius kalbos įvaiword purity and strangeness to develop their ability to speak and write correctly, accurately, clearly, visually, politely. Regarding the advice given by K. Gaivenis, it is necessary to examine on what basis he made his recommendations, on what criteria he based his proposals. He called for not to move away from the folk language (Gaivenis 1970), although he understood that “the distance of the scientific language from the folk language is a natural and lawful thing probably in many languages, but it should not be artificially accelerated” (Gaivenis 1987b: 20). When choosing the term, he suggested taking into account the systematic nature of the terms, but did not consider the requirement of brevity necessary. He argued that every term must be verbally and grammatically correct, and not every term must be short (Gaivenis 1991: 34). He believed that the requirement of terminology stability, traditionality is no less important than systematicity (Gaivenis 1973: 21). Drawed attention to the motivation of the terms. In his opinion, it is not entirely appropriate to consider unmotivated terms as inappropriate, because the motivation fades with frequent use of the term, and this is a lawful phenomenon (Gaivenis 1987b: 20). He denounced strange and incomprehensible words, e.g., bangootavimas (Gaivenis 1981: 63), and he did not approve of magic terms (išstova, atstova) (Gaivenis 1981: 64). In correcting the reprehensible phenomena of language, K. Gaivenis was moderate, he emphasized that it is important that “language cultures do not publish intrusive didactics and small arts are not confused with important things” (Gaivenis 1990: 19). He cautiously assessed the superficial attitude of the public to language errors and called for a thorough examination of the phenomenon before making recommendations: "People who work not in the field of philology but are interested in language culture often identify language error with word formation irregularities. This is not entirely accurate: an irregular construction may not be a language error in certain cases, and a perfectly regular construction is sometimes a harmful and avoidable word. When evaluating a new word, it is necessary to clarify not only the verb typology, but also in which sphere of language it functions, whether it has other Lithuanian or international substitutes and what their semantic relationships are.” (1974: 27). Thus, the linguist gave the language recommendations very responsibly, having thoroughly investigated the phenomenon to be condemned, and about the ancestry of the language he wrote: 215Terminology | 2014 | 21 we live in the house of language. This house of words has been built for us by generations over many centuries. It is our duty to improve and beautify them. And to leave them for the future – for the future time” (Gaivenis 1987a: 111). He did this all his life and left for future generations a wealth of novelties, a well-organized terminology system and a respectful, responsible attitude to language. K. Gaivenis – a highly accomplished terminologist of the second half of the last century, was a linguist of broad interests. All of his activities were concerned with raising the language culture of society, besides scientific work, he was actively engaged in normative, educational, educational language activities and dissemination: he wrote a lot about language topics in popular and professional publications. The linguist provided consultations very responsibly, after thoroughly investigating the problematic phenomenon, guided by the criteria of systematicity, consistency, folk language. The extensive theoretical and practical work of the terminologist is a huge contribution to the promotion of the Lithuanian language and the development of the language culture of society. LITTERACY AND SOURCES Gaivenis K. 1966a: Some lexical inaccuracies in prose translations. – Language Culture 11, 25–28. Gaivenis K. 1966b: Some remarks on the use of technical terms and professionalisms in figurative sense. – Language Culture 11, 55-56. Gaivenis K. 1967: Kanceliarinis stilius. – Cultural bars 8, 71. 1970. "Never Let Me Go". – Agriculture 10, 39. 1973: The End of the Trial. – Language Culture 25, 19–27. 1974: The New Yorker. – Language Culture 27, 27–30. Gaivenis K. 1980: Paronyms – Insidious Words. – Language Culture 39, 48–50. Gaivenis K. 1981: Terminology details. – Language Culture 41, 62–66. Gaivenis K. 1987a: Margas žodžių pasaulis, Vilnius: Mokslas. Gaivenis K. 1987b: Say logically and in Lithuanian. – Language Culture 52, 19–21. Gaivenis K. 1990: Taking care of the language and terminology of science. – Language Culture 59, 17–19. Gaivenis K. 1991: A couple of terminology tricks. – Language Culture 61, 32–34. Gaivenis K. 2014: The Wonderful Light of the Word, Vilnius: Lithuanian Language Institute Publishing House. Kniūkšta P. 2002: Language policy, theory and practice in “Language culture” – Kalbos kultūra 75, 9–30. KG 2003: Kazimieras Gaivenis. Bibliography index. Compiled by A. Noreikaitė, Vilnius: Lithuanian Language Institute publishing house. LKE 2008: Encyclopedia of Lithuanian Language, Vilnius: Institute of Science and Encyclopedia Publishing. Sabaliauskas A. 2012: The History of Lithuanian Language Research 1980–2010, Vilnius: Lithuanian Language Institute. VLE VI – Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija 6 (Fau-Goris), Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos 2004. institutas, 2009. pp. 101–102. The article highlights the role of the famous Lithuanian terminologist Kazimieras Gaivenis in Lithuanian linguistics and terminology. He was a versatile, but also focused linguist whose activities contributed to the strengthening of Lithuanian terminology, compilation of terminological dictionaries and ordering of terms. 216 Rasuolė Vladarskienė | Kazimieras Gaivenis – a promoter of the Lithuanian language Beside his scientific work Gaivenis was also involved in terminology ordering as well as educating society on various different subjects of language and terminology – he published many articles about various linguistic issues in professional journals and popular magazines. His consultationson problematic issues were wellconsidered and wellgrounded and based on the criteria of systematicity, constancy and current living language. The numerous theoretical and practical works of Gaivenis made a significant contribution to the development of the Lithuanian language and linguistic culture. Received 2014i12i08 Rasuolė Vladarskienė Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitetas Saulėtekio al. 11, LT-03227 Vilnius, Lithuania E-mail rasuole.vladar[email protected]