Archivum Lithuanicum

Among the text samples from foreign languages in his Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), John Wilkins prints an Old Lithuanian Lord’s prayer whose source is unknown. According to Andreas Müller (1680) it was taken from the ‘London Bible’, i.e., Samuel Bogusław Chyliński’s Old Lithuanian Bible translation of which only a part of the Old Testament had ever been printed (1660–1662). A comparison of Wilkins’ text, here edited for the first time, with all relevant Lithuanian versions of the Lord’s Prayer shows that Chyliński’s handwritten translation of Matthew is indeed the version closest to Wilkins’ text. But the differences, however slight, are significant: Wilkins, who did not speak Lithuanian, could not have modified the text in this way. Taken together, the facts point to the conclusion that Chyliński wrote down an ad hoc translation of the Lord’s Prayer for Wilkins. Johannes Bretke’s spontaneous new translation of a Bible passage in an album entry of 1599 thus would not be an isolated case.

Der spezifische Gebrauch des Graphems <y> im ersten Teil von Knyga nobažnystės (in der wiederholten Ausgabe von 1684?, weiterhin KNG2) zeichnet diesen Text gegenüber anderen zeitgenössischen Schriften aus. Aus der Analyse der Verwendungsfälle von <y> ergeben sich einige Hypothesen, die im Aufsatz näher analysiert werden. Unter dem Einfluss der polnischen Rechtschreibung haben die Bearbeiter versucht, dem Graphem <y>, welches als eine nicht konsequent eingesetzte Variante von <i> zu betrachten ist, eine genauere Funktion zuzuordnen. In der ersten Hälfte des Werkes (und somit im Großteil des Psalmenbuchs) wurde das Schriftzeichen <y> anscheinend zur Kennzeichnung von [i] (selten [ī]) vor „härteren“ Konsonanten t, p, d, v, s, r, m, n eingesetzt, um der etwas härteren Aussprache dieser Konsonanten vor den Vokalen der e-Gruppe und ihrer häufigen Schreibung ohne das Palatalisierungs-i Rechnung zu tragen. Die Konjunktion ir ‘und’ wurde in Anlehnung an die Schreibung der gleichbedeutenden polnischen Konjunktion (y) ebenfalls mit <y> geschrieben. Die Schreibung <y> hätte auch durch die hypothetisch angenommene ungespannte und etwas breitere Aussprache von i in unbetonten oder in akzentuierten aber nicht verlängerten Positionen (vergleichbar mit der Aussprache in den heutigen Dialekten in der Gegend von Kėdainiai) bedingt sein können. Deswegen ist die Möglichkeit in Erwägung zu ziehen, dass das Graphem <y> in KNG2 am häufigsten zur Kennzeichnung des weniger gespannten [i] eingesetzt wurde, allerdings nur in der Umgebung „härterer“ Konsonanten. Andererseits hätte die Schreibung <y> statt <i> (mit Ausnahme von yr) auch ästhetisch motiviert sein können: so hat man sich gewissermaßen an die Ober- und Unterlängen der Schriftzeichen t, p, d, ſ, k angepasst. Im KNG2 wurde neben einem solchen Buchstaben meistens das Graphem <y> gesetzt (am konsequentesten nach t, p und d in bestimmten Stämmen). Die Anpassung des Graphems <y> hätte auch ein Stilmerkmal eines der Bearbeiter von KNG2 sein können, welcher die ersten hundert Seiten des Gesangbuches abgeschrieben und korrigiert hat. Die nicht konsequente Verwendung von <y> in gewissen Stellungen zeigt, dass die Erweiterung seines Verwendungsbereichs nicht an einem einzigen Zeitpunkt zustande kam, sondern möglicherweise beim wiederholten Lesen der zu bearbeitenden Texte ergänzt wurde. Dieses für die KNG2 so kennzeichnende Schriftzeichen gehört allerdings nicht zu den typischen Merkmalen der Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments von 1701, die zum Teil von Samuel Bittner angefertigt wurde, welcher auch an der Bearbeitung von KNG2 beteiligt war.

The abundance of Bible citations in old Lithuanian writings makes it difficult to study their relationships. A user-friendly data platform is required to allow the Bible lines to be grouped according to the characteristics interesting to the researcher. The assessment of similarity of citations is the most problematic. An integrated analysis of vocabulary, syntax, and morphology (and in some cases—spelling) allows it, but this kind of philological research is slow and currently impossible to automate. We succeeded in automating the comparison with a cyclic algorithm. The task of the algorithm is to detect identical compounds in two character sequences and to calculate which part of the compared sequences they cover. The effect of the algorithm and the calculated percentages are mainly determined by the length of the lines, the shortest sequence allowed to be compared, and the transliteration accuracy. Different lengths of the lines (a biblical line can be quoted as a fragment that is comparable to the full line) require the consideration of the chronology of the sources and the selection of corresponding comparative calculation parameters. The most optimal shortest comparable character sequence was determined experimentally. The automation of the comparison is hindered by the ambiguous orthography of old writings. It is levelled by the rules of transliteration, the application of which is differentiated according to the most important consistent spelling characteristics of each author. After evaluating the manually and automatically transliterated lines, it was determined that the transliteration method did not have any significant effect on the results. The results can be controversial when comparing the texts written in different dialects (the levelling of

The opening line in the preface of the first Lithuanian book prepared by Martynas Mažvydas (1547) reads imkiet mani ir ſkaitikiet (lit.) ‘take me and read’ and I suggest that this phrase may reflect the famous divine words heard by Saint Augustine: tolle lege, tolle lege ‘take up—read, take up—read’ (Confessiones VIII , 12, 29). Both phrases match with respect to the verbs, their order, and the mood, but the Lithuanian phrase is not repeated. It has two additional words (mani ‘me’, and ir ‘and’) and the verbal forms appear in the second-person plural. One should note that Lithuanian here is similar to many other languages where this phrase has become popular without the repetition and with the conjunction, cf. English take up and read, German nimm und lies, French prends et lis, Italian prendi e leggi, Polish bierz i czytaj, etc. The phrase of Mažvydas is different, however, in that it is used for the personification: the voice of the preface is attributed to the book and this is the reason why the pronominal form mani ‘me’ (accusative) was added; this rhetorical device is also known from some other sixteenth-century books. The added pronoun points to the most important part of the book, the catechism; the included hymns are referred to only once and a short primer, which appears after the preface, is never mentioned. The verbal forms are in second-person plural because the addressee of Mažvydas are plural, the brothers and sisters (BRalei ſeſeris). It is well known that Augustine was one of the most widely published and studied authors in the sixteenth century, a figure of high importance to the Reformation movement, and there are no doubts that Mažvydas was familiar with his works. Many authors of that time would use more or less known phrases in their own texts; some of them would be exact quotations accompanied by references while some would be modified to the needs of the author and bear no indication to their source. At this time we do not know if Mažvydas had really studied Augustine Confessions and we even cannot tell if the phrase tolle lege reached him directly or indirectly. If it reached him indirectly, might it had been already modified into a personified form? Despite the similarities of the phrases, we should be also rather cautious not to reject the possibility that we are dealing with a mere coincidence.

The norms of emerging standard Lithuanian language began to reach inhabitants of countryside and towns at the end of the nineteenth century. Lithuanian epitaphs reveal how the norms of standard Lithuanian spread from the end of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Even though many epitaph texts did not survive, and even though they are short and anonymous, they reveal the time when people started to recognize the prestige of emerging standard and focus their language on it. It could be assumed that the influence of standard language might have been stronger in areas where clandestine Lithuanian publications were distributed more intensively. According to Vytautas Merkys, they mainly were dispersed throughout the counties adjacent to the state border: Telšiai, Raseiniai, Naumiestis, and Vilkaviškis. This paper analyses the epitaphs from these regions—the Western part of Lowlanders (up to areas around Mažeikiai, Viekšniai, Nerimdaičiai, Varniai, Tytuvėnai, and Raseiniai) and the South West Highlanders (up to areas around Vilkija, Pilviškiai, and Vinkšnupiai). The articles published in periodicals in the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century show that intellectuals considered epitaphs as public language reflecting situation of Lithuanian language. They were not satisfied with epitaphs, written in non-Lithuanian or written inconsistently. In Lithuanian epitaphs the abbreviation S. P., indicative of Polish Swiętej Pamięci ‘sacred memory’ or Lithuanian expression with a loanword Šventos Pom[i]eties / Pomėties ‘sacred memory’ was used. It was used throughout all the period, found even in 1911. However, in the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth decade of the nineteenth century we find the collocation Šventos atminties ‘sacred memory’ and its abbreviations S. A., sz. atm., Š. A. The collocation Amžinąjį atilsį ‘eternal rest’ and its abbreviations A. A. ir Am. at. started to be used simultaneously. Thus, part of community began to feel the need to avoid the loanwords. The analysis of the orthography of epitaphs shows that the letters <L, l> (instead of traditional <Ł, ł>), marking hard consonant, also <AI , ai> [ai], <EI , ei> [ei (instead of traditional <AJ, aj>, <EJ, ej>) moved easily to personal usage from emerging standard. Letter <V, v> (instead of <W, w>) was used less frequently in the beginning of investigated period. There were cases, when letter <V, v> was used in the epitaph, but names, prayer “Hail Mary” has been written with the then traditional letter <W, w>. It suggests that some users did not want to change the orthography of special words—names and titles of prayers— and the letter <V, v> still was not perceived as own. Diacritical characters <Č, č>, <Š, š> (instead of traditional <CZ, cz>, <SZ , sz>) appeared in epitaphs even later of <V, v>. The change of orthography of epitaphs shows that focus on emerging standard strengthened in turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and particularly intensified during