Soviet Contributions to the Sociology of Language [Aus dem Russ. übers. Reprint 2019 ed.] 9783110806663, 9789027976130


174 50 15MB

English Pages 205 [208] Year 1977

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD PDF FILE

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Translator's Introduction
1. Formation of the Literary Norm of the German National Language
2. On the Literary Language in China and Japan
3. Problems of the Formation of Unified Norms in the Bashkir National Language
4. Is Planning of Language Development Possible? The Norwegian Language Movement at an Impasse
5. Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics
6. Main Trends in Sociolinguistics
7. Ways of Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity: A Lexico-Semantic Investigation
8. On Social Differences in the Use of Linguistic Variants
9. On the Subject Matter of Sociolinguistics
Contributions to the Sociology of Language
Recommend Papers

Soviet Contributions to the Sociology of Language [Aus dem Russ. übers. Reprint 2019 ed.]
 9783110806663, 9789027976130

  • 0 0 0
  • Like this paper and download? You can publish your own PDF file online for free in a few minutes! Sign Up
File loading please wait...
Citation preview

Soviet Contributions to the Sociology of Language

Contributions to the Sociology of Language

16

Joshua A. Fishman Editor

M O U T O N PUBLISHERS • THE H A G U E • PARIS • NEW YORK

Soviet Contributions to the Sociology of Language

Selected, translated and edited by

Philip A. Luelsdorff Regensburg University

M O U T O N P U B L I S H E R S • THE H A G U E • P A R I S • NEW YORK

ISBN: 90 279 7613 9 Cover design by Jurriaan Schrofer © 1977, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands Printed in Great Britain at the University Press,

Cambridge

Acknowledgments

I wish to extend my cordial appreciation to O. S. Akhmanova, M. M. Guxman, L. P. Krysin, M. M. Makovskij, L. B. Nikolsky, M. M. Steblin-Kamenskij and A. D. Svejcer for reading and critically commenting on the first drafts of the translations of their respective articles. Almost all of their suggestions for improvement were incorporated in the final draft of this work. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to L. P. Krysin for suggesting several of the translations in this volume and for inspiring correspondence, correspondence which lifted my spirits on many a rainy day. Lastly, I would like to thank the authorities of the Vsesojuznoe Agentstvo po avtorskim pravam (VAAP), the All-Union Copyright Agency, for granting permission to publish these translations. The bibliographical data relating to the articles in this anthology is as follows: 1. M. M. Guxman (1960) 'Stanovlenie literaturnoj normy nemeckogo nacional'nogo jazyka'. In M. M. Guxman, Ed., Voprosy formirovanija i razvitija national'nyx jazykov. Izdatel'stvo Akademija Nauk S.S.S.R., pp. 252-273. 2. N. I. Konrad (1960) 'O literaturnom jazyke v Kitae i Japonii'. In M. M. Guxman, Ed., Voprosy formirovanija i razvitija nacionaVnyx jazykov. Izdatel'stvo Akademija Nauk S.S.S.R., pp. 11-49. 3. A. A. Juldasev (1960) 'Voprosy formirovanija edinnyx norm baskirskogo nacional'nogo jazyka'. In M. M. Guxman, Ed., Voprosy formirovanija i razvitija nacionaVnyx jazykov. Izdatel'stvo Akademija Nauk S.S.S.R., pp. 274-294. 4. M. M. Steblin-Kamenskij (1968) 'Vozmozno li planirovanie jazykovogo razvitija? (norvezskoe jazykovoe dvizenie v tupike)', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 3, pp. 47-56.

vi

Acknowledgments

5. A. D. Svejcer (1969) 'Nekotorye aktual'nye problemy sociolingvistiki', Inostrannye jazyki v skole, 3, pp. 2-14. 6. O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko (1971) 'Osnovnye napravlenija v sociolingvistike', Inostrannye jazyki v skole, 4, pp. 2-11. 7. M. M. Makovskij (1972) 'Puti rekonstrukcii social'nyx dialektov drevnosti', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 5, pp. 23-33. 8. L. P. Krysin (1973) 'K social'nym razlicijam v ispol'zovanii jazykovyx variantov', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 3, pp. 37-49. 9. L. B. Nikolsky (1974) 'O predmete sociolingvistiki', Voprosy jazykoznanija, l,"pp. 60-67.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

v

Translator's Introduction

1

1. Formation of the Literary Norm of the German National Language, by M. M. Guxman

7

2. On the Literary Language in China and Japan, by N. I. Konrad

31

3. Problems of the Formation of Unified Norms in the Bashkir National Language, by A. A. Juldasev

75

4. Is Planning of Language Development Possible? The Norwegian Language Movement at an Impasse, by M. I. SteblinKamenskij

99

5. Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics, by A. D. Svejcer

113

6. Main Trends in Sociolinguistics, by O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Maröenko

133

7. Ways of Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity: A Lexico-Semantic Investigation, by M. M. Makovskij

149

8. On Social Differences in the Use of Linguistic Variants, by L. P. Krysin

165

9. On the Subject Matter of Sociolinguistics, by L. B. Nikolsky

185

Translator's Introduction

This project, the translation of Soviet contributions to the sociology of language, was initiated eleven years ago while the translator was Research Associate with the Documentation Research Program of the Center for Applied Linguistics, then in Washington, D.C. The project began with the translation of selected articles from M. M. Guxman's Voprosy formirovanija i razvitija national 'nyx jazykov [Questions of the Formation and Development of National Languages], published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1960. This volume, a landmark in the documentation of the development of national languages, was distributed informally to a number of scholars specializing in questions of the sociology of language, the only article to formally appear in print being M. M. Guxman's 'Some general regularities in the formation and development of national languages' - an article aimed at systematizing the conclusions reached by the several contributors to the book. After a lapse of some seven years, at the suggestion of Professor Joshua A. Fishman, the translator resumed work on the anthology, focusing on contributions that were empirical, basic and current. The translator took 'empirical' to mean research based on actual linguistic data, irrespective of the method used to collect such data, 'basic' to mean studies of a foundational nature aimed at delimiting the field of sociolinguistics and 'current' to mean studies completed after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Thus, the present anthology should not be understood as necessarily representative of all the work on the sociology of language that is currently in progress but rather as a sample of some current interests. Nor should these papers, or rather the selection thereof, be understood to imply that no work in Soviet sociolinguistics was carried out prior to the post-Stalin period. Quite to the contrary, the first bibliographies1 of 1. For bibliographies of Soviet contributions to studies in language and society, cf. Rano L. Lencek, 'Problems in Sociolinguistics in the Soviet Union', Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University Press, No. 24, 1971, 269-301;

2

Translator's Introduction

this work, incomplete though they may be, indicate that the Russian output in the area of language and society has been massive. One of the better indications of the route that Soviet sociolinguistics will take is the introduction to the published Soviet contributions to the VIII World Congress of Sociology held in Toronto in 1974,2 from which I quote here in extenso: 'The present stage of development of sociolinguistic research in the Soviet Union is characterized by the utmost effort directed at defining (making more explicit) the subject-domain of sociolinguistics and the main currents of its development... the working out of the methodological bases of sociolinguistics . . . the definition of the ties between sociolinguistics and other disciplines. Moreover, the working out of the fundamental problems of sociolinguistics - such as language policy . . . the language situation in multinational countries . . . and the social differentiation of language . . . Special attention in these papers is accorded to questions of the development of terminology under various socio-historical circumstances.' Attempts at defining the subject-domain of sociolinguistics and the main currents of its development are the papers by Svejcer ('Some topical questions in sociolinguistics'), O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko ('Main trends in sociolinguistics'), and L. B. Nikolsky ('On the subject matter of sociolinguistics'). Svejcer maintains that the current upsurge in sociolinguistics may be attributed to a dissatisfaction with the microlinguistic approach to language. 'Microlinguistics . . . proves itself to be grossly inadequate to elucidate the socially determined differences in the structure of language.' For him the immediate object of sociolinguistic analysis is the socially determined variability of linguistic structure. 'Researching the socially determined variation of linguistic units, sociolinguistics relates linguistic facts to social facts. The dependence of the former on the latter is shown by determining the systematic covariation of the elements of linguistic and social structure.' The author points out that it is impossible to define the relative social prestige of competing linguistic forms without considerGirke, W., Jachnow, H., Schrenk, J., Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 7 (1972), 131-156. Handbibliographie zur neueren Linguistik in Osteuropa, Abteilung27, Munich; Girke, W., Jachnow, H., Sowjetische Soziolinguistik: Probleme und Genese. Linguistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Rronberg/Taunus: Scriptor Verlag, 1974, 176-213. Sprache und Gesellschaft in der Sowjetunion. Kritische Information. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, for 31 German translations of Soviet studies of language and society. 2. From Doklady sovetskix sociolingvistov na VIII vsemimom sociologileskom kongresse, Sovetskaja Sociologiieskaja Associacija, Institut Jazykoznanija A N SSSR, Moscow, 1974,'p. 3.

Translator's Introduction

3

ing informant judgments. He warns against extending the methods of linguistic analysis to other social phenomena. 'One of the most important principles of linguistic analysis used in sociolinguistics is the principle of the consistent differentiation between the synchronic and diachronic approach to the phenomena under investigation.' Svejcer considers questions of the social stratification of language, problems of sociolinguistic typology and problems of language policy, defining the latter as 'the totality of measures worked out for goal-directed regulating influence on the spontaneous linguistic process and realized in society (by the state)'. According to Svejcer, language policy in the Soviet Union fostered the creation and development of written languages for illiterate peoples as well as the rebirth of the national languages of 'the former "backyard" of imperial Russia'. O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko define sociolinguistics as that branch of linguistics that studies the causal ties between language and society. They report on the most essential research that has been conducted in the West, stressing that the microlinguistic view of language is an oversimplification and call for a refinement of the principles and methods of sociolinguistic research. 'The discovery and description of social structures, which are the material foundational structure of sociolinguistics, is one of the main tasks of contemporary science.' In contradistinction to the claim made by Lencek,3 namely, that sociolinguistics began in the Soviet Union in the sixties, Akhmanova and Marcenko report that such problems as the objectivity of the existence of language, the correlation between language and culture and the ways in which society consciously influences language have been central to Soviet linguistics since its inception. The footnotes to this paper contain invaluable references to sociolinguistics in the Soviet period in its infancy. 'Sociolinguistics has always been an inextricable part of Soviet linguistics as a whole.' Three main trends, constituting the contemporary Soviet approach to sociolinguistics, are singled out for discussion: sociolinguistics in the broad sense, typified by the close collaboration of linguists and anthropologists; sociolinguistics as the science of 'linguistic existence', referring to the cultivation of one's national language, ' . . . converting it into the most highly valued means of international communication'; and sociolinguistics as that branch of linguistics concerned with establishing consistent correlations between microlinguistic phenomena and the facts of the social life of a given community, the sense of sociolinguistics perhaps most familiar to sociolinguists in the West. 3. In 'Problems in sociolinguistics in the Soviet Union', Lencek writes ' . . . Soviet sociolinguistics is entirely a child of the 1960's' (p. 272).

4

Translator's Introduction

L. B. Nikolsky presents several problems in sociolinguistics which he thinks have not been accorded the attention they deserve. He stresses that linguistic communication is simultaneously the interaction between people, presupposing as it does the presence of a sender and an addressee. Moreover, the social and functional distribution of the forms of existence of a language are interwoven to such an extent that it becomes possible to speak of their socio-functional distribution. Nikolsky includes in the subject domain of sociolinguistics the conscious process of language standardization by society and of the creation of national literary languages, codification processes, terminology, etc. Devoted to questions of language policy and questions of national language formation and development are the papers by M. I. SteblinKamenskij ('Is planning of language development possible? The Norwegian language movement at an impasse'), M. M. Guxman ('Formation of the literary norm of the German national language'), N. I. Konrad ('On the literary language in China and Japan') and A. A. Juldasev ('Problems of the formation of unified norms in the Bashkir national language'). 'The illusions conditioned by the demagogic and imprecise use of such expressions as "people's language", etc., played a big role in the Norwegian language movement or even lay at its foundation.' For SteblinKamenskij every linguistic description is first and foremost a terminological problem. The author stresses the absence of unity in the Norwegian language movement, language split being a permanent fixture in Norway since the middle of the nineteenth century. Until 1899, riksm&l ('state language') was called dansk-norsk ('the usual book language'); since 1929, it has been called bokmal ('book language'). Steblin-Kamenskij traces the development of riksmal and landsmal, the latter originally a secondary written representation of several related Norwegian dialects ( = speakers of landsmal use the pronunciation of their own dialect). He concludes that: 'If the ultimate goal of the national language movement consists in the nation having a unified literary language, i.e., a literary language common to the whole nation, then it must be recognized that the national language movement in Norway suffered a failure. The recognition of landsmal and riksmal as the official literary languages resulted in there being in fact no unified literary language in Norway.' M. M. Guxman distinguishes between written and oral varieties of the German literary language, pointing out that the establishment of a supra-dialectal norm (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries) was realized most fully in the written form of communication. This was due to the fact that dialects and 'semi-dialects' competed with the literary language in oral communication. The orthoepic norm Buhnendeutsch, constituting even

Translator's Introduction

5

today more of an ideal than reality, was established in a code of rules as late as the end of the nineteenth century. Events in the history of Germany determined the deceleration of the formation of the supra-dialectal norm and the persistence of the dialect and 'semi-dialect' in the colloquial variety of the national language. During the first half of the twentieth century, the written-literary language in China and Japan was gradually replaced by the colloquial language. 'The researcher concerned with the language situation in China and Japan in the last forty to fifty years . . . must recognize the struggle of these two languages, the written-literary and the colloquial, a struggle in which the colloquial was on the offensive and as a result of which the written-literary language was forced to retreat from the front.' The debate was conducted in the public domain and in government spheres as well. Konrad indicates that in such controversies the object of attack has always been the written-literary language: ' . . . the struggle against the written literary language was always attended by a new social upsurge,by a strengthening of the fight for the democratization of society and culture' and that the student of the written-literary languages in China and Japan 'must take into account the fact that the social consciousness of the progressive democratic layers of both countries has always associated the written-literary language with everything old, everything hindering social and cultural progress'. The formation of norms for the Bashkir national language began in the thirties, although a chancery style emerged, close to colloquial Bashkir, around the middle of the eighteenth century. A t the end of the eighteenth century, Bashkir began to be dominated by Tjurka, a state of affairs which caused the Bashkir literary language to develop in almost complete isolation from the Bashkir oral language. In a later period the Bashkir standard language, until the thirties of the present century, was based completely on Tartar. 'Progressive Bashkir personalities... fought for the liberation of the standard language from elements of Central Asiatic Tjurka.' A literature was created at the beginning of the twentieth century which was based on colloquial Bashkir and therefore played a significant role in the unification of the written and oral languages, although the reactionary layer of the Bashkir intelligentsia fought against it. Belonging to studies in the methodological bases of sociolinguistics is the paper by Makovskij ('Ways of reconstructing the social dialects of antiquity: A lexico-semantic investigation'). For Makovskij, understanding the essence of social dialects depends upon the prior resolution of the problem of the semantic development of dialects and the standard

6

Translator's Introduction

language, the problem of the etymologies of vocabulary units in social dialects, including the study of borrowings and homonymy, the problem of interdialectal interference and interference between the standard language and social dialects, the problem of establishing typological regularities in the semantics of social dialects and the problem of enumerating the ancient lexical units reflecting this or that social usage. Makovskij sets little methodological store in frequency analysis and the combinationof-features approach to the study of social dialects. A favorite point is that radical social changes are not necessarily reflected in social structure, and, conversely, changes in linguistic structure do not necessarily entail changes in society. Belonging to the category of studies in the social differentiation of language is the paper by L. P. Krysin ('On social differences in the use of linguistic variants'). This is an empirical study of the distribution of certain phonetic and morphological variants in contemporary standard Russian. The data, obtained with the help of questionnaires, served as a basis for testing the hypothesis that the distribution of the variants depends upon regional, age and socio-professional characteristics of the speakers. Informants were selected whose native language was Russian, who were city-dwellers and who had a secondary or higher education from institutions with instruction in Russian. The sample varied in size from 12,000 to 18,000 people, depending upon the type of questionnaire. The data elicited support the hypothesis that the distribution of the variants is a function of the social differences. It was found that variation does not characterize to the same extent all the lexemes in which it is represented, that the linguistic properties of the variants exercise an influence on the nature of their distribution, that the attributes of the speakers determine the distribution of the variants to different extents and that the influence of social attributes on phonetic variants is greater than that on morphological.

M. M. GUXMAN

1

Formation of the Literary Norm of the German National Language

1. The formation of a single literary language in Germany occurred very slowly, encompassing several centuries (sixteenth to nineteenth).1 The establishment of a supra-dialectal norm was realized all the more intensely and fully in the written, rather than the oral, form of communication, inasmuch as dialects and semi-dialects rigorously competed with the literary language in oral communication. The longevity of these varieties of the national language is characteristic also of modern, large cities. The Berlin vernacular, preserving many of the features distinctive of the Lower German dialect, the Upper Saxon vernacular of Leipzig (i.e., the diiferent regional varieties of the so-called Umgangssprache) even now restrict the use of the literary language in its oral form. The characteristic feature of the oral variety of the literary language, an orthoepic norm, was still absent in the nineteenth century. An analysis of the rhymes of nineteenth-century poets, including Goethe, Schiller and, to a certain extent, Heine, reveals the influence of such dialect peculiarities as the spirantal pronunciation of intervocalic g and the delabialization of labial vowels. Practically speaking, the orthoepic norm Bühnendeutsch 'stage German' was established in a code of rules as late as the end of the nineteenth century and even today constitutes more an ideal than reality. Not only in the nineteenth century but also in the twentieth century, when the use of the German literary language had gradually entered into oral communication, local lexical, phraseological and, in part, grammatical differences were still present in the oral form of the literary language, especially in its colloquial, everyday aspect. Both the deceleration of the process of formation of a supra-dialectal norm and the persistence of the dialect and semi-dialect in the colloquial, everyday variety of the national language were defined by peculiarities of the historical development of Germany by the protracted duration of feudal dismemberment and by the late formation of political and economic unity. 1. For details concerning this question, cf. Guxman (1956, 1958, 1969).

8

M. M. Guxman

It was precisely these general historical precedents which determined the specific nature of the process of establishing a unified supra-dialectal norm, the complexity of the interrelationship between dialect and literary language tradition in that process and the role of conscious standardization. 2. The immediate manifestation of the political and economic dismemberment of Germany was the protracted existence of several equal regional varieties of the literary language, differing from one another orthographically, phonetically, lexically, phraseologically and, to a lesser extent, morphologically. With certain reservations, it is possible to say that the division of the German literary language in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries into definite varieties or variants repeats the division of dialect districts: there were distinguished the Lower German variety of the literary language, formed in the territory of the Hanseatic cities, the Alemannic variant of the Southwest, the Schwabian in Alsace and the Schwabian cities, the Eastern-Middle German in Saxony and Thuringia, the Bavarian-Austrian in the Southeast, the Cologne in the Middle Frankish dialect district, etc. However, the specific characteristics of the literary language and above all the specific characteristics of its written fixation, outside of which at this period a literary language was not yet in existence, facilitated a certain break between the literary language and its corresponding dialect base. Any written variety of a language, if it is not simply a fixation of an oral utterance, introduces an element of reworking. The nature of this reworking, its intensity, changes depending upon the genre peculiarities of the various literary monuments and those concrete historical circumstances in which the development of the literary language proceeds and upon the interrelationship established between the written and oral varieties of the language. However, the existence of reworking and a certain amount of selection are inherent in virtually every written literary language. These factors create the basis for a peculiar isolation of the written-literary variety of the language from its dialect base. In Germany where in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the literary language appeared primarily in the written mode of communication, the conditions for such an isolation of the literary language were especially favorable. It manifested itself in various ways: in the lagging of the written fixation behind the process of dialect development, in the exclusion of sharply dialectal features and in the interaction of the different varieties of the literary language. All these features were present as early as the first stages of the develop-

Formation of the German Literary Norm

9

ment of the German literary language. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the role of these factors was strengthened in connection with the protracted existence of the developed tradition of the written-literary form of the language and also in connection with the broadening of the sphere of use of the German literary language at the expense of greater disuse of Latin. The favorable conditions for the growing isolation of the literary language created book printing: this gave an unprecedented scope to the use of the German written-literary language at the end of the fifteenth century. An effort to avoid obvious dialect elements became more and more apparent. Although there was no conscious, consistent standardization at the dawn of book printing in Germany, inasmuch as the first book printers had no concept of a norm or of orthographic uniformity,2 the entire practice of printing suggested the overcoming of regional separatism. The problem of selling finished products loomed sufficiently large as early as the first decades after the invention of printing. The difficulties connected with the sale of finished products compelled the printers to exclude from the language of the printed editions those narrowly dialectal features which might have complicated the distribution of books beyond the borders of the given dialect district. These tendencies appeared by no means in all centers of Germany with equal intensity. Thus, for example, the maximal nearness of the local variety of the literary language to the features of the dialect district is evident in the Cologne manuscripts and publications of the fifteenth century. However, even here, until the beginning of the sixteenth century, the dialectal transition nd > ng, of the type fingen 'to find' from finden was not reflected in the written language.3 In the Lower German variety of the literary language, in turn, so closely connected with the Lower-German dialect base, many specific features of this region did not occur: thus, for example, the dialectal transition nd > nn, Id > 11, i.e., lanne < lande, gellen < gelden, did not receive fixation in the manuscripts and publications of the fifteenth century; the very strong tendency to substitute the more general -en for -et in the dialectal ending in the third person plural, etc., is observed. The Lower-German variety of the literary language, formed, in the main, on the border of the Northern Saxon and Eastern Lower German districts in Liibeck, the center of the Hanseatic League, spread to the west, to Westphalia, where the relationships between the written-literary and dialect-colloquial forms of the language were more complex. The diversity 2. Cf. in this connection the analysis of the language of the first printed publications of the various centers of Germany in the work of Guxman (1969, pp. 69-111). 3. C f , for example, the publication of the Cologne printer Kventel, Cronica van der hilliger Stat van Coellen [Chronicle of the Holy City of Cologne], 1499.

10

M. M. Guxman

of the phonetic development of vowels, characteristic of the various regions of the Lower German district, is not reflected in the Lower German variety of the literary language (c/. Foerste 1954). In the Southwest, the Alemannic variety of the literary language long preserved its lexical and phonetic distinctiveness: cf., for example, schentzlen 'to mock', gumpen 'to dance', gremp 'merchant', goette 'god-' (attrib.), etc., codified in the sixteenth century in the Basel dictionary of J. Maaler; the predominance of the diminutive suffix -le; the preservation of the old I, u, u (min, hus, lilt), etc.; but at the same time this variety of the literary language by no means coincided with the dialect of any region. It is characteristic that in the plays of the sixteenth century, connected with the Swiss dialect region, the narrow dialectal features were presented only in the language of the peasants, while the other characters spoke in the local variety of the literary language (Muller 1953, Triimpy 1955). The Schwabian dialectal transition a > au of the type schauf < schaf and the Bavarian contraction of the diphthong au > a of the type bam < baum only sporadically appear in the manuscripts and publications of the fifteenth century, and the Bavarian dialectal pronominal forms enk 'to you', os 'you' are not to be found in the literary monuments. Characteristic of a significant part of Germany is the delabialization of the vowels u, o, while the diphthong eu is only weakly reflected in writing. A still greater isolation of the literary language from the dialect is characteristic of the Eastern-Middle-German district, which played such an important role in the formation of the unified literary norm. 3. The isolation of the local variety of the literary language from the dialect proper of a given district was partially connected with the interaction of various written-literary traditions. This process, also characteristic of preceding centuries, acquired a special intensity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This conditioned the broadly distributed use of doublet forms, local and foreign, which are to be found both in the variant spellings of one and the same word and in the parallel use of synonymous constructions and lexemes from the dialect. The Strassburger manuscripts and publications of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries reveal the rather widespread appearance of diphthongized spellings foreign to the given region; one of the earliest examples of such printed books is the Psalterium Latino-germanicum, published around 1474.4 Compare, for example a passage from the Fifth Psalm: Herr, mit den oren deyner gnad vernym myn wort, verstand meyne ruff: 'Give ear to my words in Thy mercy, O Lord, consider my 4. Hain* 13 508, printer unknown, possibly Henricus Armiensis.

Formation of the German Literary Norm

11

plea', where the possessive pronoun is used twice, in the first case with a simple vowel, in the second with a diphthong. In the private correspondence of a certain Strassburger printer and publisher, I. Grueninger, similar phenomena occur very frequently. Characteristic of the dialects of a significant part of Middle Germany was an umlaut before labials of the type keufen 'to buy', gleuben 'to believe', heubt 'head', etc. This feature was reflected earlier in the manuscripts and printed publications of the middle German region: it is found in the so-called Uffenbacher Harmony of the fourteenth century, published by F. Maurer (1925) in the Middle-German manuscripts of the fourteenth century from the library in Gotha, in the famous Gospel of Beheim (Bechstein 1867) in the first printed publications of Leipzig,5 including the Sachsenspiegel (Leipzig 1490) and in the language of T. Miinzer and M. Luther. However, together with these, in the various manuscripts and publications of the same centers, another spelling is to be found, reflecting the Southeastern tradition: glauben, kaufen, haupt, etc. In Southeastern Germany a sharp reduction of final, unstressed syllables occurred very early. This reduction is reflected in the manuscripts and first printed publications of various centers, including the numerous publications of the city of Augsburg: cf. in the various publications of the end of the fifteenth century sunn 'sun', tag 'days', jar 'years', etc. But, at the same time, many publications give parallel reduced forms (current in the given locality) and unreduced forms, which may be explained as either archaic forms of the local written-literary tradition or as the result of a contemporary but foreign norm: cf., for example, ler and lere 'teaching', erd and erde 'earth', hertz and hertze 'heart', etc., and even wonunge 'dwelling', beshreybunge 'description', rettunge 'salvation'. Interesting in this connection is the formation of artificial forms with the ending -e, which were hitherto non-existent in the German language and quickly disappeared from the written language: barmherzigkeite 'charity', allmachtigkeite 'omnipotence', gabe 'gave', lage 'lay', viele 'fell'. Not infrequently the interaction of two written-literary traditions was connected with a broader interaction in a given territory or in certain large centers of two different dialect zones: thus, for example, in the writtenliterary language of Nuremberg the interaction of the Bavarian and Middle-German orthographic traditions is to be observed beginning with the thirteenth century. To a large extent this was connected with a broader interaction on the territory of this city of two different dialects, inasmuch as Nuremberg was situated on the border of the Bavarian and Frankish 5. Cf., for example, the edition of Tauler's sermons executed by K. Kachelofen in 1498; Hain* 15 346, or the calendar-almanac from the same city of 1495.

12

M. M. Guxman

dialect regions. From the thirteenth century on, the ever-increasing influence of Bavarian-Austrian regularities, exactly as observed in the written-literary monuments of the old Schwabian city of Augsburg, were conditioned by the location of that city, by changes in the make-up of its population and by economic and political ties with Southeastern Germany. The appearance of Bavarian dialect phenomena in the language of the city (for example, the diphthongization of old long i, ü, Ü) appeared both in the oral as well as the written varieties of the language. The increase of many Southern forms in the Middle-German variety of the literary language was one of the manifestations of that general process of 'High Germanization' of the Middle-German dialect region which took place over a period of many centuries (c/. Guxman 1964, pp. 58,105,106). The interaction of different varieties of the literary language, especially intensive in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, encompassed the grammatical and lexical levels as well. In the Augsburger publications, the Schwabian verbal paradigm with a common desinence -nd for all three persons in the present tense plural blended with the forms of the first and third persons in -en of different dialects; the doublet forms han/hon (Southwest) and hab (Southeastern and Middle Germany) were used simultaneously; the doublet imperative forms gee/gang 'go', steel stand 'stand up', getlgangent 'go', used in the Augsburger variety of the literary language, are from different dialects. In the Eastern-Middle variety of the literary language, the local word-forming suffix -nisse was not seldom supplanted by the Southern -nusse; in the language of Brant's Narrenschiff [Ship of Fools] (South-Western variety of the literary language) the local diminutive suffix -le: sachle 'little thing' schlegele 'little blows', Peterle 'little Peter' coexisted with the synonymous suffix -lin, which had wide distribution in the various regions of Germany: stucklin 'little piece', stiindlin 'little hour'. With respect to lexicography, different varieties of the literary language reveal significant divergences, steadfastly preserved in the sixteenth century. Of special significance were the divergences between Southern Germany, on the one hand, and Northern and even Middle Germany, on the other. Southern bidmen 'to tremble', erdbidmen 'earthquake', lefze, lebse 'lip', geiß 'she-goat', zeher 'tear', bletz 'rag', feist 'fat', peinigen 'to torture', hanf 'pot', unz 'until', etc., were already opposed in the fourteenth century to the Middle-German biben 'to tremble', erdbeben 'earthquake', lippe 'lip', ziege 'she-goat', träne 'tear', lappe, fleck 'rag', 'patch', fett 'fat', quelen 'to torture', topf1 pot', bis 'until', etc. Beginning with the works of the Hessian Hermann Fritzlar and the Gospel of Beheim (fourteenth century), down to the prose of Luther and Münzer, the

Formation of the German Literary Norm

13

specific characteristics of the vocabulary of the Middle-German variety of the literary language were preserved; as a result entire layers of this vocabulary entered into the literary norm of the national language. At the same time, in manuscripts even of the fourteenth century and even more in the printed publications of the fifteenth century the parallel use of dialect doublets in one and the same work is to be observed. Thus, in the manuscripts of the works of H. Fritzlar along with biben 'to tremble', ertbibunge 'earthquake', one finds the Southern ertpidem, together with Middle German burnen 'to burn', 'to burn down', the Southern brennen, together with the local demutikeit 'humility' the more Southern demitigkeit, etc. Entirely analogous facts are to be observed in the later manuscripts and publications of the Middle-German cities. Southern ostern, demuotig, uncz appear in the publications of Leipzig. Together with this, the reverse process of the inclusion of vocabulary, characteristic of Middle Germany, is to be noted in Southern manuscripts and publications. Thus, in the fifteenth century, the Middle-German waschen more and more frequently appears together with the local zwahen, the Middle-German bis all the more intensively replaces the old unz, etc. Zeninger's dictionary, published in 1482 in Nuremberg, gives a peculiar combination of Southern and Middle-German vocabulary: qelen and peinigen 'to torture', tren od'zeher 'tear', topff od' haffen 'pot', etc. The interaction of different local varieties of the literary language was thus one of the characteristic features of the linguistic relationships of the fifteenth century. It facilitated the further isolation of varieties of the literary language from one or another dialect base. This process assumed many forms in the separate regions of Germany and flowed with a different degree of intensity in different literary genres. The territorial position of one or another region or district, its interrelationship with other regions, its economic and cultural connections and its political isolation found their reflection in the interrelationship of different local varieties of the literary language: the literary language of such cities as Bamberg or Wiirzburg, situated in the Southwestern Frankish dialect district, in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries reveals a distinctive combination of Southern and Middle-German regularities, and, together with this, the dialect of this locality is characterized by a most intensive 'High Germanization' of the Frankish dialect. Southern dialect diffusion is also to be traced in Northeastern Germany. The entrance of Middle-German dialects into the territories of Thuringia and Saxony, the 'High Germanization' of such cities as Halle, Merseburg, Wittenberg, which began in the fourteenth century, supports, as it were,

14

M. M. Guxman

the influence of the Southern tradition, specifically in writing, on the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language. The advancement of Southern forms into Eastern Germany along the NurembergMeissen line took place, as has been demonstrated by special research, to a certain degree simultaneously in dialect and official writing. The appearance of a Southeastern form of Bavarian dialect in the Schwabian border regions in its turn was realized on two levels - in the form of dialect diffusion and in the form of literary influences. It is often difficult to distinguish these two paths of linguistic interaction, which took place both in the oral and written varieties of the language. The selection of dialect phenomena of any locality begins, in general, to be defined by the relative importance of a given phenomenon in the German literary tradition. The designation of such a new phenomenon in Middle Germany as diphthongization was supported in the publications of the Middle-German cities by the fact that as early as the fourteenth century diphthong spellings under the influence of the Southern orthographic tradition appeared in the chancery of Eastern-Middle Germany, while from the middle of the fifteenth century, they were received as a sign of the leading Augsburger variety of the literary language, whereas the transition nd > ng, typical of Middle Germany, or e > a, typical of Eastern-Middle German, was not reflected in written usage. In the first case, the dialect process was supported by the written tradition and authority of the literary language; in the second case the isolated dialect process did not gain access to the literary language. Naturally, it is by no means always possible to explain the presence or absence of certain dialectal features in the printed publications of various centers: the interweaving of the influences of various factors involved in selection is too complex and far from all factors may be taken into consideration. The large cities, which began to play a leading role in the cultural life of the country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with respect to language became a softening influence on the sharp peculiarities of that dialect region in which they arose. The isolation of urban speech from the local dialects was connected with settlement of the cities by people from various regions of Germany. The seething life of the large cities and the developing ties between them constituted a complete opposition to the old feudal, reserved way of life. In the cities, especially in connection with the founding of universities in Baden, Prague, Greifswald and Erfurt, an indigenous 'intelligentsia' was gradually formed: chancery officials and independent city officials, lawyers, doctors, preachers, the representatives of various types of

Formation of the German Literary Norm

15

educational institutions, printers and proof-readers, artists and engravers. From their midst emerge the first German humanists. The biographies of the individual representatives of these social circles are very significant: they reflect those cultural ties between the various centers which appeared as the immediate result of the economic and political growth of the cities; it is sufficient in this connection to mention how printing developed, how printing presses were produced in the large urban centers and how this art was spread by enterprising people from one city to another. The greatest Augsburger book printer, G. Zeiner, was born in Reutlingen and studied the art of book printing in Strassburg, where the founder of printing, J. Gutenberg, lived and worked. Later G. Zeiner settled in Augsburg. J. Zenzenschmidt, the first book printer of Nuremberg, was born in Eger (Vogtland) and later moved from Nuremberg to Bamberg. Fifteenth-century letters, preserved in various private archives, testify to lively cultural ties: thus, for example, the famous artist Diirer and the book printer and publisher Koberger (both inhabitants of Nuremberg) both corresponded with the Basel humanist Auerbach, with the Strassburger printer Grueninger, etc. Thus, in different forms, a certain communality of culture was created which gave birth to a conscious striving towards cultural and, above all, linguistic unity. These were those new features of the future national culture which, under Germany's historical circumstances, were taking place in a slow, difficult and contradictory fashion. But it was precisely these new tendencies in the general cultural life of the country which facilitated the strengthening of the desire for a supradialectal type of language. 4. The striving toward linguistic unity, toward working out a supradialectal type, found its realization in the fifteenth century in the concept of Gemeindeutsch. The appearance of this concept, reflecting a tendency to overcome linguistic separatism, by no means meant the establishment of an authentic general German language. Under the circumstances of the existence of several varieties of the literary language, one of these varieties, the Augsburger, is of leading importance. The books written in this variety were printed not only in Augsburg, but in Schwabia, Alsace (Ulm, Strassburg), Switzerland and Leipzig, although the main printing production of these cities preserved the local linguistic peculiarities. The dominant position of Gemeindeutsch was somewhat shaky and ephemeral apparently because not only S. Brant published his Ship of Fools in a local Alemannic variant of the literary language, but the humanist Niklaus von Vile published his translations of Latin authors in the same

16

M. M. Guxman

Alemannic variety; in Leipzig, at the end of the fifteenth century, among numerous publications in the local variety of the literary language, the Sachsenspiegel was published, in the introduction to which it is mentioned that the book was rewritten in 'the Meissen German language'. The local traditions of the literary language were suppressed just as persistently in the North and Northwest. The famous words of Niklaus von Vile about the German written language ' . . . it knows neither art nor rules and changes according to the customs of the locality, the peculiarities of the people and age' fully preserve their strength not only in the fifteenth century but at the beginning of the sixteenth century as well. In addition to this, the structural unity of the leading variety of the literary language was very relative. Even the Augsburger editions are colored by different spellings of one and the same word and by parallel grammatical constructions, etc. ( c f . Guxman 1969). Gemeindeutsch was very far from the unity and strict regularities of the standardized literary language. However, the essential difference between Gemeindeutsch and the other existing varieties of the literary language was its social function, its qualification as a carrier of linguistic unity and the recognition of its leading role. The language of the Augsburger printers was, as it were, elevated above the other varieties of the literary language and thus became the first on the road to overcoming linguistic separatism. This elevation of the Augsburger variety of the literary language, the result of a complex interaction of the Southwestern and Southeastern traditions in the fifteenth century, was brought about by the role of the city, the economic and cultural-political center of the country. Augsburg was the stronghold of imperial power. The Augsburger printed publications were not only the most numerous, but the authority of the language of these editions was based on a close connection with the imperial chancery. The imperial decrees were printed in Augsburg; the Augsburger printer Schensperger was the court printer of the Emperor. All these facts imparted a special importance to this variety of the literary language. However, the course of historical events connected with the Reformation and Peasant War moved another variety of the literary language to the front in the next decades: the victory of the Reformation over a large area of the German lands also signified the victory of that variety of the literary language which was connected with the activity of M. Luther. The Augsburger Gemeindeutsch was compelled to retreat before the EasternMiddle variety of the literary language, elevated as a result to the level of a supra-dialectal type of language which became the basis of a unified literary norm {cf. Guxman 1969). The history of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary

Formation of the German Literary Norm

17

language, which became the basis for a unified linguistic norm, was such that it is possible only to speak very conditionally about the dialect basis of the contemporary German literary language. In recent decades, as a result of the detailed research of the greatest German linguist, Th. Frings (1956a, 1956b), the position that the Upper Saxon, more precisely the Meissen dialect, constitutes the basis of the contemporary German literary language has become dominant in foreign and Soviet Germanic studies. Moreover, the phonetic features of this dialect region differ profoundly not only from the contemporary orthoepic norm but also from the language of M. Luther. This dialect region did not have the cluster pf in initial position;/corresponded to it. Thus, forms of the type pflegen, pfund, pfand, characteristic both of the contemporary literary language and the language of Luther, cannot be connected with this dialect region and because in the Upper Saxon dialect p after consonants in gemination remains unfronted: cf. strump 'stocking', appel 'apple', the affricate p f , present in the literary language, is completely absent in the dialect; the literary language lacks such dialect features as the transition nd > ng (enge 'end', weng 'to turn'), the conversion of labialized vowels i/ii, e/o, i/u, which, when ije were mixed, led to the forms mir kinn 'we can', biise 'wicked', schiin 'beautiful'; the transition e > a, cf. schlacht ' b a d \ f a l d 'field', etc. The phonetic system of the Upper-Saxon dialect differs sharply from the phonetic system of the literary language. Under such circumstances, it is hardly possible to speak of this dialect as the immediate basis of the German literary language. But searches for a different, closer dialectal basis would be in vain: the base is still the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language, defined as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the result of very complicated intersecting traditions, a characteristic of which was an ever-growing isolation from the local dialect base. If in the fourteenth century the Gospel of Beheim still preserved cases of unfronted p in word initial position: planzen 'to plant', plege 'care', erbeit 'work' instead of arbeit; heubt 'head', instead of haupt; vregen 'to ask' instead offragen\ her 'he' instead of er, etc., which are typical of this region, then the literary monuments connected with the activity of the Prussian order (Apostelgeschichte, Prophetenbuch) reveal the significant influence of the Southern tradition: together with her, er appears, together with bis-unz, together with qelen-pinigen. Fregen, heubt, erbeit, is, etc., forms typical of Middle Germany, are absent: they are everywhere replaced by the more Southern varieties - fragen, haupt, arbeit, etc. The interrelationship between Middle-German and Southern forms fluctuates in the fifteenth-century manuscripts and publications of Eastern-Middle Germany. Research on

18

M. M. Guxman

the language of the various publications of the city of Leipzig indicates that, for example, the language of the Sachsenspiegel persistently preserved such Middle-German variants as orteil 'sentence' instead of urteil, adir 'or' instead of oder, the suffix -nisse rather than nufi, the prefix vor- rather than ver-, but together with the Middle-German sal 'must' appears the more Southern sol, the Middle-German son 'son' alternates with the Southern sun, the third-person pronoun 'he' everywhere appears in the Southern variety in the form er, but the form of the oblique cases follows the local traditions: om 'to him', or 'to her', etc. Absent even in the Sachsenspiegel, however, is the unfronted p after consonants and in gemination, the characteristic /instead of pf in word initial position, the contraction of diphthongs, delabialization, etc. Cases of the fixation of these peculiarities, specific for the Upper Saxon dialect, are literally uniform in the numerous Leipzig publications of the fifteenth century, while in one and the same text the more Southern forms are aways met with. Thus, for example, in the calendar-almanac of 1495, published in Leipzig, once one finds fleg 'care', although the infinitive pflegen always has the Southern affricate; in other editions bom 'tree' instead of baum is sometimes found, minch 'monk' instead of the Southern munch, etc. Individual Leipziger publishers at the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the influence of the tradition of Gemeindeutsch, more and more intensively were excluding several Central-German elements from their books: adir is replaced by oder, sal by sol, erbeit by arbeit, heupt by haupt, gebort by geburt, etc. Shortly before the Age of the Reformation and the Peasant War, in fact, that tradition of a significantly softened variety of the EasternMiddle German literary language was formed which was used by M. Luther and T. Miinzer. Apparently, the intensity of the isolation from the dialect base was partially connected with the extreme dialectal boundary drawn by the nature of the settlement of this colonized district. Research in dialect geography in recent years has indicated the presence in these regions of a complex chain of criss-crossing isoglosses, reflecting the existence of various synonymous forms which appeared there together with the colonists from the various regions of Germany. It is highly probable that the mixed character of the dialect base conditioned the early interaction and equalization of the sharp dialectal features in the local variety of the literary language. The absence in the colonized district of the preceding local literary tradition made this new variety of the literary language especially amenable to the influence of other written traditions, distributed as the result of the cultural, economic or political supremacy of one or another district. In this connection, two criss-crossing lines are

Formation of the German Literary Norm

19

to be distinguished: the influence of the Western regions of Middle Germany, connected with the leading role, especially in the fourteenth century, of the Mainzer eparchy, and the orientation towards more Southern regularities, bringing the Eastern-Middle German literary variety closer to the literary language of Nuremberg. Apparently, the fifteenth-century strengthening of the Southern elements in this variety of the literary language was the result of an entire complex of interacting factors: (1) changes, gradually noted in the language of the Mainz dialect region, which had isolated itself from the Hessian dialects which had bordered it in the North and fused into a unified whole with the Southern regions, had to be reflected in the writing and literary language of EasternMiddle Germany; (2) the 'superposition' of the former Lower German regions of Saxony - Wittenberg, Halle and Merseburg; (3) the advancement of Southern dialectal forms into the regions of the Eastern-Middle German dialects; (4) the strengthening role of Nuremberg and its intensive connections with Saxony; (5) the influence at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century of Augsburger Gemeindeutsch. Thus, the Eastern-Middle German variety was formed as a result of a protracted development by means of the selection of phonetic, grammatical and lexical phenomena not of one dialect. For this reason, it did not lend itself to straight-line dialect localization. In addition, the very development process of this variety of the literary language facilitated the development in it of language features of a supra-dialectal type. 5. The Age of the Reformation and Peasant War, which aroused the national masses, was a powerful stimulus for a peculiar renovation of the literary language. During the preceding century the development of the written-literary language traveled, in the main, along a line of growing isolation from the colloquial language. This process manifested itself by no means only in a rejection of sharp dialect differences but also in a certain archaization of the written language, in the selection of lexical and syntactical phenomena, often far removed from the developing tendencies of the language of oral communications. The longevity of old moulds and formulas, often fashioned according to a Latin model, facilitated a certain 'ossification' of the literary language. Despite the enrichment of literary genres in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the system of language styles was defined, for the most part, by official-commercial writing and religious writing in translation. Here the established canons were in effect; printed rhetoric books strengthened the models formed in the offices and in the

20

M. M. Guxman

schools of scribes; printed Bibles, psalters and lives of the saints established the stylistic devices formed within the bounds of the peculiar German Vulgate, although in the popular religious literature ( = Massenliteratur) several tendencies toward convergence with the regularities of the oral varieties of the language are to be observed; the secular literature in translation in the overwhelming majority of cases either utilized old clichés or slavishly imitated Latin models, approximating interlinear translations. The appearance of much polemical and agitational literature breathed new life into the stiffened form of the written-literary language. Not only Luther, Münzer and Zwingli but also their opponents Murner, Eck and Fabri addressed themselves not so much to their antagonists as to definite layers of the people or to all the people as a whole. This inevitably led to a certain simplification of the written-literary language, to its convergence with the colloquial language, to the appearance of new stylistic devices, vernacular vocabulary and phraseology in the written language. A desire to 'nationalize' the language, which is usually connected with the name of Luther, was characteristic of a significant portion of the polemical and propagandistic literature of the age. The language of the works of Münzer and Agrícola, the songs of Ulrich von Hutten and of anonymous leaflets and pamphlets reveals the same new tendencies as those in the prose of Luther.8 Together with this, the striving toward linguistic unity, although more intensive at the beginning of the sixteenth century, received a new stimulus in the popular movements connected with the Reformation and the Peasant War. This striving was reflected in the hopes of those circles which saw the salvation of Germany in a political and cultural unification. It was not a coincidence that judgments about the necessity for writing in 'correct', 'pure' German first appeared parallel to projects for the reconstruction of the feudal state and the demand for holding church services in the native language took on such an essential role in the struggle against the Catholic clergy. Publishing an anthology of German sayings in 1527, Agrícola complains of the disregard of the Germans for their language. Luther frequently turns to language problems in the preface to his works, in his letters and round-table speeches. 6. It is known that by no means everybody liked this new layer in the development of the written literary language. Not only Wimfeling but also von Hutten follow the old tradition in their prose: this is indicated by the preservation of chancery clichés, by the abundance of complicated participial turns of speech and by the choice of vocabulary items.

Formation of the German Literary Norm

21

At first 'a generally understood German language' begins to oppose itself to local dialects. F. Frank in his Orthographia cautions the reader against the use of dialects, which he calls landsprachen in distinction to rechte deutsche sprach or rein Deutsch (see Müller 1882). However, Frank's understanding of this 'general', 'correct' language is very peculiar; he introduces documents from the chancery of Emperor Maximilian, publications of the Augsburger Publisher Schensperger and the works of Luther as models for correct German.7 But, as is known, His Majesty's Chancery and Schensperger used the Augsburger variety of the literary language, and Luther wrote in the Eastern-Middle-Central variety. Apparently, the differences in these two varieties of the literary language were unessential for Frank. Moreover, it is sufficient in this connection to compare, for example, the language of Eck's translation of the Bible, which followed the Augsburger tradition, with the language of Luther himself in order for the significant divergences of these two varieties to become clear. Eck preserves the old diphthongs uo, He, ie, to which in the language of Luther monophthongs correspond: Eck - broder, gut, tun, fixeren, füeß, Luther - bruder, gut, tun, füren; in Eck the transition u > o before nasals is absent, thus kiinig, sun, kunnen, sunder, sunst, whereas in Luther könig, son, können, sonder, sonst. As a result of intensive reduction, in Eck e in the plural of nouns of the hard declension is absent; in Luther it is preserved. In Eck an umlaut before labials and ei is absent, for which reason he uses the variant arbeiten, erlauben, haupt, whereas for the language of Luther, especially before 1540, the variants erbeiten, erleuben, heubt are characteristic; for Eck the variant gan 'to go', stan 'to stand', the imperative mood gang, stand are usual; for Luther the variants gehen, stehen, the imperative mood geh, steh. In Eck, as in the other authors of Southeastern Germany, a unification of the vowelling of the singular and plural numbers of the past tense of strong verbs is to be observed: blibbliben, schrib-schriben. In Luther these differences are preservedbleib-bliben, shcreib-schriben. In the vocabulary of both translations significant divergences are also to be observed, typical of the interrelationship between the Augsburger and the Middle-Eastern varieties of the literary language: in Eck - not 'need', mangeln 'to lack', 'to be in need of', biihel 'hill', gleich 'similar', zähre 'tear', lefze 'lip', scheur 'barn', geiß 'she goat', empfinden 'to feel', peinigen 'to torment', bidmen 'to tremble'; in Luther - darbe 'need', darben 'to be in need of', hügel 'hill', anlich 'similar', träne 'tear', lippe 'lip', scheme 'barn', ziege 'she goat', fühlen 'to 7. It is revealing that M. Luther characterizing the language of his works indicated that it was not distinct from the language of the imperial chancellery and was, therefore, the most general German.

22

M. M. Guxman

feel', quelen 'to torture', beben 'to tremble', etc. In Luther one does not find such Southern vocabulary items as losen 'to listen to', blöderer 'chatterbox', schentzlen 'to mock', samstag 'Saturday', zistag 'Thursday', etc. To a contemporary, however, these divergences seemed insignificant when compared with the sharper peculiarities of the Southwestern and Lower-German varieties of the literary language. It is also essential to note that the above listed distinctive features, in the sphere of phonetic-orthographic and grammatical regularities, often shifted. In Augsburger publications, the Middle-German variants of words (kommen, son), the Middle-German verbal endings and weakened reduction frequently occur. The Eastern-Middle German publications not only include the Southern variants of individual words, of the type kumen, sunder, arbeit, glauben, but also Southern reduction: cf. mensch, frid, brunn in Münzer and Luther. All this created a certain fluctuation of distinctive features, distinguishing each of the two varieties of the literary language, and, in addition, facilitated the spreading of doublet forms. The divergences of both varieties of the literary language, competing in the sixteenth century, were codified in the normative grammars of the sixteenth century. Thus, the grammar of Klajus is based on the EasternMiddle variety of the literary language in distinction to the grammar of Albertus, oriented toward the Southeast of Germany. Linguistic separatism, conditioned by the political and economic separatism of the individual districts, preserved its strength throughout all of the sixteenth century. In the Southwest, in Basel and Zurich, not only were books printed in the local Alemannic variety of the literary language, but its full equality with the other varieties, including the Gemeindeutsch, was underscored. In the Hanseatic cities the Lower-German variety of the literary language continued to dominate. The Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language by no means still occupied a dominant position in the sixteenth century. P. Dasipodius' dictionary (1535), the most popular dictionary in the sixteenth century, published in Strassburg and many times reprinted, is wholly oriented toward the literary vocabulary of the South of Germany; recorded in it are vast 'very',feist 'fat', staude 'bush', ancke 'butter', losen 'to listen to', fantzen 'to mock', blutte 'naked', mor 'pig', gant 'auction', träne 'tear', leffze 'lip', geiß 'she goat', esterich 'floor', etc. The dictionary does not introduce such Eastern-Middle German literary vocabulary items as hiigel, lippe, quelen, darben, ufer, fühlen (only the Southern empfinden is given), fett (only feist is given), diele (esterich is given),

Formation of the German Literary Norm

23

erndten (lists the Southern schneiden), flehen (lists the Southern bitten), etc. From the Eastern-Middle German vocabulary included in Dasipodius' dictionary, dopff' pot' as a synonym for the Southern haf, lappe 'rag', 'patch', as a synonym for the Southern plátz, biene 'bee' (synonym for the Southern imme), schmucken 'to decorate', teppich 'rug', etc., may be mentioned. To a still greater degree, the dictionary of J. Maaler (1561) published in Basel is oriented toward the local Alemannic tradition of the literary language. A turning-point in the Southwest sets in as late as the seventeenth century, in the Hanseatic cities a little earlier, but, for example, Bibles were printed in 1615 in Liibeck and in 1620 in Hamburg in the LowerGerman variety of the literary language. 6. The establishment of the unity of the German literary language is above all connected with the spreading of the Eastern-Middle variety of the literary language beyond the bounds of Saxony and Thuringia. The essence of this process consisted in the fact that one of the competing regional varieties gradually began to lose its local character, acquiring more and more in a significant part of Germany a generally mandatory character, gradually replacing the other regional varieties. This process, observed from the beginning of the sixteenth century, does not immediately and uniformly encompass the different regions of Germany. Thus, it embraced above all the large urban centers, leaving not seldom around the cities untouched districts, preserving local linguistic particularities. The conversion of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language into the general German literary language begins with the conquest of the Lower-German region. However, even within the bounds of this dialect region alone, the conquest of the Eastern-Middle German variety was not realized uniformly. This process had some forms in Brandenburg, others in the Hanseatic cities of Liibeck and Hamburg. Similarly, as the blossoming of the Lower-German variety of the literary language was connected with the era of the power of the Hanseatic League, so the fall of the Hansa inevitably undermined the resistance of this literary language to the incursions of Eastern-Middle German. First of all this process took place in Brandenburg. Later, in Liibeck and Hamburg. However, the Lower-German vernacular remains in the cities to the present day as the colloquial, everyday form of the language. The victory of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language in the Lower-German district was marked by its qualitative

24

M. M. Guxman

distinction among other varieties competing with it: a decisive step was taken along the road of converting this very variety into the 'Common German' literary language, which the representatives of the Southeastern tradition had earlier laid claim to. If earlier in the development of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language a gradual isolation from its dialect base was marked, then its distribution in the Lower-German dialectal region signified a further advance toward a language of the supra-dialectal type. Not devoid of meaning is the circumstance that in the given dialect region the literary language turned out to be especially sharply opposed to the dialect. In the Southwest the steadfastness of the Alemannic variant was supported by a totality of different reasons: the political and economic isolation of the Swiss cities was not an unimportant factor for Swiss linguistic separatism; a certain meaning was carried by the authority of the given tradition in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; finally, the influence of the language of Luther to a great degree weakened with the stability of the authority of the Swiss reformer Zwingli. The Southeast, in its turn, resisted the unification with the tradition of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language. This resistance was supported not only by the political struggle of Saxony against the Bavarian-Austrian hegemony but by the religious schism as well. However, in the seventeenth century, the Southwest and the Southeast recognized themselves vanquished in this linguistic struggle. The growing influence of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language is connected with the activity of M. Opitz and the Silesian School in the seventeenth century, the works of the linguistic societies and grammarian-normalizers having great significance as well. However, in the seventeenth century the formation of linguistic unity still was only a goal toward which the most progressive writers and language theoreticians strove. It was not by accident that G. Harsdorffer indicated in his original poetics Der Poetische Trichter that each writer writes and rhymes as he speaks; the poetry of Opitz who rhymed kunst and sonst may serve as an example, inasmuch as in his dialect u and o were not distinct. Not only an orthoepic but a grammatical and, even more, a lexical norm were absent in the seventeenth century. The extreme retardation of the process of linguistic unity beyond doubt was conditioned by the absence of national unity in Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The formation of national linguistic unity in all countries is connected with the establishment of a common literary norm. Under the concrete circumstances of the historical development of Germany, where not only dialectal differences were so persistent

Formation of the German Literary Norm

25

but also their reflection in the literary language, the process of standardization had its specific forms. The very concept of norm was foreign to the sixteenth century. This is indicated not only by the extremely broad content of the term Gemeindeutsch but also by the utterances of the first grammarians of the sixteenth century. Even in 1607 R. Zatler in his work Teutsche Orthography und Fraseology (published in Basel) objected to the use of dialectisms and insisted upon following more useable models; together with this he indicated that each person has the opportunity to follow any chosen authority in the oral and written use of the German language. In the Cologne orthography, published approximately at the same time, one finds very similar ideas. The endless orthographic vacillations, the many-sidedness of forms, the grammatical doublets characteristic of the written-literary language and also the first-hand statements of the German grammarians of the seventeenth century, served as sufficient basis for affirming that this period really did not know the very concept of a norm. Moreover, a unified norm within the realm of orthography, grammar, word usage or orthoepy did not and could not exist. Only in the seventeenth century was a conscious striving towards the unity of the literary language connected with the problem of a linguistic norm. The concept of norm appears in Germany in the seventeenth century, perhaps as a reflection and refraction of philosophical rationalism but, beyond a doubt, under the influence of the strivings of the French standardizes. For the seventeenth century a norm was a rational principle introduced into the language by means of a conscious effort on the part of the educated. Thus, it could not have been founded on a dialect base. So, in the history of German there developed a concept of a unified supra-dialectal type of language, Gemeindeutsch, within the specific framework, it is true, of the phraseology of the seventeenth century rationalism. Even Schottel and later J. Bodiker supposed that the so-called Hochdeutsche Sprache was formed in an artificial way thanks to the efforts of scholars. Another position with respect to this question was held by those theoreticians and writers who suggested, as Gottsched did later, that the foundation for the norm of the literary language (Hochdeutsch) must be a specific dialect, particularly that of Saxony. However, both Schottel and Gottsched considered the literary language to be the carrier of a common linguistic norm, counterposed to the dialects. This was the new element which the seventeenth century brought in comparison with preceding centuries.

26

M. M. Guxman

The unity of the German literary language, connected with the establishment of a common national norm, was created as a result of the efforts of many generations. It was created as a result of conscious standardization on the one hand and the creative work of ingenious artists of the word on the other. The grammars of the sixteenth century still referred to written-literary models in their descriptions of the language. For F. Frank, as has already been indicated, such models were the works of M. Luther, the publications of G. Schensperger and the documents of the imperial chancery; for J. Klajus Luther's language served as a model; even in following centuries, references to existing models were preserved. Often these references evoked perplexity as, for example, did those of J. Zatler to the language of the chanceries of the Austrian cities, of the chancery of Speyer, of Mainz, of the Saxon and Brandenburg electors, of the princely chanceries of Wiirttemberg and Basel, of the urban chanceries of Augsburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Worms, Strassburg, etc. But Ph. Zesen, as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, refers to models of a written-literary language of a different character: together with M. Luther, he names his contemporaries M. Opitz, Buchner and E. M. Arndt. The norm turned out on the whole as a codification of existing usage, but the most important moment in this process was the selection of synonymous variants: if, for example, in the process of establishing a grammatical norm, the codification of usage of auxiliary verbs in the forms of the perfect and imperfect of the active voice could restrict itself only to the recording of regularities already existing in the overwhelming portion of Germany, the establishment of the usage of the attributive adjective or word order often outstripped to a certain degree the usage of the written language. The specific nature of the process of standardization is revealed to a still greater degree in the establishment of the orthoepic norm. However paradoxical it may sound, the grammarian-standardizers and compilers of dictionaries prepared the soil for the blossoming of German artistic literature. Naturally, M. Opitz and G. E. Lessing, J. K. Gottsched and F. G. Klopstock are celebrities of a different order. However, it was not accidental that M. Opitz was not only the head of the Silesian literary school but the standardizer of German metrics and, moreover, to a certain degree, the standardizer of the German word-changing system. It was precisely M. Opitz who introduced the norm into the interminable chaos of syncopated and full forms, formulating the rules of preservation and loss of unstressed e, which were very close not only to the consistencies of the language of Goethe and Schiller but to the features of the contemporary literary language as well. Conscious selection and fixation created

Formation of the German Literary Norm

27

the unity of usage of such categories as the form of the nominative case of the weak declension, of the type knabe, bube, mensch; the form of the nominative case of the feminine declension, of the type schlänge, gäbe, sache-, the forms in the plural of nouns of the masculine gender of the type tage, söhne, of the feminine gender of the type wände; the formation of phrases of attributive character; the first-person-singular endings of the verb; the forms of the inseparable prefixes, etc. The poetics of M. Opitz influenced in a definitive way not only the selection of these phenomena. Although not a great writer, Opitz was beyond a doubt an eminent theoretician and standardizer of the German language. Moreover, inasmuch as Eastern-Middle Germany in the seventeenth century and later in the eighteenth century continued to play the leading role in the entire cultural life of the country, it was precisely there that the first theoretical thought connected with the problems of establishing a unified grammatical norm evolved. After the Silesians, not only J. K. Gottsched and H. F. Geliert but also the philosophers C. Wolff and I. Kant were connected with these regions. In the eighteenth century, in Frankfurt on the Main, in Leipzig and later in Weimar and Jena, lived the greatest poets of Germany, and these cities became the centers of science, philosophy and art. Moreover, it is of interest to note that in the University of Halle, C. Wolff was the first to deliver lectures in the German language. For this reason the formation of a unified German literary language and the establishment of a system of generally mandatory norms were realized even independently of individual divergences in the understanding of this norm on the part of the different authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, within the traditions of the Eastern-Middle German variety of the literary language. This tendency was characterized by special intensity in the seventeenth century, when the Meissen dialect, more precisely the Eastern-Middle variety of the literary language, was comparable to the Attic dialect in Greece or to the Florentine in Italy, etc. Naturally, only the development of Germany in subsequent years, the leading role of the Eastern-Middle regions in the political and especially the cultural life of Germany, secured the rule of this variety of the literary language and guaranteed the victory of its tradition over the tradition of Southeastern Germany. It is important to stress that a specific linguistic tradition is meant and not a simple copying, which could not have been, if one takes into consideration the difference between historical foundations and those stages of development which the German literary language underwent from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

28

M. M. Guxman

Significant divergences are to be found in conceptions of the essence of literary language in the eighteenth century. The extremes of the rationally disposed standardizers, particularly the scholastic pedantry of Gottsched, were often ridiculed by contemporaries. In this connection, the questions concerning the relative importance of artificial standardization, whether or not the norm should be the result of the rationalistic efforts of scholars (Schottel) or only the codification of existing usage, whether it should have a narrow dialectal base or whether it should select all the best existing in the various dialects, were heatedly debated. The controversies centering around these questions which were widespread in the eighteenth century were illuminated in detail in the literature dedicated to this age. It is important only to stress that the realization of the necessity for developing a unified German literary language of a supra-dialectal type became dominant, irrespective of the understanding of the development process itself. New strivings and new tasks become especially clear when the dictionaries of the eighteenth century are compared with dictionaries and glossaries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The establishment of a lexical norm for the literary language, the delineation of the literary from the vernacular, the common national from the regional and dialectal, became the foundation of the tasks of the lexicographical works of J. K. Adelung, Campe and others. The mistakes and even distortions of these tasks are explained by the narrow-mindedness, often even class restriction, of one or another author. But, together with this, the strivings of the standardizers are indicative of those new processes which are connected with the formation of a unified literary norm for the national language. The unifying linguistic processes were constituted by numerous significant and more insignificant factors, connected with the various sides of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German life. The general development of culture and science, the development of literature and the theater, the activity of universities, literary circles and schools, the special reality of questions of literature and the theater, etc., were the defining circumstances which made the real linguistic unification of Germany absolutely essential. The development of a national culture was impossible without linguistic unity. The establishment of this unity was realized as an original synthesis of the protracted spontaneous development and standardizing tendencies of past centuries, when there took place the selection and codification of a defined system of signs established earlier in broad common national usage; the selection and codification assumed special

Formation of the German Literary Norm

29

significance under the circumstances of persisting dialectal differences in Germany. The striving toward linguistic unity and the initial stages of standardization in Germany are connected above all with the written literary variety of the language. However, the first elements of the standardization of the oral form of speech are noted in the seventeenth century. These tendencies are observed in the negative characteristics of the oral speech of the leading critics of Austria, which we find in the treatise of Scioppius Consultatio de prudentiae et eloquentiae parandae modis in adolescentis cuisdam Germani usum (1626) and in the observations of that author that the best German is spoken in Speyer because the travelers to that city strive to avoid the mixed features of their own local dialect; these same ideas appear in the utterances of Schottel, M. Opitz and J. K. Gottsched. For Schottel the question of linguistic unity was no longer only a problem of the written language. Schottel writes in his works not about the Schriftsprache in the proper sense of that word but about the Hochsprache, the Gemeinsprache, both in the written as well as the oral form of communication. For this reason a question is asked not only about 'correct writing' but even about 'correct sounding' as well. As with Gottsched, the linguistic model was the speech of the educated as it sounded at the Saxon court. However, as is known, the unity of the language in its written form was achieved in Germany significantly earlier and more fully than in its oral form. Essential in this connection are not only the biographies of the classicists of German literature, Goethe and Schiller, confirming the presence of elements of regional pronunciation in their language, but also data from the history of German rhyme. The works of G. Baesecke and F. Neumann dedicated to the analysis of German rhyme, indicated on the basis of extensive factual material the persistence of the reflection of dialect features in the rhyme of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German poets (Baesecke 1899, Neumann 1936). Such dialect features as delabialization, causing the appearance of rhymes in i: u, e:o, and the spirantal pronunciation of intervocalic g, causing the appearance of rhymes in ch:g, are consistently reflected not only in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German poetry, but in the works of Goethe, Schiller and, in particular, Heine. Connected with this is the later codification of the orthoepic norms (at the end of the nineteenth century) and the persistence of the dialect and semi-dialect in oral communication, especially in the colloquial, everyday variety of communication, and the ideal, rather than real, nature of the orthoepic norm itself, despite which dialectal differences preserved their strength, even in the pronunciation of

30

M. M.

Guxman

the educated. In addition, the imperative nature of standardization was most strongly expressed in the establishment of orthoepic rules. The establishment of a supra-dialectal norm, uniform for all of Germany, the extension of standardization to orthoepy and the appearance of this norm in the sphere of oral communication not only limited the use of the dialect and altered its social significance but created completely new literary language functions hitherto unknown. Connected with this is the further isolation of regularities in literary language development from those in dialect development.

REFERENCES

Baesecke, G. (1899), Die Sprache der Opitzschen Gedichtsammlungen von 1624 und 1625 [Language of the Opitz Collections of Poems of 1624 and 1625], Braunschweig. Bechstein, Ed. (1867), Des Mathias von Beheim Evangelienbuch, 1343 [The Gospel of Mathias von Beheim, 1343]. Leipzig. Dasipodius, P. (1535), Dictionarium Latino-germanicum vice germanico-Latinum [Latin-German and German-Latin Dictionary]. Strassburg. Foerste, W. (1954), 'Geschichte der niederdeutschen Mundarten' [History of the Low German dialects], Deutsche Philologie im Aufriss [Sketch of German Philology], Vol. ii, 1935-1939. Berlin-München. Frings, Th. (1956a), Sprache und Geschichte, ii, Mitteldeutsche Studien 17. Halle. (1956b), Sprache und Geschichte, Iii, Mitteldeutsche Studien 18. Halle. Guxman, M. M. (1956), 'O sootnosenii nemeckogo literaturnogo jazyka i dialektov' [On the interrelationship between the German literary language and dialects], Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1. (1958), Ot jazyka nemeckoj narodnosti k nemeckomu nacional'nomy jazyku [From the German Folk Language to the German National Language]. Moscow. (1964), Der Weg zur deutschen Nationalsprache, Part I. Berlin. (1969), Der Weg zur deutschen Nationalsprache, Part II. Berlin. [Enlarged German edition.] Maaler, J. (1561), Teiitsch spraach [The German Language]. Zürich. Maurer, F. (1925), Ein neues deutsches Evangelienbruchstück d. XIV. Jahrhunderts [A New German Gospel Fragment of the Fourteenth Century]. Giessen. Müller, Ernst Erhard (1953), Die Basler Mundart im ausgehenden Mittelalter [The Dialect of Basel at the Close of the Middle Ages], Bern. Müller, J. (1882), Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des deutschsprachlichen Unterrichts bis zur Mitte des XVI. Jahrhunderts [Sources of the History of German-Language Teaching to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century], Stuttgart. Neumann, F. (1936), Geschichte des neuhochdeutschen Reimes von Opitz bis Wieland [History of the New High-German Verse from Opitz to Wieland]. Strassburg. Trümpy, H. (1955), Schweizerdeutsche Sprache und Literatur im XVII. u. XVIII. Jahrhundert [Swiss-German Language and Literature in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries]. Basel.

N. I. KONRAD

2

On the Literary Language in China and Japan

In European works on the Chinese and Japanese languages the terms 'literary language' and 'written language' are widely used. Western European Sinologists and Japanologists use primarily the second term ('written language', 'langue écrite', 'Schriftsprache'') while Russian specialists use primarily the first. Both terms signify a phenomenon of language reality called wen-yen in China and bungo in Japan. These words are similar in both languages, not only in meaning and use but also in their component parts. The element yen in the Chinese word and go in the Japanese both signify 'language'. The root element wen in the Chinese word and the same element (in Japanese pronunciation bun) in the Japanese word signify both 'literature' and 'writing'; in this respect they are analogous to Latin litterae (meaning both 'literature' and 'letters'). Thus, the precise translation of the words wen-yen and bungo requires a term which would signify both meanings simultaneously. Such a term was not found in European languages, for which reason two freely interchangeable translations are used. In order that the conceptual unity signified by the Chinese and Japanese terms not escape the reader, we will hereafter render the terms wen-yen and bungo by the Russian expression pis'menno-literaturnyj jazyk ['written-literary language']. In European studies of the Chinese and Japanese languages this writtenliterary language is always opposed to the jazyk razgovornyj ('spoken language', 'colloquial language', 'langue parlée', ' Umgangssprache'). This latter term corresponds to Chinese pai-hua and Japanese kögo. Etymologically, pai-hua signifies 'plain speech' and kögo signifies 'oral speech'. We will hereafter use the Russian expression razgovornyjjazyk [spoken or colloquial language] as a translation of these terms. The first step in studying the language situation in these countries consists in stating the function of both languages in this situation. Any Sinologist or Japanologist who observed Chinese and Japanese

32

N. / . Konrad

language practice during the first half of the twentieth century not only observed these phenomena, however, but also witnessed the clash of the above-mentioned tendencies. The written-literary language, which had earlier dominated official and business documents, journalism and artistic literature, was gradually replaced by the colloquial language. In Japanese artistic literature it yielded rather quickly to the colloquial language in almost all types of prose and was retained for a while only in certain types of poetry. Retreating from scientific-popular literature, the writtenliterary language continued to be used in specialized scientific literature and also in some kinds of newspaper articles. The matter ended in a 'compromise': the colloquial language 'integrated' into its structure several elements of the written-literary language. Though the writtenliterary language had long reigned alone in official and business spheres, where everything was written according to its norms from the text of the law to linen receipts, in the end it failed to prevail. The new Japanese constitution of 1945, created after the surrender, i.e., a document of the type which had always been created strictly according to the norms of the written-literary language, was written in the colloquial language. Beginning in the second decade of the twentieth century, the same process also took place in China. As a result, the colloquial language was consolidated in all spheres which had been dominated by the writtenliterary language. Thus, we see a second proposition from which the researcher concerned with the language situation in China and Japan in the last forty to fifty years must proceed: he must recognize the struggle of these two languages, the written-literary and the colloquial, a struggle in which the colloquial was on the offensive and as a result of which the written-literary language was finally forced to retreat from the front. The struggle was not 'academic'. Both in China and in Japan, as the entire contemporary history of these countries proves, questions of language have more than once become the object of social attention. In Japan in the 1880s, i.e., at the time when a widespread movement began for the introduction of the colloquial language into artistic literature and journalism, a fierce controversy arose over which of the existing verbal copulas in the language ('da', ldesu\ 'de arW) should be used. And this controversy was conducted by neither scholars nor linguists; it was conducted by the foremost writers of the time, who had laid the foundations of the new realistic literature, the most significant trend in the literature of Japan, which was fortifying itself on the road to capitalism. These were: Hasegawa Futabatei, Yamada Bimyo, Ozaki Koyo. The first stood on the left flank; he fought for the most colloquial copula da; the

The Literary Language in China and Japan

33

second represented the center, as it were: he suggested the copula desu as the more literary; the third, who represented the right wing, advocated the copula de aru, intermediate between the purely spoken language and the written-literary, i.e., equally admissable to both. Of course, it was not a matter of the copula itself as such: each copula was used with a definite stylistic vocabulary and with its special stylistic grammatical forms; generally speaking, each corresponded to a particular style of speech. Inasmuch as the literary norms of the national language were in the process of formation at that time in Japan, all these questions were of the greatest social significance. Subsequent history has shown how the question of the copula was finally solved: the copula desu became the norm; the copula da became a part of that speech which was free from 'polite' conventions; the copula de aru (or de arimasu) became a feature of speech not addressed directly to an interlocutor. In recent years the question of which of the existing personal pronouns should be used has been ardently debated. Moreover, the debate left the public domain and entered government spheres. The Ministry of Education issued a resolution in which it recommended the use of certain personal pronouns. It is characteristic that only those pronouns were recommended which are considered the most 'neutral' from the point of view of politeness or rudeness. It would be possible to cite many such examples. It is important to note one characteristic feature which is invariably present in such controversies over language problems: the object of attack has always been the written-literary language, characterized as 'reactionary' and 'feudal'. In China the struggle for the exclusion of the written-literary language from artistic literature and journalism, which intensified in 1918-1919, was openly declared a 'literary revolution'. The appearance of such appraisals was due to the fact that the struggle against the written-literary language was always attended by a new social upsurge, by a strengthening of the fight for the democratization of society and culture. Thus, the struggle against the written-literary language in artistic literature in Japan first began during the bourgeois-liberal movement of the 1870s and 1880s when, after the revolution of 1868, the main transformations were in progress which opened the door to the strengthening of capitalism in Japan. The fight for the colloquial language in China arose in 1919 in precisely the same way in the atmosphere of the 'Movement of the Fourth of May', as the widespread democratic movement begun at that time in China is traditionally called. The aim of this movement was the liquidation of the remains of feudalism in society and liberation from the yoke of foreign imperialism. The last wave (in time) of such a movement in Japan reached its peak after the defeat of Japanese

34

N. I. Konrad

imperialism and militarism of World War II when large masses of Japanese people joined the struggle for the introduction of democratic reforms. The last wave (in time) of this movement in China was one of the results of the victory of the revolution. Mao Tse-tung spoke about the implications of language problems in his speech 'Against Banal Schemes in the Party' delivered at a meeting of workers' leaders in Yenan on February 8, 1942: 'During the "Movement of the Fourth of May" the bearers of new trends revolted against literature of wen-yen and spoke out in favor of literature in pai-hua, revolted against old dogmas, in defense of science and democracy, and in this respect they were completely right' (Mao Tse-tung 1953, Vol. 4, p. 92). It is apparent from these words that the introduction of pai-hua, i.e., of the spoken language, into all spheres of language use was considered in the context of the development of science and democracy. From all that has been said, a third proposition is outlined from which the student of the written-literary languages in China and Japan must proceed: he must take into account the fact that the social consciousness of the progressive democratic layers of both countries has always associated the written-literary language with everything old, everything hindering social and cultural progress. In order to thoroughly understand all these facts, the circumstance already indicated must be taken into account: in both Japan and China, the exclusion of the old written-literary languages from literary use and their replacement by the colloquial languages took place within the framework of the process of strengthening the common-national language in the social function of the language of a nation and establishing the literary norm of that national language. Therefore, the first matter which requires illumination is the national language problem in both countries. The juxtaposition of the development profiles of the national languages of two peoples, the Chinese and the Japanese, will permit us to note several common regularities in this process and expose the features distinctive to each country. The very history of these people affords a possibility of understanding both the causes for the appearance of these national distinctive features and their essence. As is well known, the histories of China and Japan were very different during the historical period when the Chinese and Japanese national languages were developing: the formation and development of the national language in Japan took place during the transformation of a feudal country into a capitalist one; the formation and development of the national language in China, however, took place during a delay in the development of capitalism in connection with the dependent position of the country and its enslavement by Western European and American

The Literary Language in China and Japan

35

imperialism. This state of affairs accounts for the relative protractedness of the preservation of feudal elements in the country. Later, however, after the victory of the Chinese people over foreign aggressors and over reactionary forces within the country, the development of the Chinese national language took place under the circumstances of the People's Republic, which were fundamentally different from the circumstances to be observed in Japan, where the capitalist structure continues to prevail. A bourgeois nation was formed in Japan; in China, this process failed to be achieved at an opportune time. The development of a people's democracy in modern China created the foundation for the formation of the Chinese socialist nation. The above-mentioned features in the history of Japan and China in the initial stage of national language history and in the present stage of this history account also for the features of the process of national language development of each of these peoples. As in the most recent history of Japanese, so in the most recent history of Chinese, one fact may be observed - in the first somewhat earlier, in the second somewhat later - which has the significance of a definite landmark in the histories of both languages. In the history of the Japanese language, this is the movement for gembun-itchi, literally: for 'unity of word and writing'. In the history of Chinese language this is the movement which received in China the name wen-hsiieh ko-ming 'literary revolution'. The movement for 'unity of word and writing' in Japan appeared in the 1880s; the 'literary revolution' in China belongs to the end of the 1910s and the beginning of the 1920s and is connected in the main with the events of 1918-1919. Let us take a close look at what constituted the content of these phenomena. The movement for 'unity of word and writing' in Japan in the 1880s was a fight for having writers write as they spoke; in other words, it was a fight for the use of the living spoken language in literature. The 'literary revolution' of 1918-1919 in China was also a fight for having writers write as they spoke, a fight for the formation of a literary language based upon colloquial speech. 'We should not exhaust much strength and energy on studying an ancient, dead language; instead, it is necessary to use the modern living language', said Lu Hsiin (1957, p. 25) later in one of his appearances, elucidating the essence of the 'literary revolution'. It is apparent from his words that the foremost participants in the Chinese culture of those years viewed this 'modern living language' pai-hua, as it was called - not simply as a 'spoken language', the language of everyday use; for them it was a new literary language: 'it is necessary to write in a simple, contemporary literary language, understandable to everyone - pai-hua' - Lu Hsiin said in the same speech.

36

N. I. Konrad

The movement for the 'unity of word and writing' in Japan was started by the young writers of that time, who later became the founders of the bourgeois literature - Yamada Bimyo and Hasegawa Futabatei. But they only expressed in a more definite form what was then thought and said by many of the representatives of contemporary literature, journalism and science. The 'literary revolution' in China was proclaimed by journalists and scholars from the ranks of the progressives among the Chinese intelligentsia. Lu Hsiin in the speech quoted above said that making the transition to the new literary language was tantamount to 'forcing silent China to begin to speak' and further added: 'such work was accomplished for the first time shortly before the "movement of May 4". This was the "literary revolution"' (1957, Vol. 4, p. 24). This revolution was carried out by a group of writers at the head of which stood Lu Hsiin, who had become the founder of a new progressive artistic literature in China. Kuo Mo-jo, the second outstanding figure of the new literature, immediately entered this group. These writers expressed themselves, however, only on those subjects which were on the minds and lips of the foremost intelligentsia of China of those years, especially the numerous young students who were its most active part. Both movements achieved complete success: the colloquial living language lay at the base of the language of artistic literature in Japan and later in the language of journalism and science; the living colloquial language became the foundation of the new literary language also in China. 'The modern literary language,pai-hua, gradually began to spread throughout the country, and, it is necessary to say, did not in general meet with great obstacles', Lu Hsiin (1957) writes about this period. Thus, both movements, in Japan as well as China, had, as we see, one and the same goal: the large-scale introduction of a national language, imparting to it all the most important language functions and thereby making it a really universal instrument of communication in the given country, not only of oral communication but of written communication as well. The fact that this goal was successfully (although not immediately) achieved testifies to the fact that it was set up by the very history of these two peoples. In the movement for the transition of literature to the spoken language, two aspects must be distinguished: the theoretical foundation for the necessity of such a transition and the practical experience in the creation of works in the spoken language. In Japan, Maejima Mitsu, in his report to the shogun, Keiki, on a language and writing reform, speaks about this transition in 1868, i.e., on the eve of the 'revolution of Meiji'. He addressed himself in 1869 to the new government with the same report. The

The Literary Language in China and Japan

37

movement greatly extended its scope in 1886 after the appearance of the treatise of Mozume Takami on Gembun-itchi. In the same year the first literary work written in the colloquial language appeared - short sketches by Yamada Bimyó, then beginning his literary activity. In China the importance of the colloquial language was first spoken about in 1898, in the days of the so-called 'reforms of K'ang Yu-wei'. One of the participants in these reforms, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, even attempted to publish an official gazette in pai-hua. But this attempt did not receive further development at the time and proved to be fruitless like all the reforms of K'ang Yu-wei. The movement for the new language did not actually develop until 1917-1919: at first it expressed itself in an appeal for such a transition and in its theoretical foundation. Several public figures, for example, Hu Shih, wrote about this in 1916. Beginning in 1917, the movement began to assume a broad character. The journal Hsin CKing-nien became its organ, and its collaborators not only called for a transition of literature to the spoken language pai-hua, but themselves wrote in this tongue. Another journal, Hsin Ch'ao, followed Hsin CKing-nien. Soon in many journals and newspapers special sections of articles and essays written in the colloquial language began to appear. The quickness with which this movement spread, immediately embracing not only literature but also journalism, is characteristic of China. This was not observed in Japan. In literature the main credit for introducing the spoken language into literature belongs to Lu Hsun, the founder of the New Chinese literature and the creator of its realistic bent. From this point of view, an important role was played by his early works: 'K'uang-jen chi Chi' [Notes of a Madman, 1919] and 'Ah-Q Cheng-chuan' [The True Story of Ah-Q, 1921], What was the historical situation in both countries during the years when these movements appeared ? The Japan of the 1880s was a country which had just turned onto the road of capitalist development. In the not-too-distant past, in 1868-1871, there took place a 'revolution and transformation' as V. I. Lenin characterized the events of those years in his 'An attempt to synthesize the main facts of world history after 1870' (c/ Lenin 1939, pp. 622, 623). Inasmuch as this characterization is found in the section 'Revolutionary movements of a non-proletarian character' for the period 1870-1875, it is clear that V. I. Lenin had a bourgeois revolution in mind. Indeed as early as the end of 1867 the house of Tokugawa was overthrown, a house which, for more than two and a half centuries from the very beginning of the seventeenth century had governed the country and supported its feudal system in its last historical phase, sometimes called

38

N. I. Konrad

feudal absolutism. This event was revolutionary, entailing bourgeois transformations, transformations which are, as we know, partial, and left in the country a series of feudal institutions but nevertheless as a whole led the country on the road of capitalist development along which it quickly traveled. The 1870s, i.e., the earliest years after the 'Meiji revolution', as the revolution of 1867-1868 is usually called, were filled with these reforms and opened for the Japanese bourgeoisie a broad path of development. The progressive elements among the bourgeoisie at the time led the struggle for reforms, starting a 'movement for the rights of the people' ('minken-undo'), as it was then called. The main slogan of the movement was 'freedom' O'iyff) in the limited sense that this slogan acquired among the bourgeoisie. In short, a bourgeois-liberal movement developed which is typical of the bourgeoisie in general in the period of struggle for the establishment of its dominance. In the middle of the 1880s the greatest upsurge in this movement appeared. It was precisely at this time that the movement for the 'unity of word and writing' was begun. The China of 1918-1919 was a country which had only a few years earlier experienced a revolution, as Mao Tse-tung termed the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911.1 For more than two and a half centuries from the middle of the seventeenth century, this dynasty ruled the country, establishing its supremacy, which was a specific form of feudal absolutism. The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty was a revolution because the destruction of the Bogdo Kha[ga]n regime removed one of the most important obstacles in the path of the introduction even of the mainly bourgeois reforms into the country. The fact that this regime indeed was a hindrance is strikingly shown by the failure of K'ang Yu-wei, who in 1898 attempted to introduce such reforms under this regime. After the events of 1911 a struggle for democracy (in its bourgeois interpretation) began in the country, led by the Kuomintang Party, which was then headed by Sun Yat-sen, that 'harbinger of the Chinese revolution', as he was called by Mao Tse-tung, and represented then the progressive strata of the Chinese bourgeoisie. But the revolution of 1911 was only one of the stages on the road to the liberation of China from feudalism and, moreover, from a semi-colonial state. The revolution of 1911 was still not a real struggle either with feudalism or with foreign imperialism. The protracted struggle began only in 1919 in the form of the 'Movement of the Fourth of May', as the rise of the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist movement, which appeared under the direct influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, began to be called in China. The 1. For example, in the work 'Chung-kuo ko-ming yu Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an-tang' (1939). Cf. Mao Tse-tung (1948, p. 214).

The Literary Language in China and Japan

39

leading role in this upsurge was played by the revolutionary democrats, the best representative of whom was Lu Hsiin. This, in similar fact occurred in the modern history of Japan and China; there appeared a broad social movement for the introduction of the living colloquial language into literature and, moreover, into journalism and science and for the literary cultivation of the living colloquial speech. To the fighters for its dissemination, this language was kokugo in Japan, kuo-yii in China. These terms in both languages are understood both as the 'language of the people' in the sense of the whole population of the country and as a 'common language', i.e., the 'language of the nation' and as the 'language of the government' formed by that nation. It is not difficult to see that all this, only different aspects of the same concept, is that which in our linguistics is signified by the expression 'national literary language' or 'literary norm of the national language'. The movement for the dissemination of the national literary language appeared after both countries, to one or another degree, had started on the road to bourgeois revolution, shortly after those elements of feudalism were overcome which more than anything else hindered the development of capitalism; this movement displayed itself at the time of the highest peak of the progressive movement of the bourgeoisie in these countries, a movement which in each country assumed a special form, depending upon the specific type of historical development of these countries: a bourgeois, liberal movement in Japan, a bourgeois-democratic movement in China. Such are the historical facts. A general feature of the development process of the national language of both countries displayed itself in the fact that both in China and in Japan the movement for the dissemination of the national language began at the time of the rise of a bourgeois movement, a movement which was progressive for its time. In Japan, however, it was connected with the bourgeois-liberal movement, in China with the bourgeois-democratic movement. This determined the essential national differences of the process: the bourgeois-democratic movement in China, as the more progressive, thus guaranteed the quicker and more decisive development and dissemination of the national literary language. What was the language which in Japan and China began to be called national? Inasmuch as the goal of the above-mentioned movements was its dissemination, this was obviously an important question. We already stated above that this was our contemporary, living, colloquial language in both countries. We know this on the basis of our own observations and on the basis of how the movement was named in both countries. In Japan it was called directly: a movement for the unity

40

N. I. Konrad

of the word, i.e., of oral speech, and writing, i.e., of written speech; in China they said: a fight for the simple language (pai-hua), i.e., the language which everyone spoke. But what was the 'colloquial language' ? A simple observation gives the answer: it was the language understood by the largest number of people, the most widespread. In Japan the inhabitants of Tokyo (in the eastern part of the island of Honshü) and the inhabitants of Osaka (in the western part of the same island) understood one another in this language; it was understood in Nagasaki (on the southern island of Kyüshü) and in Hakodate (on the northern island of Hokkaido). In China with pai-hua it was possible to live in Peking in the northern part of the country, in Nanking in the central part, and in Canton in the southern part. One could travel all around the country with it. It is true that, in traveling around Japan and landing, say, in Osaka or Nagasaki, we heard a speech which we understood very poorly: this was a local dialect. The same situation was observed also in China. This was true in the cities and even more so in the villages: here it was often necessary to look for someone who spoke the Tokyo language, if our business was in Japan, or the Peking language, if our business was in China. Usually such a person turned out to be a local official or a school teacher. The peasants somehow understood the speech of the 'capital' but answered our questions in such a way that we almost failed to understand anything. All this testifies to the fact that, together with the general language, local dialects also existed and exist even to this day. But what was that language which was to a great extent common to the whole country ? Was it a special language, standing, so to speak, above the dialects or some type of dialect with a widespread distribution ? What was just said gives us the answer: the common language in Japan was the language spoken in Tokyo; the common language in China was the language spoken in Peking. Does it follow from this that the Peking dialect became the common language in China and the Tokyo dialect the common language in Japan? In general, yes, but with certain qualifications. It may be asserted that it was the language which crystallized in Tokyo and Peking. But its base was broader than that of the urban sub-dialect: the base in Japan is the dialect of the whole vast region around Tokyo, i.e., the dialect of the eastern part of the island of Honshü; the base in China is the dialect of the whole vast region of which Peking is a part, i.e., the northern dialect of the Chinese language. But we repeat: this language crystallized in Tokyo and Peking, the largest political, economic, and cultural centers in the country, where representatives from various parts

The Literary Language in China and Japan

41

of the country, i.e., representatives of the local dialects, came together in common activities. The latter may be proven by concrete historical facts. Let us consider Japan. Edo, as the capital of the country was called until 1868, now Tokyo, was where the families of all the feudal lords, great and small, lived until the second half of the seventeenth century; with them lived numerous domestic servants as well. Here were found princely vassals of various ranks, conducting all the important business in the government institutions. The feudal lords themselves periodically lived in Edo, always surrounded by their military entourages, in the case of important rulers always very numerous. As a result, the population of the capital was always very mixed. To this it is necessary to add the permanent presence in Edo of the representatives of the various commercial houses all over the country, especially from Osaka, Kyoto and Nagasaki. The capital was the largest center of trade conducting business with all parts of the country. All these new arrivals, who had used their native speech at home, learned in Edo to use the speech of this city and, traveling later to their homes, carried this speech to all the corners of the country. Likewise, the natives of Edo themselves assimilated something from the alien, everchanging population. There were especially lively relationships between the Edo merchant and the merchant houses of Osaka and Kyoto, and on the strength of such contacts elements from the dialects of these two cities in particular appeared in the language of the Edoites; in Osaka and Kyoto, more persistently than in other places, in turn, the speech of Edo appeared. Thus, the national literary language of Japan was formed in a situation where there was lively communication among the representatives of various local dialects in the dialect of the political and cultural center of the country, the city of Edo. This may be observed in a series of linguistic facts. We shall introduce only one of these facts. As early as the middle of the nineteenth century, in the language spoken in Edo, forms of the verbal conjugation were present which were characteristic of all the eastern Japanese dialects, i.e., of the dialect system to which the speech of this city belonged, and at the same time forms of conjugation were present which were characteristic of the western Japanese dialect system, in particular, of the speech of Osaka and Kyoto. Both series of forms were apparently so vital that the English Japanologist B. H. Chamberlain presented them as two variants of the verb conjugation in his grammar of the Japanese language (understood as the common language of the entire country), compiled in the 1880s. At the end of the century, however, only isolated elements of the Western Japanese dialect forms of the verb conjugation remained in the Japanese national language, which, as

42

N. I. Konrad

indicated above, is supported by the fact that the Eastern Japanese dialect, represented by the speech of the city of Edo (Tokyo), formed the dialect base of the national literary language.2 This common language, formed in the last period of Japanese feudalism, received its special designation in the language: it was called futsugo, literally 'usual language', i.e., found everywhere, in other words, 'common'. How did this process go in China? From the thirteenth century on, Peking became the largest political, economic and cultural center of the country. Trade relations connected Peking with all the government districts. Peking trade houses conducted lively trade relations throughout the whole country, and large trading firms of the provinces also constantly did business with those of Peking. In a word, the picture was the same as that in Japan. Not only were there in Peking 'princely courts', as in Edo, but there was something which did not exist in Edo: large numbers of youths from provincial noble families, especially from petty landowner families, were regularly situated in Peking. They traveled there from all parts of the country. It was they who strove to enter government service and who formed the entire middle and lower and in part also the upper stratum of officials, who were very numerous and influential in this enormous country with its centralized government. In order to receive any position in the government structure, it was necessary to take a state examination. The examination for lower positions was given in the provincial centers of the countries; in order to receive the right to occupy a more important post, it was necessary to take the examination in the capital, Peking. Preparation for this examination was accompanied by a protracted stay in the capital, which naturally demanded a knowledge of the language spoken in Peking. Thus, the youths, receiving assignments in all parts of the country, spread the Peking speech everywhere, thereby making it the language of government institutions. This language received its special designation in the country: kuan-hua, literally 'officialese'.3 The Portuguese, who were the first 2. On this point see the works on the history of the Japanese language which have recently appeared in Japan, for example, Yuzawa (1943, pp. 10,11); also the majority of the general works on the Japanese language, for example, Kobayashi (1944, p. 371). 3. ' . . . approximately four-fifths of all the Chinese people speak so-called Kuan-hua, or the Mandarin dialect' (Schmidt 1915, p. 14). The general significance of kuan-hua and, moreover, of the northern variety, i.e., the variety based on the Peking dialect, is testified to by the fact that it was precisely this which all Europeans began to study first, naturally striving to master the language variety with the widest distribution. Furthermore, it is precisely this significance of kuan-hua which is reflected in the titles of reference works compiled by Western European sinologists. J. Edkins (1857), who

The Literary Language in China and Japan

43

Europeans to encounter it, because they called all the officials of the 'heavenly empire' mandarins, translated this Chinese name by the expression 'Mandarin language', 'Mandarin dialect'. Not only officials spoke the Mandarin dialect; it was spoken by the educated classes of Chinese society of the time in general; this dialect spread even among the trading population of the country. In short, at the end of the nineteenth century, it had already become p'u-fung-hua 'usual language', as it began to be called - 'usual language' in the same sense as futsügo in Japan, i.e., 'common language'. We have been speaking until now about that form of the common language which was created during the last epoch of feudalism - the period of feudal absolutism. In Japan this was the period of the Tokugawa shogunate, i.e., the beginning of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, in China, the period of the Ch'ing Empire, i.e., the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. It would be erroneous to think, however, that the dialects - the Eastern Japanese represented in the dialect of the city of Edo, the Northern Chinese represented in the dialect of the city of Peking - lying at the foundation of the national literary languages of these two peoples, were formed in the same historical period. Already in the second half of the sixteenth century we observe in Japan the main features of this dialect, the beginning of the formation of which dates back to still remoter times. This is not to be understood as the Edo dialect proper because, in the strict sense of the word, this dialect may be spoken of only with the appearance of the city of Edo itself, i.e., from the beginning of the seventeenth century, but rather, as the Japanese language as a whole: beginning with the second half of the fourteenth century the features of the grammatical structure which is characteristic of contemporary Japanese may be clearly observed; in the second half of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth century the contemporary phonetic system was basically formed. However, in connection with the fact that this developing, common Japanese norm later underwent special development within the city of Edo, one must speak of an Edo wrote a Chinese grammar as far back as 1857, made a special point of indicating that he was writing a grammar of the spoken language, 'usually called the Mandarin dialect'. A new, improved edition with the same title appeared in Shanghai in 1864. The German sinologist Carl Arendt (1891, 1894), who published his famous Chinese textbook in Germany in 1891, also wrote a grammar of northern kuan-hua, calling it 'A Textbook of the Spoken Language'. Kuan-hua is called the spoken language by M. Courant (1913) as well, the author of a popular French textbook on the Chinese language.

44

N. I. Konrad

dialect.4 The end of the seventeenth century and especially the eighteenth century are merely periods in the development of this dialect and its diffusion throughout the country, to some extent as a common language. In China, the northern dialect began to acquire its characteristics, as we know them today, as early as the eighteenth century.5 Its sources, however, date back to much earlier times. Phonetically, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the main features of its later phonetic cast were worked out, are of great significance in its history. Therefore, only the subsequent development of this dialect and its diffusion throughout the country, to some extent as a common language, belongs to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is necessary, however, to make one addition to the above exposition. We spoke about the diffusion of the Eastern Japanese dialect throughout Japan and of the Northern Chinese dialect throughout China, and about their acquiring the significance of a common national language. It should be added that the possibility for such a diffusion was facilitated by the process of a certain concentration of dialects, in progress at that time, a concentration, it is true, which did not then have a common character and was restricted to the spheres of definite groups of local dialects but which nevertheless, despite this restrictedness, had developed features of the future unified national norm. Thus in Japan at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth, we observe the traces of the common koiné in each of the two most important dialect systems the Western Japanese and the Eastern Japanese, the Kansai and the Kantò, as they are called in Japan. Phonetically, as was already stated, the phonetic system which is characteristic of the contemporary literary norm of the national language was established as far as its most important elements are concerned from the sixteenth century on. In China we detect the formation of a koiné in each of the most important groups of dialects at an early date : in a group of northern dialects, in a group of dialects of the eastern part of China - the Min group, as it is called in China - in another group of eastern dialects - the Wu group - and in a group of southeastern dialects - the Yiieh group. 6 The 4. For details cf. Hashimoto Shinkichi, Kokugogaku gairon (in the series Iwanami Nippon bungaku Kóza); Ando Masatsugu, Kokugo hattatsusi josetsu (in the series Kokugogaku Kóza). 5. The opinion of I. M. OSanin, expressed in its original form in 1946 and affirmed by him in a report read in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences in June 1951. 6. Here the term koiné is applied to a common language, formed on the basis and within the framework of a specific group of dialects, in other words, in the sense of a local common language. The formation of such local common languages is testified to

The Literary Language in China and Japan

45

presence of such local koine's with the ever-increasing communication between people from different districts facilitated the general process of dialect concentration. It was precisely this common linguistic ground which facilitated the diffusion of the Edo dialect in Japan and the Peking dialect in China as the common language of the country. It is necessary to note one further circumstance. When we trace the history of the common language, that predecessor of the unified national literary language, we find it, naturally, in literary works of some sort. In the main, these are literary works created by the bourgeoisie, who were born still within the framework of a feudal society. We stated above that in Japan the main features of the future common language are found in the fourteenth century. They can be observed in the language of the first works of early urban literature, the farces (kyógen).7 It was said above that we can detect the formation of elements of the future common language in China in the thirteenth century. Where do we find it? In the narrative literature of the time. But such literature was created by the urban classes of the time. Thus, the turn taken by a dialect in the direction of gradual transformation into a common language is connected with the growth of the bourgeois elements. Needless to say, this did not mean that the bourgeoisie used some sort of 'special' language of its own. This language was the common language in the dialect system of a region which, as a result of general historical principles, acquired special significance in the country. Usually this was the region of its main political, economic and cultural center. The language was created by the whole population of this region, the bourgeoisie playing an essential role in its literary reinforcement and its diffusion. But this shows the significance of growing capitalist relationships in the unfolding and development of a common language, later developing into a national literary language. Thus, the Edo dialect in Japan and the Peking dialect in China became the foundation on which the common national languages, which received by the appearance of a special designation for them : they, too, were called kuan-hua. Inasmuch as the word kuan-hua implies the notion 'common language', it is possible to speak of common languages of various regions. One sometimes finds the name kuan-hua applied to a local koiné in the works of European sinologists, for example, Nemeling (1907). Concerning these koiné, cf. Schmidt (1905), introductory part: 'Lingvistiòeskoe wedenie v izucenie kitajskogo jazyka' [A linguistic introduction to the study of the Chinese language]. Here, too, are general remarks concerning the formation of northern kuan-hua. 7. Yuzawa (1943, p. 8) directly indicates that the kyógen language is close to the common national language of the Muromati period (second half of the fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth).

46

N. I. Konrad

the name 'ordinary languages', developed in both countries during the feudal state: futsugo - 'ordinary language' - in Japan andp'u-t'ung-hua 'ordinary language' - in China. But we cannot speak of the development of 'ordinary languages' into national languages at that time: they were not yet either kokugo nor kuo-yii - 'national languages'. Should this be understood in the sense that the national language which we now know in Japan and China constitutes something else compared with the 'ordinary language' ? The answer to this question must be double: both yes and no. The national language in twentieth century China and Japan is not different from the 'ordinary language' of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in these countries; it does not constitute something different either in the sense of its grammatical structure or in the sense of its basic vocabulary stock. Both the basic vocabulary stock, i.e., above all, the everyday lexicon, and the grammatical structure of the national languages of these countries are the same as those of the 'ordinary language' of their past. The concept of 'national language' is not a concept of particular grammatical structure or particular lexical stock. Where is it necessary to seek the difference between 'national language' and 'ordinary language'? Perhaps only in the fact that the 'ordinary language' became the national language only as a result of the development and perfection of its own elements ? Of course the contemporary national languages in China and Japan have widely diverged from the 'ordinary languages' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The lexical structure changed in the most radical way. Japan, which turned toward capitalism in the middle of the nineteenth century, took over the technology of Europe and America as well as the exact and natural sciences with which this technology is connected; the bourgeoisie demanded the founding of political and juridical institutions, which were connected with that portion of the social sciences which catered to a capitalist basis.8 It is natural that all this entailed the introduction of an enormous number of new words and expressions into the vocabulary of the language. The same enrichment of the vocabulary is to be observed in the last forty to fifty years in China. It is true that here, in comparison with Japan, there were pecularities in this process in connection with the delayed and ugly development of capitalism in the country 8. The social sciences in Japan of the 1870s and 1880s were the economic, political and social teachings of Mill and Spenser, as well as Montesquieu and Rousseau (c/. Konrad 1932). In China until the end of the 1920s, as writes Mao Tse-tung (1948, p. 236), 'the evolutionary theory of Darwin, the formal logic of Mill, French educational literature, and the social history of Montesquieu' were widely disseminated.

The Literary Language in China and Japan

47

(ugly because of the semi-colonial position of the country and the stubborn persistence of feudalism). Building a new type of industry on a new technology in China was extremely slow and inadequate. Therefore, the new technology and the exact sciences connected with it could not be introduced in their entirety, and, therefore, the expansion of the vocabulary with new terms coming from this sphere was not abundant and stable. Instead of this there was a great enrichment of the language by new words and expressions coming from the realm of the social sciences. In China, as is known, feudalism and the yoke of imperialism long constituted the main obstacle to the development of the Chinese people, as a result of which a bitter struggle began in China with internal feudal and external imperialist oppression, a struggle in need of an effective ideological weapon. A revolutionary-democratic movement, whose leader was Sun Yat-sen, quickly developed in China and later grew into a struggle headed by the Communist party, a struggle in which Marxism-Leninism became a powerful ideological weapon (c/. Mao Tse-tung 1948, p. 263). All this led to the entrance into the vocabulary of the Chinese national language of an enormous number of new words and expressions from the social sciences, developing on the basis of Marxist-Leninist methodology. Thus, the active vocabulary of the modern Japanese and Chinese languages is not the vocabulary which was characteristic of the 'ordinary languages' of these countries in the recent past. But this change in the vocabulary was above all quantitative. It is true that a few changes in the morphology of derivation took place, precisely in connection with these new words, for example, the appearance of a series of new derivational affixes, but these changes do not alter the principal characteristics of the morphology of derivation in the Chinese and Japanese languages in general. Certain new phenomena in the grammatical structure as, for example, the wide development in Japanese of constructions with the predicate in the passive voice with a non-animate subject, as well as the diffusion of grammatical caiques from European languages into Chinese, also do not change the base of this grammatical structure, and they moreover are based on certain phenomena observed in the structure of the language in the past. Consequently, neither in changes in the vocabulary nor in changes in the grammatical structure should the appearance of the development of 'ordinary languages' in China and Japan into national languages be sought. What, then, changed futsugo and p'u-t'ung-hua into kokugo and kuo-yiil It would seem that the answer to this question is clear: the conversion of these 'ordinary languages' from folk languages into national languages. Of course, this is so. But nations began to be formed in Japan and China

48

N. I. Konrad

relatively recently. J. V. Stalin (1954, p. 13) shows that nationalities develop into nations 'with the appearance of capitalism, with the liquidation of feudal division and the formation of a national market'. Attention should be paid to the fact that J. V. Stalin is not speaking here about the complete liquidation of the feudal structure but only about the liquidation of feudal division. This means that under centralized feudalism the formation of a nation, at least the beginning of such a formation, is possible. Of course this possibility comes about not only as the result of the liquidation of feudal division; for this, two more conditions are necessary: the appearance of capitalism and the formation of a national market. But we know that capitalist relations arise under feudalism and that a national market begins to be created then also. As history shows, all this takes place in the last phase of feudalism, in the period of absolutism. The period of the Tokugawa shogunate was precisely such a period in Japan (the beginning of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries), and in China it was the period of the Ch'ing Empire (the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries). Consequently, the process of national formation in these countries had already begun at that time. It is known that the development of a nationality into a nation is accompanied by the development of a nationality language into a national language. From this it follows that the appearance of the 'ordinary language' in these countries meant that a national language had already arisen. A national language, in the full sense of the word, is formed later when it wins for itself the place of a unified common national language for the whole country. This process is connected in Japan with the abovementioned movement for 'the unity of speech and writing', in China with the 'literary revolution'. What did these movements mean ? The struggle for the possession of all spheres of linguistic communication. The successful result of this struggle, i.e., the conquest of all spheres of linguistic communication, would mean the ultimate formation of the national language. The historical period in which this struggle flared up has already been stated above. In Japan this was during the 1880s, after the overthrow of the shogunate and the introduction of bourgeois reforms, during the years when the bourgeoisie was actively working to strengthen its positions and pave the way for the development of capitalism. In China this was from 1917 to 1919, i.e., after the revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Bogdo Kha[ga]n regime and established a republic. Before 1919, and the above-mentioned 'Movement of the Fourth of May', the 'literary

The Literary Language in China and Japan

49

revolution' was part of a general struggle on the cultural front, and this struggle was, as it is characterized by Mao Tse-tung (1949, p. 4), 'a struggle between the new bourgeois culture and the old feudal culture'. Thus in China, too, the struggle of the national language to conquer all spheres of linguistic communication, i.e., to definitively strengthen its position precisely as a national language, also unfolded after the first victories of the bourgeoisie over feudalism. As was already stated above, however, the cardinal difference between the movements of the 1880s in Japan and the 'Movement of the Fourth of May', 1919, in China, must be taken into consideration. In Japan, this struggle was only for the main bourgeois reforms; in China, however, as we see from all the subsequent events, this movement, joined to the struggle for national liberation, quickly stirred up all the Chinese people and led to a struggle for the interests of the broad masses of people; in short, the struggle assumed a broad revolutionary scope. In Japan this struggle led to the surrender by the bourgeoisie of its bourgeois-liberal position and to the formation of a reactionary bourgeois-landowner block. In China, after joining the movement for national liberation, it quickly seized the main classes of the Chinese people and led to the Communist party's heading the struggle, which determined the real revolutionary character of the whole movement. In connection with this, the colloquial language in China, more quickly and surely than in Japan, occupied its position in the literary norm of the national language. It was stated above that this struggle was above all for the mastery of artistic literature. This circumstance is of great and special interest to the investigator of the history of national languages. Why was there a struggle for the language of artistic literature ? Because the paramount importance of this domain was consciously or unconsciously understood. Because literature plays the most important role in the formation of a man's personality, his thoughts, his feelings and his emotions. The influence of literature on man is exceedingly wide and multifaceted. It is necessary to note that the full affirmation of the national language in the literature of Japan and China is connected with the development of realism in this literature. Only realistic literature, definitively established in Japan at the end of the past century and the beginning of the present one and in China at the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, introduced the spoken language into the literature. Thus, the first stage of this struggle was primarily for the language of literature. In Japan one thus spoke of the struggle for the 'unity of speech and writing'; the 'literary revolution' in China was fought under the slogan of the transition of literature of pai-hua, the 'simple language'.

50

N. I. Konrad

Thus, the struggle for the language was at the same time a struggle for a new content and method in literature. But what did the new literary language have to contend with in its struggle for affirmation? Any Japanese and any Chinese language specialist can answer this question: with the old literary language, with the literary language of feudal Japan and China. Mao Tse-tung speaks very eloquently about this with respect to China. Characterizing the ideological side of the 'Movement of the Fourth of May' (1919), he indicates that it was directed against old dogmas. By 'old dogmas' he meant the Confucian doctrines in which the representatives of the ruling class of former times were raised. These doctrines were reflected in the literature in wen-yen wen, i.e., in the various types of compositions (wen) written in the old literary language (wen-yen). This old literary language, the literary language of the eighth to thirteenth centuries, was in the eyes of the 'new people', as the participants in this movement are called by Mao Tse-tung, an embodiment so to speak, of the Old Confucian doctrines, in other words, of the ideology of the old ruling class which still retained its position. For this reason, by opposing 'science and democracy' to these doctrines, the 'new people' displayed as their banner pai-hua wen, 'literature wr itten in pai-hua\ in the new literary language, in the literary language of the twentieth century. They thought that the new ideas of science and democracy could and should be expressed by means of this language (cf. Mao Tse-tung 1948, p. 956). The greatest classicist of the realistic novel in Japan, Shimazaki Toson (1872-1943) speaks of the need for the new literature to tear itself away from the paths of the old literary language. In a special introduction written by him for the Russian translation of his novel The Broken Precept, he writes: 'I would like to direct attention . . . to the fact that our new literature already has a fortyyear history behind it. I would like it to be kept in mind that this new literature began with a movement for the unification of the spoken and bookish languages. Until that time our language was so restricted by special and restrictive laws and rules that the writing of a literary work of art in the same language as that used in life was not permitted. This movement freed our literature from all the ways of the past. I consider this to be one of the most important points for understanding the appearance and development of our new literature.'9 We cannot go into a detailed explanation here of the question of what this old literary language was, its nature or its history. We will only say here that this language at the time of its growth was the living, colloquial 9. Shimazaki Toson (1931, pp. 3-4). The introduction was printed in Japanese in the journal Meiji bungaku kenkyii (March 1934, pp. 30-31).

The Literary Language in China and Japan

51

language of the time and that it gradually froze in certain forms, departing, as a result, from the constantly developing colloquial language, that it turned into a written language, almost unintelligible when heard, in the last centuries in both Japan and China. And it was called 'written language', wen-yen in China and bungo in Japan. It was this written literary language of old feudal China and feudal Japan with which the spoken language entered into conflict. As was said above, the battlefront quickly widened: the colloquial language began its attack not only in artistic literature but in all spheres dominated by the old written-literary language, above all in the spheres of journalism and science. Here it is necessary to note an essential difference between what happened in China and what happened in Japan. In Japan the introduction of the new literary language into journalism and science took place much more slowly than in China. It is sufficient to say that up until recent times in Japan not only editorials in newspapers but telegrams as well were written in a language which preserved the main features of the old literary language. For a long time also scientific works were written in this old literary language. In China, however, journalism and science were conquered by the new literary language much more quickly and decisively. One characteristic of the struggle should be mentioned. The fighters for the universal introduction of the 'ordinary' language, striving by every means to undermine the position of the old literary language, did not stop at declaring it 'class hostile'. In China, this manifested itself in the occasional association of wen-yen, i.e., of the old literary language of China, with feudalism. In Japan, the same tendency was marked in the discussion of the democratization of the national language, a discussion which arose soon after the defeat of Japanese imperialism in the Second World War. 10 What was understood by 'class' in language? Essentially, the matter did not concern language as such but that social class which cultivated the old literary language, already the written-literary to the new generation, i.e., understood with difficulty when heard. Indeed, this class was raised in the old tradition, received its education on the old foundation and looked scornfully upon the colloquial language, considering it inadmissible to turn to it either in business or in 'serious' literature - poetry and essays. The colloquial language, from the point of view of this stratum, was a language of 'peasant' novels, the property of the 'ignorant mob'. In reality, such views were inherited from feudal times and were 10. Cf. the articles concerning problems of language reform in the journal Nippon Hydron, June 1946.

52

N. I. Konrad

justifiably evaluated by the new generation as 'feudal', and this evaluation carried over to the literary language used by those who held the abovementioned views. The severity of such an evaluation was a result of the political opinions of the overwhelming majority of people in this class: they were at best conservative and at worst completely reactionary. In this connection, what came from the pens of these writers was for the people of the new generation not only 'backward' but hostile, 'feudal' as they said. Thus, the character of such a social class, which stood for the old literary language, the political positions of this class and the content of that which was created in this class, i.e., those features which really were of a class nature, were carried over to the language itself. If one turns to that which was found of a 'class' nature, directly 'feudal' in the language itself, this turns out to be, in essence, a few words and expressions characteristic of a speech style of a certain portion of the nobility and bourgeoisie, words and expressions which had permeated the common language. In the majority of cases, these words and expressions belong to the category of so-called 'politeness formulas', i.e., words and expressions especially suited for stressing the modesty of the speaker in relation to himself and his deference toward either his interlocutor or the person spoken about. The mistake of the partisans of democratization lay in the fact that they imparted to these words and expressions excessive significance, not understanding that words and expressions coming from the jargon of several social levels do not completely transform a language into a class language. In the final analysis, it must be mentioned that the struggle for the new literary language led to its victory, inasmuch as this struggle was predestined by history itself. But only in the final analysis, i.e., far from immediately. The complete victory of the new literary language in artistic literature, i.e., the elimination of the old literary language, came in Japan only in the first decade of our century, in the third decade in China. We can explain why this happened just at that time. In Japan, in the middle of the first decade, there unfolded a widespread bourgeois-democratic movement known under the name of Heimin-undo 'the movement of simple people'. This movement was evoked by the protest of the masses against a bourgeoisie which had turned into a reactionary force and, forming a bloc with the landowners, hindered the further democratization of the country. The sharpness of this movement no doubt also reflected the protest of the masses against war with Russia and to a large extent the revolutionary movement of 1905 in Russia.

The Literary Language in China and Japan

53

The above-mentioned 'Movement of the Fourth of May' broke out in China in 1919. Its substance and consequences were characterized by Mao Tse-tung (1949, p. 7) in the following fashion: 'Until the fourth of May, Chinese literature was old-democratic in character and constituted a part of the world bourgeois-capitalist cultural revolution. After the fourth of May, the new Chinese culture became new-democratic in character and constituted a part of the world proletarian-socialist cultural revolution.' There is no doubt that such a change could not have occurred had it not been for what Mao Tse-tung here calls 'the world proletarian-socialist cultural revolution'. To the extent that the revolution occurred in Russia, the change in the social foundation of the national liberation movement in China was influenced by the Great October Socialist Revolution. It thus becomes clear why the final consolidation of the position of the 'ordinary' language as the national literary language in Japan and in China occurred at the indicated time: only the new surge in the people's movement in the struggle against reaction could create the conditions for such a victory. After the victory of the new democracy in China, the new literary language dominated not only artistic literature but all the other spheres of language use as well. In Japan, however, even after the elimination of the old written-literary language from artistic literature, this language continued for a while to maintain its position in other spheres: completely in the sphere of official documentation, partly in journalism. This position was defeated only under the new upsurge of the democratic movement after the Second World War. As a consequence of the introduction of the new literary language into literature, literature immediately became the main arena for the further development of the national literary language. Moreover, it became the soil in which the common national language norm grew. This means that the literary languages of China and Japan were formed within the framework of the national language. As distinct from the old literary language, which had formed already in feudal Japan and feudal China, we call it the new literary language. In Japan, where it began to develop comparatively early, during the 1880s, it received a special designation: it is called Hydjungo, 'normative language' or 'standard language' as the Japanese name is translated. It was given such a name precisely because it had become the language norm according to which all the local dialects and sub-dialects and all oral and written speech in general were standardized. The school became the most important channel for the dissemination of this literary language, or language norm, especially the elementary school which was assigned the task of cultivating this norm in the whole population of the country.

54

N. I. Konrad

The new literary language in China was originally designated by the same word, pai-hua, which had served as the designation for the colloquial language; it later began to be called kuo-yii, literally 'state language' - the same word which was used to designate what we call 'national literary language'. In China, too, the school became the most important means for the dissemination of this new literary language. Thus, the paths leading to the establishment of the literary norm of the national language, in other words, the paths leading to the formation of the new, modern literary language in China and Japan, are very complex and in many respects different in each of these two countries; the relationship of the new literary language to the old in each of these countries is complex and also different. The new literary language in Japan absorbed many more elements from the old literary language, mostly in the realm of the various language styles; in China, however, a greater divergence from the old literary language took place, even in the realm of language styles. Differences are also to be found in the relationship of the new literary language to the local dialects: the process of eliminating local dialects took place faster in Japan than in China, where dialects, sometimes encompassing very large territories with many millions of people, succeeded in forming their local koiné. In this connection, the process of channeling dialects into the main stream of the national language proceeds more slowly and with greater difficulty. What is the difference in these countries between the old literary language and the new ? The 'chrestomathy' (Tokuhon) serves as the main textbook for nativelanguage study in the Japanese elementary school. This chrestomathy is a collection of specially compiled or particularly selected texts intended to serve as models of the Japanese language. The language of these texts is that spoken by teachers and students, i.e., the colloquial language. It must be added, however, that this language may not completely correspond with that spoken in several localities of Japan by pupils and even teachers at home with their family, especially if the family is from the peasantry. The 'domestic' language may be a local dialect, but the language spoken in school is studied across the country, is understood by everyone and is the language in which literary works are written. In those sections of the chrestomathy which are studied in the higher grades, one or two phrases are sometimes given from the usual text in two varieties: in the variety in which the phrase is given in the text, i.e., in the spoken variety, and in the variety it should assume in the written-literary language. We will introduce an example of such a juxtaposition (where the upper line is the colloquial variety, the middle line the written-literary

The Literary Language in China and Japan

55

variety and the lower line the meaning of each word); in English translation this sentence reads: 'In the city of Osaka of the goods purchased abroad rice is the most abundant.' Osaka shide gaikokukara kaiireru Osaka shinite gaikokuyori kaiiruru purchased 'Osaka in the city abroad ichiban öi mottomo ösi most abundant' 11

shinamonowa komega shinamonowa kome goods rice

The student learns from such a juxtaposition that nouns in the locative case end in -de (shide 'in the city') in the spoken language, but in -nite (shinite) in the written-literary language, that the ablate case in the colloquial language ends in -kara (gaikokugara '[from] abroad') but in -yori (gaikokuyori) in the literary language; that the nominative case in one instance ends in -ga (komega 'rice') but has the form of the base (kome) in the other; that the attributive (participial) form of the verb kaiireru 'to buy' is kaiireru in the colloquial language but kaiiruru in the writtenliterary language; that the predicative form of the adjective oi 'abundant' is oi in one instance but osi in the other; finally, that the word ichiban 'very, most' is best replaced by the word mottomo in the written-literary variety. The student thus sees that in the colloquial and written-literary varieties of the language certain case-endings, certain conjugated forms of the verb and adjective and even certain words are different. Although relatively limited in the Japanese elementary school, in the secondary school the study of the written-literary language is widespread. A large number of model texts of this language weie included in the chrestomathy. The wide divergence between the spoken and writtenliterary languages may be seen from the fact that a special course in the grammar of the written-literary language is necessary. The amount of lexical divergence may be judged even by such an example as the following: when translating the phrase saihai hanzen betsujini 'success and failure clearly to different things

zokuseri belong'

into the colloquial language, the one word saihai must be replaced by the two words seiko and shippai; the word hanzen by the word hakkirito, the word betsujini by the phrase betsuno kotoni, the verb zokuseri by the verb p.

11. The example is taken from the chrestomathy of 1907-1908. Cf. Pozdneeve (1908, 145).

56

N. I. Konrad

natteiru, not only is a new word selected in the latter case, but a different aspect of a semantically identical verbal form.12 In China, too, a chrestomathy is the main textbook for native language study. In many chrestomathies intended for use in the secondary school, two textual varieties are given at once: an original variety in the writtenliterary language and a translated variety in the colloquial. We will cite an example with the following English translation: 'Once all the foxes ran out of food, and they gathered together to go into the field and seek food.' 13 Original text: i 'one yeh field

jih cKuan hu shih chiieh day many (all) foxes, food ran out ch'iu shih to seek food'

chiang ch'u gathered together to go

Translation into the spoken language: yu i-t'ien hsti-to hu-li liang-shih wan-le 'there were once many (all) foxes provisions ran out pien-hsiang ch'u wai hsiin yeh-shih planned to go out to seek fodder'

t'a-men they

From the juxtaposition of these two varieties, the Chinese school boy sees that almost all the words in the written-literary language are ones he is unaccustomed to using: two words, i jih, are used instead of the usual i-t'ien 'once'; cKuan instead of hsti-to 'all, many'; hu instead of hu-li 'foxes'; shih instead of liang-shih 'provisions'; chiieh instead of wan-le 'ran out'; cKiu instead of hsiin 'to seek'; shih instead of yeh-shih 'fodder'. The Chinese school boy sees that certain grammatical forms are also different in the written-literary language. The form of the perfective aspect of the verb, ending in -le in the colloquial language, retains the base form in the written-literary language. The phrase-structure is also somewhat different: the word yu 'is' is unnecessary, while mandatory here in the colloquial language; the pronoun t'a-men, 'they', is also unnecessary. The Chinese school boy sees from another example, kuo yeh chih fei i-erh jen chih kuo 'the state is not a state of one or two people', that the written-literary kuo corresponds to the colloquial word kuo-chia 'state'; that where there are two words in the colloquial language, the negation pu 'not' and the copula shih 'is', the one word fei is used in the written12. The example is taken from the chrestomathy Gendaibun Yokai (Tokyo, 1927, pp. 94-95). 13. The example is taken from the chrestomathy Kuo-wen tu-pen, Book 2 (Shanghai, 1930, pp. 4-5).

The Literary Language in China and Japan

57

literary language as a special negative copula.14 In short, the student becomes convinced that the compilers of the chrestomathy acted rightly when they called the colloquial variety 'a translation into the colloquial language'. The examples cited are sufficient to give those ignorant of Chinese and Japanese a certain conception of what the difference is between the written-literary and colloquial languages and of the extent of the difference. The written-literary language has its own vocabulary, a significant part of which does not correspond to the vocabulary of the colloquial language (even as far as 'common woids' are concerned); the written language also has its own grammar, differing in many respects from the grammar of the colloquial language. What is this written-literary language? Or, in other words, the old literary language of Japan and China ? The old literary language (simply 'literary language' in former times, 'written-literary language' in modern times) is studied according to models. These models are taken from both the works of the authors of the modern and even the most modern times as well as from the literary monuments of former eras. This is explained by the fact that journalists and social figures such as, for example, Shimada Saburo (1852-1923) in Japan and Liang Ch-ch'ao (1874-1930) in China, phrases from whose works we cited above, reproduced the norms of the old language in their works. Naturally, the vocabulary of the texts of various epochs may far from correspond. It would be strange to expect articles on voting law or a trade-union movement, studies of differential calculus or rates of exchange to be based on the old lexicon. Here, the language of the writings of Sun Yet-sen is very characteristic: its grammatical structure is typical wen-yen, written-literary language; its lexicon is that of spoken modern Chinese. However, the extent to which any work uses the colloquial vocabulary is, in the main, restricted by the limits of the special lexicon and the corresponding terminology; as far as 'general' words are concerned, norms of the old language, even in the sphere of vocabulary, appear in force. What was that old literary language? To which period does it belong? When one studies the Japanese school texts containing models of the old language, one is struck by the frequent reference of the compilers to the Tsurezuregusa, one of the very famous monuments of fourteenth century literature. This is a collection of short essays, notes and discussions on all possible themes, from life, history, philosophy, etc. This book belongs to a poet-wanderer, the monk Kaneyoshi, better known under the monastic 14. The chrestomathy Kuo-wen tu-pen, Book 2 (Shanghai, 1930, p. 33).

58

N. /. Konrad

name Kenko-hoshi. The language of this work serves as a model of the written-literary work. The book of Kenko-hoshi is not uniform in language: in this respect it is indicative of all Japanese literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. After Tsurezuregusa, more frequently than other monuments of literature in similar chrestomathies, one finds the historical narrative Masu-kagami, also dating from the fourteenth century, and Hojoki, an autobiographical tale of the beginning of the thirteenth century. Thus, the historical form or model of the written-literary language of Japan of the modern and most recent periods is the language of the above-mentioned literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The language of the 'eight great writers of T'ang and Sung', i.e., of the esteemed poets, journalists and historians of the T'ang and Sung dynasty, serves as a similar historical model for the written-literary language of modern China. Generally accorded first place among them are Han Yii (768-823), Liu Tsung-yuan (733-829), Ou-yang Hsiu (10071072) and Su Shih (1063-1101). The works of these writers have long served as material for the study of the written-literary language, since the second half of the sixteenth century, when a well-known litterateur of the period, Mao K'un, published A Collection of Selected Works of the Eight Great Writers of T'ang and Sung with his comments. A completely educational application of the works of these writers appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century with the publication of A Chrestomathy from the Works of the Eight Great Writers of T'ang and Sung compiled by Shen Te-chiang. The extent to which the language of these writers served as a model for the writers of subsequent times may be judged from the words of Lu Hstin, who, speaking about the writers of the second half of the nineteenth century and even the beginning of the twentieth, said that 'they reflected if not Han Yii, then Su Shih' (Lu Hsiin 1957, p. 24). Here Lu Hsiin had in mind not so much the content as the language. Thus, the historical model of the written-literary language of China of the modern period and the latest period is the language of the works of the abovementioned writers of the eighth to twelfth centuries. What made the language of the literature of an earlier historical period a classical written-literary language in the eyes of succeeding generations? An answer to this question is given by the history of the language. The history of the Japanese literary language - in the form in which it is reflected in the monuments which have come down to us since the eighth century - testifies to the fact that this language followed a peculiar path of development. The rigid norms of the literary language, already formed in the eighth

The Literary Language in China and Japan

59

to twelfth centuries, were maintained in Japanese literature until the twentieth century. However, the living colloquial language, in developing its phonetic, lexical and grammatical systems, fought a stubborn battle with the archaic forms of writing for centuries and, in the end, almost completely eliminated them from all styles of written-literary speech. Examples were cited above of the written-literary and colloquial variants of one and the same text. The lexical and grammatical differences between these two variants are corresponding systemic differences. It is not possible to go into a detailed description of each of these systems here. We shall elucidate what has been said only in the most general form, citing examples from one of the most important branches of grammar, the system of verbs and adjectives. One phenomenon has remained stable throughout the history of the Japanese language: the presence of a set of common grammatical features in the verb and adjective. These common features are the presence in both the verb and adjective of predicative, attributive and modifying forms, the ability of the verb and adjective to have tense and modal forms. Naturally, the external expression of these grammatical forms in the verb and adjective are different, and not all these forms are equally developed; moreover, both the verb and adjective have their special grammatical forms, inherent to each of them. For this reason, they do not coalesce into one lexico-grammatical category. A t the same time, however, the presence of these general features does not permit their complete separation. Thus, the general grammatical character of the verb and adjective remains unaltered throughout the duration of the history of the Japanese language, but the external expression of certain forms, the degree of their development as well as their system itself, changes. So, in the old language the system of verbal conjugation is based on a special form for each function of the verb in the sentence. The opposition there of predicative and attributive forms determined the inclusion of a participal in the system of verbal forms. In the modern language this opposition disappeared, and consequently the grounds disappeared for separation of the participal, and that, in turn, influenced the structure of the attributive sentence. Modality in the old language developed in a system of moods; in the modern language these forms not only changed externally, but, more importantly, several aspects of modality were completely dropped from the system of grammatical modality, thus destroying the former system. Even such examples as the following give the reader an idea of how different the grammatical forms are in the old and the modern languages. The past tense in the old language had two forms; for example, from the

60

N. I. Konrad

verb torn 'to take' these forms are: toriki and toritariki. In the modern language the past tense (indicative mood) has only the one form totta. The future tense form in the old language is toran (toramu) and tord in the modern language. The negative forms of the verb in the old language are formed by means of the conjugated suffix -ji, by means of -nai in the modern language, so that 'I am not taking' is torazu in the old language but toranai in the modern language; 'I did not take' is torazariki in the old language but toranakatta in the modern language. The predicative form of the adjective of the old language had the ending -shi, the attributive form, the ending -ki; in the modern language both these forms are identical and take the -/. Naturally such changes have arisen and developed gradually in the history of the Japanese language; moreover, the changes did not affect the whole of the language but appeared at different times and in different places. During the course of a long period of time, two forms, the former and the new, usually coexisted; sometimes the new form was not retained, and the old form again established itself in full force. Thus, for example, the old system of verbal conjugation was formed over the course of a protracted period of time (several centuries) during which it gradually changed into a new system, and in this new system itself were deposited many features of the old. Therefore, when we speak of the system of old or modern languages, we have in mind the historical form of the language with the greatest distinctness and stability in the majority of its features. It must be said, however, that in this case we have a certain divergence from the living, colloquial speech. Definiteness and persistence are naturally determined by the actual language picture, but these dualities assume a special force in written form, in literature. Written fixation is in itself a tool which brings definiteness and can assist stability. Definiteness and persistence function, moreover, not only in the sphere of a written language but in the sphere of the colloquial, inasmuch as linguistic forms fixed in writing acquire the status of language models, of language standards. We observe precisely such a picture in the history of the Japanese language in the eighth to fourteenth centuries. In the literary works of these centuries we may trace the great persistence of some forms and the slight persistence of others. A comparison of the language in works of an abstract nature with the language of works closer to common speech reveals in the latter the more frequent use of various linguistic forms. Thus, if one compares the language of the above-mentioned monument Tsurezuregusa with the language of the Kyogen, the native farces of the

The Literary Language in China and Japan

61

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one finds in the language of these farces a series of elements which later became the norm of the new language. Inasmuch as the language of the farces beyond any doubt transmits the living speech of their time, such an observation enables us to conclude that there was a certain divergence between the language of the 'great' literature of the fourteenth century and the purely colloquial language. This divergence consists in the fact that other forms were present in a colloquial language together with those forms which we see in the literature. Thus, for example, in the speech of the characters of the farces we find both different forms of the verb in the attributive and predicative positions as well as one and the same form in both these positions. But the possibility itself of unhindered use of either both forms or one form testifies to the fact that such forms did not constitute a barrier to understanding. So, in the language of Tsurezuregusa and similar literary works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we find the sum, so to speak, of the past development of the Japanese language - a sum represented in those forms which had survived the long tests of language use and acquired a stability which permitted them as an aggregate and in their interrelationships to form a distinct system. This stability was determined by social practice, but literature and writing as a whole played a definite role in its creation. As observations of the history of the Japanese language show, the language of literature can play a considerable role in establishing the most appropriate and stable language forms if two conditions are present: if the language of this literature contains in itself all the most important language experience, and if this literature has during its existence a powerful and, moreover, progressive significance. The works in Japanese literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the type mentioned satisfy both these conditions. If we compare the language of Tsurezuregusa with the language of Genji Monogatari - the famous novel of the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries, we see at once that they are not identical. The language of Genji Monogatari and other famous, so-called 'Heian' novels of the ninth to eleventh centuries, is completely colloquial. Its grammatical system is the same as that in Tsurezuregusa. The past tense of the verb is formed the same way and has the same ending as it does in Tsurezuregusa. The same situation exists throughout the morphology. However, in the area of syntax, in the sentence construction of Tsurezuregusa, there is a tendency toward shorter syntactic constructions and more economical means of expression. The differences in vocabulary are even more striking. On the whole, it is basically the same, but in

62

N. I. Konrad

Tsurezuregusa there are many words of Chinese origin, while in Genji Monogatari there are very few such words. Facts of this sort indicate that the common language norms mentioned above were based on two different sources: purely colloquial and literary speech. We know the origins of this literary speech: the entire development in Japan from the eighth to the twelfth centuries was based on the study of Chinese literature - historical, legal, political and artistic. We know also how this study was carried out: it was based on the translation and interpretation of various Chinese texts. In addition, efforts were made in translating to preserve almost all words of Chinese origin and to use a phrase structure as close to the Chinese as possible. In this connection, a special translator's jargon was created in the schools, which subsequently became one of the styles of the old literary language and was called 'the style for literal translation from the Chinese' ('kambunchokuyakutaV). By degrees, more and more words from this Chinese literature crossed from special use to ordinary use and entered the common language. With them came also certain syntactic expressions. By the thirteenth century, this originally literary stratum in the Japanese language occupied a noticeable place. Those features peculiar to the language of Tsurezuregusa as compared with the language of Genji Monogatari, which we spoke of previously, belong to precisely this layer. The lexical borrowings mentioned, which made it possible to develop in Japanese a socio-political, philosophical vocabulary, enriched the lexicon of the Japanese language. And naturally, this enrichment of the vocabulary showed itself most of all not in the formally written novels but in works like Tsurezuregusa, namely, in commentaries on all the possible themes of social life, in the exposition of views and thoughts on various ideological problems. For this reason, Tsurezuregusa is actually the sum of the development of the Japanese language up to that time. The social significance of such works in the Japanese literature of the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries is beyond question. During these centuries, Japan was in a state of feudal dismemberment, when clashes between separate groups of feudal lords and peasant uprisings almost never ceased. This internal conflict reached special heights in the middle of the fourteenth century. Like Tsurezuregusa, Masu-kagami belongs to precisely this period. Masu-kagami recounts the very events of these decades; Tsurezuregusa reveals the views, judgments, opinions and tastes of the people of that time. From this standpoint Tsurezuregusa is a veritable art encyclopedia of the philosophical views and mental outlook

The Literary Language in China and Japan

63

of the most educated and reflective representatives of Japanese society of the fourteenth century. These are the historical-linguistic, socio-historic and literary-artistic reasons which make it possible to see in the language of these works the literary language of medieval Japan. This is the historical model for the written-literary language of Japan in the contemporary and most recent period. What was the historical model of the written-literary language of China of the new and latest period, of that language which is called wen-yen in China? We indicated above that this model was the language of the 'eight great writers of T'ang and Sung', i.e., the language of the greatest writers of the eighth to twelfth centuries. What is the significance of the language of these works for their epoch and for the general history of the Chinese language ? We must first define the relationship of the language of the works of these T'ang and Sung writers to the living, colloquial language oftheir times. As was indicated above, Han Yii, Liu Tsung-yiian, Su Shih and other litterateurs of the pleiad of the 'eight greats' were poets, journalists and philosophers. Their prose we would call articles, essays and treatises. Dialogue, which best of all renders the spoken language, is absent from them. Their relationship to the colloquial language of that era may thus be established through comparison with other literary monuments where dialogue speech is present and, in general, the language carries the obvious stamp of colloquial elements. There are such monuments: the narrative literature of the eighth to the twelfth centuries, above all the so-called T'ang novella (Fisman 1955). The novellas belonging to the T'ang period, i.e., to the seventh and tenth centuries, are constructed on plots taken from everyday life. In them we see people of the times and we hear their speech. A very famous novella is 'The Story of Ying-ying' a short story about the love of two simple people (Fisman 1955, pp. 136-148). Its author is Yuan Chen. A friend of an eminent poet of the T'ang period, Po Chii-i (772-846), and of the brother of the latter, Po Hsin-chian (775-825), Yuan Chen was himself not only the author of novellas but a poet as well. We know that they all moved in one of the literary circles of the time. Such circles, friendly groups of writers, were numerous then in both capitals of the T'ang Empire, Ch'ang-an and Lo-yan. These circles were the most widespread form of literary social life. Po Hsin-chian was also a poet and an author of novellas. One of his best novels is 'The Story of the Beautiful Li' (Vasil'ev 1935, pp. 139-162; Fisman 1955, pp. 90-145).

64

N. I. Konrad

There is no question but that the language of these novellas is the language of their authors, the language spoken by Po Hsin-chian and Yuan Chen and their literary friends, the language spoken by all writers, the representatives of the intelligentsia of medieval feudal China. They spoke the language spoken by the million inhabitants of the main T'ang capital, Ch'ang-an. This was the most common language of China at that time. Comparing the language of these novellas with the language of the articles of the 'eight greats' and taking into account differences evoked by the difference in genres, it is not difficult to discern that it is one and the same language. It is thus possible to say that the language of the 'eight greats' was not far removed from the living spoken elements of the time. In the biography of Po Chii-i it is related how the poet seemingly decided on the publication of his poetry only after having read it to his own nurse and having convinced himself that she understood everything. Of course, such a story is just one of the anecdotes usually woven into the biographies of renowned writers, but it is nevertheless worthy of attention: the idea itself is interesting that the language of the writer should be checked against the language of the simple people. Such an idea must have some truth in it: the language of the poetry written by Po Chu-i was really the language of his times. And if this was the language of poetry, the language of prose was even closer to the spoken language. And all these writers, we repeat, belong to one and the same social stratum, the intelligentsia of a large city of medieval feudal China. Several facts are very important for the characterization of the language of these writers. The first of these comes from the history of grammar, the second from the history of poetics. It is widely known that the science of grammar existed in old feudal China, having developed without the influence of any of the grammatical theories of the West. Several linguistic categories constituted the foundation of the grammatical system in this old science, the existence of which were noted by the old grammarians. At the beginning these were categories of 'full signs' (shih-tz'u) and 'empty signs' (hsii-tz'u). Inasmuch as the word in the eyes of these grammarians was always closely connected with the written sign, 'sign' in these terms is to be understood as 'word'. By 'full' was understood a word which carries a definite referential and therefore independent meaning, by 'empty' a word which does not have such a referential meaning. European Sinologists hold that the term 'full word' corresponds to our 'significant word', 'empty word' to our 'auxiliary word'. Such a division of words into two essentially different groups paved the way for the construction of the old Chinese grammatical system. Its

The Literary Language in China and Japan

65

essence lay in the fact that the significant words, entering into speech in specific interrelationships with one another, required auxiliary words; they required such words also in the case of a change in their meaning. Therefore, 'empty words' meant all the grammatical elements of the language, and grammar was that reduced to the analysis of the function of these grammatical elements. The study of the grammatical structure of the Chinese language was based in the main on the facts of the language of the T'ang and Sung writers. A chrestomathy of the selected works of these writers was, as we indicated above, the main text in school education. Moreover, the writers themselves of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries wrote, in the words of Lu Hsiin, 'if not reflecting Han Yii, then reflecting Su Shih'. Thus, such a grammatical study reflects in itself the grammatical structure of the Chinese language of the eighth to twelfth centuries. The very thoroughness of this old grammar and its obvious internal consistency and definitiveness could not have been obtained had the material itself not provided the data. We, approaching this material differently from the old Chinese grammarians, can only affirm the exceptional thoroughness and integrity of the language of the 'eight greats' of the T'ang and Sung period. It is also well known that all of Chinese classical poetry was based above all on the materials of the language of the T'ang and Sung writers. The poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries learned to write through the works of the T'ang poets; by studying the devices used by the T'ang and Sung writers in composing articles, treatises and studies, the prose writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries learned how to construct compositions and studied the existing devices used in expository prose, plot development, colophons, etc. In short, by acquainting ourselves with the classical poetry of China, we in fact acquaint ourselves for the most part with what the Chinese investigators found in the T'ang and Sung authors. These facts permit us to draw an essential conclusion: by virtue of its quality, the language of the 'eight great' writers of the T'ang and Sung period early acquired the status of a grammatical and stylistic norm. We are therefore justified in seeing in it the literary language of China of the eighth to twelfth centuries. Thus, the historical model for the writtenliterary language of China of the new and latest periods was the literary language of medieval feudal China. However, one essential addition must be made to what has already been said: in the language of the T'ang and Sung authors there are other elements as well. These may be traced to bookish sources.

66

N. I. Konrad

Han Hii, journalist, and philosopher of the T'ang period, proclaimed a slogan which not only became the standard for his own activity but became the general rubric of the whole T'ang and Sung period, i.e., eighth to twelfth centuries. This slogan was a return to 'the literature of antiquity' (ku-weri). 'The literature of antiquity' was for Han Yii and his followers the literature of China of the seventh to ninth centuries, B.C., which was indeed ancient even for them: Shih-ching [The Book of Songs], Shu-ching [The Book of History] and other ancient monuments from which were later compiled the so-called 'classical books' of Confucianism. Antiquity for the T'ang and Sung writers included the following centuries as well, when there lived the first great poet of China Ch'ii Yuan (340-278 B.C.); 'The Father of History' in China Szu-ma Ch'ien (145-86 B.C.) and the greatest master of the 'Poem in Prose', Szu-ma Hsiang-ju (179-118 B.C.). The works of these and several other writers of those centuries constituted for Han Yii and his colleagues 'the literature of antiquity' (for details cf. Konrad 1957). Leaving aside for the moment the question of the historical significance of such a return to antiquity, we shall only point out here that as a result of this return, which was accompanied by an intensive study of ancient literature, the influence of the above-mentioned works of antiquity, i.e., of the language of an entirely different era, was reflected in the language of the T'ang and Sung writers. Inasmuch as working out the history of the Chinese language, and especially of its grammatical structure, remains to this day an unfinished task of science, it is difficult for us to define the nature and degree of the grammatical differences between the language of ancient China and the language of medieval China. But, nevertheless, observing the traces of the ancient language in the language of the T'ang and Sung writers, we see that many of the constructions of the ancient language were easily placed within the framework of the medieval language. On the other hand, a study of the grammatical treatises of older and newer Chinese authors who were devoted to the written-literary language (wen-yen) shows that examples from the ancient written monuments are widely used in them. It is thus impossible to suggest a serious isolation of the literary languages of ancient and medieval China, although in many respects this ancient language differed from the medieval and was for the Chinese of the T'ang and Sung period the language of the ancient literature. We therefore can consider those elements which entered the language of the T'ang and Sung writers from the ancient language to be elements from a literary source.

The Literary Language in China and Japan

67

However, the facility with which elements entered the language of the eighth to twelfth centuries testifies to the fact that the T'ang and Sung writers took from the ancient language precisely those features which preserved their significance for later times, in other words, those features upon which the general direction of the development of the language was based. We may thus consider the language of the writers of the T'ang and Sung periods a kind of result of the development and standardization of the most persistent and vital elements of the Chinese language. One cannot fail to see in this one of the reasons why this language became the literary norm and acquired the status of the literary language of medieval China. For a full understanding of the essence of this literary language it is necessary however to take into consideration still one more circumstance, namely, a certain divergence between it and the purely spoken language of the period. Of this we are convinced when we compare the works of the T'ang and Sung authors, even those such as, for example, the novellas which were closest to the colloquial language, with the so-called 'anthologies of utterances' (yii-lu) and 'booklets of stories' (hua-pen) of the Sung period (tenth to twelfth centuries). In the language of these monuments of so-called 'popular literature' there are a number of features absent from the language of the abovementioned writers. We are well aware that a new period in the history of the Chinese language begins approximately in the thirteenth century, the final stage of which is the contemporary Chinese national language. This period is connected with the development of the so-called 'folk literature': folk-song poetry, stories and dramas. All the Chinese novels and plays which later became famous appeared after the thirteenth century. And their characteristic feature from the linguistic point of view was the fact that they were all written in pai-hua, i.e., in the colloquial language of the time. If one takes this new Chinese language, as it may conveniently be termed, in the latest stage of its development, then its most essential grammatical difference from the medieval language is, as we see it, the following. We indicated above that grammatical teaching of the medieval language was based on the opposition of two linguistic categories: 'full words' and 'empty words'. Grammatical teaching of the new period had to depart from this: instead of two main categories in the language, three were observed. Two of these were named by the former terms, shih-tztt and hsu-tz'u; the third by a new term: chu-tz'u.15 15. Cf., for example, the special treatise on the 'auxiliary words', 'Chu yu tz'u', by Lu I-wei (last quarter of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth century).

68

N. I. Konrad

However, these former terms received a new meaning. The word shift in the term shih-tz'u has the meanings 'full' and 'real'; the word hsii in the term hsii-tz'ii means 'empty' and 'absent from reality'. Corresponding to these second meanings, the term shih-tz'u began to be understood as 'words designating objects', hsii-tz'ii as 'words designating actions and properties of objects'. Such a concept is connected with the old Chinese grammarians' conception that existence is characteristic only of an object; as far as actions or properties are concerned, they have no separate existence apart from an object.16 But a grammatical observation was hidden behind this explanation: it was noticed that the appearance of a hsii-tz'ii, i.e., an 'auxiliary word' in the former sense of the term, depended upon the word which was, so to speak, served by that word. In other words, auxiliary elements were observed which were connected with the category of noun and auxiliary elements connected with the categories of action and quality. And this meant that the former general grammatical category 'significant words' split into two special categories: a noun group and a predicative group where everything was included which later in turn split into verbs and adjectives. Such a split was connected with the strengthening of special morphological features for these categories not only relating to analytic morphology but also belonging to synthetic morphology. Such a grammatical study, naturally, could not have appeared were it not for the linguistic facts supporting it. And these facts were new by comparison with the language of the T'ang and Sung authors. The above, we repeat, concerns the Chinese language of the later period; in the Sung folk tales and collections of utterances such facts were not yet fully confirmed and co-existed with facts present in the language of T'ang and Sung writers. For this reason, they did not constitute any barrier to understanding. Moreover the language of the Sung folk tales belonged to the spoken language of that time, and the above-mentioned elements were, as a consequence, characteristic only of that sphere of the language. But it must nevertheless be recognized that the literary language of medieval China, represented by the T'ang novella and the works of the 'eight greats', included only the most stable, cultivated and socially justified linguistic norms, i.e., it was precisely what we call a literary language. Such is the historical model for the written-literary language of China of the new and latest periods. It must be noted that the meaning of such a model for the medieval Chinese literary language resulted from the wellknown significance of the literature of its representatives. We indicated 16. Cf. the Chinese grammar Bumposyo by Hozumi Ikan, a Japanese sinologist of the second half of the eighteenth century.

The Literary Language in China and Japan

69

above that Han Yii proclaimed the slogan of a return to 'literary antiquity'. This slogan became the standard for a whole great epoch encompassing the eighth to eleventh centuries. The old classics began to be revived from oblivion, to be republished, studied and commented upon. They were quoted at every step. Opinions and conceptions were supported by them. There began a veritable rebirth of antiquity. What attracted one to this antiquity? What did the philosophers, journalists and poets of the eighth and succeeding centuries seek in the works of the seventh to second centuries B.C. ? The answer is given by the one who first called for a return to antiquity - Han Yii: in them were sought that humanism which the T'ang and Sung writers and thinkers strove to make the content of their epoch. Han Yii in his small treatise called 'On Man' was the first to proclaim that man is the highest value of all being, that in him all being is concentrated. 'Heaven' for him was only 'the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars'; 'Earth' for him was only 'grass, trees, mountains and rivers'. And everything in between - everything living, alive, acting - was concentrated in man. In his other treatise 'On the Way' Han Yii formulated the second tenet of Chinese humanism of the eighth century. This tenet is 'universal love', i.e., love for everything. Such a love for everything, in the conception of Han Yii, should be the basis for all social life and its progressive development (c/ Konrad 1957, pp. 73-74). Such ideas were new for the medieval China of that time and signaled a great step forward. What they led to in creative writing is shown by the poetry of Po Chii-i, which was thoroughly imbued with such humanism. This humanism also determined the enormous social significance of the works of the T'ang and Sung authors, a significance far transcending the boundaries of their epoch. The significance of the language of their works, the literary language of medieval China, was thereby enhanced. We hope that this exposition has revealed the essence of that phenomenon which is called wen-yen in contemporary China and bungo in Japan, i.e., the written-literary language. Why did it evoke passionate protests and in the end was forced to leave the scene? The answer to this question, we suggest, is clear: this language proved to be unfit for the people of the newest epoch. Above all, it proved to be unfit because it had already become obsolete. And it had become obsolete in all its most important elements: in both its vocabulary and grammatical structure. From a literary language, it had turned into a written-literary language. We have already broadly outlined the direction taken by the development of the Chinese and Japanese language of the new period. The

70

N. I. Konrad

grammatical structure acquired new features; new words flooded the language. The problem, it would seem, might have been easily solved: begin to write as one spoke. But two obstacles arose on this path: the insufficient development of pai-hua in China and kógo in Japan and certain features of the social structure. Literature written in the language of the new period began to develop in China from the thirteenth century, and by the end of the nineteenth century it constituted a large collection of novels, stories and plays. But the ruling class of feudal China firmly held all the other branches of writing in its hands. Thus, laws, political and economic treatises, philosophical essays, i.e., all 'serious' literature, had to be written in the language of the 'classics'. Even 'high' poetry and artistic prose did not have the right to descend to the level of 'simple language', the vernacular. The old literary language was thereby called upon to support Chinese feudalism. This explains why the struggle for a new China drew even language into its orbit. The same circumstances long retained the old literary language also in Japan. It too had become obsolete for people of the new period, had ceased to be understandable. From a literary language it turned into a written-literary language. During the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the last period of Japanese feudalism, an enormous urban literature grew up in Japan using, for the most part, the live spoken language of the time. Novels, stories and to a lesser degree theatrical pieces were written in this language. In this language the vast domain of the oral story grew, an extremely popular vaudeville genre among the people. As in China, however, the colloquial language, as a 'vernacular', was not permitted in those branches of writing which were controlled by the ruling class of feudal lords. For this reason, the text of the law, treatises on economics, politics, philosophy, if they were all not written in Chinese, were written in the old literary language. This old language became one of the instruments for the monopolization of enlightenment and of education by the ruling class; the ruling class closely associated it with themselves. It is understandable after this that when the bourgeois revolution took place in Japan in 1868, incomplete, it is true, but nevertheless leading the country in the direction of capitalist development, the struggle with the remains of feudalism, which was led by the young and still radically inclined bourgeoisie, included among its targets the old literary language which had long since become, as we said above, the written-literary language. But the reactionary block of the bourgeoisie and landowners became the foundation of power in capitalist Japan, and that fact caused both the indecisiveness of the position of the bourgeoisie, who quickly shed their original radicalism,

The Literary Language in China and Japan

71

and the stubbornness of the ruling classes with respect to the defense of the written-literary language. We have outlined above how long this language was retained in official use. Only the pressure of the democratic masses after the defeat of Japanese reaction in the Second World War forced the ruling class to surrender its position even in this language domain - the last which this class still held in its hands. The development of the system of the new language, fully revealed in Japan from the end of the sixteenth century on, led to the existence of a completely developed standard both in the domain of lexicon as well as in the sphere of grammar at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, conditions already existed for the formation of the new literary language. Such a language indeed exists in Japan. It is called 'model' (Hydjungo). Stable norms, which laid the foundation also for the formation of the new literary language, were formed during the long period of development of the new language of China. The preparation process went so far as to permit Lu Hsiin, the founder of modern Chinese literature, to create works establishing this new literary language as early as the end of the second decade of the twentieth century. It was called pai-hua in China, i.e., by the same word which had earlier meant 'colloquial language' and even 'vernacular'; at the present time the termp'u-t'ung-hua 'ordinary language' is accepted. Such a transfer of the term underlines, as it were, the unity of the linguistic sphere of the modern literary and colloquial languages From the above we may draw, it seems to us, the following conclusions: (1) A literary language should be understood as an aggregate of those linguistic norms which are the most highly developed and tested by social usage, the most stable and socially acceptable, those norms which define the phonetic system of a given language, its lexical system, and its system of grammar and stylistics. (2) In the general history of the language of any people, the literary language, thus understood, appears in different historical forms, which arise at each major stage in the history of that people, stages associated with great changes in the general structure of the language. Such historical forms may be termed the literary language of such an era. (3) The appearance of different historical forms of a literary language at any stage in the history of the language of a given people is accompanied by the historical development of that people, particularly with the stage of nationality formation and development and the stage of national formation and development. As history shows, the formation and development of nationality is connected with the feudal stage of socioeconomic development, and the national formation of a people, the formation and development of a nation, is connected with the capitalist stage.

72

N. I. Konrad

Correspondingly, one may speak of a medieval literary language and a modern literary language. (4) A medieval literary language and a modern literary language are different with respect to the scope of their utilization and, consequently, with respect to the degree of their social significance. In the former case, the social significance of the literary language is limited to definite, relatively narrow social strata, for the most part the ruling classes; in the latter case, the literary language acquires great, almost nationwide significance. The more decisive the process of democratization, the more effective this significance becomes. (5) In connection with this, the historical fate of these literary languages is different as well. A medieval literary language, restricted primarily to the use of the dominating class, gradually codifies its forms and thus begins to fall away from the general linguistic development of the language of a given people. On this basis a rift between the literary language and the language of actual speech takes place in the end, and the literary language becomes a written-literary language, as opposed to the colloquial language. A modern literary language, also codifying its forms to a certain extent but nevertheless being by nature closely connected with the entire language sphere (with the nationwide language), follows the general development of the language, constantly absorbing the most established and stable innovations appearing in the language usage of the nation. Thus, the modern literary language does not lose contact with the living language and does not turn into a written-literary language. (6) The rift between the medieval literary language and the language of living usage later leads to the dissatisfaction of the new generations with the expression by means of the literary language of the new ideas and thoughts entailed by a new era. On the strength of this there arises a certain antagonism between the old literary language and the new. (7) For its final development, a literary language needs written codification, a literature. We are therefore right in speaking of a literary language only if such literature exists. (8) The importance of a literary language as a definite linguistic norm is supported by the social significance of the literature in which the literary language is codified. (9) Inasmuch as the social significance of a given literature may change with a change in historical circumstances, the social attitude toward the literary language codified in that literature also changes: with the transition to a new stage of social development, the literary language, connected with the literature which is characteristic of the passing stage, is interpreted as unacceptable to the new social development.

The Literary Language in China and Japan

73

(10) The antagonistic opposition of the old and new literary languages in the social consciousness cannot long persist. Besides the general historical continuity which connects the new literary language with the old, the new literary language in its development must also in practice turn to the old, utilizing everything in it that is viable.

REFERENCES

Arendt, C. (1891), Handbuch der nordchinesischen Umgangssprache. (1894), Einführung in die nordchinesische Umgangssprache. Stuttgart-Berlin. Courant, M. (1913), La langue chinoise parlée. Grammaire du Kwan-hua septentrional. Edkins, J. (1857), A Grammar of Chinese Colloquial Language Commonly Called the Mandarin Dialect. Shanghai. FiSman, O. L. (Trans.) (1955), Tanskie novelty [T'ang Novellas]. Moscow, Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR. Kobayashi Yoshiharu (1944), Kokugogaku Tsdran. Konrad, N. I. (1932), 'Pervyj étap japonskoj burzuaznoj literatury' [The first stage of Japanese bourgeois literature], Problemy literatury Vostoka [Problems of Oriental Literature]. L. [1st ed.]. (1957), 'Naialo kitajskogo gumanizma' [The beginning of Chinese humanism], Sovetskoe vostokovedenie, no. 3. Lenin, V. I. (1939), Tetradipo imperializmu [Notebooks on Imperialism]. M. Lu Hsiin (1957), Speech on the theme 'Wu-sheng-te Chung-kuo' [Silent China], delivered in Hong Kong on February 16,1927, Chuan-chi [Collected Works], Vol. 4. Peking. [In Chinese.] Mao Tse-tung (1948), Hsuan-chi [Selected Works], Harbin. [In Chinese]. (1949), 'On the Movement of the Fourth of May' (an article in a collection devoted to the thirtieth anniversary of the movement). [In Chinese]. (1953), M„ IL, Vol. 4. Nemeling, K. (1907), The Nankin Kuan Hua. Göttingen. Pozdneev, D. (1908), Tokuhon ili kniga dlja ótenija i praktiéeskix upraznenij v japónskom jazyke [Book for Reading and Practical Exercises in the Japanese Language], Part 2, Books V-VIII. Yokohama. Schmidt, P . O . (1915), Opyt mandarinskoj grammatiki s tekstami dlja upraznenij. Posobie dlja izuienija razgovornogo kitajskogo jazyka Pekinskogo narecija [Mandarin Grammar with Exercises. Text for the Study of Colloquial Chinese of the Peking Variety], Vladivostok. [2nd ed.]. Shimazaki Töson (1931), Narusennyj zavet [The Broken Precept], Authorized translation from the Japanese by N. Fel'dman. Moscow-Leningrad. Stalin, J. (1954), Marksizm i voprosy jazykoznanija [Marxism and Problems of Linguistics]. M. Gospolitizdat. Vasil'ev, B. A. (Trans.) (1935), 'Povest' o prekrasnoj Li' [Tale of the Beautiful Li], 'Vostok', Collection 1, Literatura Kitaja iJaponii [Literature of China and Japan]. Moscow, Academia. Yuzawa Kokichiro (1943), Kokugosi gaisetsu.

A. A. JULDASEV

3

Problems of the Formation of Unified Norms in the Bashkir National Language

The establishment of standard norms in the Bashkir national language began, essentially, as late as the thirties of the present century, after the formation of the Bashkir A.S.S.R. Before this, the Bashkir language did not have a standard literary norm. It was represented, for the most part, by the folk-colloquial form of the language, although the literate portion of the population also used a written language which, for the entire duration of its history up to the October Socialist Revolution, considerably differed from the folk-colloquial form of Bashkir. Around the middle of the eighteenth century a chancery style emerged in the written language, in many respects close to the colloquial style of Bashkir (Axmerov 1957). This style persisted in the business papers of that time and was widely used in the works of Salavat Julaev as well (Axmerov 1957).1 At the end of the eighteenth century, however, in connection with the formation of the Central Spiritual Jurisdiction of the Muslims in Ufa, 2 the features of the Central Asiatic variety of the language 'Tjurka' began to dominate all styles of the written language. This may be traced not only in the works of the religious-clerical writers of the period but in the business papers as well. The development of the literary language proceeded almost in complete isolation from the oral Bashkir language. In a later period, the literary language up until the thirties of the twentieth century was based completely on the Tartar literary language. For this reason the written and oral varieties of the language continued to remain isolated. Progressive Bashkir personalities, beginning with the Bashkir educators of the end of the nineteenth century, M. Bikcurin and 1. Cf. also the book Salavat Julaev (Ufa, Press of the Bashkir branch of the A.S.U.S.S.R., 1952). 2. Created in 1788 by an ukase of the Tsarist government, the Central Spiritual Jurisdiction of the Muslims, as it is known, took under its supervision all spheres of the ideological and spiritual life of the Bashkir people.

76

A. A.

Juldasev

M. Umitbaev, and ending with the writers at the beginning of the twentieth century, fought for the liberation of the literary language from elements of Central Asiatic Tjurka. As a result of the efforts of Bashkir writers (M. Gafuri and others), a significant literature was created at the beginning of the twentieth century, based primarily on colloquial Bashkir and playing, therefore, an important role in the unification of the written and oral languages. 3 The influence of the Central Asiatic Tjurka on the written language was so deep, however, and the support which this written language enjoyed from the reactionary layer of the Bashkir intelligentsia and clergy who rejected everything native was so strong that the features of the oral language under such circumstances could not become predominant in the written language of the Bashkirs. The Bashkir language in its folk-colloquial form split into three territorial dialects, formed in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries on the base of closely related tribal dialects as a result of the economic and political concentration of tribal unions and groups. These dialects developed under different socioeconomic conditions. With respect to economy and culture, Bashkiria gradually divided into two districts beginning in the sixteenth century. The first district is Western and Northwestern Bashkiria where the transition to a sedentary way of life and agriculture began as early as the sixteenth century and was completed around the beginning of the twentieth century and where the socioeconomic life was built on capitalistic foundations before the October Socialist Revolution. The other district is Southern and Southeastern Bashkiria where the patriarchal-tribal way of life was preserved to a significant extent and where even toward the beginning of the formation of the Bashkir A.S.S.R. the Bashkirs led a semi-nomadic way of life, occupying themselves primarily with cattle-breeding, forestry and hunting (cf. Rainov 1952, Kuzeev 1959).4 As a result, the development of Bashkir dialects and patois followed two different courses. The above-mentioned socioeconomic factors and resulting weakness of the economic and cultural connections in South and Southeastern Bashkiria inevitably led to greater dialect and patois differentiation and to a breach in the development of Bashkir dialects and patois represented in the Northwestern part of Bashkiria where, due to a radical change in the mode of life, the connection and interaction between the dialects and patois was unusually enlivened beginning in the eighteenth 3. In this connection the works of a few writers of bourgeois-nationalistic orientation should be noted, particularly those of S. Jaksigulova and F. Sulejmanova, among others. 4. Cf. also the well-known studies of A. P. CuloSnikov.

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

77

century, leading to the obliteration of borders between them as early as the nineteenth century. The Northwestern dialect, whose speakers occupy almost half of the territory of Bashkiria, was, from ancient times, in constant and close contact with the Tartar language (cf. Usmanov 1950, pp. 8-17). This contact became more intimate with the fall of the Kazan Khanate. A mass resettlement of Tartars to Northwestern Bashkiria began in the fifties of the sixteenth century (cf. Ceremsanskij 1859), as a result of which the population ratio was changed in several places. And although the seventeenth to nineteenth century resettlement of the Tartars to the territory of Bashkiria did not take place on the same scale as that of the sixteenth century, nevertheless the influence of the Tartar linguistic environment continued to strengthen itself. This was facilitated not only by a numerical preponderance of Tartars in some regions of Bashkiria, especially in the Western part of the territory of the Northwestern dialect, but by a series of other factors as well, namely, by the leading role of the Tartar settlers in agriculture, with which the Bashkirs, going over to a sedentary way of life, had just begun to occupy themselves (Raimov 1952, p. 53); by the appearance of trade centers in the cities of Ufa, Belebej, Birskij, Sterlitamak with a predominantly Tartar population, which traded in urban as well as rural localities; by the opening of secular schools, where teaching was conducted primarily in the Tartar language; by the wide distribution among the Tartar population of the Tartar literary language, Tartar journalistic and artistic literature, which to a great extent was published in Bashkiria itself, etc. On the strength of these factors, the process, characteristic of this dialect, of intensive interaction of the patois entering into it proceeded under the circumstances of the dominant significance of the Tartar linguistic environment. This evoked a transformation of the Bashkir patois and the leveling of their characteristic features. Only two characteristic features of the Bashkir language entered permanently into the system of the dialect under investigation: (1) the replacement of Old Turkic d and z in inlaut and auslaut by interdental d (biz-da > bed da 'we have', bar-duk > bar-di'we go', kaz > kad 'goose'); (2) the use in the structure of the form of the present tense of the cluster -aj instead of the Tartar -ij (compare the dialect almaj 'he, she is not taking', oS'iraj 'is being caught', 'is being met', asaj 'he, she is eating', with the Tartar almij, ocirij, allj with the same meanings, etc.). In all the rest, the characteristic features of the Tartar language, more precisely of its central dialect, took hold. Thus, the whole group of Bashkir dialects, which appeared in the

78

A. A. Juldasev

Northwestern half of the territory of Bashkiria, based on the former tribal dialects of the Uran, Hajna, Tazzar, etc., united into a single dialect which, in all its characteristic features was opposed to the group of Southern and Southeastern Bashkir dialects, whose development proceeded along different lines. The socioeconomic conditions in Southeastern Bashkiria in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also changed to a certain degree. Here, two regions became gradually isolated: the Northeastern steppe and forest-steppe region, where semi-nomadic cattle-breeding was combined with agriculture, and the Southeastern mountainous region, where the dominant economy was semi-nomadic cattle-breeding with almost no agriculture. The Southeastern region was inhabited by the Burzjan, Tangaur, Usergan, Jurmatin, Kipcak and Tam-jan tribes (cf. Kuzeev 1959, p. 61), on the basis of whose tribal dialects a comparatively unified territorial dialect was formed. The nature of this dialect was in many respects defined by the tribal dialects of the Jurmatin (ethnically formed as a result of a mixture of Nogaj and Tartars) (Kuzeev 1959, p. 62). This dialect is usually called the Jurmatin. Into the Northeastern group of the Bashkirs entered the following tribes: Tabi'n, Kataj, Saljut, Aj (Ajle) and Kudej (Kuzeev 1959). On the basis of the dialects of these tribes the so-called Kuvakan dialect was formed, with predominance of the linguistic features of the former tribal dialect of the Tabi'n and Kataj, going back to the Kidan tribes of Central Asia (Kuzeev 1959). The difference in the economic-cultural life of the Southern and Northern regions of Eastern Bashkiria, observed even before the beginning of the eighteenth century, was preserved until the formation of the Bashkir A.S.S.R. In view of this, the Jurmatin and Kuvakan dialects developed separately in the course of the past two centuries. As a result, these dialects exhibit notable differences both in their lexicon as well as, particularly, in their phonetics, all the more because the structure of the tribal dialects and patois entering into these dialects could not have been uniform. 5 The main features of the Jurmatin dialect which is characterized by the 5. Many of the above-mentioned tribes, for example the Usergan, Tangaur, Nogaj-Burzjan, Duvan-Tabyn, Kataj, and Sal'jut entered the Bashkir tribal union at a relatively later period of ethnic development. Originating, for the most part, from the various Turkic tribes of Central Asia, they lived in the same socioeconomic conditions favorable to the preservation of linguistic features, as did the other tribes represented in Bashkiria.

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

79

comparatively intensive interaction of the dialects united by it may be reduced to the following:6 (1) Old Turkic s in inlaut becomes interdental 9, in anlaut and, at the beginning of an affix, h: susar > huQar 'martin', sartix > har'i 'yellow', kelsdr > kilhci 'if he, she shall arrive by foot, by vehicle'; (2) the palatalization of the sound structure of an entire series of words: compare Jur. ase 'sour', ad 'little', aderak 'a little', halmak 'weighty', 'moderate', kesertkan 'nettle' with the forms of other dialects: act, as'i, ad, ad'iraq, halmaq, salmaq, qis'itqan, q'icifqan, with the same meanings; (3) the preservation of the initial I affix, excepting where the given sound appears in an environment with sonorant sounds when I becomes n (kon+lar > konnar 'days' jun + le > junne 'explanatory', 'standing', tyy + lan > tyyna 'you listen', kirj + lek > kiynek 'breadth'). The Kuvakan dialect, fusing with all the dialects entering into it (of which there are considerably more than in the Jurmatin dialect), differs from the latter for the most part with respect to the following features: (1) Old Turkic s in words of Turkic origin consistently becomes h: compare Jur. husar and Kuv. huhar, hiuhar 'martin', etc. (2) Words of the type as'i 'sour', aqir'in 'silently', 'slowly', ad 'little', sas 'hair', ajdaniu 'to revolve', 'to spin', 'to turn', halmaq 'weighty', 'moderate', arsiu 'to clean', as distinct from the Jurmatin dialect, represented by a postpalatal sound structure. (3) The consistent progressive assimilation and dissimilation of initial n, d, I of an affix, as a result of which affixes with initial n, d, I, depending upon the nature of the preceding sound, have four phonetic variants. (4) A developed terminology reflecting the specific details of the material culture of the Bashkir people, their patriarchal-tribal way of life and cattle-breeding economy. Despite all their divergences, however, the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects display a large communality of features. This, above all, applies to the grammatical structure. These dialects differ from one another with respect to neither the structure of grammatical forms nor their basic meanings ( c f . Dmitriev 1948). To a significant extent such is the case also in the lexicon which constitutes the so-called basic vocabulary and which is divisible into a series of elements, for the most part going back to an Old Turkic language base, partially, however, to foreign sources. 6. The dialectal material introduced here and in the following account is taken from these doctoral dissertations: Kiekbaev (1949), Baisev(1955), Isbulatov (1955), Jusupov (1955). Material is also drawn from the results of dialectological expeditions kept in the manuscript collection in the Institute of the History of the Language and Literature of the Bashkir branch of the A.S.U.S.S.R.

80

A. A. Juldasev

In the realm of phonetics, the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects agree with all the other patois and dialects: (1) in the structure and articulation of the majority of vowel (/, e, a, u, d, i, o, u) and consonant (b, n, labio-dental v, bilabial v, d, x, t, z, s, s, j, k, g, q, y, x, r, I, m, n, g) phonemes; (2) in the use of vowels in words and affixes of Turkic origin in conformity to the law of palatal synharmonism, excluding complex words of the type bilbau 'waist belt', 'belt'; (3) in the laws of high vowel reduction in words containing the sonorants r, m, n, I; (4) according to the laws of vowel elision (Dmitriev 1948); (5) in the law of the so-called interruption of vowels operative in the Tartar, Cuvash and (partially) the Xakas languages; (6) in the voicing of final voiceless sounds and initial voiceless sounds of the second structural part of complex words in intervocalic position; (7) in the intonation system, in particular, in the laws of stress (Dmitriev 1948, Kiekbaev 1949); (8) in several laws of assimilation and other aspects of positional change of consonants (Dmitriev 1948, p. 35). The Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects also agree in the fact that they most fully present the characteristic features of the Bashkir language which were lost by many Northwestern dialects as the result of foreign influence and which, by their roots, apparently date back to the period of the formation of the basic ethnic features of the Bashkir tribes, i.e., to the period prior to the thirteenth century when the Bashkir language, as may be judged on the basis of very scanty and fragmentary though thoroughly reliable evidence7 constituted a certain unity.8 Here, first of all, belong the following phonetic features: (1) the absence of the phoneme c and the subsequent consistent transition of Old Turkic c into s: compare Old Turkic ac 'to open', cacak 'flower' and Bashkir as, sasak with the same meanings; (2) the absence of the phoneme £ which corresponds to the combination of sounds ji or je: compare Northwestern9 zir 'earth', fide 'seven' with Bashkir er, ete with the same meanings; (3) the voicing of initial n: compare Old Turkic pus 'to ripen', 'to be in time', pusan 'to be angry' with Bashkir bes 'to ripen', 'to be in time', 'to boil', bosonou 'to experience', 'to be anxious'; (4) the transition in certain positions of Old Turkic z and d into interdental d: compare Old Turkic biz-de 'we have' with Bashkir bedda\ (5) a corresponds in many cases to root i in Tartar and many other Turkic languages: compare Bashkir karak 'necessary', 7. Ibn-Fadlaris Journey on the Volga (Moscow and Leningrad, 1939, pp. 63-68); Xvol'son (1869, p. 713). 8. The nomadic way of life encountered the most diverse tribal dialects and patois and facilitated leveling. 9. The Northwestern dialect of the^Bashkir language.

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

81

kasta 'shelf', katjas 'advice', karta 'fence', kaban 'stork', kabak 'chaff', etc., and Tartar kirak, kista, kitjas, kirta, kiban, kibak with the same meanings; (6) observance of the law of labial harmony: compare Bashkir tormosobod-doT) 'of our life', komos 'silver' with Tartar tormisib'izntn, komes with the same meanings; (7) the voicing of initial q and k at word junctures in intervocalic position or preceded by a sonorant: qara qasll > qara yasl'i 'black eyebrowed', ike qullap > ike yullap 'willingly', matur kala > matur yala 'beautiful city', ike kitap > ike gitap 'two books'; (8) the consistent diphthongization of final i in strong position: yalej (a proper name), Valej (a proper name), compare Northwestern yali, Vali;10 (9) a tendency toward consonant loss in several words: jaQi (Kuv. jahl) 'flat', joma 'Friday', ede (Kuv. ehe) 'hot', aj'ik 'sober', b'inan 'from here', etc. Compare the Northwestern jass'i, jomya, iomga, esse, ajnik, mlnnan, bonnan; (10) a tendency to replace the rounded mid vowel o or u by the unrounded sound of the same series /: b'idau 'calf, b'iyau 'fetters', s'ibar 'piebald', sima 'smooth', compare the Northwestern bozau, boyau, cobar, Soma; (11) a tendency for jc to alternate with q: qat'in 'wife', 'woman', jaqsy 'good', compare Northwestern xatin, jaxsi; (12) a tendency for c and s to alternate with s: sarsambl 'Wednesday', 'surroundings', sisma 'stream', sarsau 'curtain', sirsi 'fir-tree', s'ij'iq 'liquid', compare Northwestern carsamb'i, cisma, cirsl, sij'iq. The Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects also most fully present the specific features of the lexical structure of the Bashkir language. The communality of features in the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects served as a premise for the creation of a unified national Bashkir language. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons11 there was no talk of its establishment until the October Socialist Revolution. 10. An exceptional case of diphthongization in inlaut is observed only in the word tejes 'must'. Cf. the Northwestern tijes with the same meaning. 11. Besides the above-mentioned factors, it is also necessary to mention that the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects, most specifically representing the details of the national Bashkir language, were found in that part of Bashkiria which, at the time, did not have leading economic or linguistic significance. Due to the development of the capitalistic system in Northwestern Bashkiria and subsequent reinforcement of the role of the Northwestern dialect, these dialects are gradually losing meaning in the social life of the Bashkirs. As a result of this the literate portion of the Bashkir people has gradually become bilingual: Bashkir has been used in everyday speech while Tartar has been used primarily in all other cases. This in many respects facilitated the wide distribution among the Bashkirs of artistic literature and periodicals in the Tartar language. Let it suffice to say that more than ten newspapers, several journals and many books in the Tartar language which became popular throughout Bashkiria were being published in the twenties in Ufa and Orenburg alone. All this, together with such factors as the national colonizing policies of the Tsarist government and the related economic and

82

A. A. Juldasev

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, due to the steadfast introduction of the Lenin national policy into the life of the people, the question of the creation of a Bashkir national language was the center of attention throughout the entire Bashkir A.S.S.R. In May 1918 in Moscow, a special conference of responsible Bashkir and Tartar workerCommunists was set up for the consideration of questions connected with the creation of a Bashkir national literary language. In the same year, the Central Commission on Questions Concerning the Bashkir Language was created with the eminent political and social personage S. Xudajberdin at its head. This commission solved a number of the most urgent organizational tasks concerning the preparation of national specialists, the creation of a national literature, a national publishing house,12 and a theater in Ufa and Sterlitamak and a whole number of other questions concerned with raising the cultural level of the Bashkir people. In 1923 a special committee was organized for the establishment of a national system of writing and the compilation of textbooks and educational aids in the Bashkir language. During the process of introducing all these measures, the question was raised of the dialect base of the literary language. On April 9, 1921, after lengthy controversies,13 a resolution was adopted to base the Bashkir literary language on the Kuvakan dialect.14 However, this resolution did not yield the expected results. It was soon ascertained that far from all of the features characteristic of the Kuvakan dialect were characteristic of the Bashkir language as a whole. This dialect could not resist the remaining dialects which, to a greater or lesser degree, had been influenced by the Tartar language and could not steer the other dialects into the mainstream of Bashkir language development. This latter role could be played by the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects together. The common features of these two dialects even constituted the cultural backwardness of the Bashkir people connected therewith, the absence of Bashkir home government and writing, the strengthening of Tartar imperialistic chauvinism, etc., completely precluded the possibility of Bashkir national language formation. 12. Under the leadership of M. Gafuri, the classicist in Bashkir literature, the newly created national printing college attracted the greatest savants of the Bashkir language. This enabled the language and style of all literature to be improved because the linguistic norms which were worked out were considered a model for all Bashkiria. 13. Cf the newspaper Basqortostan xabarlare, Sterlitamak, April 2, 1921. 14. Cf. M. Baxtijarov's article on Bashkir dialects in the newspaper Basqortostan xabarlare (No. 7,1921). Cf. the main orthoepic and orthographic rules in relation to the reviewed features from the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects which have been published in the journal Belem (Ufa, No. 1-2, 1924).

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

83

national base of the Bashkir language. This is why a resolution was adopted in 1925 to make these two dialects the base of the Bashkir literary language. The establishment of the literary language on the basis of the abovementioned two dialects was time-consuming and exceedingly difficult. This is explained first by the fact that significant divergences are to be observed in the phonetic and lexical structures of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects and that, furthermore, they are divided into a number of patois, each having its specific characteristics; secondly, these dialects had not yet been investigated at the time - the existing knowledge of them was of only a tentative character; thirdly, in the literary language in 1921-1925 many of the especially dialectal characteristics of the Kuvakan dialect were legalized. The problem of standardization was reduced to the conscious selection and introduction into the literary language of those analogous features of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects which, on the one hand, dominated the features with respect to which the given dialects were different and those features which differentiated them from the Northwestern dialect and constituted the specific differences of the Bashkir language, on the other. For the most part this concerned orthoepy, spelling and vocabulary. The standardization of the language could not be hurried, inasmuch as there were insufficient scientifically based data. Therefore, as early as the second half of the thirties the need for the acquisition and careful investigation of the corresponding linguistic materials became apparent. In carrying out this task, Bashkirista organized and conducted seventeen expeditions around the regions of Bashkiria which enabled them to collect extensive material. The first results of the study of this material were published in the form of separate articles in the pages of the local press (c/. Juldasev 1959). The fruits of the developing work on the investigation of the features of the Bashkir language were expressed also in the Bashkir language grammars which appeared in the thirties and later (c/. Juldasev 1959). As the result of all this work, the above-mentioned phonetic features of the Bashkir language were canonized (with the exception of the voicing of initial q and y at word junctures in intervocalic position and sonorants). With respect to the pronunciation of the basic mass of the Bashkir population, i.e., of the speakers of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects, this list of characteristic features of Bashkir orthoepy was gradually completed. In particular, the following characteristic features of these dialects entered into the literary norm: (1) The law of assimilation and dissimilation of consonantal affixes,

84

A. A. Juldasev

observed in the main in the Kuvakan dialect, according to which the Bashkir language, as distinct from the Tartar and other Turkic languages, is in many respects identical with the Kazak, Karakalpak, Xakas, Kirgiz and Altaj languages: (a) the assimilation and dissimilation of the initial n of an affix: its transition into t after final voiceless p, t, s, s, q, k,f (compare tas+nyy > tastyy 'stone' (gen.), kitap+ni > kitap'i 'book' (acc.), ayas+nyy > ayastly 'tree' (gen.), qalaq+ni > qalaqti 'spoon' (acc.), esak+ney > esaktey 'intestine' (gen.), skaf+niy > skaftin 'cupboard' (gen.); its transition into d after preceding /, m, n, y (compare bal+ni > baldi 'honey', qalam+ney > kalamdey 'pencil' (gen.), on+ni > ondo 'flour', uliy+ni > ul'iydi 'your son' (gen.)); the transition into b after r, b, u, ii (compare h'ijir+ni > hij'irbi 'cow' (acc.), bab+niy > badd'iy 'cellar' (gen.), bau+ni > baud'i 'rope' (acc.), beleii+ney > beleiidey 'knowledge' (gen.)); (b) assimilation and dissimilation of initial d: the transition of d into n in affixes of an oblique case or past tense in -t after the vowels a, ¿f (compare bala + dan > balanan 'from the baby', biilma + ddn > bulmanan 'from the room', kara+dim > karanlm 'I was looking'); the transition of d into d in inflectional affixes and the past categorical tense after preceding d, r, u, j (compare bau+ni > baud'i 'rope' (acc.), bar+dik > bardik 'we are going (by foot), we were traveling (by vehicle)', bedtda > bebba 'we have', malaj+niq'i > malajbiqi 'belonging to the boy'); the transition of d into I in the locative case affix and in the particle dal/da after vowels (compare qala+da > kalala 'in the town', tide la 'and . . . himself, itself'), the transition of d into t after voiceless consonants (compare qas+dik > qastik 'we hid', es+da > esta 'at work'). (c) the assimilation and dissimilation of initial /: the transition of / into t after voiceless consonants (compare jort+lar > jorttar 'houses', istas+lar > istastar 'comrades'); the transition of / into d after /, m, n, y, 2 (compare mal+lar > maldar 'cattle', kejem + lar > kejemdar 'clothes', kon + lar > kondar 'days', ey + lar > eydar 'sleeves'); the transition of I into b after r, b, u, j (compare kib + lar > k'ibbar 'girls', bau + lar > baubar 'ropes', tam'ir + lar > tamirbar 'ropes', dj+lar > djbar 'houses'). (2) A specific regularity of the Jurmatin dialect is the replacement of the original postdental spirant s by the interdental 0 in inlaut15 and auslaut: qi'Qka 'short' (compare the Northwestern qisqa, Kuv. qihqa with the same meanings), baQ- 'press' (compare the Northwestern, Old Turkic bas-, Kuv. bah- with the same meanings). 15. In this respect, Bashkir is to a certain extent close to Turkmen.

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

85

(3) Represented most clearly in the Kuvakan dialect is the tendency for o to alternate with u (compare the literary Bashkir butka 'porridge', butau 'stir', karluyas 'swallow', muyaj'iu 'to be bored', oso 'this', 'this one, and the Northwestern, in part Jur. botka, botau, qarl'iyac, qarltyas, morjaj'iu, susi); and a to alternate with u (compare literary Bashkir unda 'there', 'he has', undaj 'such', unyy 'he' (gen., acc.), uya 'he' (dat.) 'her' (dat.) and the Northwestern, Jur. anda, andij, aniy, eya). (4) The tendency for o to alternate with u: bogon 'today', bogongo 'today's' (adj.), kokort 'sulphur' (compare the Northwestern biigen, biigenge, kiikert). (5) The tendency for insertion, in certain cases, of consonant sounds: bll 'this', iltir 'to sit down', ultir'is 'sitting', kisange 'yesterday's' (adj.), bojdaj 'wheat', herpertke 'broom', etc. (compare the Northwestern bu, utlr, utiris, kisage, kicage, bodaj, bodaj, heberke, seberke, etc.). (6) The tendency to devoice b, d, g,f: heperexii 'sweep', timak 'thus', tiQta 'ten', ete 'seven', kaiida 'trunk', kerpek 'eyelash', tupraq 'soil',/earth', japraq 'leaf, etc. (compare the Northwestern hepereu, seberii, dimak, dista, Side, gdtidd, kerfek, tufraq, etc.). (7) The tendency for t to alternate with s: siskan 'mouse', soso 'fresh', soskordii 'to sneeze' (compare the Northwestern t'isqan, t'icqan, toce, tockereu). (8) The tendency for g (k) to alternate with n: siyertka 'grasshopper', tuyarak 'round', niya 'why' (compare Northwestern cikertka, tugarak, niga). (9) The tendency for / to alternate with n: jondod 'star', sogoldor 'beet', menan 'with', etc. (compare Northwestern joldid, cogonder, belan, etc.). (10) The tendency observed in the Kuvakan dialect for b to alternate with m: menan 'with', q'ismau 'bandage', morondoq 'muzzle', bina 'here' (particle), (compare the Northwestern and Jur. belan, boronli'q, m'ina). (11) Particular cases of consonantal alternation: /, r, d (compare Bashkir arqir'i 'through', tojddgan 'kite' and the Northwestern arqili, tilegan);/and b (compare Bashkir ebak 'silk' and the Northwestern efak); k and t (compare Bashkir terpe 'hedgehog' with Northwestern kerpe); m and d (compare Bashkir kiildak 'shirt' with the Northwestern kiilmak); b and ii (compare Bashkir keiiek 'similar' with the Northwestern kebek with the same meaning); y and m (compare Bashkir jamy'ir 'rain' with the Northwestern jayy'ir with the same meaning); r and j (compare Bashkir beraj 'some kind o f with the Northwestern berar with the same meaning); d and n (compare Bashkir ine with the Northwestern ide), etc. (12) Elision and assimilation at the junction of an analytic form of the past tense in -yan ine (compare Common Bashkir baryajntm 'I was going

86

A. A. Juldasev

on foot' with the Northwestern baryan 'we are going') and at the junction of the components of complex words oläsäj 'grandmother' (olo äsäj), olataj 'grandfather' (olo ataj), harajak 'the offspring of big horned cattle, born in the fall' (har'i ajaq), Qaridel, the name of a river, etc. (13) Particular cases of vowel alternation: i with ä (compare Bashkir irlän 'hamster', hike 'plank bed' with the Northwestern ärlän, sähe with the same meaning); e with ö (compare Bashkir bötöu 'to be finished' with the Northwestern betii with the same meaning); a with i' (compare Bashkir jaQmiq 'lentil', c'ibayas 'chain', s'irsau 'curtain', umurd'ija 'snowdrop', tiQtamal 'towel' with the Northwestern jasmak, cebayac, sabayac, carsau, um'irdaja, tastimal with the same meanings); je and ji with i (compare Bashkir eskäü 'to smell', feker 'thought', serekäj 'gnat', tejes 'must', etem 'orphan', ilau 'to cry' with the Northwestern isnäü, fiker, cirki, ties, zätim, j'ilau); e with i (compare Bashkir ireteii 'smelt' with the Northwestern eretii with the same meaning); i and ü (compare Bashkir kügäüen 'gadfly' with the Northwestern kigeüen); e with ö (compare Bashkir mey 'thousand' with the Northwestern möy with the same meaning); ö and u (compare Bashkir yumer 'life' with the Northwestern yömer with the same meaning), etc. With few exceptions, the enumerated characteristic features of the Bashkir language were in many respects common to the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects. They thus easily entered the literary language. Considerable difficulty was caused only by the assimilation and dissimilation of consonants. This is explained by the great divergence of the dialects of the Bashkir language, including the major ones, with respect to the given phenomenon. Thus, in the Kuvakan dialect, the assimilation and dissimilation of consonants at affix-base junctures occurs unusually widely and consistently,16 while in the Northwestern dialect it is of a different regularity and consistency.17 The Jurmatin dialect, however, here occupies an intermediate position.18 The norms which existed until 16. For example, as distinct from all the other dialects of the Bashkir language, the phoneme / at the beginning of all affixes (-lar, -la, -Uq, ll), after voiceless consonants of the base, is replaced by the variant t (compare es+läj > estäj 'he, she works', batqaq+ Uq > batqaqtlq 'swamp', tas+ll > tastl 'containing rock'). 17. As distinct from the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects, in this dialect there is no dissimilation of consonants, while assimilation applies only to a limited number of affixes (the affix -It, for example, is not assimilated) and occurs in correspondence with the norms of Tartar. 18. The forms of the past categorical tense and all oblique cases change in correspondence with the norms of the Kuvakan dialect, while affixes containing initial / (-lar, -la, -Itq) are in correspondence with the norms of the Northwestern dialect; only the affix -ll assimilates differently from the other dialects.

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

87

1925 based on data taken from the Kuvakan dialect were essentially opposed to the newly established norms oriented for the most part toward the Jurmatin dialect19 and corresponded neither to the regularities of this latter dialect20 nor to those of any of the other Bashkir dialects. The new norms, in addition, are not distinguished by sufficient consistency inasmuch as they are essentially a mechanical mixture of the rules of several dialects.21 If one in this connection takes into consideration that the regularities of the one dialect in their relation to the regularities of the other dialect are in this case, as a rule, mutually exclusive, it is not difficult to understand why the existing norms relating to assimilation and dissimilation of consonants at affix-base junctures are acquired with great difficulty and up until the present time continue to remain controversial. Such also is the existing practice of pronouncing and writing homonyms. As a rule, they are based on the pronunciation of the majority of the Bashkir people represented in the territory of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects. In addition, a significant part of the homonyms are differentiated on the basis of their phonetic variants in the various dialects and patois and, occasionally, on the basis of variants created by the 'standardizes' themselves: compare tura 'straight' and tur'i 'bay', niga 'to what' and niyd 'why', 'what for', e0 'smell' and ¿9 'feeling', 'memory', 'consciousness', tuyan 'brother', 'native', 'relative', and tiuyan 'he was born', 'born', aQi'l 'noble', 'valuable', and as'il 'essence', 'foundation', 'rudimentary', on 'voice', 'sound', and oy 'den', 'lair', ay'in 'rapidly flowing' and ay'im 'flow', tari 'millet', and dar'i 'powder', s'ij'iq 'liquid', and hijiq 'flexible', 'elastic', qatlam 'layer (of society)', and qatlau 'layer (of mountain rocks)', etc. Such a solution to the problem obscures the etymological nature of the word and destroys the consistency of established pronunciation and spelling norms (compare, for example, the pronunciation and spelling of as'il 'essence', 'foundation' with the law 19. Compare the practice, existing now and which existed before 1925, of standardizing phenomena of assimilation and dissimilation with respect to affixes with initial I (-iar, -Ilk, -ll, -la). The assimilation and dissimilation of initial I in the affixes listed above, in the affix of the past categorical tense and in oblique case affixes entered the literary norm from the Jurmatin dialect. 20. Here, for example, as distinct from the literary norm, initial affix / after base m, n consistently results in it: urman+lar > urmannar 'forest' (gen.) (compare Bashkir

urmandar), etc.

21. The norms operative with respect to « and d are based on Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialect regularities, those operative with respect to /, applicable to the affix -lar, are founded on the pronunciation practices of the Kuvakan dialect, while those applicable to other affixes (-Ilq, -ll, -la) are partially based on the norms of the Jurmatin dialect, partially on the pronunciation regularities of the Northwestern dialect but mainly on the etymological nature of the affixes listed.

88

A. A. Juldasev

according to which the phoneme s in inlaut changes to interdental 0, etc.). The remaining questions concerning the specific nature of Bashkir orthography were solved by conforming to the features of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects. The establishment and stabilization of Bashkir literary pronunciation norms were stimulated by such powerful factors as school, radio, and theater. All these factors played a decisive role also in the popularization of the orthoepic norms of the loanwords which entered the Bashkir literary language during the years of socialist construction. If earlier foreign language borrowings entered the Bashkir language, undergoing significant phonetic changes, then they, during the period of orthoepic norm establishment, due to the above-mentioned factors, in the majority of cases entered into the speech of all the speakers of the Bashkir language without special changes. Thus, in former borrowings the phoneme o, adapting itself to the phonological system of the Bashkir language, resulted in ä (bürbänä 'brevno'), i (compare känäfil'kanifol'), ö (görsäk'gorsok'). In the borrowings of the same period a divergence is observed here only in the stressed syllable, where the phoneme o continues to result in u (compare zavxuz 'zavxoz', savxuz 'sovxoz\ kalxuz 'kolxoz'). In unstressed syllables, this phoneme has a pronunciation almost identical with Russian (compare kamandir, kambajin). Moreover, in many words its pronunciation, when stressed, in Bashkir is not distinct from its pronunciation in Russian (compare dipo, rajfö, rajzö, silpö, seVpö, matör, 'motor', etc.). In former borrowings the phoneme v consistently resulted in b (compare kämbirt 'konvertpatbal 'podval') or u (compare dauaj 'davaf, parau'id 'parovoz\ samauir *samovar'). And only in word initial position, if followed by labial back vowels was it received as v (compare Volga, vulXs, 'volost'). In those borrowings which entered into the speech of the forties it was adopted with all its characteristic Russian features: compare zavuc, zvanuk 'zvonok\ kelivr 'klever', aviatsiä *aviacijaetc. Only in a few words the phoneme v in intervocalic position continues to result in u (compare zvinauat'zvenovodgruppauat'gruppovodetc.). The adoption of the phoneme e which, like the above mentioned two, contradicts the articulatory habits of the Bashkirs, is also of interest. This phoneme resulted in i in former borrowings (compare kämfit'konfeta'), ä (compare keläj 'klej\ pülämit ipulemet\ ziräbä '£rebij'), a (compare kulasa 'koleso'), I (compare ucir'it'ocered"). In the new borrowings of the type: kreml\ dizeV, tabel\ order, uSiteV, predsedatel', telegramma, etc.,'it is generally adopted without substantial changes. Only borrowings of the

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

89

type: akademik, gektar, desant, dezurnyj, respublika, patefon, etc., continue to be rendered by i in a significant number of dialects. The phoneme c, formerly having yielded s (compare pusti 'poeta\ usut'ucet') firmly entered the Bashkir language: compare izbac, uciteV, vrac, Cexoslovakija, etc. The phoneme sc is gradually being adopted in words of the type plasc. This sound is perceived in the dialects with the greatest of difficulty. The influence of borrowings in the adoption of the phonemes e, c, ju, ja turned out to be hardly noticeable (compare the dialect pronunciation larjuk tlarek\ mantjur'monter', kvitansy 'kvitancija', simint 'cement', kastiim 'kostjum\ biro 'bjuroetc.). In new borrowings vowel prothesis, characteristic of the Bashkir language, is not observable (Dmitriev 1948, p. 116) — compare, on the one hand, old borrowings of the type estina 'stena\ istan 'stany\ Istansl 'stancija', and, on the other, new borrowings of the type: student, stap, spion, znacuk 'znacok'. The main prerequisite for the successful solution of questions of orthoepy of the Bashkir language was the creation and perfection of a writing system which was not the property of the broader masses for a long time. Constructed on the basis of the Arabian alphabet, it was not appropriate for the Bashkir language. It was not easy to figure out its system. In 1929 a Latinized alphabet was adopted, and later an alphabet on a Russian base guaranteeing the independent representation of each phoneme of the Bashkir language (Juldasev 1959). This permitted the construction of an orthography on the phonetic principle,22 which noticeably facilitated the process of learning to write and served as a powerful conductor of pronunciation norms. On the other hand, the establishment of rigid pronunciation norms, in its turn, played a mammoth role in working out a standard spelling, insofar as this was based on a phonetic principle. The process of adopting spelling norms not based on orthoepy took a long time. This was caused, above all, by the insufficiently consistent solution of a whole series of questions. Many rules were reconsidered several times, and spelling gradually became more uniform. However, it could be still more consistent and valid in the spelling of reduced vowels, affixes joined to borrowings, compound words, particles, joticized combinations, the designation of palatalization and non-palatalization of consonants, etc. Along with its inconsistency, the existing body of rules reveals an 22. Together with the absolute dominance of the phonetic principle which forms the basis for Bashkir spelling, a morphological principle is also represented, spreading, in the main, to loan words from the Russian language.

90

A. A. Juldasev

insufficient clarity, a failure to consider certain rules23 and an obviously insufficient knowledge of confirmed practices of spelling (for example, the specific features of Bashkir pronunciation and writing considered above are not reflected in the existing body of rules). It goes without saying that many of these questions are partially touched upon in the orthographic dictionary. However, without a general rule, without rigid and clear regulating principles it is difficult to learn spelling from individual words in dictionary entries.24 The need for removing the above-mentioned deficiencies in spelling becomes even more urgent when one takes into consideration that spelling, when organized in conformity to the regularities of a given language, may be of considerable help in language building. The process of establishing lexical norms for modern Bashkir was most lengthy and complex although it took place under the same favorable circumstances as the regulation of pronunciation and spelling. The dialects of Bashkir diverged greatly with respect to vocabulary. At the beginning of the process of national language formation, the lexical structure of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects was in many respects opposed to the Northwestern dialects. This concerned not only the layer of the lexicon connected with the specific productive activity of the speakers of one or another dialect but semantic categories such as kinship, human and animal anatomy, household objects, etc., as well. From the words designating kinship, the following may be mentioned: Jur. and Kuv. cisci 'mother', qust'i 'younger brother', apQin 'the wives of cousins', ejan 'grandson', ejansar 'granddaughter', biila 'great-grandson', bulasat 'great-granddaughter', t'iuar 'great great grandson', t'iuasar 'great great granddaughter', t'iua jat 'great great grandson' (fifth generation), ete jat 'great great grandson, great great granddaughter' (sixth generation), etc., which in the Northwestern dialect are either designated by other words (compare Northwestern inaj, inakaj, ixni 'mother', ene 'younger brother'), or are not designated at all (compare apQyn, among others). Among the 23. Such, for example, is the following formulation: 'In words ending in 'q-k', if these sounds do not alternate with 'y-g' when joined to a vowel, 'o-e', 'I-e' is written neither in the root nor in different forms of the word' (Axmerov 1952, rule no. 15), i.e., words of the type qlrq 'forty', qirglncl 'fortieth', jolq 'to rip' must be written qrq, qrqns, jlq. 24. I have in mind Axmerov (1941). This work played a large role in the establishment of a standard spelling. The second edition of this dictionary (Moscow, 1952) was especially valuable. It included an orthography guide, where the description of the consolidated system of spelling was systematized and considerably supplemented. In particular, the author was first in formulating rules concerning the use of the letter e, the devoicing of final q and n in intervocalic position, the spelling of the endearment

particles yihallqinallkendljgend, etc.

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

91

words designating household objects and food are such, for example, as Kuv. and Jur. ktinak 'bucket', toq 'bag', tojodjltujid 'birch box', sangelsak 'cradle', tiyin 'cork', hodgak 'scoop', koraga 'barrel (for kumis)', semak 'samovar spout', qur 'ferment for kumis', dsa 'flat cake', susbara 'meat dumplings'. Among words relating to other semantic categories may be mentioned Jur. and Kuv. borlatau (in sound, Jr. biirlatau) 'crop of a bird', haman 'temple', soyqa 'back of the head', basalaj 'metatarsus', iyraii 'sob', tampa 'fever', saj'ik 'saliva', iykaii 'sloped', aral 'island', jajyor 'rainbow', b'iyat 'century', tail 'from the beginning', telmarjen 'frog', hi'la 'pike perch', bele 'quack', uqra 'gadfly', kasartke 'lizard', hombas 'salmon', hiipaj 'screech-owl', q'irayaj 'wild goat', hadanaq 'march rosemary', qalsan 'sow-thistle', qarayat 'currants', misar 'large fish', tarteska 'poker', qiphiuir 'pincers', qonan 'a young horse aged two to three years', diinan 'a young horse from three to four years old', oryas'i 'female sheep or goat of a certain age', saygar 'calf born in the summer', tuqal 'hornless', atambaj 'goat born in the summer', h'ibaj 'horseman', kir 'sorrel with pale white mane and tail (color of a horse)', haiierek 'a stallion over four years old', iilaq 'goat born in spring', hidat 'clearing', jarka 'log', tab'ik 'shaving" sijdaflkiiial 'pole', jisi'ii 'plane', toQqau 'take aim', maraj 'target', morgan 'outstanding shot', hut 'juice', 'nectar', jabaj 'simple', tolas 'disorderly', tonqos 'first-born', nogar 'groom', k'ilik 'action', osak 'slander', jakal 'peasant woman', mojos 'corner', among others. The lexicon of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects differs from that of the Northwestern dialect not only with respect to the structure of roots but with respect to the structure and meaning of a whole series of productive words. Compare, on the one hand, Northwestern konlaseu 'to envy', tiniii 'to become silent', jalau 'lick', jaliniu 'entreat', etc., and, on the other, Kuv. and Jur. konsolaii, t'imiu, jalmau, jalbar'iu with the same meanings; compare also qasik, in Jur. 'pilgrim' but in the Northwestern dialect 'spoon', etc. Under such conditions a highly complex process of vocabulary formation in literary Bashkir began. A s a result of an absence of research on the lexicons of the leading Bashkir dialects, this process proceeded spontaneously for a long time, soon leading to a complete lack of coordination. Exploiting this situation, bourgeois nationalists and pan-Turkists tried in every way to attribute to the Bashkir language the characteristic features of the language Tjurka, archaisms which had long since entered the realm of legend,25 dialectisms, jargonisms of Arabic and Persian origin and alanqort instead of qoros 'steel', orom instead ndsel 'type', kusam instead of etakse 'leader', akpan instead of janvar' 'January', naurib instead of fevraV 'February', etc. 25. In particular, archaisms of the type

of

92

A. A. Juldasev

artificially created words, while Tartar 'great power' chauvinists flooded the Bashkir language with Tartar words (Kuziev 1939; cf. Baisev 1955). The task of clarifying the national origin of the Bashkir lexicon became urgent. A great role was played in its solution by the Bashkir-Russian dictionary of V. Katarinskij (1899). Contrary to the tradition established before the October Socialist Revolution of regarding the Bashkir language as one of the dialects of Tartar, V. Katarinskij considered it a separate language. This thesis found clear expression in his dictionary. Katarinskij succeeded in revealing such specific words of the Bashkir language as ajran 'sour milk', alsaq 'friendly', altir 'brave', alls 'far', ariik 'truth', arqir'i 'through', asna 'friend', bajyus 'pauper', bujdak 'unmarried', hay'idak 'caterpillar', jalpaq 'flat', joma 'Friday', j'iuasa 'a type of pastry', kasartke 'lizard', k'iliu 'to do', maraj 'target', monar 'mist', muj'il 'birdcherry tree', saj'iq 'saliva' and many others. Composed for the most part on the basis of materials collected from the Kuvakan dialect (this is attested by the reflection in the dictionary of the consonantal assimilation and dissimilation characteristic of that dialect), the dictionary of V. Katarinskij served, despite its incompleteness, as a most valuable contribution to the creation of national foundations for the Bashkir lexicon. In the thirties, knowledge about the specific nature of the Bashkir lexicon was considerably enriched as the result of the direct study of the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects. This permitted the inclusion in the literary language of the large majority of characteristic words from the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects, described above. But this was not enough. It was imperative to remedy the lack of coordination in vocabulary usage which reigned at the time. On the other hand, it was necessary to enrich the vocabulary with new terms called for by the economic and cultural reformation of the Bashkir people. In order to solve these problems a permanent terminological commission of the Soviet of Ministers of the Bashkir A.S.S.R. was created in the forties. This commission worked out the principles of the lexical norms of the Bashkir language, generally stated in the work of T. G. Baisev (1955, p. 80).26 These principles, which were improved upon as the appropriate experience was accumulated, based the development of the lexicon upon the resources of the Bashkir language itself and partially 26. Cf. also the draft resolution 'Basqort a3abi tele terminologijanhlnig, principtare turah'indayi doklad bujinsa' (Ufa, 1940). L. Galidov and G. Isbulatov, 'Termindar turahinda kajhl-ber fekerSar', in the newspaper Qidll BaSqortostan (Dec. 4, 1940); T. Bai5, 'BaSqort telendage kajhi-ber huSdar turahinda' in the newspaper Basqortostan (Ufa, October 17, 1940); K. Axmar, 'Balqort aaabi teleneo leksika normahi ham terminologija mas' aiaiare', in the journal Oktjabr (No. 7, Ufa, 1948).

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

93

upon borrowed vocabulary. The terminological commission also conducted a great deal of practical research. It became the laboratory in which the norms of the Bashkir lexicon were worked out; it examined and approved a number of terms created on the basis of the above-mentioned principles, as well as the first normative dictionary which included sociopolitical and philosophical terms.27 Immediately after the abovementioned dictionary, there appeared terminological dictionaries of botany (Baranov and Sakirov 1932), chemistry (Ismuxametov, Urazmatov and Jusupov 1934), mathematics (Abdrasitov, Srumov et al. 1934), physics (Sulejmanov, Emasov, Gazizov and Safin 1934), linguistics (Sakirov 1935), and medicine (Muxammedov and Abdrasitov 1935). Continuing this extremely valuable work, the Institute of History, Language and Literature of the Bashkir branch of the A.S.U.S.S.R. in recent years published a second series of terminological dictionaries of mathematics (Bajramgulov and Galimov 1949), physics (Curaev 1949), chemistry (Ismuxametov 1950), geography (Xakinov 1952), botany (Baranov 1952), zoology (Baisev 1952), forestry (Jarmuxametov 1954), and others.28 The lack of coordination in the designation of identical concepts observed in the first terminological dictionaries is absent, and the glossary is considerably expanded. The exceptionally large work on terminology in many respects facilitated the establishment of unified lexical norms for the Bashkir literary language. Owing to this work, good translations of the classics of Marxism-Leninism and of artistic, scientific, scientific-technical and educational literature were produced. In the first years of the existence of the Bashkir A.S.S.R., translations from Russian were of necessity free arrangements of the original. But with the passage of time it was impossible to be satisfied with such arbitrary translations, especially in stabilized textbooks and in political and scientific literature. Stricter demands were placed on translations which only began to be satisfied after the creation of terminological dictionaries and after the preparation of qualified translation specialists. This made terminology from Russian, 27. Basqort tele termindara hi&laga (Social'-ekonomik-falsafa termindare), Bulletin No. 1, Ufa, 1931. 28. Speaking of terminological work in Bashkiria, the new trend which began in connection with the appearance of Dmitriev (1955) must not be passed over in silence. This work is the first attempt at theoretical generalization of all that has been done within the realm of Bashkir grammatical terminology. Of special value is the annotation suggested by the author of existing and possible variants of corresponding terms. This will help to unify and improve the grammatical terminology in Bashkir language textbooks. A generalization of the results of establishing terminology in the realm of the sociopolitical and technical sciences should become the subject of special research.

94

A. A. Juldasev

which gradually acquired national significance, accessible to the Bashkir language. Only in recent decades have many terms, borrowed from Russian and belonging to the most different semantic categories, become the property of the broad masses. A number of derivatives were formed from these foreign language bases with the help of the productive affixes and wordforming types of the Bashkir language (compare buntarliq 'rioting', novatorliq 'innovation', boVsevistik 'Bolshevik', partijal'i 'party' (adj.), kuVturahid 'uncultured', xarakterh'id 'without character', staxanov metodi 'Stakhanovite method'). Translations not only constituted a source of new terms and helped establish lexical norms but also caused the enrichment and development of the semantic system of the language as a result of the broad application of calqueing. In modern Bashkir we are quite often confronted with caiques of foreign language terms: isinbarl'iq 'reality', dQqorma 'superstructure', xedmat geroizmi 'labor heroism', kuVtura front'i 'cultural front', kuVtura-ayartiu ese 'culturally instructive work', kul'tura-politik ayartiu 'cultural-political education', art'ik etestertii 'over-production', etc. The literary formation and enrichment of the Bashkir lexicon as well as the establishment and stabilization of spelling norms and the development and improvement of syntactic and stylistic resources are most of all connected, however, with the periodical press and the extensive artistic literature which have appeared in the native language in the Soviet period. The process of establishing literary norms for the Bashkir national language, like its development process, as was noted above, is basically connected with this very period. In the twenties and later during the stormy development of the Bashkir economy and culture the role of the periodical press in the cultural and social life of the entire Bashkir people grew to unusual proportions. The first newspapers and journals in the Bashkir language which appeared during this period became the property of the broad masses of Bashkirs. The Republic newspapers acquired especially large distribution and popularity: Basqortostan (which later changed its name to Q'id'ilBaskortostan), So vet Basqortostani, Leninse, Jas todoiise and the journals: Jayijol, Belem, Sasan, Oktjabc. The main centers of journalism in the twenties were Ufa and Sterlitamak. At the present time more than twenty newspapers are published in the Bashkir language in the regional centers. The language and style of the periodical press at the beginning of the twenties constituted a natural continuation of the best traditions of the written language with, however, a broader popular base and the bolder and more decisive utilization of elements from all the dialects and patois

Norms in the Bashkir National Language

95

of Bashkiria, with the slight domination of elements from the Northwestern and Jurmatin dialects. This was particularly clearly expressed in artistic literature, especially in the works of first generation Bashkir Soviet writers: M. Gafuri, A. Tagirov, D. Jultij, S. Kudas, G. Gumar, G. Xajri, B. Valit, S. Xudajberdin and others, who acquired great popularity among the Bashkir people as early as the twenties. The efforts of these writers were directed toward the reflection in the Bashkir language of those characteristic features which were present in the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects and which have not yet entered into literary Bashkir as a norm. The revelation and skillful use of these features of the Bashkir language in artistic literature facilitated their integration in the common national system of the Bashkir language, all the more because the language of the above-mentioned authors merited consideration as the model for all Bashkir journalists and writers. Significant in this respect also are the merits of the succeeding generation of Bashkir writers: G. Amiri, A. Karnaj, S. Agis, I. Zajni, B. Bikbaj, G. Masgut, K. Ismaj, R. Nigmati, A. Vali, M. Karim, S. Miftaxov, X. Karim, G. Saljam, M. Xaj, M. Tazi, K. Dajan, K. Margan (A. Kireev), A. Bikcantaev, I. Abdullin, G. Axmetsin, G. Ramazanov and others. Through their works a powerful stream flowed into the system of the Bashkir national language: not only the characteristics of the Bashkir language present in the Kuvakan and Jurmatin dialects but also elements from the Northwestern dialect itself. The most significant role was played by the works of X. Ibragimov,29 G. Gumar, G. Xajri, Babic and the preceding literary tradition (in the work of M. Gafuri and S. Kudas). The introduction into the common national system of the Bashkir language of elements of dialects and patois to a certain extent met the growing terminological needs, enriched the synonym resources of the Bashkir national language (c/. Baisev 1955, pp. 96-97) and thus broadened its stylistic possibilities. The establishment of unified phonetic, grammatical and lexical norms was a necessary premise for the subsequent successful development of the Bashkir national language. Gradually unifying its variants, it constituted the basis of Bashkir language unity. Most of the essential changes in the conversational speech and in the dialects take place at present under the ever-growing unifying influence of standardized literary Bashkir,30 which, 29. His play 'Basmay'j'm', performed in the Bashkir theater for the first time in 1921, was very popular among the Bashkirs. Among the remaining fifteen plays written by X. Ibragimov, 'Eynakaj' also stands out in this respect. 30. Along with the enrichment of dialects with respect to elements not represented in dialects, there occurs, on the one hand, the gradual replacement of dialectisms by corresponding equivalent terms from the Bashkir literary language and, on the other,

96

A. A. Juldasev

owing to a thick network of schools, the establishment of universal elementary education, the growth of the national literature, press, films, and theaters, pervades all spheres of communication at the present time. All the dialects and patois of Bashkiria, excluding the Northwestern dialect which, as formerly, is undergoing the strong influence of the Tartar literary language 31 and for this reason (and also because of the abovementioned factors) has changed to such an extent that the question of its belonging to the Bashkir national language is quite justly considered extremely controversial, 32 are now undergoing notable improvements under the influence of the standard norms. It is natural that the Northwestern dialect, converging more and more with the Tartar literary language, cannot oppose the influence of the Tartar national language and enter the system of the Bashkir national language. Only certain of its patois, territorially coming into contact with the Jurmatin dialect, 33 are in the sphere of influence of the standardized Bashkir literary language which, in the end, will apparently lead to their merging with the Jurmatin dialect. the struggle between mutually exclusive dialectal and literary doublets, which are equally well known to all speakers of the given dialect but are used by them far from uniformly. (Dialectal doublets, for example, are persistently retained by the older generation, while they are used by the youth for the most part only in colloquial speech.) 31. Clerical work and teaching in schools, technological institutes and teachers' colleges are conducted in the territory of this dialect in the Tartar language. In Ufa the republic newspaper Kommuna, intended for speakers of the Northwestern dialect, appears in the Tartar language. In this dialect region there are more than twenty regional newspapers published in the Tartar language. Besides this the population uses extensively every kind of printed matter published in the Tartar language. 32. Many consider this dialect to be Tartar. Certain linguists, however, on the basis of two features of the Bashkir language which survived in this dialect (the replacement of original d and z in inlaut and auslaut by interdental 8 and the use of the combination aj instead of Tartar Ij in forming the present tense: compare Tartar qarlj with Northwestern qaraj 'he, she is looking'), and the national affiliation of the speakers of this dialect, related it to the Bashkir national language. They raise a question of the creation of a second literary Bashkir language for the speakers of the given dialect, the necessity of which can be hardly justified either from the practical point of view (the language of the speakers of this dialect fully guarantees communication with the people using the modern Bashkir language and other varieties of the Bashkir national language), or from the scientific point of view (the natural development of this dialect is such that a second literary language would not yield the anticipated results, the dialect, as before, follows with complete regularity a path of unification with the Tartar literary language inasmuch as even today those factors which are conditioning this process remain in force). 33. Here also belong the separate dialects of Bashkirs living compactly in the Davlekan, Buzdjak and other regions of Northwestern territory of the Bashkir A.S.S.R.

Norms in the Bashkir National

Language

97

REFERENCES

AbdraSitov, X. and M. Srumov, et al. (1934), Matematika termindare. Ufa. Axmerov, K. Z. (1941), Orfografik hiidlek. Ufa. (1952), Orfografik hiiblek. Moscow. [2nd ed.]. (1957), 'BaSqort a3abi teleneg formalasiu ham iiseii juldari', Adabi Basqortostan, No. 4, Ufa, pp. 69-70.' BaiSev, T. G. (1952), Zoologija termindare hudlege. Ufa. (1955), 'The Bashkir dialects in relation to the literary language'. Doctoral dissertation, Moscow. Bajramgulov, K. F. and K. Galimov (1949), Russa-basqorsta matematika termindare. Ufa. Baranov, S. A. (1952), The Names of Plants in the Latin, Russian, and Bashkir Languages. Ufa. [2nd ed.]. Baranov, A. S. and Z. Sakirov (1932), The Names of Plants in the Latin, Russian, and Bashkir Languages. Ufa. [1st ed.]. teremSanskij, V. M. (1859), An Economic, Statistical, and Industrial Description of the Orenburg Government. Ufa. turaev, §. (1949), Russa-Basqortsa fizika termindare. Ufa. Dmitriev, N. K. (1948), Bashkir Grammar. Moscow. (1955), Grammatical Terminology of the Textbooks in the Native Language. Moscow. ISbulatov, N. X. (1955), 'The dialect of a village of the Kazmasevo Abselilov region of the Bashkir A.S.S.R.'. Doctoral dissertation, Moscow. ISmuxametov, I. (1950), Russa-Basqortsa ximija termindare. Ufa. ISmuxametov, I., N. Urazmatov and G. Jusupov (1934), Ximiya Termindara. Ufa. Jarmuxametov, A. I. (1954), Urman ese termindare hudlege. Ufa. Juldasev, A. A. (1959), 'The Bashkir language', New Written Literary Languages of the U.S.S.R. Moscow and Leningrad. Jusupov, X. N. (1955), 'Asin dialect of the Bashkir language'. Doctoral dissertation, Moscow. Katarinskij, X. V. (1899), Bashkir Dictionary. Orenburg. Kiekbaev, D. G. (1949), 'The orthoepy of the Bashkir literary language'. Doctoral dissertation, Ufa. Kuzeev, R. G. (1959), 'The tribal structure of the Bashkirs in the XVIII century', Voprosy baskirskoj filologii. Moscow. Kuziev, M. R. (1939), 'Bagqort ya6luin rus alfavitlna kiisereu turahlndayl mSs' &lag£ qarata', Qm Basqortostan, No. 151. Ufa. Muxammedov, M. N. and X. AbdraSitov (1935), Urissa-latinska-basqorsta medicina termindare. Ufa. Raimov, R. M. (1952), The Formation of the Bashkir A.S.S.R. Moscow. Sakirov, Z. I. (1935), Language Terms. Ufa. Sulejmanov, Emasov, Gazizov and Safin (1934), Fizika termindare. Ufa. Usmanov, A. (1950), The Joining of Bashkirs to the Moscow Government. Ufa. Xakimov, M. E. (1952), Geografija termindare hudlege. Ufa. Xvol'son, D. A. (1869), Ibn-Dast's Account of the Khazars, Burtars, Bulgars, Magyars, Slavs, and Rus. St. Petersburg.

M. I. STEBLIN-KAMENSKIJ

4

Is Planning of Language Development Possible? The Norwegian Language Movement at an Impasse

Is the planning of language development possible and, if it is possible, to what extent? This question arises in connection with the evaluation of the results of the language movement which took place in Norway during the course of the past hundred or so years. 1 Before evaluating these results, however, I shall try to define in what sense I shall use several expressions necessary for describing the language movement, such as 'language', 'literary language', 'national language', etc. Every linguistic description is first and foremost a terminological problem. For this reason progress in linguistics is often an illusion brought about by the introduction of new terms which in essence designate nothing new or by old terms receiving imprecise, vague, metaphorical use. The illusions conditioned by the demagogic and imprecise use of such expressions as 'people's language', etc., played a big role in the Norwegian language movement or even lay at its foundation. I shall call 'language' only the sound, or oral, language, as distinct from its written representation, which I shall call such. In such an understanding, a language is characterized by its specific pronunciation, that is, its system of phonemes, which are realized and distributed in a particular way in the speech chain, forming words or other meaningful units. I shall call 'literary language' such a language as is used as the standard, or norm, in a particular society, not only by itself, but in its written representation, and is opposed to local dialects, that is, languages which are not used as the standard and do not have a standard, written representation. 1. If one considers everything published by the participants in this movement, then the literature devoted to it is immense. It is insignificant, however, if one considers only what was written by objective observers. The most thorough review of the Norwegian language movement in the nineteenth century was written by a Frenchman (Burgun 1919-1921). The most thorough survey of this movement in the twentieth century was recently published by a Norwegian, born and living in the U.S.A. (Haugen 1966). Haugen's book also contains a bibliography of the Norwegian language movement.

100

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij

It follows, obviously, that the common, unified literary language of a nation should be called the 'national literary language'. I shall not use the expressions 'language common to all the people', 'national language common to all the people', 'unified language common to all the people', etc., at all, which were widely used in our linguistics after 1950 when it became obligatory to maintain (contrary to the obvious) that the 'language of the people' always was 'common to all' and 'unified'. But I shall distinguish between the 'primary written reflection of a language', i.e., the immediate reflection of the oral language in writing, and the 'secondary written reflection of a language', i.e., that written representation which does not correspond to any particular oral language because it is the synthesis of the written representations of several oral languages. Putting the pronunciation of some oral language into such a secondary written representation, this secondary written representation may be read or even used for direct oral communication. But the 'secondary' language thus obtained will be essentially different from the 'primary' language, so to speak, in that it will not have its own specific pronunciation, i.e., its system of phonemes realized in a specific way in the speech chain, etc. Absence of unity was above all always characteristic of the Norwegian language movement: it had two sharply different trends in the nineteenth century, and even three in the twentieth century. Since the middle of the nineteenth century language split has been a permanent condition in Norway. The result of one of these two trends of language movement in the nineteenth century is usually called riksmal (rigsmaal, later riksmaal, now riksmal, literally 'state language') - a designation which became current after Bjernstjerne Bjcrnson used it in one of his speeches in 1899 - but since 1929 officially bokmal (literally 'book language')-a designation which came to be applied differently, however (cf. below). Until 1899 riksmal was called dansk-norsk or 'the usual book language' (det almindelige Bogsprog). The basic pre-condition of riksmal was that when Norway still belonged to the Danish State (1397-1814), in the Norwegian cities and, above all, in Oslo (then Kristiania), a kind of mixed dialect was formed, i.e., an oral non-standard language with a vocabulary and morphology that were basically Danish but with Norwegian pronunciation. Apparently, on the basis of a lexical and morphological similarity between Danish and the Norwegian dialects, a Danish text could be read, so to speak, in Norwegian. It is assumed that such a reading of a Danish text was the basis of the Norwegian mixed urban dialect. Thus, not so much the Danish language itself as its written representation participated in its formation,

Is Planning of Language Development Possible ?

101

while the main feature which distinguishes a language from closely related languages, i.e., pronunciation, was completely Norwegian. The existence of this urban dialect is attested by witnesses from the second half of the eighteenth century, but it is possible that it arose significantly earlier. It is probable that this urban dialect could be more official and closer to Danish writing or more colloquial and closer to the local dialect. It is also certain that it constantly underwent the influence of the surrounding Norwegian dialect environment and thereby somehow changed. However, these are only assumptions. The history of the Norwegian mixed urban dialect is very unclear. How did it appear in reality ? Which successive stages of development did it undergo ? What was its system of phonemes, and how was it realized on various occasions in its more official and more colloquial varieties? Among whom and where was it used during the various stages of its history ? All these questions may be answered, apparently, only with assumptions and in the most general form. Very little is known about what really happened. The formation and development of the mixed urban dialect was undoubtedly the most important development in the history of the Norwegian language during past centuries. Nay, this was the only development in the language itself in Norway, rather than in the written representations of the language, either primary or secondary, or the only thing that really happened to the language in Norway, as opposed to what was proclaimed or decreed about it. It is uncontroversial, however, that the appearance and development of the mixed urban dialect was not the result of conscious efforts, or planning as such efforts have recently come to be called. It is easier to talk about planning in connection with how the mixed urban dialect, or the colloquial language of the urban population, became the Norwegian linguistic norm and its pronunciation 'the nationwide Norwegian pronunciation' (landsgyldige norske uttale), in the words of the eminent champion of this pronunciation, Knud Knudsen (1812— 1895). The legitimization of this pronunciation in the theater and school it was completed in the eighties of the preceding century - was, apparently, the result of conscious efforts. It is not clear, however, whether this legitimization was accompanied by any internal changes in the pronunciation itself and its main variant - that of Oslo. The result of conscious forces were, of course, also the orthographic reforms of riksmdl. The reforms were realized only in the twentieth century, namely, in 1907, 1917, and 1938. Until 1907 the orthography of riksmdl was not distinct from that of Danish. As a result of these reforms, that which Knudsen termed 'Norwegian pronunciation' received more adequate written representation. It is true that the third trend of the

102

M. I.

Steblin-Kamenskij

Norwegian language movement found expression in the last two of these reforms, a trend whose goal was not the adequate written representation of a particular pronunciation but something entirely different. More about this will be said below. The 'Norwegianization' of the vocabulary of riksmal, i.e., the introduction of words from the Norwegian dialects into riksmal, is usually considered the result of conscious efforts. Dialect words began to be introduced into literature by J. Aall and J. Munch in the journal Saga as early as 1816-1820. Wergeland, Bj0rnson, Ibsen, and many other Norwegian writers used dialectisms in their works. In essence, however, this lexical 'Norwegianization' differs little from the enrichment usual for every literary language at the expense of words which one or another writer culls from dialects, especially when he turns his attention to the life of the people. Dialect words poured into Norwegian literature not so much as a result of linguistic planning but because the depiction of Norwegian peasant life became popular. Forty or so dialectisms are to be found in the first 80 lines of Ibsen's Peer Gynt. They are numerous in the peasant stories of Bj0rnson. But in the later social dramas of Ibsen and Bj0rnson, where the action takes place in an urban, bourgeois milieu, they are few. There are in fact quite a few Norwegian dialectal words in modern riksmal. The greater part of the vocabulary of contemporary riksmal consists of words inherited from the Danish literary language. The conscious striving toward 'Norwegianization' took place in regard to the syntax of riksmal. From time to time manuals appeared which taught one how to make the style 'more Norwegian' and free oneself from the Danish inheritance. However, the syntactic recommendations of such manuals usually amounted simply to the necessity of overcoming the syntactic complexity and mannerisms of the scholarly, written style (in the final analysis, not even Danish but German or Latin) and striving for the simplicity of living speech. Thus, syntactic 'Norwegianization' was, at base, simply the tendency toward renewal on the basis of living speech characteristic of every developing literary language. The result of the second trend of the Norwegian language movement is so-called landsmaal(later landsmal, literally 'rural language' or 'language of thecountry'), asit was called by its eminent creator Ivar Aasen (1813-1896), or 'New Norwegian' (nynorsk), as it was officially designated in 1929. Linguistic factors were not the basic precondition for landsmal but a conception about what the 'language of the people' was. According to this conception, the 'language of the people' (which was considered to be at the same time the 'literary language'!) exists with as much reality in the totality of the dialects of the people as the 'soul' of the people exists

Is Planning of Language Development Possible ?

103

in the totality of the individuals constituting the nation. Consequently, the words of this language may be established in just the same way by means of the comparison of words from different dialects as the hypothetical words of the proto-Indoeuropean language are established by means of the comparison of words from the individual Indoeuropean languages in their oldest form. It is obvious, naturally, that several different pronunciations cannot be synthesized. From several actually existing phonological systems a new, intermediate, and moreover actually existing system cannot be created. But it is possible to synthesize the spelling of etymologically identical words. According to the conception under discussion, the 'language of the people (which would be also the 'literary language') should be created by means of such generalization. All this ran contrary to not only the facts of the history of the other European countries already known at that time, in which the literary languages were developed from some one dialect, i.e., from the language of part of the population of the country, but also contrary to the elementary tenet of linguistics that language is not writing but something that is spoken. However, those Norwegian scholars who were the champions of landsmal continued to ignore this tenet and, by the way, much else in the science of language. The idea of creating landsmal belongs to the Norwegian scholar P. A. Munch (1810-1863) who, in particular, wrote: 'No dialect pronunciation may ever become the literary language. The literary language is the harmony of dialects reduced to the simple, noble, and original form of the language' (quoted in Burgun 1919-1921, Vol. 1, p. 150). An understanding of how Munch conceived of the existence of such a 'literary language' in dialects may be gained from the following one of his remarks about the name of one Faroese popular ballad. It is not necessary, he says, to write Sjura kvai (i.e., to attempt to render the contemporary Faroese pronunciation), but it is necessary to write Sigurda kvaedi (i.e., simply to give the Old Norwegian spelling) because the contemporary Faroese 'wants to say just this [s/c - M. S.-K.], when he says Sjura kvai, what is of interest here is not his spoiled [j/c-M. S.-K] pronunciation, but what he really wants to say (hans virkelige Mening)' (quoted in Burgun 1919-1921, pp. 149-150). It is not surprising that in Munch's view it would be best to resurrect the Old Norwegian forms of words thereby obtaining the Norwegian literary language. Munch's idea was realized by Ivar Aasen when in 1853 in the appendix to an anthology of dialect texts he published an example of the written synthesis of Norwegian dialects. Similar to the way in which preference is always accorded the most archaic forms in the reconstruction of a

104

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij

protolanguage, Aaseninhis generalization of Norwegian dialects accorded preference to those forms which were the closest in spelling to Old Norwegian, i.e., as a rule to West Norwegian forms. Even that which had not been preserved in any of the Norwegian dialects was introduced in some of his spellings. Moreover, he demanded the reading of all the letters, even those which were, so to speak, purely etymological. In a series of cases Aasen selected this or that spelling not because it was a synthesis of dialect forms, but only because it was maximally dissimilar to the spelling of the given word in Danish and, consequently, in riksmal. Such a reverse dependency of landsmal on Danish and riksmal is also revealed by the fact that several words common to all the Norwegian dialects did not enter landsmal only because they were in riksmal. Landsmal, thus, is originally a secondary written representation of several related languages, namely, Norwegian dialects. It is not accidental that Aasen himself, as is well known, spoke riksmal and not landsmal. When one speaks landsmal as that which I called a 'secondary language' above, then one uses the pronunciation of one's own dialect. However, according to the statement of the Norwegian philologist E. Smith (18871957), which Haugen (1966, p. 291) cites, 'there is hardly a single adult advocate of landsmal who uses it daily with a family and a circle of friends who do the same'. Landsmal does not have its own pronunciation, just as Esperanto does not. But a specific pronunciation is naturally most basic to the national form of the language because a pronunciation cannot be the result of synthesis. On the other hand, it is entirely possible to synthesize the written representations of several related languages in one common secondary written representation, for example, the three Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) in a kind of common Scandinavian (this idea has been expressed more than once) (Burgun 1919-1921, Vol. 2, p. 87) or all the Western Norwegian dialects in common Western Norwegian and all the Eastern Norwegian in common Eastern Norwegian (this idea has also been expressed) (Burgun 1919-1921, Vol. 2, p. 122), etc. Another question is the extent to which this would be useful. Although the secondary written representation cannot be made into a language in the proper sense of the word, it is possible to prescribe its application in writing. This was done in Norway as the result of the coming to power of a party in 1884 (the so-called 'left') which recognized landsmal as the 'people's language' and, at the same time, the cause of landsmal 'the cause of the people'. In 1885 the Norwegian Storting adopted a resolution which read: 'it is recommended to the government to take the necessary measures in order

Is Planning of Language Development Possible ?

105

that the Norwegian national language [i.e., landsm&l - M. S.-K.] be accorded the same rights of a school and official language as the usual language of writing and literature [i.e., riksmal - M. S.-K.]'. This resolution was developed in a series of subsequent resolutions. They guaranteed landsmal an equal position with riksmal in government offices, at school and at the University, where a professorship of landsmal was established in 1889. The school became the main buttress of landsmal because all pupils study landsmal as well as riksmal and, moreover, at the wish of the school community (i.e., the parents) either riksmal or landsmal is chosen as the 'basic language', i.e., the language of the textbooks. The struggle between landsmal and riksmal which began over one hundred years ago was embittered and protracted but did not lead to a decisive result. Calculating the relative distribution of landsmal and riksmal is very difficult, however, because, although they are officially equal, they are phenomena of a completely different order, as is apparent from all that was said above. Usually the relative distribution of landsmal and riksmal was calculated on the percentage of children studying in schools where landsmal (riksmal, respectively) was chosen as the 'basic language'. On the basis of these data from 1930 the distribution of landsmal grew most sharply after the orthographic reform of 1938, reached a maximum in 1944-1945 (31.1%) and from then on gradually declined (to 20.5% in 1964-1965). It was significantly less according to the language data of the offices, church services, published books, student compositions, etc. Thus, the books published from 1946-1955 in landsmal constitute only 10.7% of the total number. But all these data are less reliable than the data on the schools. Landsmal began to be used in literature as early as the end of the fifties of the nineteenth century. But since it was held to be the 'people's language' every author considered himself justified to approximate, more or less, that 'people's language', i.e., dialect, which was native to him. Therefore in the orthography and morphology of landsmal there was much more lack of uniformity than in any literary language not pretending to be the 'people's language'. Moreover, inasmuch as landsm&l was considered by the authors using it to be the 'people's language', the stylistic range of works written in it was correspondingly narrow. Different stylistic levels are usually possible in works written in a literary language: the narration of the author, the speeches of the characters who speak one or another variety of the literary language or one or another dialect, etc. Such stylistic contrasts are usual in works written in riksmal. But in works written in landsmal, for example, in the novels of T. Vesaas (born 1897), the most outstanding writer using landsmal, the Norwegian

106

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij

peasants as a rule speak landsmál, i.e., the secondary literary language of the author, and not a dialect: a supporter of landsmál, naturally, cannot oppose a dialect, or 'people's language', to landsmál - the very idea of landsmál is that it be the 'people's language'! The fact that the stuggle between riksmál and landsmál did not lead to the victory of one side brought to life the third trend in the Norwegian language movement, namely, attempts to synthesize riksmál and landsmál in a kind of 'common Norwegian language' (samnorsk). The idea of such a synthesis was expressed as early as the nineteenth century. Its defenders were the eminent folklorist Moltke Moe (1859-1913), who introduced the word samnorsk, the eminent historian of the Norwegian language Didrik Arup Seip (1884-1963) and many others. The possibility of a synthesis was suggested by the fact that the differences between riksmál and landsmál are clearly not similar to the differences between two, even related, languages. Since landsmál does not have a pronunciation of its own, it is apparent that the difference between riksmál and landsmál is not in pronunciation. In other words, when a word of riksmál coincides in spelling with a corresponding word of landsmál, there is no difference at all. But there are very many such words. In a recently published Norwegian-English dictionary including riksmál and landsmál (Haugen 1965), such words constitute three-fourths of the total number, and if one considers those words which differ only in their grammatical endings, there are far more. In those cases where the words of riksmál and landsmál differ in spelling, then, since landsmál has no pronunciation of its own, this means that the difference is not in the sounds themselves but only in the way in which the sounds are distributed in words, i.e., in a way that is completely determined by the spelling. The vast majority of differences between landsmál and riksmál may be reduced in essence to mechanical rules (like: read the digraphs ei, au, 0y, use, 0; read the suffix -leg as -lig; read the words no and dá as ná and da; read the ending -a in the past tense of the verb as -et, but in the singular of a noun as -en, etc.) whose application permits one to read landsmál as if it were riksmál, thus converting landsmál into a kind of orthography for riksmál. Texts in landsmál, especially textbooks and official documents, are frequently mechanical translations of texts in riksmál to such an extent that it is really difficult to refrain from reading them in this way. Of course, the synthesis of riksmál and landsmál also required administrative measures for its realization. These were worked out by the orthographic reform commissions of 1917 and 1938 and later on by simply a 'language commission'. The idea of unifying riksmál and landsmál 'on the

Is Planning of Language Development Possible ?

107

basis of a Norwegian national language' {pa norsk folkemalsgrunn), as this was usually formulated, received powerful support when a government was first formed by the 'Workers' Party' in 1935. The procedure of synthesizing riksmal and landsmdl consisted in proposing several spellings 'more moderate', i.e., traditional, and more 'radical', i.e., closer to landsmal (or riksmal, respectively), wherever there was a difference between riksmal and landsmal, expecting that the more radical forms would be preferred in riksmal and that in the future it would be possible to convert them from optional ('equal' or 'secondary') into obligatory which was in fact the main content of the orthographic reform of riksmal in 1938. In the final analysis, as was supposed, only the most radical forms of riksmal would remain, and it would thus flow together with landsmal. The immediate result of the orthographic reforms of 1917 and 1938 was, naturally, orthographic chaos which has not been eliminated until the present time. As this was formulated by the opponents of the reform of 1917, six languages were substituted for two as a result of the reform: obligatory riksmal and landsmal and a pair of optional languages for each. But worse than the chaos (in essence it entered into the plans of the reformers as a necessary prerequisite for the blending of riksmal and landsmal) was that, as became apparent, the 'radical bokmaV which resulted from the reform (in 1929 riksmal came to be officially called 'bokmaV) was not a written representation of any really existing oral language. In 'radical bokmaV, or simply'bokmaV, as the opponents of the orthographic reforms began to call it, imparting an abusive sense to this word, were not only forms from completely different stylistic levels but also forms nowhere existent in reality. By 'people's language', which was meant to be the basis for the blending of riksmal and landsmal, not just any particular language was understood but the set of linguistic features common to landsmal and the Eastern Norwegian dialects (landsmal has now reoriented itself toward them), i.e., once again some linguistic synthesis. Inasmuch as landsmal in and of itself is a secondary written representation, the result of the synthesis of landsmdl and riksmal in its written representation is, so to speak, a tertiary written representation. Nevertheless, radical 'bokmaV became obligatory in school texts and official documents, and the classics of Norwegian literature were translated into it in the school anthologies. The language struggle began anew and no less embittered. But this time it was not a struggle between riksmal and landsmdl, but between the traditional riksmal and the product of the synthesis of riksmal and landsmdl. Societies and periodicals appeared with the defense of

108

M. J. Steblin-Kamenskij

traditional riksmal as their goal. There appeared a parents' movement concerned about their children learning the new product of linguistic synthesis in school. 'Bokmal' was ridiculed in literature. It was used for characterizing pedantic teachers or ungifted quill-drivers devoid of feeling for the language and blindly following official recommendations. Among the voices protesting against the synthesis of riksmal and landsmdl, loudest were the voices of the masters of the word - writers and poets. As early as 1917 Knut Hamsun spoke about 'language in danger' (this was the title of his pamphlet directed against the orthographic reform). The famous Norwegian poet Arnulf 0verland was ironically asking in 1940 'Is our language abolished?' and in 1948 'How often must we change the languages ?' (this was the title of his biting pamphlets directed against the synthesis of riksmal and landsmdl). Masters of the word have for ages had a grudge against linguists who undertake to reform the literary language neither understanding its aesthetic value nor able to use it. The famous Norwegian writer Alexander Kielland formulated this sarcastically thus: 'Is it not comforting', he wrote, 'to observe time and again that professors of language cannot write ? They watch over the language like eunuchs over a harem, eunuchs who cannot make use of the treasure and spend their lives in impotent fury at those who can.' Meanwhile, riksmal's struggle with landsmdl retreated into the background. In the nineteenth century landsmdl was usually opposed to riksmal as a language without a cultural tradition to a language of culture. Bjcrnson and Ibsen, for example, criticized landsmdl from this point of view. In the twentieth century among the supporters of riksmal in any of its forms, the recognition of landsmdl as a constituent element of Norwegian culture became more and more widespread. A series of talented writers contributed to the establishment of landsmdl as a literary vehicle. There appeared a rich and original landsmdl literature whose roots reached deeply into native soil. Translating this literature into riksmal would mean divesting it of these roots. Moreover, an essential part of Norwegian folklore, namely, the popular ballad (folkeviser), exists only in a normalized dialect or in landsmdl. Thus, the non-recognition of landsmdl is impossible for a Norwegian who values national culture. This would be the non-recognition of part of his national cultural heritage. Finally, the recognition of landsmdl was prompted by the disappointment with the possibility of eliminating the language schism by administrative means: the violation of democracy in language policy did not lead to any good especially when it was allegedly carried out in the name of democracy. The general recognition of the right of landsmdl to exist manifested

Is Planning of Language Development Possible?

109

itself in particular in that its official designation, 'New Norwegian', accepted in 1929, became generally used. In a linguistic struggle, a name is naturally not an adequate designation of what is named but a demogogic means. The designation riksmal ('state language') in its day facilitated the consolidation of the forces of riksmal. The official designation bokm&l ('book language') introduced in 1929 was in essence a blow directed against riksmal by the supporters of its amalgamation with landsmal. The designation 'New Norwegian', which came to replace the unclear designation landsmal (i.e., 'rural language' or 'language of the country') contributed to the strengthening of the position of landsmal. It is interesting, however, that the designation 'New Norwegian' was earlier applied more than once to riksmal. Beginning in the mid fifties, the 'language commission' became more careful in its recommendations. It increasingly lost the illusion regarding the possibility of a radical change in the language situation, striving rather to establish a status quo to unify riksmal and landsmal. The 'standard for textbooks', (Icereboknormal), prepared by the 'language commission' and officially adopted in 1959, mainly only regulated the spelling of individual words in riksmal and landsmal while, in contradistinction to the recommendations of preceding commissions, taking the orthographic tradition into consideration and the presence of stylistic differences between different spellings. Nevertheless, some tendency toward unification of riksmal and landsmal was present in the 'standard for textbooks', and it therefore met with resistance and criticism on the part of the opponents of language synthesis. Despite this, however, the movement supporting such a synthesis continued. A 'national union of language unification', having as its goal the rapprochement of riksmal and landsmdl, was founded by a group of youths in 1959, and the organ of this union, Language Unification, began to appear. In 1964 under the chairmanship of the rector of Oslo University, Professor Hans Vogt, a new official commission began to work which was supposed to 'investigate the language situation' and suggest 'measures for preserving and developing the Norwegian language'. In an ample and carefully worded memorandum presented by the Vogt Commission in 1966, various data on riksmal and landsmdl are set forth, and it is announced that the language struggle which, in the opinion of the commission, had its positive sides, should give way to tolerance and collaboration on a voluntary basis, and the establishment of a 'committee for the preservation of the Norwegian language' is recommended. Such are the results which the Norwegian language movement achieved. If the ultimate goal of the national language movement consists in the

110

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij

nation having a unified literary language, i.e., a literary language common to the whole nation, then it must be recognized that the national language movement in Norway suffered a failure. The recognition of landsmal and riksmal as the official literary languages resulted in there being in fact no unified literary language in Norway. This situation entailed above all the necessity of unproductive losses of a large quantity of resources, work and energy. It was necessary to learn two 'Norwegian languages' in school; to translate textbooks, dictionaries, official documents, etc., into the second 'Norwegian language'; to translate classical Norwegian literature from one 'Norwegian language' into the other, thereby converting the national literature into translation; to attempt to regulate the orthography, achieving in fact not national unity but greater and greater chaos; to strive to overcome the national language schism while at the same time aggravating it; to search all the time for a way out of the tragic situation created and debate it endlessly orally and in the press, privately and in government committees, losing in arguments, in essence completely fruitless, energy which could have been expended on things of national cultural value. Since the language struggle compelled one to regard language more from the point of view of what it should be rather than what it in reality is, the Norwegian language in essence almost did not undergo investigation. Suffice it to say that there is only one objective, synchronic description of the grammar of riksmal (Western 1921). For almost half a century since the publication of this book, not a single work of this type has appeared. School and other handbooks are naturally not taken into account, neither are works in which the synchronic description of the grammar is replaced by the history of the language or dialectology (see, e.g., Berulfsen 1967). Even partial investigations of the grammar of riksmal are non-existent. Things are even worse with landsmal: up to now there is neither an objective description of the grammar of landsmal as a whole nor any partial investigations of its grammar. It is thus possible to say that the grammar of contemporary Norwegian is one of the most unexplored grammars in the world. At the same time, the involvement of the broad masses of the Norwegian people in the language struggle did not have as its result the acquisition of the language by the people, but rather the fact that the average Norwegian, however ignorant of linguistics he might be, is as a rule convinced that he is completely competent to solve any linguistic problem. At the basis of the Norwegian language movement, besides the notion of a 'national language' in the most nebulous and demagogic sense of this word, lay also the notion that the development of a language may be

Is Planning of Language Development Possible ?

Ill

consciously guided in one or another direction, i.e., 'planned'. The history of the Norwegian language movement for the past hundred-odd years is a striking refutation of the correctness of this notion. It follows from the Norwegian experience that a language movement does not necessarily lead to the realization of the goal which its participants set themselves and also that it has as its result not a change in the language itself but a change either in its social status, i.e., the legalization of the language as a standard, or a change in its written representation, i.e., the regulation of this representation, bringing it into greater correspondence with the pronunciation, the appearance of secondary or tertiary representations, which may in turn become secondary and tertiary languages. As is generally known, it is true that cases are possible of the reverse influence of the written representation of a language on its pronunciation. Thus, such cases took place in the Norwegian language when as a result of the orthographic reform of 1907 which substituted p, t, k for b, d, g in a large number of words in which a voiceless stop was pronounced even earlier - this voiceless stop appeared here and there in places where there used to be a voiced one. But such cases are in no way the result of language planning. Is it appropriate in general to apply the word 'planning' to language development ? Most of what happened with the language in Norway is more similar to a natural calamity caused by some unconsidered actions. Haugen says in essence the same thing in other words in the introduction to his book (in what follows, however, yielding to the philosophy of Pangloss, he always calls the Norwegian language movement 'language planning'): 'a linguistic avalanche', says Haugen (1966, p. 1), 'has been set in motion, an avalanche which is still sliding and which no one quite knows how to stop, even though many would be happy to do so.'

REFERENCES

Berulfsen, B. (1967), Norsk grammatikk, Ordklassene. Oslo. Burgun, A. (1919-1921), Le développement linguistique en Norvège depuis 1814, Vols. 1-2. Kristiania. Haugen, E. (1965), Norwegian-English Dictionary. Oslo. (1966), Language Conflict and Language Planning: The Case of Modern Norwegian. Cambridge, Mass. Western, A. (1921), Norsk-riksmâls-grammatikk. Kristiania.

A. D. SVEJCER

5

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

The term 'sociolinguistics' came into use relatively recently. To the best of our knowledge, it was first used in one of the works of Currie (1952). However, the problem of the relationship between language and society, the object of study of sociolinguistics, is far from new. Many generations of linguists clearly realized that language is a social phenomenon and that the phenomena of language are socially determined. Soviet linguists are justly proud of their contribution to the resolution of the problems of the sociology of language. Since the twenties we in our country have been intensively working on the study of the social differentiation of language and, in particular, on social dialectology (see ¿irmunskij 1968). The contributions of Soviet linguists in the domain of language planning are generally known (see Isaev 1968). It would be incorrect to suppose, however, that the appearance of the trend called 'sociolinguistics' is simply a 'change in name'. Sociolinguistics in the sixties is a qualitatively new stage in the study of the relations between linguistic and social phenomena. It is above all necessary to note that this trend is developing on the basis of contemporary linguistics, renouncing an atomistic view of language and striving to strictly and consistently realize a systemic approach to linguistic phenomena. Extensively utilizing the achievements of contemporary linguistics, sociolinguistics does not view the phenomena of language as isolated facts but rather as phenomena endowed with the characteristics of systemic organization. At the same time it must be mentioned that the interest in the problems of the sociology of language we are currently observing is determined to a significant extent by a well-known dissatisfaction with intralinguistic or, in the words of the American linguists Trager and Smith (1951), 'microlinguistic' approach which has been widely adopted in contemporary linguistics. Such an approach, based, as is well known, on the interpretation of linguistic phenomena in terms of language structure and on the

114

A. D. Svejcer

analysis of linguistic phenomena from the point of view of their relationship to other linguistic phenomena, proves itself to be grossly inadequate to elucidate the socially determined differences in the structure of language. It is well known that the process of describing language as a unified monolithic structure has been firmly established in linguistics for some time. It often found its embodiment in a simplified scheme, based on the language of an individual, that is, an idiolect. The representatives of descriptive linguistics not infrequently reduce the description of a language to the description of an idiolect. Sometimes this analysis is based on research with one informant (see, for example, the description of the phonological system of the Swahili language in the well-known work of Z. Harris 1963). In other cases, the investigator based his description on the analysis of his own idiolect (see, for example, the description of the phonological structure of American English in Francis 1958). It cannot be denied that the adoption of such an undoubtedly simplified scheme may be sometimes justified by the goals and level of analysis. It is, however, hardly possible to contest the claim of one of the most distinguished representatives of linguistics, André Martinet (1962), according to which such an analysis, ignoring territorial and social differences, may be factually reduced to 'sacrificing existing differences in the name of descriptive simplicity'. If structurally determined variation found its explanation within the framework of intralinguistic analysis, then extra-linguistically determined variation, including social factors, in the words of the American investigator William Bright (1966) was not infrequently 'swept under the rug as free variation'. At the same time one of the main tasks facing contemporary sociolinguistics is proving that the variation of the elements of linguistic structure is never 'free' in the real sense of the word. The research being conducted at the present time in the domain of the sociology of language encompasses a broad spectrum of problems. We shall dwell on only several of these in what follows inasmuch as the thorough and circumspect elucidation of the problems of contemporary sociolinguistic investigations is naturally impossible within the bounds of one article.

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

115

THE SUBJECT OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND THE METHODS OF SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Like psycholinguistics and ethnolinguistics, sociolinguistics is a borderline branch of science. The problems it studies are of significant interest to sociologists who observe definite regularities characterizing the structure of contemporary society in linguistic phenomena and processes as well as linguists who investigate socially determined phenomena and processes as one of the most important aspects of the existence and development of language. It was indicated above that the object of sociolinguistic study is the problem of'language and society'. The immediate object of sociolinguistic analysis is the socially determined variability of linguistic structure. The goal and object of analysis should define its methods. Indeed, one of the most important goals of intralinguistic analysis is the delineation of invariant functional units. Thus, for example, one of the most important aspects of phonological analysis is the grouping of allophones into phonemes on the basis of extracting the invariant distinctive features common to all the variants of the given phoneme. Grammarians, grouping allomorphs into morphemes, pursue an analogous goal. In both cases the goal of the analysis remains the isolation of the invariant constituent units of the given level with the subsequent establishment of systemic relations between these units. Inasmuch as the object of study in sociolinguistics is the variation of linguistic structure, variable and not-constant quantities become the object of close attention. In this regard it should be kept in mind that not only allophones, allomorphs, etc., may vary but also the functional units of the different levels themselves, that is, the phonemes, morphemes, etc. Researching the socially determined variation of linguistic units, sociolinguistics relates linguistic facts to social facts. The dependence of the former on the latter is shown by determining the systematic covariation of the elements of linguistic and social structure. From this it follows that the method of correlating linguistic and social phenomena is one of the most important methods of sociolinguistic research. We shall dwell below in greater detail on the concrete spheres of application of this method. For the time being we shall limit ourselves to the simplest example. Suppose we come across a case of variation of the two forms of the plural of the type inzenery and inzenera 'engineers'. Intralinguistic analysis can only define the interrelationship between these variants as the free variation of allomorphs of one and the same morpheme. At the same time, it is important for the sociolinguist to establish

116

A. D. Svejcer

that the above variation exhibits a certain dependence on social factors (for example, on level of education). Such data may be obtained by means of interviewing informants, a method which is widely applied in sociolinguistic research. Inasmuch as certain divergences from the general norm are possible in each individual case, the results of the interviews undergo statistical analysis. Interviewing informants has been used for a long time in linguistic research. Without it, in particular, work on the compilation of dialect atlases would be inconceivable. However, in sociolinguistics this research method has undergone further development and changed substantially. A negative attitude to those value judgments which informants sometimes express is deeply rooted in contemporary linguistics. Only linguistic facts derivable from interviews are taken into account. As concerns the evaluation given by the informant to one or another linguistic phenomenon (in Bloomfield's [1940] terminology 'secondary and tertiary responses'), they are practically excluded from view as not having scientific value. Sociolinguistics subjected this state of affairs to a radical review. Indeed, informant judgments about languages and dialects used within the bounds of a given area, with all their seeming naivetd and unscientific nature, in many cases cast supplementary light on the language situation. Without considering them, it is, in particular, impossible to define the relative social prestige of competing linguistic forms. The study of attitudes toward language, current among the speakers of a given language (or, in the words of H. Hoenigswald [1966] 'folk linguistics'), is one of the most important tasks of sociolinguistics. Irrespective of their truth or falsity, these attitudes are subject to study as one of the elements of the language situation. Speaking of the methods of sociolinguistics research, the attempt of some scientists to work out a unified procedure of analysis of linguistic as well as social phenomena must be mentioned. In this regard, one observes an attempt to use the methods and principles of linguistic analysis in the study of phenomena related to the social sphere. Among the scholars working in this field, the American linguist K. Pike (1954-1960) occupies a prominent place. To him belongs the idea of working out a unified conception of structure, a unified set of terms and a unified method of research applicable to the same extent to the analysis of language and to the analysis of any form of human activity. Based on the behavioristic understanding of any goal-directed human activity as resting on a chain of stimuli and responses, K. Pike's theory of the structure of human behavior postulates behavioremes, units of behavior consisting of elements of linguistic as well as non-linguistic behavior.

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

117

Within the limits of the present article, it is hardly possible to subject the theory of Pike and related conceptions of other authors to detailed critical analysis (Garvin 1952, Hall 1959). We will limit ourselves to the statement of the obvious fact that these theories proceed from the assumption that linguistic and social structures are isomorphic. The arguments which are usually introduced to support this assumption, however, are very weak and not at all convincing. We cannot disagree with H. Hoenigswald (1966, pp. 16-17), who thinks that the extension of formal linguistic analysis to other elements of culture is a far from simple matter and that the analogies sometimes observed between the structure of language and other social phenomena turn out to be very artificial. The fact that it is in linguistics that formal methods of analysis find wide application is, apparently, far from accidental, and the mechanical extension of these methods to other social phenomena may be hardly considered fruitful. It by no means follows from the above that no methods and principles of analysis worked out on the basis of linguistic materials may be applied in the study of sociolinguistic correlations. It is only that it is necessary in each case to consider the specific nature of the material under investigation. Thus, for example, the Australian scholar A. Capell (1966) considers K. Pike's distinction between etic and emic levels useful for sociolinguistic analysis. If on the etic level of analysis the object of investigation is the external, immediately observable side of this or that phenomenon, then on the emic level the attention of the investigator is focused on their functional side, on their relation to the other elements of the given structure. This distinction, strictly applied in linguistics (see, for example, phonetic and phonological analysis), is not unimportant for anthropology as well, especially in the comparison of the externally similar but functionally differentiated social phenomena of different peoples. One of the most important principles of linguistic analysis used in sociolinguistics is the principle of the consistent differentiation between the synchronic and diachronic approach to the phenomena under investigation. As an example, we may cite two works of one and the same investigator - P. Friedrich (1966a, 1966b). In one of these works, dedicated to the problem of socially conditioned variation in the use of the Russian pronouns ty 'you' (informal) and vy 'you' (formal), the author limits himself to the synchronic approach alone. Studying the dialogue in the works of Russian classical writers of the nineteenth century against the background of a broad picture of the social structure of Russian

118

A. D. Svejcer

society, P. Friedrich constructs a ten-component model of extra-linguistic (social and psychological) factors influencing the use of these personal pronouns. The other work is of a diachronic character. In it the author traces the gradual dissolution of the old, widely ramified system of kinship terminology in Russian, relating this phenomenon to the decline of the patriarchal way of life of the prerevolutionary Russian village (see, for example, the transition into the passive vocabulary of such kinship terms as dever' 'husband's brother', zolovka 'husband's sister', etc., and their replacement by the paraphrastic brat muza 'husband's brother' and sestra muza 'husband's sister'. Some further details on the characteristics of the concrete methods of sociolinguistic analysis are given below in connection with an exposition of the concrete problems of sociolinguistics.

THE PROBLEM OF THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF LANGUAGE

Research devoted to the social stratification of language occupies one of the leading places among contemporary works in sociolinguistics. The extreme topicality of this question is stressed by Academician V. M. ¿irmunskij (1968, p. 22) who writes that it is absolutely necessary to consider the class structure of society in the study of the history of a language as a social phenomenon. To this it may be added that the social structure of society should not be omitted from consideration in the synchronic study of language as well because in many cases it casts additional light on the interrelationship between numerous subsystems entering into the complicated 'system of systems' of a language at a given stage in its development. The heterogeneity of the system of language finds its expression, in particular, in the fact that a set of partially intersecting subsystems coexist in it whose interrelationship may be defined as language variation in a spatial projection (horizontal differentiation) as well as the social stratification of language (vertical differentiation) (Reiman 1966). The horizontal differentiation of language structure lies at the basis of the division of a language into regional dialects, semidialects and variants. As concerns vertical differentiation, here are distinguished, on the one hand, subsystems of language which are distinctly and unambiguously related to definite social and occupational groups (here being, in particular, social and professional dialects - for example, the argot of déclassé, the so-called 'army slang' in English described by G. A. Sudzilovskij [1954] and others) and, on the other hand, those dialects, semidialects

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

119

and variants of the standard language which form a vertical hierarchical series within the bounds of one and the same strictly defined area. The language situation in Germany, described in the works of Academician V. M. Zirmunskij (1956,1964), may serve as an example of the social stratification of the second type. In this case there is no rigid one-to-one relation between a linguistic system and its social user. One may only speak of its primary correlation with certain social groups. Thus, for example, the main speakers of dialects in Germany are the peasants and, to a lesser extent, the petty bourgeoisie. The latter more often appears in the role of speakers of urban semidialects (Halbmundarten), whereas the standard language in its spoken form is the 'language of the educated', that is, in the main, representatives of the social élite. The situation is further complicated due to the fact that under the influence of urbanization, the development of the educational system, the means of mass communication, the ever-increasing influence of the standard language on dialects is to be observed in contemporary society. Not infrequently a situation appears where in the speech of one and the same person both dialectal as well as competing standard language forms are evinced. Noting the widespread distribution of this phenomenon among the English peasants, the well-known English dialectologist H. Orton (1962) writes that the pressure of the standard language on English dialect speech is so great that as many as three or four variants of one and the same word not infrequently coexist within one and the same idiolect whose choice is usually determined by the social situation. As distinct from bilingualism, that is, the mastery of two different languages, the mastery of two varieties of one and the same language (most frequently the standard language and one of its dialects) is called diglossia (Ferguson 1959). One of the most fundamental works devoted to the investigation of the social aspects of diglossia is the research of the American linguist W. Labov (1964). As is well known, there is no unified pronunciation norm in the American variety of the English language. The regional variants of American pronunciation may be divided into two main groups according to the following differentiating characteristic - the presence or absence of the consonantal phoneme [r] in post-vocalic position. Among the 'r-less' pronunciation types, that is, those lacking [r] in this position, are the regional standards of Eastern New England and the Southeast of the U.S.A. The pronunciation of New York is also usually listed among these. The sociolinguistic research of W. Labov essentially corrected this persistent view. W. Labov conducted his research in one of the districts of New York the population of which had previously been the subject of sociological

120

A. D. Svejcer

research. The informants interviewed by him exhibited the phenomenon of diglossia: the parallel use of two pronunciation types was observed in their speech - one with postvocalic [r], the other without it. After generalizing the results of the interviews and subjecting them to statistical analysis, the investigator introduced sociological correlates into his work. Above all, the social situation was taken into consideration (the 'speech style' in the terminology of Labov). The results of the investigation showed that an informal context was characteristic of the 'r-less' type of pronunciation, while the other type of pronunciation (with postvocalic [r]) tends to be used in formal speech and in those situations in which the attention of the informant is focused on the 'correctness' of speech. Considering the social status of the informants, W. Labov observed that the 'r-less' type is on the whole more characteristic of the speech of 'lower' urban society, whereas the type with postvocalic [r] is more frequently found in the speech of the upper social strata. He thus succeeded in establishing that the 'r-less' type is characterized by relatively less social prestige. The research of W. Labov is interesting in that it reveals the dynamics of socially conditioned language change. In the past, orientation to the pronunciation norms of eastern New England with its 'r-less' type of pronunciation was characteristic of New York pronunciation. During the post-war period the influence of the mid-western pronunciation type led to the formation of a new norm, providing, in particular, for the introduction of [r] in postvocalic position. This process is apparently not yet complete, and at the present time both pronunciation types exist within the boundaries of one and the same area, distinguished from one another by their social prestige. The work of Labov revealed one further curious detail: if the informal speech of the urban bourgeois (the 'lower-middle class' in the terminology of Labov) lags behind the speech of the upper strata of society in the use of postvocalic [r], in formal contexts, their speech is differentiated by a somewhat greater attraction to the new pronunciation norm. This phenomenon (that is, the conscious and at times excessive imitation of normed speech or 'hypercorrection') plays, in Labov's opinion, an essential role in the mechanism of the linguistic change he observed. A somewhat different situation connected with the presence of two pronunciation types in one and the same area is revealed in the research of the American dialectologists L. Levine and H. J. Crockett, Jr. (1966). The subject of their research is variation in the pronunciation norms in one of the regions of the state of North Carolina. This region, found on the border of the 'r-less' type of pronunciation and the type of pro-

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

121

nunciation with postvocalic [r], is also characterized by the coexistence of both types. In order to have the opportunity to use the methods of quantitative analysis they postulated a variable, conventionally designated R, which corresponds to the relationship between the number of actual occurrences of [r] which they observed and the total number of potentially possible uses of [r] in the given stretch of speech. The data of the investigation were correlated with such sociodemographic correlates as level of education, age, the occupational status of the informants and the length of their residence in the given region. The research showed that, in contradistinction to New York, the status of both the pronunciation types in the region is approximately identical. Using these data as their point of departure, the authors arrive at a conclusion about the presence of two competing pronunciation norms in the region they investigated. At the same time a relatively high R factor among the youth may be regarded as the symptom of the possible drift of this area to the pronunciation type with postvocalic [r]. Some foreign studies in the social stratification of language demand a critical approach. The authors of these works, as a rule, operate with the categories of bourgeois sociology. At the same time, the research techniques they employ deserve, beyond doubt, attention. Many of the research methods which W. Labov and other authors use in their work may, in our view, be successfully applied in the investigation of analogous sociolinguistic situations.

SOME SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF BILINGUALISM AND MULTILINGUALISM

When peoples speaking different languages are in contact, specific changes within the sphere of their language and culture frequently take place. Such a situation, from the point of view of the linguist, is the situation of language contact, while the assimilation of the second-language system which takes place in this process is usually called bilingualization. The accepted term in anthropology for the process of assimilating elements of another culture is acculturation (Diebold 1964). Extensive literature exists on the problem of language contacts. The founder of the theory of language contacts is generally considered to be H. Schuchardt. Interest in this country in this problem goes back to the works of J. A. Baudouin de Courtenay and L. V. Scerba (see Rozenzvejg 1963). A prominent role in working out questions of language contacts and bilingualism was played by works of U. Weinreich (1953) and E. Haugen (1953, 1956) appearing in the fifties. In the past scholars' attention was mainly concentrated on the purely

122

A. D. Svejcer

linguistic aspects of bilingualism. In recent times, however, interest in the psycholinguistic (see Verescagin 1967) and sociolinguistic aspects of this problem has noticeably increased. In the present section we will dwell on several sociolinguistic aspects of the problem of bilingualism and multilingualism. In studying the phenomena of bilingualism and multilingualism, sociolinguistics relates them to specific social correlates. Here, just as in the study of the phenomena of the social stratification of language, attention may be drawn to two types of correlates. Belonging to the first type are the social indices relevant to the given research (for example, the social status of the informants), and to the second specific social processes (for example, the process of acculturation). The terms monolingualism, bilingualism and multilingualism are used in sociolinguistics far from uniformly. Sometimes these terms are used in relation to a given society or country as a whole, while sometimes they are applied in relation to an individual in command of one, two, or several languages. In order to clarify whether or not we are talking about the existence of different linguistic communities within the bounds of one and the same country or about the ability of the inhabitants of a given country to use different linguistic systems in the process of communication, it was suggested to distinguish between national monolingualism, bilingualism and multilingualism on the one hand, and individual monolingualism, bilingualism and multilingualism on the other. National monolingualism may completely coincide with individual bilingualism and even multilingualism. Thus, for example, the population of the island of Malta is, on the whole, a monolingual community, the native language of which is Maltese (related to Arabic). At the same time, many of the inhabitants of this island know a second language, Italian or English. National bilingualism or multilingualism, on the other hand, sometimes coincides with individual monolingualism. Switzerland, which is a multilingual state, may serve as an example of this phenomenon. On the other hand, monolingualism is characteristic of the main body of the population of this country (Kloss 1966). In the majority of cases, however, there is a definite connection between national and individual bilingualism or multilingualism. The fact of the matter is that the social inequality existing in capitalistic society among the peoples that make up a multinational state is reflected, in particular, in the relative status of the languages of these peoples. Here, as a rule, monolingualism is characteristic of the speakers of that language which occupies the dominant position in the life of the given

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

123

society, whereas bilingualism is more widely distributed among the speakers of the other languages which occupy a subordinate position in relation to the dominant language. This phenomenon takes place even in those cases where the languages are formally equal and have the status of national languages in the given country. Such, in particular, is the situation in Canada, where bilingualism occurs mainly among the French and not the English-speaking population. Such a correlation between the dominant language and the rest defines in turn their social prestige. There is a good reason why French-speaking Belgians call the infrequent bilingualism of the speakers of the dominant language 'bilinguisme de concession', and the bilingualism among the speakers of other languages 'bilinguisme de promotion' (Coulon 1962). The German scholar H. Kloss (1966) notes the following factors determining the interrelationship between the languages in a multilingual society: the official status of the languages, the distribution of each of them, the nature and extent of individual bilingualism, the social prestige and the genetic affinity of the languages. This list, however, is far from complete. In reality, the factors which determine the linguistic situation in bilingual and multilingual states are much more complicated and varied. Thus, A. R. Diebold (1964), in his work devoted to Spanish-Indian bilingualism in Mexico, points to the dependence of the degree and nature of bilingualism on the process of acculturation. Among the factors which determine the interrelationship between the Spanish language and the local Indian language Huave, the author stresses the domain of these languages (namely, the local language is the language of everyday communication and is used within the family), the economic and political dependence of the local Indian population on the Spanish-speaking external world, and its insignificant mobility. The linguistic situation in multilingual, newly independent countries is extraordinarily complicated. Many of them are temporarily compelled to use the language of their former rulers not only in the capacity of the official language of international communication but also in the capacity of a lingua franca for interlingual communication within the country. Such is the situation in many of the developing countries of Africa which were French or English colonies. Especially complex is the situation in India, where there is no unified language-intermediary ('macrointermediary' in the terminology of the Soviet scholar V. A. Cernysev [1968]) serving all or at least the main strata of its heterolinguistic population. In addition to this, Hindi and English are mainly used here in the capacity of language-microintermediaries, restricted in their degree of distribution as well as in the sphere of their use. The attempt to proclaim Hindi the

124

A. D. Svejcer

unified national language of the country was not crowned with success in view of the sharp negative reaction it evoked in the non-Hindi-speaking regions of India. Nevertheless, the conversion of one of the most widely distributed local languages into a language-macrointermediary continues to be one of the most important tasks of the language policy, not only of India but of many other developing countries as well. Even in circumstances of national bilingualism, however, the local language can by no means always take upon itself the functions of a unified national language. The very absence of a literary standard and the resultant inadequacy of the local language Guarani as a means of communication in modern society, significantly weaken the position of this language in competition with the Spanish language in Paraguay (Rona 1966). The absence of distinctly codified norms interferes in many cases with the unambiguous identification of the elements of a local language having a tendency to conversion into a macrointermediary. This phenomenon was noted by W. Samarin (1966) in relation to the language Sango in Central Africa. According to his observations, many of the bilingual inhabitants of this region not infrequently identify linguistic forms of Sango as forms of the local language. Much of what was said above in relation to diglossia applies to bilingualism as well. Here essentially the same mechanism of switching from one linguistic system to another depending upon the social situation is in operation. In the final analysis, this depends upon the social structure of the given society which determines which of the given languages is used in the sphere of education, official business communication, in everyday life, etc. Indicative in this respect is the bilingualism among immigrants living in the United States, whose native language, as a result of the policy of Americanization conducted in that country, is used in a very narrow sphere and is subject to significant interference from the dominant English language (Haugen 1953, 1956; cf. Zluktenko 1966).

THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY

As is well known, by 'typology' one usually has in mind the definition of general linguistic categories, based on the comparison of related phenomena in different languages, with the goal of classifying languages according to types irrespective of their origin (see the definition in Akhmanova 1966). As distinct from structural typology, classifying languages on the basis of the differences and similarities of their structural

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

125

properties, sociolinguistic typology builds its classification schemes on the basis of such sociolinguistic indices as the status of the languages, the sphere of their use, their social functions, etc. One of the key concepts of sociolinguistic typology is the concept of linguistic situation. According to the definition of the Soviet linguist L. B. Nikol'skij (1968), a linguistic situation is 'the interrelationship of functionally stratified linguistic formations used in a given region (usually within the bounds of a state)'. Several scholars describe a linguistic situation as made up of such components as the number and types of languages used in the given region, the extent of their distribution, the sphere of their use and their social prestige (c/. Ferguson 1966, p. 309). Sociolinguistic typology is built on the basis of a taxonomy, that is, the comparison of similar features, which bring linguistic situations to light in all their diversity. On the other hand, sociolinguistic typology makes it possible to describe linguistic situations in unambiguous terms or, in other words, to establish a metalanguage for their description. There exist several typological schemes, proposed by various authors, which have not as yet been widely applied. Such, for example, is the scheme of Greenberg (1956), which defines the diversity of languages used in a given area. Ferguson (1962) placed at the basis of the scheme proposed by him such a feature as the degree of standardization of the languages. Stewart's (1962) sociolinguistic typology is based on the functional distribution of languages in one or another society. It goes without saying that all these schemes have an inescapably one-sided character. For this reason, of special interest is one of Ferguson's later works (1966), which is an attempt to work out a unified multifaceted scheme suitable for the description of the most diverse linguistic situations. First of all it is proposed to distinguish between types of languages depending upon the role they play in the process of communication among the members of a given society. In this regard, Ferguson distinguishes between three types of languages: major, minor, and special. To the first group belong languages which are native for not less than 25% of the population or more than one million inhabitants of a given country, national languages and languages so widely used in the educational system that they are mastered by not less than 50% of the graduates of secondary school. Moreover, a major language may satisfy only one of the above-enumerated conditions. Thus, for example, approximately one-third of the whole population of Bolivia speaks Quechua, but it is not the national language of that country. At the same time, Irish is the native language of only 3% of the inhabitants of Ireland, although, together with English, it is considered the national language of the country.

126

A. D. Svejcer

To minor languages Ferguson relegates languages spoken by from 5 to 25% of the inhabitants of a country or not less than 100,000 people (for example, Basque in Spain). Special languages are distinguished by their extremely diverse nature. Here we find languages that are widely used in religious rites (for example, Pali in Ceylon), in artistic literature (for example, 'classical' Chinese on Taiwan), those taught as a special discipline in most secondary schools (for example, French in Spain), those widely used by people of a particular age group (thus, for example, Japanese is still widely used by the educated inhabitants of Taiwan between the ages of 35 and 55). The data obtained as a result of this classification may be made more precise with the help of the indices proposed by Stewart characterizing the type and function of a given language. Five main types of language are distinguished: (1) vernacular - the unstandardized native language of a given speech community; (2) standard-a local language, standardized; (3) classical - a standard language which is not native to a local population (for example, the Arabic literary language in several Arab countries); (4) pidgin - a hybrid language, combining the grammatical structure of one language with the lexicon of another; (5) creole - a pidgin which has become the native language of a given speech community. The functions depend upon the division of the languages into the following groups : (1) languages used mainly for communication within a given speech community; (2) languages used in official business communication, either officially designated as languages of government or widely used in government agencies, in the system of education, or the armed forces; (3) languages used as lingua franca or, in other words, language-intermediaries, used for domestic interlinguistic communication; (4) the languages of instruction of secondary schools and those in which textbooks are published ; (5) languages widely used for religious purposes ; (6) languages used 'in the international arena' for communication with other nations; (7) languages widely taught as school subjects. The scheme proposed by Ferguson makes it possible to briefly (although, of course, schematically) characterize the language situation in

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

127

any country with the help of a series of literal and numerical indices corresponding to the parameters enumerated above. Its shortcoming, in our view, lies above all in its incompleteness. Thus, for example, this scheme does not provide for the situation frequently appearing in contemporary society where one and the same literary language (or, in the terminology of Ferguson, 'standard language') serves different speech communities, represented in each of them in the form of different variants. In recent times, the problem of the variants of the standard language has been widely discussed in the works of Soviet linguists (Stepanov 1963, Svejcer 1963, Domasnev 1967). In regard to this question, the typological scheme worked out by the Jugoslavian scholar D. Brozovic (1967) is of great interest. Secondly, Ferguson's scheme does not make it possible to account for the nature and degree of individual bilingualism and multilingualism among the inhabitants of a given country. At the same time, these data are extremely important for the characteristics of the language situation in countries with a large immigrant community. Finally, attention must be paid to a certain arbitrariness in the establishment of some characteristics lying at the basis of their classificational schemes. This shortcoming appears especially clearly in the division of languages into major and minor. Other shortcomings of Ferguson's scheme may be pointed to, but it must not be forgotten that it is one of the first attempts at working out a unified, multifaceted typological classification of languages based on sociolinguistic characteristics. It follows from the above that the working out of unified principles for the typological comparison of languages with due regard for social correlates remains one of the most topical questions of sociolinguistics.

LANGUAGE POLICY

One of the most important domains of the application of the data of sociolinguistic analysis is so-called 'language policy'. It is well known that the development of languages is determined by internal (that is, intralinguistic) as well as external (that is, extralinguistic) factors. Among the latter, a certain role is played by language policy defined as 'the totality of measures worked out for goal-directed regulating influence on the spontaneous linguistic process and realized by society (by the state)' (Nikol'skij 1968, p. 114). The role of language policy is limited if only because the several levels

128

A. D. Svejcer

of language structure (for example, the phonological and morphological) are subject to external influence to only a very insignificant extent. Nevertheless, in certain conditions the influence of society on language process may be very perceptible. It must be borne in mind that the nature of language policy is determined in the final analysis by the nature of the social system, the class structure of the given society and the policies pursued by the dominating class. An example was already cited above of the language situation in the United States, where language policy is a component part of the official course of 'Americanization' followed in regard to Americans of foreign extraction. The result of this policy is that the third- or fourth(and sometimes the second-) generation Americans, as a rule, forget their native language, becoming completely monolingual. As distinct from this policy, directed at restricting the sphere of use of the native language of national minorities, language policies in our country proceeded from the tasks defined by Leninist national policy and fostered the creation and development of written languages for illiterate peoples as well as the rebirth of the national languages of the former 'backyard' of imperial Russia. Sociolinguistic research can and should be a reliable basis in elaborating and realizing language policy. This calls for a circumspect analysis of the language situation, which requires field work, questionnaires, the scientific justification and formulation of questions for the census of the population and processing its data. In linguistics the term 'language policy' is not infrequently used synonymously with the terms 'language engineering' (Isaev 1968, p. 83) and 'language planning' (Haugen 1966). In the present article by the term 'language engineering' we have in mind that form of language policy which is directed at the development of a language, at the perfection of its written form and at the codification of its literary norm, and not at the restriction of the sphere of its use or at its full exclusion from use. We have already referred to the vast experience of Soviet linguists in the field of language engineering. Much of this experience still awaits its generalization. It will doubtlessly be of great benefit to developing nations for which the problem of the development of the national language is one of the most urgent questions of social development. One of the noteworthy foreign works devoted to this topic is the article of E. Haugen 'Linguistics and language planning' (1966) which is an attempt to formulate the tasks of linguists in language engineering. In his opinion, very useful in this regard are special historical studies permitting one to establish the trends of development of a given language, to dis-

Some Topical Questions in Sociolinguistics

129

tinguish its original elements from those that are borrowed, as well as synchronic descriptions of its structure, observations in the domain of dialectology, research on the phenomena of the standard (literary) language, the results of which may be embodied in the rules of orthography, in grammars and in dictionaries. In order to be able to correctly forecast the results of linguistic engineering and set scientifically based tasks, the mastery of the techniques of linguistic analysis, a knowledge of typological universals and the correct understanding of the relation between written and oral speech are necessary. One of the most important channels of influence on linguistic processes is the system of language teaching. It is essential that the teaching of first as well as second languages be conducted with due regard for the results of sociolinguistic analysis (Shuy 1967) which are especially important in the evaluation of one or another linguistic fact and, in particular, in the selection of the most preferable variant of two or several competing forms. The very concept of norm as a regulator of variability is inextricably connected with specific social correlates determining the relative status or social prestige of conflicting variants, as well as with the social situation determining their functional use. In linguistic literature the term 'normative' is sometimes used with a condescending-derogatory connotation. Now and then it becomes a kind of euphemistic equivalent of the concept 'unscientific' (see the frequent distinction between scientific and normative handbooks on grammar, vocabulary, stylistics and phonetics). The reasons for this, in our view, are rooted in a deterministic approach to the phenomena of language which denies any possibility of conscious influence on language processes. Yet the history of many languages abounds in examples testifying to the very essential role which normative handbooks play in language standardization. But in order that these handbooks be of genuinely scientific character, it is necessary that they be based not so much on the intuitions of their authors as on an objective analysis of linguistic facts taking into consideration the advances of all branches of linguistics, including the data of sociolinguistics.

Author's postscript Since this article was written back in 1968, it clearly needs some updating. If I were to write it now, I would not limit the immediate field of sociolinguistics to socially determined variability but would also include in it socially marked invariant structures. I would also add to the list of

Ì30

A. D. Svejcer

'topical questions' some general philosophical problems of sociolinguistics, such as the relationship between social and linguistic structures, the social determination of a linguistic sign, the relationship of contemporary sociolinguistic research to different philosophical and sociological trends. These are partly covered in my 'O mikrosociologii i makrosociologii jazyka' [On micro- and macrosociology of language] (Moscow 1970), a paper for the XIII World Congress of Sociology (a critique of an exclusively microsociological orientation of sociolinguistics); 'Metodologiceskie osnovy amerikanskoj sociolingvistiki' [Philosophical foundations of American sociolinguistics] (in Metodologiceskie problemy istorii jazykoznanija, Institut naucnoj informacii po obscestvennym naukam, Moscow, 1974), an analysis of the influence of behaviorism, neopositivism, symbolic-interactionist and phenomenological theories on some trends in sociolinguistics. I would also include among these problems the conceptual framework of sociolinguistics discussed in my 'O ponjatijnom apparate sociolingvistiki' [On the conceptual framework of sociolinguistics] (in Vsesojuznaja naucnaja konferencija po teoreticeskim problemam jazykoznanija. Tezisy dokladov sekcionnyx zasedanij. Moscow, 1974). Another problem to be added to the list is that of the relationship of sociolinguistics to text linguistics. It is referred to in my 'Socional'nokommunikativnyj analiz teksta i problemy perevoda' [Socio-communicative text analysis and problems of translation] (in Doklady sovetskix sociolingvistov na VII vsemirnom sociologiceskom kongresse, Moscow, 1974), a cross-cultural study of Russian and English newspaper texts. These and other problems are discussed in my forthcoming Sovremennaja sociolingvistika: teorija, problemy, methody [Contemporary Sociolinguistics: Theory, Problems, Methods] to be published by Nauka in 1976.

REFERENCES Akhmanova, O. S. (1966), Slovak lingvisticeskix terminov [Dictionary of Linguistic Terms]. Moscow, Sovetskaja enciklopedija. Bloomfield, L. (1944), 'Secondary and tertiary responses to language', Language, 20. Bright, W. (1966), 'Introduction: The dimensions of sociolinguistics'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague, Mouton. BrozoviC, D . (1967), 'Slavjanskie standardnye jazyki i sravnitel'nyj metod' [Slavic standard languages and the comparative method], Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1. Capell, A. (1966), Studies in Sociolinguistics. London-The Hague.

Some Topical Questions in

Sociolinguistics

131

CernySev, V. A. (1968), 'K probleme jazyka-posrednika' [Toward the question of a language-intermediary]. In Jazyk i obscestvo [Language and Society], Moscow, Nauka. Coulon, M. (1962), L'autonomie culturelle en Belgique. Brussels. Currie, H. C. (1952), 'A projection of sociolinguistics: The relationship of speech to social status', Southern Speech Journal, 18. Diebold, A. R., Jr. (1964), 'Incipient bilingualism'. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Language in Culture and Society. New York. DomaSnev, A. I. (1967), Oierk sovremennogo nemeckogo jazyka v Avstrii [A Study of Contemporary German in Austria]. Moscow, Vyssaja skola. Ferguson, C. A. (1959), 'Diglossia', Word, 15, 2. (1962), 'The language factor in national development', Anthropological Linguistics, 4,1. (1966), 'National socio-linguistic profile formulas'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague, Mouton. Francis, W. N. (1958), The Structure of American English. New York. Friedrich, P. (1966b), 'Structural implications of Russian pronominal usage'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague, Mouton. (1966a), 'The linguistic reflex of social changes from Tsarist to Soviet Russian kinship'. In Explorations in Sociolinguistics. The Hague. Garvin, P. L. (1952), 'Structure and variation in language and culture'. In Sol Tax (Ed.), Indian Tribes of Aboriginal America. Chicago. Greenberg, J. H. (1956), 'The measurement of linguistic diversity', Language, 32. Hall, E. T. (1959), The Silent Language. New York. Harris, Z. (1963), Structural Linguistics. Chicago. Haugen, E. (1953), The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior. Philadelphia. (1956), Bilingualism in the Americas. Alabama. (1966), 'Linguistics and language planning'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague Mouton. Hoenigswald, H. M. (1966), 'A proposal for the study of folk-linguistics'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague, Mouton. Isaev, M. I. (1968), 'Jazykovoe stroitel'stvo kak odin iz vaznejsix ekstralingvistiCeskix faktorov razvitija jazyka' [Language engineering as one of the most important extralinguistic factors in the development of language]. In Jazyk i obsiestvo [Language and Society], Moscow, Nauka. Kloss, H. (1966), 'Types of multilingual communities: Discussion of ten variables'. In Explorations in Sociolinguistics. The Hague. Labov, W. (1964), The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington. Levine, L., and H. J. Crockett, Jr. (1966), 'Speech variation in a Piedmont community : Postvocalic r'. In Explorations in Sociolinguistics. The Hague. Martinet, A. (1962), A Functional View of Language. Oxford. Nikol'skij, L. B. (1968), 'Jazykovaja politika kak forma soznatel'nogo vozdejstvija obSiestva na jazykovoe razvitie' [Language policy as a form of the conscious influenoe of society on language development]. In Jazyk i obsiestvo [Language and Society], Moscow, Nauka. Orton, H. (1962), 'Introduction'. In Survey of English Dialects (A). Leeds. Pike, K. L. (1954-1960), Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. Glendale.

132

A. D.

Svejcer

Reimen, J. R. (1966), 'A propos de la différenciation verticale (sociale) de la phonie d'une langue', Journée de sociolinguistique. Evian, 12 September. Rona, J. P. (1966), 'The social and cultural status of Guarani in Paraguay'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague, Mouton. Rozenzvejg, V., Jr. (1963), 'Ojazykovyx kontaktax', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1. Samarin, W. J. (1966), 'Self-annulling prestige factors among speakers of a creole language'. In Sociolinguistics. The Hague, Mouton. Shuy, R. W. (Ed.) (1967), Social Dialects and Language Learning. Champaign. Stepanov, G. V. (1963), Ispanskij jazyk v stranax Latinskoj Ameriki [The Spanish Language in the Latin American Countries]. Moscow, Progress. Stewart, W. A. (1962), 'An outline of linguistic typology for describing multilingualism'. In F. A. Rice (Ed.), Study of the Role of Second Languages in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Washington. Sudzilovskij, G. A. (1954), 'K voprosu o "slenge" v anglijskoj voennoj leksike. (SpecifiCeskaja Cast' emocional'no okraSennogo sloja voennoj leksike') [On the question of 'slang' in the English war vocabulary (The specific portion of emotionally tinted military vocabulary)]. Dissertation, Kalinin. Svejcer, A. D. (1963), Oierk sovremennogo anglijskogo jazyka v SSA [A Study of Contemporary English in the United States of America]. Moscow, VysSaja Skola. Trager, G. L., and H. L. Smith (1951), An Outline of English Structure. Washington. VereSiagin, E. M. (1967), 'Psixolingvistiéeskaja problematika teorii jazykovyx kontaktov (obzor literatury)' [Psycholinguistic problems of the theory of language contacts (a review of the literature)], Voprosy jazykoznanija, 6. Weinreich, U. (1953), Languages in Contact. New York. ¿irmunskij, V. M. (1956), Nemeckaja dialektologija [German Dialectology]. MoscowLeningrad. (1964), 'Problemy social'noj dialektologii* [Problems of social dialectology], Izv. ANSSSR, vol. 23, 2, OLJa. (1968), 'Problema social'noj differenciacii jazykov' [The problem of the social differentiation of languages]. In Jazyk i obsöestvo [Language and Society]. Moscow, Nauka. Zluktenko, Ju. O. (1966), Morni kontakti [Language Contacts]. Kiev.

O. S. AKHMANOVA AND A. N. MARCENKO

6

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

That branch of linguistics that studies the causal ties between language and social life - such is the most general definition of the term 'sociolinguistics'. A more individualistic meaning of this term, although the one which is the most widely disseminated at this time, is the following: sociolinguistics is that branch of linguistics which studies the social differentiation of languages, that is, their different social dialects (c/. Akhmanova 1966, p. 444). How is such an understanding of the subject matter of sociolinguistics to be concretely interpreted in the numerous works that are in some way connected with sociolinguistics, and on which of these factors should we focus our attention? We think that it is necessary to report first of all on the serious research which has been conducted over a very protracted period of time by various foreign scholars and which is reflected in numerous and various publications.1 Anthologies of this type are of the highest value because they present in easily visible form vast and multifarious information reflecting different stages of research of this question. The bilateral correlation between language (or, as the representatives of the most influential sociolinguistic trends prefer to say, the 'linguistic habits' of a given ethnic group) and the extra or prelinguistic world is conceptualized by different researchers in different ways. We will attempt to elucidate briefly the main problem to the study of which this research is dedicated. The trend accorded the most renown is that according to which one's native language as a means of cognition defines this or that world view (or, as is frequently said, 'world picture') through the prism of which one comes to know the 1. Cf. Sor (1926), SelisSev (1928), VoloSinov (1929), Saxmatov (1936), ¿irmunskij (1936,1956), Karinskij (1936), Abaev (1948,1952), Jakubinskij (1953), Vinokur (1959), Konrad (1959), DeSeriev (1958, 1966), DeSeriev and ProtSenko (1968). See also the anthology Jazyk i obsiestvo (Moscow, 1968) and the anthology Voprosy social'noj lingvistiki (Leningrad, 1969).

134

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N.

Marcenko

reality of one's environment.2 Directly opposing is the point of view which in essence denies any effect of one's native language on the cognition, perception, and conceptualization of extralinguistic reality. It is clear that neither of these extreme points of view may be accepted by us. Between the language and thought, the language and the properties of the social life of a given community, there is a definite correlation. This correlation should not be simply construed, however, all the less so with that idealistic bent which is immediately observable in attempts to give precedence to language (c/. Akhmanova and Ginzburg 1968). It is therefore necessary in this connection to speak about the complex interaction and interinfluence of both sides of the given dialectical unit. We will attempt to illustrate the above with examples (see Akhmanova 1963). (1) Although different types of distribution and juxtaposition of the individual elements of a linguistic model have a thoroughly defined significance, in and of themselves they do not reveal the full complexity of the functioning of a given language. Thus, for example, if one compares the phonological status of the [p\\b] opposition with that of the [0]-[d] opposition in English, one is easily convinced that the latter is supported by only one 'minimal pair', by the two extremely infrequently used words thigh and thy. The dephonologizing of this opposition and the return to that stage when [9] and [d] were variants of one and the same phoneme would thus appear to be certain. (2) The influence of the written language, of 'exemplary' pronunciation and of the 'victorious' dialect. Thus, for example, there is every reason to think that the English laryngeal fricative was artificially introduced in strong positions as a consequence of the fact that its omission 2. This well-known utterance of E. Sapir was used by B. Whorf (1964, p. 134). Sapir's understanding of the problem was indeed broader and more interesting. See, in particular: 'As with race, so with culture. Particularly in more primitive levels, where the secondarily unifying power of the "national" ideal does not arise to disturb the flow of what we might call national distributions, it is easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated' (Sapir 1949, p. 213). It should be noted that Whorf's point of view is often presented in an excessively straightforward and one-sided interpretation. Compare, for example, his statement as follows: 'I should be the last to pretend that there is anything so definite as "a correlation" between culture and language, and especially between ethnological rubrics such as "agricultural, hunting", etc., and linguistic ones like "inflected", "synthetic", or "isolating".... The idea of "correlation" between language and culture, in the generally accepted sense of correlation, is certainly a mistaken one' (Whorf 1964, pp. 138-139).

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

135

was a sign of 'uncultured' pronunciation (see Horn and Lehnert, Vol. 2, 1954, pp. 867ff). We note that if the researcher intentionally restricts himself to the [study of language in its - translator] 'microlinguistic' aspect, contenting himself with the abstract concept of language as code the units of which are given beforehand and merely manifest themselves in the syntagmatic axis only on the basis of the principle of 'position' and 'environment', he is creating a simplified picture. It is indeed well known that in the real functioning of language the manifold nature of sound may in no way be reduced to the main variant of a phoneme and the small set of its main variants. Speaking therefore, for example, about the nature of the Russian voiceless fricatives in the environment of following soft consonants within the framework of microlinguistics, we may restrict ourselves to establishing the reduction in 'syntagmatic dependency' (or 'positional constraint') of these sounds. However, this will be far from adequate for linguistics, which takes various sociolinguistic facts into account, such as, for example, the age of the speakers, their membership in social groups, their emotional state, etc. It has been noted, for example, that speakers palatalize voiceless fricative consonants in official contexts less; on the contrary, in less restricted contexts, such palatalization is more frequently observed (see Ban 1963). The older the speaker, the greater the degree of palatalization; it is absent from [the speech of - translator] speakers of the younger generation and is reduced under the influence of certain regional varieties of the language. (3) In contemporary Russian there has been a radical change in the distribution of the forms of the masculine and feminine gender (doktor 'doctor', professor 'professor', pisateV 'writer', etc.). On the other hand, the verbal form prisla 'she arrived' required that the noun following it be in the feminine gender (doktorsa 'female doctor', professorsa 'female professor', pisateVnica 'female writer', etc.). The distributional rules were absolutely clear and strict. Now, however, strings of the form professor prisla 'the female professor arrived', doktor usla 'the female doctor exited' are everywhere to be found. Naturally, it is good that we succeeded in observing, recording and describing this fact, even within the framework of microlinguistics. But the main task consists in elucidating by whom, when (in which circumstances of communication) and with which degree of consistency the old distribution is being lifted, in which lexical and social contexts the feminine gender suffix is lost. In other words, just as in the case of the palatalization of consonants, here, too, one should not restrict oneself to conclusions about the disruption or non-disruption

136

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N.

Marcenko

of the former distribution, about the decrease or increase in syntagmatic dependency. It is essential to develop and refine the principles and methods, the means and devices, of sociolinguistic research, that is, of the study of linguistic structures in given social contexts. It is not only necessary to describe the structure of a given language but to elucidate how the main regularities in the functioning of language in a given society may be described, which regularities may be observed in different languages because they function in different socio-historical contexts. The discovery and description of 'social structures', which are the material foundational structure of sociolinguistics, is one of the main tasks of contemporary science. Only in this way may we overcome the idealistic positions which have been developed in the works of foreign linguistic trends more than once. It is only in this way that it can be shown that this or that 'linguistic picture of the world' constitutes something secondary in relation to the social structure of a given society and that the given linguistic structure exercises an influence on the formation of the thought of the members of a given community only in the sense in which ideas influence the development of social life in general, changing to a greater or lesser extent the direction of this development. Such, consequently, is the general philosophical basis of the whole discussion on which, in essence, the study of still more concrete subdivisions within the enormous field of knowledge designated (for the most part indifferently) by the term 'sociolinguistics' should begin.3 Central to Soviet linguistics have always been such problems as the objectivity of the existence of language, the correlation of language and culture and the ways in which society consciously influences language. The leading Soviet linguists, setting themselves multifarious tasks, depart from the understanding of language as a cultural tradition, of necessity conscious, active and organizing the relations of society to language or 'language policy'. The attention paid to questions of speech culture, questions of figurative and literary language, its functional stratification and, furthermore, the regularities of its development, tested on the basis of newly appearing speech phenomena, is thus understandable (see Smirnickij 1954, Vinokur 1929a, Vinogradov 1964). At the present time, especially great significance is attached to the question of the admissible local varieties of the local language in connection with the growth of speech culture in all parts of the country. 3. For more details on the general theoretical position presented above see: Ahkmanova (1957, 1964, 1968a, 1969b, 1970), Akhmanova and Ginzburg (1968).

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

137

It is obvious from the above that foreign to Soviet linguistics is the approach to language as a peculiar, anonymous structure the study and description of which is the vehicle of this language and from whose social structure and historical circumstances this language cannot be separated. For this reason, sociolinguistics has always been an inextricable part of Soviet linguistics as a whole. A great contribution to the resolution of sociolinguistic problems was made by the historical linguistic and sociolinguistic works of R. O. Sur, L. M. Selis&v, V. V. Volosin, A. A. Saxmatov, V. M. Zirmunskij, L. P. Jakubinskij, N. M. Karinskij, V. I. Abaev, A. M. Peskovskij, G. O. Vinokur, B. A. Larin, V. V. Vinogradov, K. I. Konrad, Ju. D. Deseriev, and a series of other scholars (see footnote 1). Of a special importance are the works of E. D. Polivanov which have principal significance.4 Turning to the contemporary state of sociolinguistics, three main trends should be singled out.

1. SOCIOLINGUISTICS IN THE BROAD SENSE

Sociolinguistics is studied on the basis of the data of various languages, for the most part the languages of peoples not belonging to 'average European culture' (AWE). In the center of attention are such factors as one or another circumstance of communication, social affiliation, age, educational background of the interlocutors and so forth, while all varieties of speech defined by these factors appear most distinctly in the data of the so-called 'ethnographic' languages, although they may be observed to some extent in the language of so-called 'cultured' peoples.® By no means the last place in this trend of research is occupied by works which strive to elucidate the relation of speakers to language, those concepts and representations which people have with regard to appropriate and non-appropriate, admissible and non-admissible, desirable and 4. See Polivanov (1968), especially Section 1, 'Specifiôeskie osobennosti poslednego desjatiletija 1917-1927 v istorii naSej lingvistiôeskoj mysli' (pp. 51-56) and Section 4 (pp. 176-235), where the various aspects of sociolinguistics are elucidated. 5. On this question see: Weinreich (1953), Hoijer (1954), Cohen (1956), Gumperz and Hymes (1964), Liberson (1966), Bright (1966), Haugen (1956a, 1956b), Fishman (1968), Lander (1966), Hymes (1970), Villegas (1969, 1970) and Linguistic Communications, 1 (Monash University, 1970). The design of the present article does not permit us to dilate upon this trend in sociolinguistics; we refer the reader to the content-rich and interesting article of Svejcer (1969).

138

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko

non-desirable, and so forth. Moreover, although this data may be found in West European languages (in particular with the 'U' and 'non-U' variants of the English language), this nevertheless appears most vividly in societies in which national characteristics, patriarchal structure and the stability of one or another linguistic canon are clearest. Typical of the given trend is the close collaboration of linguists and anthropologists because not only do such independent branches of linguistics as 'ethnography' and 'the ethnography of communication', and so forth, interface very closely with sociolinguistics, but they even enter into it. The general premise of this type of research is that sociolinguistics is called upon to elevate sociology to a higher level, inasmuch as sociolinguistic data may function in the capacity of a 'diagnostic index' of social structure in general; that is, through knowledge of the aboveenumerated properties of linguistic communication in one or another community it is possible to obtain more tangible, objective data in order to more deeply penetrate the nature of the essentially social properties of the given human community. It is completely understandable that all these investigations are of more than descriptive character but rather are to be conceptualized as a basis for 'language planning'. They should be used to develop concrete ways and means of solving various problems connected with the choice of the governmental national language, the choice of those languages which should be admitted into school instruction, legal proceedings, and so forth, problems of the unification and standardization of orthography, the adoption and implementation of this or that measure in regard to national languages. It is therefore fully understandable that sociolinguists of this orientation continually take most active part in the various international congresses of sociologists (in Avignon, Rome and Varna), in which the organization of a sociolinguistic section has become a tradition in which the participation of Soviet scholars is of ever-increasing significance.6 6. See, in particular, the papers and reports of the Soviet linguists at the VII International Sociological Congress (Varna, Bulgaria, September 14-19, 1970): V. I. Abaev, P. A. Asimov, Ju. D. Desiriev, F. P. Filin (Razvitie obscestvennyx funkcij jazykov naradov SSSR i nekotorye voprosy teorii sociolingvistiki, Moscow, 1970). Cf. DeSiriev (1970), Svejcer (1970) and others.

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

139

2 . SOCIOLINGUISTICS AS THE SCIENCE OF 'LINGUISTIC EXISTENCE'

This trend differs in principle from the first.7 If in the first of the trends listed attention is focused on divergences from the ideal forms of existence of a national language, that is, such questions as bilingualism, diglossia, different types of linguistic interference, attempts to solve the linguistic problems of multinational governments, to regulate the linguistic relations between national minorities, and so forth, then typical and characteristic of the second of these trends, on the contrary, is the cultivation of one's general national language, imparting to it the most complete forms, converting it into the most highly valued means of international communication. 8 In other words, where the first trend concentrates itself on problems of linguistic diversity within the bounds of one social community, where it is interested first and foremost in overcoming the disruption of linguistic integrity which impedes the normal realization of essentially social functions, the second trend promotes above all the deep study of those sociolinguistic problems the solution of which is essential to the improvement, sharpening, betterment and working-out of the most perfect form of an already-existing language, historically selected and maintained as the main means of communication for a given human community. Although it would seem that the research trends already characterized (which of necessity could be given here only in the most general terms) would be sufficient for sociolinguistics to acquire full specificity, nevertheless, with each year that passes, the necessity of such an approach to the study of the ties between linguistic and social life, which would demand the working-out of a macrolinguistic method in the research of all aspects 7. When one regards language as goal-directed activity, as goal-directed human activity, one owns to one of the forms of human existence; in this case one speaks of 'linguistic existence'. This question is treated in greater detail in the article by N. I. Konrad (1959) in which an extensive treatment of this trend in Japanese linguistics is given. See also: Fel'dman (1956), Neverov (1963). 8. Here is a partial list of those aspects of research which characterize this trend: types of speech situations in general; linguistic existence and colloquial speech (monologue, dialogue); speaking and hearing; the language of movies, the theater, the stage, customs and beliefs; linguistic existence and polygraphy, and others. On these topics see: Encyclopedia of the Japanese National Language (Tokyo, 1955, pp. 15-18). We, naturally, are much more familiar with the work of those linguists belonging to the Prague School, for example, the works of V. Matesius, B. Havrinek, J. Vachek and others. See the anthology Prazskij lingvisticeskij kruzok (Moscow, 1967, pp. 338-393, 432-443, 524-543). See also Havrdnek (1963), Vachek (1964), DaneS (no date). See also the interesting and convincing article by R. A. Budagov (1970) where these questions are discussed with rare clarity and depth.

140

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko

or 'layers' of language, is recognized more and more clearly and universally. In other words, with the passing of every year it becomes clearer and clearer that the extremes of micro- and structural linguistics gradually, as it were, drained our science of blood. The issue here is not simply the preferential attention 'accorded' abstract constructs and so-called linguistic universals. Unwelcome for the development of linguistics was the structuralists' adamant proclamation of the microlinguistic approach as the only 'scientific' one, proclaiming it Linguistics with a capital letter. As a result, genuine linguistic investigations were replaced by different types of symbols and schemas which led to the sharp decline of speech culture and essential perversion in the matter of preparing new linguistic specialists (for details, see Akhmanova 1968b, 1969b). For this reason, it is very necessary to especially delineate yet another trend in sociolinguistics.

3 . SOCIOLINGUISTICS AS THAT BRANCH OF LINGUISTICS WHICH ESTABLISHES CONSISTENT CORRELATIONS BETWEEN MICROLINGUISTIC PHENOMENA AND THE FACTS OF THE SOCIAL LIFE OF A GIVEN COMMUNITY

What are the tasks facing linguists who investigate natural language as a special kind of human phenomenon? How do they transcend the limits of structuralism and rehabilitate linguistics proper? (see Akhmanova 1969c). Of the literature familiar to us, the person who came closest to answering this question is Marcel Cohen (1970), one of the most famous sociolinguists, who thinks that the cardinal methodological problem of sociolinguistics is the question of the possibility of establishing correlations between definite social facts or phenomena and linguistic processes. Not restricting himself to posing the question, he goes on to give a brief review of the limited amount of work that has already been done in the history of linguistics in this direction. Marcel Cohen goes on to list those scholars who attempted to elucidate this problem in their works. (1) The 'brave attempt' of Wilhelm Schmidt in 1926 to establish a correlation between the word order of a sentence and the patriarchal and matriarchal ways of life, which, as one might have expected, failed to succeed (Cohen 1970, p. 7). (2) The 'very daring' attempt of Antoine Meillet to relate the structure of a changing word, on the one hand, to the independence and developed initiative characteristic of the representatives of small social groups, such as, for example, the Vikings, on the other (Cohen 1970, p. 7). In other

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

141

words, Meillet attempted to postulate the possibility of the formation of linguistic functions under the immediate influence of the mentality of a certain portion of the aristocracy (see Sommerfelt 1924-1925, f. 1; 1965). Although, theoretically speaking, this may have had a place, there is no basis for introducing an hypothesis of this type into the ranks of scientifically proven positions. (3) The semantic investigations published in the capital work of A. Meillet 'Comment les mots changent de sens' (1936, Vol. 2), in which it was maintained that words having one meaning for exclusive social groups acquire a broader meaning when the distribution of their use is increased. Such was the case with the generally used French word arriver which sailors had used to mean 'to put in to shore', 'to moor (to)', and came to mean 'to get in', 'to arrive' in general. (4) The hypothesis of A. G. Haudricourt (1959, pp. 42-43), according to which the complication of social relations may be accompanied by a reduction in the number of actual phonetic oppositions. 9 Such is the state of affairs of contemporary sociolinguistics presented by Marcel Cohen. It turns out that not only are sufficiently encompassing investigations of this type lacking to this day, but, most importantly, the methodology itself has been neither established nor studied, the very principles of conducting investigations of this type. In this connection it is very interesting to recall the extensive data gathered together in the collective monograph Russkij jazyk i sovetskoe obscestvo [The Russian Language and Soviet Society] (Panov 1968). But in this interesting work the methods and main directions of research remain essentially microlinguistic. Here, genuine attempts to establish correlations between linguistic and social facts (to say nothing about the working out of a rigorous research methodology) are not to be found. 10 We cited examples above from the domains of phonetics and grammar. 9. It should be noted that in the domain of phonetics we have more authoritative research among which the works of W. Labov are of great general linguistic interest because they demonstrate on the basis of great factual material that method of linguistic research which may be presently considered the most important for the development of linguistics as a whole and phonetics in particular. See Labov (1966). 10. In this regard we refer the reader to the work of B. A. Uspenskij (1970) which is a kind of sociolinguistically furbished stylistics. Although the question of the properties of the functioning of French words in the Russian language is dealt with by Uspenskij exclusively from the point of view of the composition of works of art, this is of even greater sociolinguistic significance because only those people who belong to a given social circle may use the given words and expressions in a literary work of art. The use of these words and expressions by persons of the same nationality, but belonging to a different social group, is impossible.

142

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko

But linguistics in the full sense of the word (that is, sociolinguistics in the third aspect delimited by us) u must begin with lexis, with the lexical composition of a language, because it is precisely this area of language that is the most immediate, which reacts instantaneously to all changes in social life. Of course, this does not mean that we completely deny the material basis of grammar. We, Marxists, think that in the final analysis everything may be traced to material life, that it is manifestly obvious that sociolinguistic correlations in the domain of lexis are to be found as it were on the surface, that they are obviously and clearly visible. In the domain of morphology and syntax, however, sociolinguistic correlations are hidden from direct observation and may be observed only by means of the consistent lifting of complex intermediate mediations.12 Among the various problems of lexicography, the study of lexical synonyms presents special, it seems to us, insurmountable, difficulties. As is known, all the existing attempts until now to investigate the vocabulary of a language in this regard may be reduced to the following two main trends: (1) attempts to construe synonymous relations as a problem of theoretical logic, attempts to approach them from the universal conceptual point of view and (2) attempts to find completely formal methods for describing equi-significant words on the basis of the positivistic study of their distribution and thereby arrive at 'rules' for their functioning within the realm of real speech production. We think that the absence of sufficiently promising results is mainly due to the fact that between these completely different - if not contradictory - approaches to the problem of synonymy sufficiently reliable correlations have not been established. The main point is that insufficient attention has been paid to the sociolinguistic side of the question, that the real facts of communication have not been studied with the help of one or another language which would 11. Sociolinguistics, naturally, is understood in the third of the above-mentioned senses. Therefore, that which was said above about the unsuccessful attempt made by Antoine Meillet, who wished to establish correlations between patriarchal society and a given aspect of syntactic construction, is indisputable. As is known, analogous attempts by N. Ja. Marr (going back to Jespersen) aimed at establishing correlations between analytic linguistic structure and more highly developed thought and, conversely, synthetic structure and less highly developed, naturally, could not lead to anything. 12. The other domain in which social differences appear absolutely clearly is phonetics. We might cite as an example the monumental work of W. Labov (1966) which opens new ways for overcoming formalism in the field of phonetics-phonology. See also Akhmanova's review of Labov's book in Voprosy jazykoznanija (1967, no. 6, pp. 140-142).

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

143

elucidate the genuine features or characteristics of the given phenomenon through the study of the actual properties of their functioning.13 What are the real properties and which research methods and devices may be recommended in order that the study of synonymy might stand on firm ground of sociolinguistic method ? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to turn to the classification of the various aspects of translation prepared by R. Jakobson (1959). In this work, R. Jakobson distinguishes three main aspects of translation, namely: intralinguistic, interlinguistic (or translation in the proper sense) and intersemiotic, the content of which far transcends the bounds of natural ('verbal') language (Jakobson 1959, p. 233). It is interesting to note that 'intralinguistic translation', or 'reformulating (rewording)', that is, the rewording of a given content in other words and the expressions of that same language (in more abstract terms, the 'interpretation of verbal signs by means of other verbal signs of one and the same language') stands on first place in the classification introduced. And this is not accidental. In the sources of human culture the vital necessity of this type of translation was completely real. Within the limits of the present article it would not be to the point to address ourselves to the oldest and various linguistic models of intralinguistic translation. We will limit ourselves to only isolated examples borrowed from the literature and cultural-historical tradition of the English language. We shall introduce in the capacity of examples such widely-known works as the writings of Charles and Mary Lamb (1930), Mary Seymour (1889), various approaches to the course of artistic literature, which, without setting themselves the task of preserving the artistic merits and artistic individuality of a work, strove to impart to the unsophisticated reader the main content of classical literature. It is possible that the greatest interest from this point of view at the present time is evoked by the 'intralinguistic translation' of the so-called King James Bible one of the greatest works of world classical literature.14 It must be 13. It is curious to note in this regard that in A. I. Smirnickij's course (1956, p. 202) the question of synonyms is factually excluded from the systematic review of the lexical structure of a language. Moreover, naturally, the meaning of the term 'synonymy' is correctly elucidated, if it is considered from the point of view of the accepted metalanguage of our science. Cf. Akhmanova (1966, p. 407). Several scholars, Soviet as well as foreign, think that synonymy in the sense usually meant does not exist in language at all. See, for example, Vinokur (1929b), Zvegincev (1968), Bloomfield (1968), Breal (1924), Ullmann (1953). 14. This translation of the Bible was made in 1611 and is called 'The Authorized Version'. Since the translation was made on the order of King James I, it is also called the 'King James Bible'.

144

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N. Marcenko

noted that the transposition of the most diverse works of English literature into 'Basic English' is also of completely exclusive interest for the indepth study of 'intralinguistic translation', because the device under discussion acquires the greatest cultivation and theoretical foundation. Since the present article is not literary-scientific, the discussion of the literary merits of this or that original work and the extent to which they are lost in 'intralinguistic translation' does not figure among our goals. In the present article we naturally focus our attention on the sociolinguistic aspect of this process, namely, on the social nature of this aspect of adaptation. Take, for example, the set of verbs associated with the semantic field of visual perception. The verb to see functions in the capacity of a lterme d'identification1 or 'unique beginner', since it is namely to see which expresses the neutral, most general meaning, devoid of any supplementary emotional-expressive shades of meaning and serves as an elucidatory means, or lexicographic interpretation, for the overwhelming majority of the other members of the set. For example:15 1. . . . in heaven there is laid up a pattern of it for him who wishes to behold it, and, beholding, to organize himself accordingly (D.V.R.P. 334).

la. . . . its pattern is already there in heaven for him to see who so desires; and, seeing it, he makes himself its citizen (R.R.P., 184).

2. . . . I descried a small island about half a league to the northwest (S.G.T., 64).

2a. . . . I saw a small island about a mile and a half to the northwest (S.G.L.L., 99).

3. . . . you will easily detect five 3a. . . . you will quickly see five places where the signs are unsuch cases of unusual crowding commonly near together (P.G.B., 261). (P.G.I., 67). 15. The abbreviations adopted: D.V.R.P. - The Republic of Plato (translated into English by I. H. Davies and D. I. Vaughan, London, 1927); R.R.P. - The Republic of Plato, A New Version Founded on Basic English (by I. A. Richards, New York, 1942); S.G.T. - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Oxford, 1940); S.G.L.L. - Jonathan Swift Gulliver in Lilliput. In Basic English (edited by I. Litvinoff, Moscow-Leningrad, 1935); P.G.B. - E. A. Poe, 'The Gold Bug', Poems and Tales (Chicago, 1904); P.G.I. - 'The Gold Insect'. In Basic English (edited by I. Litvinoff, Moscow, 1936); D.R.C. - Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Oxford, 1937); D.R.C.L. - Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. In Basic English (edited by I. Litvinoff, Moscow-Leningrad, 1935).

Main Trends in Sociolinguistics

145

4. . . . and the motion of the 4a. . . . and at the motion of the minute-hand, which he saw minute-hand, which he could without any trouble . . . easily discern . .. (S.G.T., 21). (S.G.L.L., 41). 5. . . . After I had observed the 5a. . . . After I had seen how cruel the rough seamen were to the outrageous usage of the three three men, I saw them go in men by the insolent seamen, I all directions over the island . . . observed the fellows run scat(D.R.C.L., 71). tering about the land . . . (D.R.C., 324). 6. . . . the essential Form of Good 6a. . . . in the field of deep knowledge the last thing to be seen, is the limit of our inquiries and can barely be perceived; but, and hardly seen, is the idea of when perceived, we cannot help the good. When that is seen, our concluding that it is in every decision has to be that it is truly case the source of all . . . the cause . . . (R.R.P., 134). (D.V.R.P., 238). 7. . . . He failed to remark that he 7a. . . . he took it without examination, not seeing by it that he was fated therein, amongst was fated to eat his own other calamities, to devour his children, and other shocking own children... (D.V.R.P., 368). things . . . (R.R.P., 208). 8. . . . The lanes and alleys which I could not enter, but only viewed them as I passed, are from twelve to eighteen inches (S.G.T., 30).

8a. . . . The narrow streets, into which I was unable to go, but only saw when I went by, are from twelve to eighteen inches . . . (S.G.L.L., 54).

As is apparent from the examples cited, the following verbs are found in the original text: to behold, to descry, to detect, to discuss, to observe, to perceive, to remark and to view. In all cases, only the one verb to see is given in the intralinguistic translation. Such materials are so rich and diverse that undoubtedly more than one research report will be devoted to them in the future. It is thought, however, that even with the help of these few illustrative examples, it is possible to elucidate and found the above-articulated position that the question of synonymy, as a part of lexicology, a sociolinguistic discipline by nature, cannot be fruitfully studied without penetrating the nature and character of that 'social law' which brought the given variety of

146

O. S. Akhmanova

and A. N.

Marcenko

funtioning of lexical units to life. In other words, no lexicological research can penetrate the essence of this or that linguistic phenomenon if it is not based on the establishment of regular and scientifically founded correlations between the given linguistic facts, on the one hand, and those socially conditioned circumstances and requirements which gave birth to them or brought them into life, on the other. The question of the essence and content of sociolinguistics should by no means be considered resolved or even sufficiently clearly and precisely posed. It is thought that the classification of the approaches to this question proposed in the present article, as well as the materials introduced, will not be without use for the development of this field of linguistic research.

REFERENCES

Abaev, V. I. (1948), Jazyk kak ideologija i kak texnika. Moscow. (1952), 'Istorija jazyka i istorija naroda'. In Voprosy teorii i istoriijazyka. Moscow. Akhmanova, O. S. (1957), Ocerki po obsëej i russkoj leksikologii. Moscow. (1963), 'Ékstralingvistiieskie i vnutrilingvistiöeskie faktory v funkcionirovanii jazyka', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 4, 45-49. (1964), 'Ekstralingvistiöeskie i vnutrilingvistiöeskie faktory v funkcionirovanii i razvitii jazyka'. In Teoretiieskie problemy sovremennogo sovetskogo jazykoznanija. Moscow, pp. 69-74. (1966), Slovar' lingvistiëeskix terminov. Moscow. (1968a), 'Otlicitel'nye certy sovetskogo jazykoznanija'. In Problemy sovremennoj lingvistiki. Moscow, pp. 3-18. (1968b), '"Smysly" estestvennyx öeloveceskix jazykov i racional'naja semantika', Inostrannye jazyki v skole, 3, 14—21. (1969a), 'Estestvennyj celoveieskij jazyk kak ob"ekt nauinogo issledovanija', Inostrannye jazyki v skole, 2, 6-17. (1969b), 'Lingvisticeskoe znaèenie i ego raznovidnosti'. In Problema znaka i znaienija. Moscow, pp. 110-113. (1969c), 'Ocerednye problemy jazykovedenija', Russkij jazyk v skole, 3, 3-8. (1970), 'Leninskaja teorija poznanija i lingvistiöeskaja abstrakcija'. In Leninizm i teoretiieskie problemy jazykoznanija. Moscow, pp. 146-152. Akhmanova, O. S., and R. S. Ginzburg (1968), 'K voprosu o dialektike jazyka i myslenija'. In Problemy teorii poznanija i logiki. Materialy k XIV Mezdunarodnomu filosofskomu kongressu. Moscow, pp. 134-145. [Also in Akten des 14. Kongresses für Philosophie. Wien, 2-9 Sept. 1968.] Ban, A. (1963), 'Palatalizacija v gruppax soglasnyx v sovremennom russkom jazyke'. Dissertation. Moscow. Bloomfield (1968), Language (Russian translation). Moscow. Bréal, M. (1924), Essai de semantique. Paris.

Main Trends in

Sociolinguistics

147

Bright, W. (Ed.) (1966), Sociolinguistics. The Hague-Paris. Budagov, R. A. (1970), 'Celovek i ego jazyk (Zametki ob otnoäenii ljudej k literaturnomu jazyku', Voprosy jazykoznatiija, 6, 3-14. Cohen, M. (1956), Pour une sociologie du langage. Paris. (1970), 'Quelques vues sur les perspectives actuelles de la sociolinguistique', Sociolinguistics (Newsletter of the Sociolinguistics Research Committee, International Sociological Association), 2, March, 5-8. DaneS, F. (no date), 'Dialektické tendence ve vyvoji spisovnych jazykû (Pfispëvek sociolingvisticky)'. In Ceskoslovensképrednâsky pro VI mezinârodni sjezd slavisti». Prague, Academia, pp. 119-128. DeSeriev, Ju. D. (1958), Razvitie mladopis'mennyx jazykov narodov SSSR. Moscow. (1966), Zakonomernosti razvitija i vzaimodejstvija v sovetskom obscestve. Moscow. (1970), Sovetskaja metodologia, teorija ipraktika planirovanija i prognozirovanija jazykovogo razvitija. Moscow. Deäeriev, Ju. D., and I. F. Protcenko (1968), Razvitie jazykov narodov SSSR v sovetskuju époxu. Moscow. Fel'dman, N. I. (1956), 'O rabote Gosudarstvennogo issledovatel'skogo instituta rodnogo jazyka v Tokio', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 3. Fishman, J. (1968), Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague. Gumperz, John, and D. Hymes (Eds.) (1964), 'The ethnography of communication', American Anthropologist, 66, 6, Part 2, December. Haudricourt, A. G. (1959), Année sociologique. Paris. Haugen, E. (1956a), Bilingualism in the Americas. New York. (1956b), Language Conflict and Language Planning. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Havrânek, B. (1963), 'Na zâvër dvouleté diskuse o obecné a hovorové £e§tinë', Slavo a slovesnost. Prague, pp. 254-261. Hoijer, H. (Ed.) (1954), 'Language in culture', American Anthropologist, 56, 6, Part 2, December. Horn, W., and M. Lehnert (1954), Laut und Leben, Vol. 2. Berlin. Hymes, D. (1970), Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York. Jakobson, Roman (1959), 'On linguistic aspects of translation', On Translation. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jakubinskij, L. P. (1953), Istorija drevnerusskogo jazyka. Moscow. Karinskij, N. M. (1936), Ocerki jazyka russkix krest'jan. Moscow. Konrad, N. I. (1959), 'O jazykovom susòestvovanii', Japonskij lingvisticeskij sbornik. Moscow. Labov, W. (1966), The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C. Lamb, Charles, and Mary Lamb (1930), Tales from Shakespeare. New York. Lander, H. (1966), Language and Culture. Oxford. Liberson, S. (Ed.) (1966), Explorations in Sociolinguistics. The Hague. Meillet, A. (1936), 'Comment les mots changent de sens', Linguistique historique et linguistique générale, Vol. 2. Paris. Neverov, S. V. (1963), 'Ob odnom napravlenii lingvisticeskoj nauki v Japonii', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 6. Panov, M. V. (1968), Russkij jazyk i sovetskoe obscestvo. Moscow, Nauka. Polivanov, E. D. (1968), Stat'i po obscemu jazykoznaniju. Moscow. Sapir, E. (1949), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York. Saxmatov, A. A. (1936), Ocerk sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka. 3. M.

148

O. S. Akhmanova and A. N.

Marëenko

SeliSCev, A. M. (1928), Jazyk revoljucionrtoj èpoxi. Moscow. Seymour, Mary (1889), Shakespeare's Stories Simply Told. London. Smirnickij, A. I. (1954), Ob"ektivnost'' susëestvovanija jazyka. Moscow. (1956), Leksikologija anglijskogo jazyka. Moscow. Sommerfelt, A. (1924-1925), 'La philosophie linguistique française', Bulletin de la société linguistique. (1965), 'Francuzskaja lingvistiSeskaja Skola'. In Novoe v lingvistike, Issue 4. Moscow, pp. 357-371. Sor, R. O. (1926), Jazyk i obiéestvo. Moscow. Svejcer, A. D. (1969), 'Nekotorye aktual'nye problemy sociolingvistiki', Inostrannye jazyki v skole, 3, 2-14. Also, p. 113, this volume. (1970), O mikrosociologii i makrosociologii jazyka. Moscow. Ullmann, St. (1953), 'Descriptive semantics and linguistic typology', Word, 9, 3, 232233. Uspenskij, B. A. (1970), Poètika kompozicii. Moscow. Vachek, J. (1964), A Prague School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington. Villegas, O. U. (1969), Nucleos Sociolinguisticos. Mexico. (1970), Sociolinguistica concreta (algunas Sacetas). Mexico. Vinogradov, V. V. (1964), 'Problemy kul'tury reii i nekotorye zadaCi russkogo jazykozanija', Voprosy jazykoznanija, 3. Vinokur, G. O. (1929a), KuVtura jazyka. Moscow. (1929b), 'Problema kul'tury reii', Russkij jazyk v sovetskoj Skole, 5, 85. (1959), 'O zadaCax istorii jazyka'. In Isbramiye raboty po russkomu jazyku Moscow. VoloSinov, V. V. (1929), Marksizm ifilosofija jazyka. Leningrad. Weinreich, U. (1953), Languages in Contact. New York. Whorf, B. L. (1964), Language, Thought, and Reality. Edited by John B. Carroll. Cambridge, Mass. ¿irmunskij, V. M. (1936), Nacional' nye jazyki i social' nye dialekty. Leningrad. (1956), Nemeckaja dialektologija. Moscow-Leningrad. Zvegincev, V. A. (1968), Teoretiëeskaja i prikladnaja lingvistika. Moscow.

M. M. MAKOVSKIJ

7

Ways of Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity: A Lexico-Semantic Investigation

1. The theoretical investigation of social dialects stumbles upon many difficulties, connected, in the main, with the absence of a completely satisfactory definition of this concept. Not infrequently, the only result of studies devoted to the analysis of different kinds of slang, jargon, argot and so forth is merely the further complication or, conversely, the unnecessary simplification of the ensuing theoretical problems, the inspection of secondary questions while ignoring the primary, fundamental features of social dialects. The colloquial norm of the literary language is not infrequently passed off as the jargon of this or that social milieu; conversely, this or that aspect of jargon is regarded as relating to the colloquial norm of the literary language; the use of certain stylistic devices (frequently of an occasional nature) is not infrequently proclaimed essential to different social or professional dialects. The 'structural' approach to sociolinguistic problems, striving to subordinate the living use of the language to a priori schemes, is especially unfruitful (cf. Rona 1970).1 Fathoming the essence and regularities of social dialects demands, as far as we are concerned, resolutions of at least the following issues: (a) elucidation of the features peculiar to the semantic development of social dialects in comparison with similar facts in the development of the general national standard; the painstaking comparison of the semantic development of words expressing one and the same notion in closely related and remotely related languages; (b) researching the etymologies of vocabulary units in social dialects, which not infrequently becomes very arbitrary (compare English slang bit 'a girl', bearing no relationship to bit 'piece', but going back to Old English buta 'mulier'; English slang stir 'prison', not bearing a relationship to Gipsy star, but going back to Old English steorari) and the 1. For a critique of the 'structural' approach, cf. Filin (1966, p. 44; 1965).

150

M. M. Makovskij

elucidation of the possibilities and borrowings into various social dialects and of the question of homonymy; (c) investigation of the possibilities of interference between various components of social dialects and the literary standard. It is necessary to clarify which words of the literary language (and of social dialects, respectively) at a given stage of development may or may not enter into social dialects (the literary language, respectively) and under what conditions; (d) researching the typological regularities of the lexicon and semantics in the social dialects of related and remotely related languages; (e) researching the features peculiar to the social dialects of antiquity and the enumeration of the ancient lexical units reflecting this or that social use. In the present work a detailed treatment of only the last of these questions is given, the remaining questions being considered only insofar as they are related to this problem. Solving all of the above-mentioned problems is, naturally, only possible on the basis of working out a strict and non-contradictory method of analysis. For researching the social dialects of antiquity there is no special method of analysis whatsoever as yet, contemporary social dialects being researched intuitively and empirically for the most part, mainly by means of ascertaining the frequency of this or that feature in the speech of the informant, the differences in the combinability of these features, each of which is simultaneously inherent in several social dialects (cf. Fishman 1971, Fasold 1970, Sapon 1963, Akhmanova and Marcenko 1971). Without dwelling on the fact that frequency in itself is by no means always a reliable characteristic of linguistic phenomena (in particular, their viability and peculiarity to a certain milieu), it must be mentioned that this parameter is subject to significant (not infrequently accidental and transient) variations within the bounds of the several larger or smaller speech communities and is by far not always due to social factors as such. The so-called 'combination' of features frequently turns out to be no less accidental and arbitrary. Just as it is observable in the componential analysis of word-semantics, the choice of such features is not based on strict criteria and may be arbitrarily increased or decreased without limit. Moreover, analysis by means of 'combining features' is not applicable to all levels of a language, in particular, to the lexicon: for example, on the basis of combining arbitrarily selected features it is hardly possible to solve the problem of the given word's peculiarity to this or that social dialect and to trace the semantic changes in its movement from one

Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity

151

linguistic stratum to another. The data obtained from informants are not infrequently characterized by great unreliability and vary from informant to informant. 2 2. Every social dialect is, on the one hand, invariably of a regional nature; on the other hand, every regional dialect is of necessity at the same time social, since it is spoken in a certain more or less homogeneous (or heterogeneous) social speech community living in the given region. Every speaker of a language, thus, commanding a regional dialect, is simultaneously a speaker of one or several of the social dialects spoken in the given region and also familiar with the professional dialect of his trade and (to a greater or lesser extent) with the colloquial norm of the standard language in the nearest city or workshop (factory, mill) (cf. Ferguson 1971). As is well known, no social dialect is an isolated formation: it is constantly in contact with other social, regional and professional dialects, and also with the literary standard (cf. Clyne 1967, Reichstein 1960, Bright and Ramanujan 1964). Several cases of such interference are possible: (a) one of the dialects participating in interference not only changes its sphere of distribution but also undergoes greater or lesser structural changes; (b) this or that social dialect, participating in interference, does not experience significant changes in its structure but changes the sphere of its distribution; (c) this or that dialect, undergoing definite structural changes, does not change the sphere of its distribution (neither regionally nor in regard to the number of social strata it encompasses). This means, in particular, that the social factors inherent in one of the interacting dialects may limit the sphere of influence of the regional factors in the other dialect; moreover, regional factors inherent in one of these dialects may limit the sphere of influence of the social factors in the other dialect. Thus, despite the great changes which took place in the social structure of the original speakers of American slang in the seventeenth century, despite the fact that the sphere of its distribution significantly increased and it became the basic, general American linguistic Standard, its lexical structure remains unchanged to this day, although many words of this slang have long disappeared in Britain; on the other hand, while several English local dialects preserved the same social sphere of speakers, their vocabulary and area of distribution experienced significant changes in past centuries despite their characteristic conservatism. 2. In this regard we may point to the arbitrary and unscientific nature of N. Chomsky's well-known theory based totally on interviewing native speakers. Cf. Walker 1964), Crescini (1965), Zimmermann (1965).

152

M. M. Makovskij

Very widespread are cases, not only of the influence of regional dialects on social, but of social dialects on regional dialects. Thus, F. P. Filin (1967) showed that Russian dialectal alyrt'ja 'cow' appeared in local dialect from thieves' cant. Of the same nature are also the words zul 'knife', zexa 'rye', lox 'peasant', rym 'house', sevrif 'understand', lasyj 'not large' and others. S. Wolf (1955) and E. Neubert (1937) note numerous borrowings from German social dialects into the local dialects of Leipzig, Halle and Magdeburg. With the expansion of the sphere of distribution of the elements inherent in social dialects, the same elements restrict the sphere of their distribution in a given region; conversely, with the narrowing of the sphere of distribution of a word in a social dialect, the sphere of its areal use is broadened. Many words went out of use in the Old English regional dialects, however these words are represented in the social linguistic layers; moreover, many English words which went out of use in slang live on in the regional dialects of England as well as the United States. If the areas of the social and regional dialects coincide, then they do not coincide in their social status and distribution; conversely, if these dialects coincide in their social status and distribution, then they do not coincide in areal distribution. Social dialects are traditionally regarded as very unstable, impersistent, in no way normalized, 3 and as a frequently very disorderly and accidental heap of lexemes existing in the colloquial sphere and serving as a reflection of the social consciousness of people belonging to a definite social milieu. In the present work we shall take the following definition of social dialect as our point of departure. A social dialect is the language norm historically evolved in a given region and belonging to one or several social strata of a class society, varying in the number and social status of its speakers depending upon consecutive interaction with the contemporary social, professional and regional dialects and the standard language. During the period of the Norman conquest, for example, the social dialect of the English aristocracy was mainly based on the use of Romance vocabulary with semantic changes of one type or another in the corresponding words, while the 'social lower classes' were the only speakers of 3. It should hardly be assumed that 'non-normativity' in language is of an accidental and spontaneous nature and incapable of being scientifically described and compared in different languages: chance does not appear at different stages in the development of a language without the influence of a regularity, and a regularity not infrequently appears as a result of the influence of chance. Cf. ¿irmunskij (1964, p. 112; 1936), DeSeriev (1966, pp. 24-36, 41-^5).

Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity

153

the Middle English lexico-semantic system proper. Moreover, the semantic development of words with one and the same meaning in these two dialects did not coincide. Consequently, as is well known, the extensive intermingling of the vocabularies of these two dialects was observed, although their enrichment with regional dialect words and foreign elements was not quantitatively and qualitatively the same. The modern social dialect of the English aristocracy is distinct in structure and meaning from the numerous social dialects of the 'middle' and 'lower' classes: 'colonialisms' and Americanisms predominate in the former, while the basis of the latter remains the vocabulary of the ancient periods of the existence of the English language, which had long gone out of use in the other spheres of the language (but was partially observed in the regional dialects). The use of standard English grammar predominates in the dialect of the aristocracy, whereas a conglomeration of grammatical norms analogous to those which exist in the various regional dialects is characteristic of the dialect of the 'lower' classes. The word-formation possibilities of the social dialects of the English aristocracy are completely different from those of the 'lower layers' of society (typical of the latter is the phenomenon of word-rupture of the type abso-bloody-lutely reminiscent of a corresponding phenomenon in Gothic - cf. Soudek 1967). We cite examples of the different material structure of synonym series in the social dialects of the 'middle' and 'lower' strata of society: in the former the concept 'person' is expressed by the words lug, mark, in the latter by bean, beezer, bim, berry, cluck, cog, guy, egg, pimple, wight; in the former the concept 'health' is expressed by the words dummy, flicker, in the latter by feather, fig, fix, kilter, shape, whack. 3. Research on the social dialects of antiquity usually runs up against virtually insurmountable difficulties. At least the special works in this area do not go further than subjective guesses not based on a strict linguistic methodology. Very revealing in this regard is the pessimistic proclamation of F. Klaeber (1903) that the absence of a sufficient quantity of facts hardly permits us to go further than incomplete suppositions in this field.4 At the same time the importance of the study of the social dialects of antiquity may not be overestimated. The question of defining the 'social' character of ancient vocabulary was raised most fully in the work of B. von Lindheim 1951. He points to the 4. Cf. Benge (1930), von Lindheim (1951). For the 'colloquial form' of Old English established on purely phonological grounds, see Magoun (1937). See also Lehmann (1968), Schmidt (1958).

154

M. M.

Makovskij

preservation of more or less 'coarse', 'common' meanings of several Old English words in Middle English and to the loss of the more 'elevated', poetic meanings typical of these words in Old English. In particular von Lindheim distinguishes situations: (a) when this or that word has a colloquial character in the entire range of its meaning (Old English wamb); (b) only a certain (clearly delineated) meaning of a word (Old English hricg) is uncodified; (c) only a certain portion of the semantic network of a word (Old English wlonc) is 'colloquial'. This division, however, is arbitrary and subjective, for, first, the semantic development of words in ancient languages may in no way be evaluated from the point of view of the regularities of contemporary languages (c/. Daunt 1966); moreover, even in contemporary languages the development of 'coarser' shades of meaning in many words is in no way always indicative of their 'social' affiliation. Those authors who explain any deviation whatsoever in phonological and morphological structure of an ancient language by means of social factors are hardly right (a not insignificant role may be played here by different types of textological factors, for example, transcriber's mistakes, later emendations of scribes and so forth). In the present work the study of social factors operative in ancient languages will be based on some of the objective internal regularities of the language system the deviations from which may be hardly interpreted in any other way than the manifestation of certain social (or, at least, colloquial) norms in the ancient language. We are talking, in particular, about several features of lexical synonymy which have not until now received sufficient elucidation in special studies. (1) We note first of all that words forming a synonym series are distinguished from one another not only and not so much stylistically, according to their meaning, origin and the time of their entrance into the language, but also on the basis of their function, according to their 'weight' and structural capacity in a synonym series. Depending on the social sphere characteristic of the given series of synonyms,5 the exit or the entrance of some elements of such a series may in no way be reflected in the meaning and number of the other elements, whereas the entrance or exit of other synonyms may bring about deep changes in the structure of 5. The number of synonyms, the nature of the shades of the meanings of the synonyms represented in the synonym series, the entry of some but not other words into a synonym series, the possibilities of synonym development, the relations of different synonyms among themselves - all these factors have an especially sociolinguistic nature and are explicable only through the investigation of those social circumstances and needs which gave birth to them or brought them to life. Cf. Akhmanova and Marienko (1971, pp. 9-11), Gumperz (1964).

Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity

155

the series and the meaning of the words entering into it. The extreme result of this latter process is the partial or even full destruction of the series itself or its conversion into another series or a series antonymous to the original one (enantiosemy). While in the presence of some elements of a synonym series the entrance of borrowings or derived synonyms or the exit of the original ones are impossible, in the presence of other components the massive influx of foreign and derived synonyms with simultaneous exit of native words from the synonym series is observed. While in the presence of some elements synonym series remain unchanged for a protracted period of time, in the presence of other elements a synonym series undergoes constant changes. One and the same synonym, being a component in a given synonym series, may in the presence of changes in the series acquire unequal weight in that series, that is, its structural 'weight' may not be always equal to itself. For the study of the ancient 'colloquial' language and the influence of social factors on language it is important to take the following into consideration. (a) The meaning of each member of the synonym series is usually one of the results which are similar to one another in the otherwise dissimilar semantic development of different words.6 The number of the elements in the series thus must correspond to the number of different semantic 'cycles' represented in it.7 If any members of the synonym series exhibit the same cycles of semantic development, then such a synonymous series must apparently be recognized as conditioned not by intralinguistic regularities but by different types of extralinguistic, in particular, social causes (c/. Akhmanova and Panfilov 1963). Thus many synonyms designating a child or boy in Old English may be seen to be socially tinted in that they exhibit the same cycles of semantic development: compare (1) the original concept 'give birth (to)', 'produce': beam ((bceran)), cnosl (compare Gothic knops 'race', 'family', Old East German chnot, IndoEuropean *g(e)no-, gen 'to produce', 'to engender'); (2) the original concept 'to inflate', 'to swell': hyse (WP, 1, 356 *keu 'swell', 'swelling'); cild (compare Gothic kilpei 'womb', inkilpo 'pregnant'; Walde-Pokorny traces this word to the Indo-European root *gel, gel-t 'form into a ball; 6. One of the most important features of synonymity is the simultaneity of the similar development of different semantic cycles. It is thoroughly understandable that in the semantic shift of even one member of a synonym series the member is excluded from this series, and the wholeness of this series is disturbed or completely destroyed. Cf. Collinson (1939). 7. For a full definition of semantic cycles see Makovskij (1971, p. 46ff.). Semantic cycle is conceived as the maximum of regular consecutive meanings (semanterices) which a word can have.

156

M. M. Makovskij

swelling; womb; fetus', compare German Kalb); (3) the original concept 'stick', 'beam': scielcen (scylcen), compare Middle Eastern German schalk 'the little prop that a spar rests on', Danish skalk 'a piece of construction wood or short spar'; cniht; cnapa (compare Icelandic dräng 'unmarried m a n ' - Old Icelandic drengr 'thick stick'); stoßt (WaldePokorny relates this word to the Indo-European root *(s)teup, including numerous words with the meaning 'staff', 'stump'). One of the frequent and very important cases of such a 'deviation' typical of social dialects is the following: a given word is involved in an uncharacteristic cycle of semantic development of one or several of its synonyms which at the given period may be not represented in the language (although in several cases such synonyms may exist within the bounds of the synonym series) (cf. Mayer 1962). This in turn leads either to the mass influx of synonyms into the language or to the polysemy of lexical units. It must be taken into consideration that in the course of their unfolding two arbitrary semantic cycles may yield synonymous elements only once; consequently, two arbitrary semantic cycles or elements of a cycle may be found together only once within the bounds of a unified synonym series. The so-called Sperber's Law, according to which a semantic change in only one of the members of a set of synonyms entails an analogous change in all the other members, in no way constitutes proof of an intrasystemic analogy of synonyms (as this is usually construed) but represents a simple reflection of the fact that the elements of semantic cycles which are similar in meaning develop in the same way irrespective of whether or not these elements belong to synonym sets (cf. Budagov 1963, Geckeler 1971). (b) The more the members of a set of synonyms, the 'weaker' (more variable) the relations between the members of that set because the number of lexemes in the set does not correspond to the number of its semantemes, that is, members of the individual semantic cycles, while the number of semantemes does not correspond to the number of lexemes. Each deviation from this intralinguistic regularity (that is, if the entry of words into the set of synonyms leads to the greater stability of the set and the exit of words from it entails its instability) may invariably be interpreted as the result of social influence on linguistic structure. It is most indicative that many of the words which have been lost in Old English, but entered the system of social and territorial dialects, continue to the present day to exist in slang and constitute the backbone of its lexicon (cf. Makovskij 1962, Offe 1908). The phenomenon of regeneration of the lexicon is also most interesting in this regard. Linguists traditionally investigate which words with a greater or lesser degree of reliability may be

Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity

157

relegated to the domain of 'peripheral' vocabulary. Many dictionaries of argot, slang, etc., have been compiled where such words are systematized and classified. Up to now, no attention has been paid to words which may not enter this or that linguistic stratum. It appears nevertheless that not every (even the most common standard) word may be used in one or another social dialect at a given period in the existence of a language. Thus, the Standard English word understand is completely absent from contemporary British and American slang (compare the corresponding set of synonyms in slang: boot, catch on (to), colly, cop, dig, get jerry, get next to, glow, latch (on), make, sabby, spot, twig, wool). In neither British nor American slang are such widely distributed words used as courage (compare the corresponding set of synonyms: belly, face, ginger, gizzard, gravel, grit, guts, moxie, spunk)', help (aid); steal; shy (timid) and others. The word parler is absent from French argot. Those words which periodically exit from social dialects and are periodically regenerated in them without change in their meaning constitute kinds of lexico-semantic constants8 of social dialects whose presence or absence is significant for the system of social dialects. Such constants may be exemplified by the coincidences of part of the lexicon of social and territorial dialects, on the one hand, and of social dialects and the literary standard, on the other, although the presence of such coincidences naturally does not imply either the common origin of one or another social dialect and territorial dialect or the literary standard or the borrowed character of the respective words. The entry or exit of regenerated constants from a lexico-semantic system does not at all imply the intersection of social dialects with other linguistic strata, or any kind of linguistic movement, rather, on the contrary, it testifies to the preservation of their structural integrity. It is perfectly natural that regenerated lexemes at one or another period in the existence of a language may in turn completely leave the literary language or other social or territorial dialect of which they were an inextricable part. However, this is usually in no way reflected in the possibilities of regeneration, in the composition of the regenerated lexemes or in the order of their regeneration in a social dialect or exit from it (cf. Makovskij 1964). Thus, English graft, birl, glom, long having left British slang, continue to appear periodically in American slang. Moreover, many one-time literary words, having long gone out of use, are periodically found in English social dialects. The possibilities and dimension of regeneration are completely determined by the social factors that are operative at a given period in one or another social dialect. In a period of great social changes bringing about 8. For constants in the lexicon and semantics, see Makovskij (1971, p. 30).

158

M. M. Makovskij

a change in the structure of one or another social dialect and the composition and number of its speakers, formerly regenerated lexemes may be replaced by new ones. The systematic regeneration of one and the same elements of the lexicon invariably testifies to the given dialect's continuing to serve one and the same social milieu. If as a result of the influence of these factors the order of succession of the regenerated elements is disturbed,9 if instead of their usual absence they continue to remain within the bounds of a social dialect, if, finally, several regenerated elements which usually consistently replace one another in the language are simultaneously represented in a social dialect, then we are dealing with redundancy. If, on the other hand, regenerated elements are not present in a language when their presence is required, or they appear at a time when they should be absent, then we are dealing with linguistic deficiency. It is fully understandable that the greater length of a series of synonyms does not imply its redundancy and the shorter length does not say anything about its deficiency. One of the peculiarities of social dialects lies in the fact that in their evolution they never repeat former states of their proper development but obligatorily repeat stages arising as a result of their contacts with other linguistic spheres. In the literary language, on the other hand, elements are not regenerated which are common with another linguistic layer, but lexical units of the literary language itself (of the type of contemporary German beginnen, Brosam, Gau, Recke, Sippe, Wonne, etc.) ( c f . Kuhberg 1933, Müller 1923). (c) The more words enter into a synonym series, the fewer the changes in the semantics of its individual components. Consequently, the exit of members of a synonym series must entail the further semantic development of the remaining elements. If the converse is observed, i.e., if an increase in the number of elements in a synonym series is accompanied by the semantic development of its members or the exit of members of the series is not accompanied by semantic changes, then this can hardly be interpreted otherwise than in the sense of the influence of specific extralinguistic factors. Thus, the replenishment of the Old English synonym series with the meaning 'joy': gefeä, blips, glcednes, wynn ((wennan), dream (compare contemporary standard English joy, mirth, delight; slang bang, belt, b i f f , boat, buzz, charge, drive, jolt, kick, pack, punch, sock, swack, etc.) was accompanied by the semantic development of dream 'joy', 'music') dream 'sleep' and the polarization of the meaning of Old English wennan) Modern English wean 'take from one's breast', 'wean'. At the same time, the exit of most of the members of the Old English synonym series with the meaning 'child' {beam, umbor, byre, cnosl) 9. Cf. the anthology The Concept of Order (Seattle-London, 1971).

Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity

159

in no way affected the meaning of the word child, which exists to this day. (d) Lexical synonymy is that very sphere where the influence of social factors on language appears most obviously ( c f . Bernstein 1960, Bock 1968, Fischer 1958, Hymes 1967). The interaction of social dialects with territorial or with the national standard which appears as a result of social shifts leads to the disturbance in the semantic development of words. As a result, the usual consistency of the change of semantemes within the bounds of a word is not only destroyed, but, moreover, the individual semantemes which usually enter into the framework of a single word are expressed by different words. Not all of these words, however, are equally compatible in the synonym series of different social dialects. In some cases these words may not enter into synonym series at all, which in turn not infrequently leads to a powerful influx of synonyms into social dialects (for example, in American slang there are over 100 words signifying 'drunk'). In other cases, the entry of this or that word into a synonym series excludes (totally or partially) the further replenishment of these series by synonyms. In a third group of cases, the entry of words into a synonym series is accompanied by semantic dissimilation (enantiosemy) or the simultaneous expression within the bounds of one word of several components of a semantic cycle (this is a specific feature of social dialects, for example, English slang fib [1] 'tell a lie'; [2] 'to beat'; filch [1] 'to steal'; [2] 'to beat'). Compare also the polarization of meanings in English slang: brick [1] 'good'; [2] 'bad'; cheesy [1] 'showy'; [2] 'shabby'; dub [1] 'to open'; [2] 'to c l o s f l o o r [1] 'to fail (on an examination'); [2] 'to pass an exam v/t\Y\ fresh [1] 'drunk'; [2] 'sober'; fence [1] 'to purchase'; [2] 'to sell', 'to spend'; game [1] 'a simpleton', 'a dupe'; [2] 'knowing', 'wide-awake'; jerry [1] 'fog', 'mist'; [2] 'discovery', 'detection'; gut [1] 'cram'; [2] 'empty'; hank [1] 'rest'; [2] 'tease', 'worry'. Compare French argot: bloquir 'sell', 'buy'; chic 'bad', 'good'. Thus, a certain number of synonyms must be compatible with a specific meaning of each one of them, and one or another meaning of the synonyms must be matched by a definite number of words in the synonym series. Each deviation from this regularity apparently signifies the appearance of extralinguistic factors in language. We note that synonyms which simultaneously enter into or exit from the language belong to one and the same social sphere. In this regard it must be pointed out that words which remain in the language after the exit of the synonyms reflect the social status of the speakers to a lesser extent than the synonyms which left the language. (2) As was mentioned, many investigators think that the so-called

160

M. M. Makovskij

'stylistic' use of words of the literary language (metaphor, metonomy, synecdoche and others) predominates in social dialects. We think that the converse is true. Sociological studies have shown that 'simpler' concepts lie at the base of many words in Indo-European languages: thus, at the base of the meaning of the words Russian ponjat', French comprendre lies the concept ((to take)); English understand, German verstehen the concept ((to stand)); the notion ((to pull)) lies at the base of many words designating time (cf. Buck 1949, Pokorny 1949). It is hardly possible, however, to maintain that the Indo-European words cited are 'stylistic variants' of 'simpler' concepts which lie at the base of their meaning or to consider these 'simple concepts' 'stylistically dependent' on 'more complicated' ones (cf. Gray 1969). Consequently, it may be supposed that the so-called 'metaphoric' or 'stylistic' shifts and 'resemanticizing' of words in social dialects must be regarded as primary, primordial, and their literary use as secondary, arising after the appearance of the corresponding words from social dialects in literary languages. The aforementioned is of great significance for the methodology of investigating ancient social dialects inasmuch as it gives us the possibility of rather precisely delimiting the range of those words which, in the earliest periods of the development of a language, were indisputably the domain of this or that social class and only much later appeared in the literary language, and also homonyms. (3) As we attempted to show in our book The Theory of Lexical Attraction, within the bounds of closely related languages it is not infrequently possible to observe the presence of structurally and semantically similar components of lexico-semantic sets manifested in non-contiguous areas and vastly different in their temporal correlation (for example, the lexico-semantic sets of Old English and the contemporary Swiss dialect of German which are characterized by great conservatism). It is quite clear that the convergence of the lexical system of several contemporary social dialects of English with the analogous system of Swiss, all of whose elements in turn correspond as a rule to those of Old English, may reflect the Old English state to a great extent. Together with this, the presence in the Swiss-German lexico-semantic set (correlated with that of contemporary English) of words, absent in the latter, makes it possible without a doubt to reconstruct many elements of the Old English social dialects and to establish several properties of their semantic development according to the principle 'from the new state to the old'. Compare English slang bully 'splendid' with Swiss bullig; English slang nag with Swiss Nagg 'slow', 'old horse'; English slang to mitch 'to slink', 'to prowl about' - Swiss muchen 'to go about stealthily';

Reconstructing the Social Dialects of Antiquity

161

English slang mug 'a coarse, wry face', Swiss Mauggeren 'sour, long face'; Busel 'an habitual drinker', buslig 'drunk', compare contemporary English literary look - Swiss luegen 'look'. Correlated lexico-semantic sets, observed in different areas of the distribution of closely related languages, usually manifest themselves in dissimilar linguistic strata. Thus, if in one of such languages it becomes possible to reveal a lexico-semantic set in the social stratum, then this set may be considered to be structurally equivalent to an analogous set in another area and in another closely related language only if in the latter it is manifested in the territorial, not social, stratum. If a lexico-semantic set in a territorial dialect of a language is correlated with an analogous set in the social stratum of another closely related language, then it may be acknowledged that in the first of these languages this set also manifested itself in the social stratum at earlier periods in the development of the language. This is why the areal variants of social dialects (for example, the variants of English slang in England, America and Australia) never exhibit corresponding lexico-semantic sets (c/. Makovskij 1964, 1962). (4) We have reviewed several aspects of one of the most important questions of contemporary linguistics - the problem of determining the social dialects of antiquity which are not preserved in written monuments of the language. The resolution of this problem would not only open new, broad possibilities and perspectives of sociolinguistics proper but would also facilitate to a significant extent the review of many outdated dogmas about the history of language, as well as the resolution of a series of controversial questions in typology, etymology and general linguistics. In the present article a method of internal reconstruction of the social dialects of antiquity is proposed according to which the elements of earlier periods of the development of a language are established on the basis of later evidence of the functioning of the same language. The use of this method for the establishment of the social dialects of antiquity which, it would seem, are lost to science without a trace and forever, may introduce substantial corrections in our thinking about such cardinal problems of linguistics as the dialect basis of general literary standards, the history of the formation and development of literary languages, the problem of archaisms and innovations, characteristic features of the appearance and interaction of different social dialects and idiolects and their correlation with territorial and professional dialects, the mechanism of borrowing, interference among various languages and individual social and territorial dialects. The lexicon of social dialects of antiquity, thus enlivened anew from the darkness of the centuries, may undoubtedly

162

M. M. Makovskij

serve as a reliable foundation for research in the sociology of language, the main concepts and analytical methods of which still remain undefined and shaky.

REFERENCES Akhmanova, O. S., and A. I. Marcenko (1971), 'Osnovnye napravlenija v sociolingvistike' [Main trends in sociolinguistics], IJvS, 4. Also p. 133, this volume. Akhmanova, O. S., and V. Z. Panfilov (1963), 'Ekstralingvisticeskie i vnutrilingvisticeskie faktory v funkcionirovanii i razvitii jazyka' [Extralinguistic and intralinguistic factors in the functioning and development of language], VJa, 4. Benge, H . (1930), 'Beiträge zur vergleichenden Betrachtung antiker und moderner Umgangssprachen', Bayrische Blätter für Gymnasialwesen, 66. Bernstein, B. (1960), 'Language and social class', British Journal of Sociology, 11. Bock, Ph. K . (1968), 'Social structure and language structure'. In J. Fishman, Ed., Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague. Bright, W., and A. K . R a m a n u j a n (1964), 'Sociolinguistic variation and language change', Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists. The Hague. Buck, C. D . (1949), A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Chicago. Budagov, P. A. (1963), Sravniterno-semasiologiieskie issledovanija [Comparative Semasiological Investigations], Moscow. Clyne, M . G . (1967), Transference and Triggering. New York. Collinson, W. E. (1939), 'Comparative synonymy: Some principles and illustrations', Transactions of the Philological Society. Oxford. Crescini, A. (1965), 'Occasionalismo linguistico', II problema fitosofici, 99. Daunt, M. (1966), 'Some modes of Anglo-Saxon meaning'. In Ch. Brazell, Ed., In Memory of John Rupert Firth. London. DeSeriev, Ju. D . (1966), Zakonomernosti razvitija i vzaimodejstvija jazykov v sovetskom obsiestve [Regularities in the Development and Interaction of the Languages in Soviet Society], Moscow. Fasold, R . W . (1970), 'Two models of socially significant linguistic variation', Language, 46, 3. Ferguson, C. A. (1971), 'Diglossia', Language Structure and Language Use. Stanford. Filin, F. P. (1965), 'Zametki o sostojanii i perspektivax sovetskogo jazykoznanija' [Notes on the state and perspectives of Soviet linguistics], VJa, 2. (1966), ' K Probleme social'noj obuslovlennosti jazyka' [On the problem of the social determination of language], VJa, 4. (1967), Slovar' russkix narodnyx govorov [A Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects], 1. Moscow. Fischer, J. L. (1958), 'Social influences in the choice of a linguistic variant', Word, 14. Fishman, J. A., Ed. (1971), Advances in the Sociology of Language. The Hague-Paris. Geckeier, H . (1971), Strukturelle Semantik und Wortforschung. München. Gray, B. (1969), Style: The Problem and Its Solution. The Hague-Paris. Gumperz, J. J. (1964), 'Linguistic and social interaction in two communities', The Ethnography of Communication. Washington.

Reconstructing

the Social Dialects of

Antiquity

163

Hymes, D. (1967), 'Models of interaction of language and social setting'. In J. McNamara, Ed., Problems of Bilingualism: The Journal of Social Issues, 23, 2. Klaeber, F. (1903), 'Notes on Old English prose texts', Modern Language Notes, 18, 243-245. Kuhberg, W. (1933), Verschollenes Sprachgut und seine Wiederbelebung in neuhochdeutscher Zeit. Frankfurt am Main. Lehmann, W. P. (1968), 'Proto-Germanic words inherited from Proto-Indo-European which reflect the social and economic status of speakers', Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung, 35, 1. von Lindheim, B. (1951), 'Traces of colloquial speech in Old English', Anglia, 70. Magoun, F. P., Jr. (1937), 'Colloquial Old and Middle English', Harvard Studies in Philology and Literature, 19. Makovskij, M. M. (1962), 'Jazykovaja suSènost' sovremennogo anglijskogo "slenga"' [The linguistic essence of contemporary English 'slang'], In. ja. v sk., 4. (1964), 'Interaction of areal slang variants and their correlation with "standard" language', Linguistics, 1. (1971), Teoria leksiceskoj attrakcii [The Theory of Lexical Attraction], Moscow. Mayer, E. (1962), Sekundäre Motivation. Köln. Müller, K. (1923), 'Die Wiederbelebung alter Worter', Wissenschaftliche Beihefte zur Zeitschrift des allgemeinen deutschen Sprachvereins, 2. Neubert, E. (1937), Spaziergang durch die Magdeburger Mundart. Magdeburg. Offe, J. (1908), 'Das Aussterben alter Verba und ihr Ersatz im Verlaufe der englischen Sprachgeschichte'. Kiel. Pokorny, J. (1949), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern. Reichstein, R. (1960), 'Étude des variations sociales et géographiques des faits linguistiques', Word. Rona, J. P. (1970), 'A structural view of sociolinguistics', Method and Theory in Linguistics. The Hague-Paris. Sapon, S. M. (1963), 'A methodology for the study of socioeconomic differentials in linguistic phenomena', Studies in Linguistics, 4, 3-4. Schmidt, K. R. (1958), 'Zur Erforschung der sozialen Terminologie in Texten des russischen Mittelalters', Scando-Slavica, 4. Soudek, L. (1967), Structure of Substandard Words in British and American English. Bratislava. Walker, D. E. (1964), 'The notion "idiolect": Contrasting conceptualizations in linguistics', Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists. The Hague. Wolf, S. (1955), 'Über sogenannte Stadtmundarten', Muttersprache. Zimmermann, H. (1965), Zu einer Typologie des spontanen Gesprächs. Bern. Zirmunskij, V. M. (1936), NacionaVnyj jazyk i social'nye dialekty [National Language and Social Dialects]. Moscow-Leningrad. (1964), Problemy social'noj dialektologii [Problems of Social Dialectology]. IAN OLJa.

L. P. KRYSIN

8

On Social Differences in the Use of Linguistic Variants*

In contemporary standard Russian there exist variants which are permitted by the norm in the capacity of stylistically differentiated or full-fledged doublets. Normally, these variants constitute variant pairs or, to a lesser extent, variant series; the aggregate of such pairs and series is characteristic of different levels of linguistic structure.1 For example: [z'v']er7[zv']er' 'wild animal', le[s'a.']iklle[sa']ik 'forester', [sie]g//[sa]gi 'steps', e[n]ergijal e[n']ergija 'energy'; (cerez) reku/reku '(across a) river', (jpjat') vedomostejl vedomostej 'five lists', 'registers', pomestitsjajpomestitsja 'find room', sobralis'/sobralis' 'gathered'; (stakan) cajujcaja '(a glass of) tea', traktory traktorä 'tractors', v otpuskejv otpusku 'on leave', 'holiday', kapletjkapaet 'fall (in drops)', 'dribble', gasnul/gas 'extinguished'; rezkalrezanie 'cutting', plotnicijlplotniceskij 'carpentering', licemerif¡licemernicat'' 'dissemble' ; po pjati rublejlpo pjaf rublej 'five rubles each (distributive num.)' otzyv o cemjotzyvna cto 'opinion about something', ukazaf cto/ukazat'na * This article was published under the title 'K social'nym razlicijam v ispol'zovanii jazykovyx variantov' (Voprosy Jazykoznanija 3, 1973, 37-49) and translated in an expanded form by Philip A. Luelsdorff, Institut für Anglistik, Universität Regensburg. It is based on data presented in the phonetic and morphological sections of the monograph Russkij jazyk po dannym massovogo obsledovanija (opyt social'nolingvistiieskogo izucenija) [The Russian Language in the Light of Mass Investigation of Its Speakers (An Essay in Sociolinguistics)], completed in 1970 in the Russian Language Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences under the author's direction by a collective of collaborators consisting of V. L. Voroncova, M. Ja. Glovonskaja, E. I. Golanova, N. E. Il'ina, M. V. Kitajgorodskaja, L. P. Krysin and S. M. Kuz'mina. 1. The question of lexical variants is connected with the problem of the demarcation of different types of synonyms. In order to retain the concept of variants for naming formally varying units of all levels, we may relegate full synonyms to the category of lexical variants (in our sense), that is, words with the same lexicographic definition and coinciding syntactic, semantic and lexical selectional restrictions. Inasmuch as lexical variants are not investigated in this article or in the above-mentioned monograph, we will refrain from more detailed discussion of lexical variants, limiting ourselves to this general note.

166

L. P. Krysin

cto 'to point something out', 'to point to something', and so forth. Analogous facts exist in other languages (cf. the following phonetic and morphologic variants in German: Geleise-Gleise 'line', 'track', aderigadrig-äderig-ädrig 'venous', ich hälfe-ich hülfe 'I would help', and so on; the various pronunciations of [r], [0], [$], and morphological variants of the type proved-proven, dived-dove, pleaded-pled, in American English; derivational variants in Spanish: protesta-protestación 'protest', bravezabravura 'courage', 'bravery', and so forth; the competition of the variants of the personal pronouns vos and tú in American Spanish, and so on (cf. Moskal'skaja 1969, Labov 1966, Svejcer 1971, Arutjunova 1961). In order to clarify how variants of this type are distributed among the speakers of the contemporary standard language, whether their distribution depends upon the social characteristics of the speakers and, if so, what the quantitative correlation of the variants with the different social groups is, special research was undertaken. The main instruments of this research were linguistic questionnaires compiled in the Russian Language Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences on the initiative and under the direction of M. V. Panov (see Panov 1960, Mucnik 1963, Baxturina and Zemskaja 1963, Smelev 1964). The data obtained with the help of these questionnaires served as a basis for testing the main initial hypothesis - the hypothesis that the distribution of the variants permitted by the norm depends upon territorial, age, professional, educational - in a word - on the social characteristics of the speakers in the broad sense. The purpose of the present article is to report several results of the work. We shall thus not concern ourselves with the theoretical basis of the methodology of written questionnaires and the practical application of these in our work; these problems have been elucidated in a series of published papers (see Russkij jazyk . . . 1968, para. 19-22, Krysin 1968, section on Methods of data collection, Panov 1971, Barinova et al. 1971). In accordance with the arguments presented in these works, we consider the data obtained with the help of questionnaires sufficiently representative in the sense that they permit one to ascertain the quantitative distribution of variants in different social groups of speakers. Inasmuch as all the speakers who served as our informants in answering the questionnaires were placed in identical contexts of situation, the question of the divergences in answers that would have been conditioned by contextual-stylistic differences did not arise (we would have inescapably

Social Differences in Linguistic Variant Use

167

run into such differences in the study of natural speech, both spontaneous and prepared.2 The answers to the questions on the questionnaires thus constitute homogeneous data in the lingua-stylistic aspect, which is a positive feature in the given instance, since it permits the possibility of analyzing the socially conditioned linguistic differences among speakers 'in a pure form', not complicated by differences of a contextual and situational nature, and so on. A population of speakers of standard Russian was investigated, the selection of which was based on the following three criteria: (1) persons whose native language is Russian and who have lived since childhood in a Russian-speaking environment, (2) inhabitants of cities, (3) having a higher or secondary education received in educational institutions with instruction in the Russian language (for more details cf. Krysin 1968, pp. 14-16, Zemskaja 1968, p. 37). It was assumed that these three criteria were necessary and sufficient; not one of these taken separately was a basis for including one or another person or group of persons in the indicated population. Samples were drawn from the population by means ofthe quota method. 3 These samples varied in number from 18,000 to 12,000 people, depending upon the type of questionnaire disseminated; 20-30% of the questionnaires were returned filled-out. It was necessary to screen several of the returned questionnaire sheets for reasons of a methodological and linguistic nature.4 As a result, the answers of 2,000-4,500 persons, representing different ages, professional-educational and geographical groups of speakers of the contemporary language constitute the material on which the research is based. The data obtained support the hypothesis that the distribution of the variants among the speakers depends upon their social characteristics. In the vast majority of cases, the quantitative differences in the distribution of the variants correspond to the social differences. Moreover, 2. See the methods employed by W. Labov: in studying the phonetic variation in contemporary American English, in addition to the social characteristics of the speakers, he took into consideration differences in speech styles: careful speech, casual speech, the reading of a text or a list of words, etc. (see Labov 1966). 3. On sampling procedures and especially the quota method (or, in other words, on stratified sampling) see, for example, Yates (1960), GruSin (1967) and other publications. 4. Consider, for example, the peculiarity of the pronunciation questionnaire which requires the investigator to exclude from analysis the answers of those persons who, in the control questions, exhibited traces of the influence of dialect or foreign-language pronunciation features in their speech (on this topic see Panov 1971, p. 295).

168

L. P. Krysin

the different parameters (for example, the speaker's age, profession, and geographical origin) determine the distribution to a different extent.

1. REGIONAL DIFFERENCES

One of the most obvious dependencies is the dependency of the quantitative distribution of language variants on the regional heterogeneity of the speakers. In the study of this dependency, the following premises constituted our point of departure: The contemporary norm is unique and obligatory for all speakers of the standard language. In the majority of cases, the norm is a basis for recommending for use strictly defined linguistic forms: [p'iE] sok and not [p's] sok 'sand', [barAda], and not [boroda] 'beard', [gorlo] and not [Yorlo] 'throat', [lafka] and not [lawka] 'bench', 'shop', dokument and not dokument, vybory and not vybora 'elections', neskol'ko mest and not neskol'ko mestov 'several places', and so forth. Divergences from these recommendations are regarded as a breach of norm. However, within the bounds of the standard language there are sufficiently numerous variants: both one and the other form of expression are considered normative (for examples, see the beginning of the article). This situation in no way contradicts the status of the standard language. On the contrary, 'the permissibility of historically conditioned variants', A. Jedlidka (1964, p. 55) writes, 'may in no way be questioned. It is connected with the recognition of the dynamic character of the norm, with the recognition of historical processes unfolding in the literary language. The inclusion of historically conditioned variants in the norm must be regarded as a means of resolving the contradiction between essentially static codification and dynamics of the norm as a means of reflecting the immanent dynamics of the norm. It is precisely the variants which make possible the development of the norm. They are, as a rule, transitional forms from one quality to another'. As a complex organism based on the principle of consistent normativity and performing exceedingly diverse social functions, the standard language greatly differs from local dialects which do not undergo conscious codification and serve a much narrower circle of communicative needs. Diachronically, however, the standard language is connected with dialects by close ties: namely, the literary norm extracts new expressive means from dialects, as well as from popular speech and other subsystems.

Social Differences in Linguistic Variant Use

169

Being parts of the unified Russian national language, the standard language and the local dialects, different in principle, exhibit common features, in both their elements (phonemes, morphemes, words, constructions) and the way in which these elements combine. For this reason, the variants permitted by the literary norm partially correlate, albeit differently, with the corresponding phenomena in the various dialects. Thus, for example, if in some dialect the form of the locative case in -li occurs (of the type v pogrebti, v klubu), then, apparently, in the speech of the speakers of the standard language living in the given region and having undergone, in one way or another, the influence of the dialect system the percentage of the corresponding variants found within the limits of the norm (v snegu, v medu, and so on) should be higher than in the speech of other literary-language speakers who either do not experience any dialect influence at all or who live in the environment of dialects with different morphological features. In other words, in those regions where dialectologists have noted a more pronounced manifestation of certain dialect features, the speech of the speakers of the standard language exhibits a higher percentage of features isomorphic or identical with those of the dialects. This regularity was corroborated by our research.5 Thus, for example the assimilative softening of consonants, generally characteristic of the contemporary literary pronunciation (compare [s'n'Jeg 'snow', vo[zT]e 'by', 'near', 'past', pe[tY]ja 'loop', [zV]