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Livonian at the Crossroads of Language Contacts

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Livonian at the Crossroads of Language Contacts LIVONIAN AT THE CROSSROADS OF LANGUAGE CONTACTS RIHO GRÜNTHAL level for Livonians, while German was the language of the barons, Helsinki landowners, and upper class that held economic privilege for centuries after the rise of the German colony in present-day Latvia and Esto- nia in the 13th century. However, the geographical and sociohistorical context of the Livonian language suggests that contacts were not lim- Livonian at the crossroads ited only to variants of Latvian and German. of language contacts Geographically, Livonian used to be spoken in areas that were located along important water routes and trading connections that over time were involved in conflicts between various ethnic groups. The northeastern coast of Courland (Latvian Kurzeme) and the estuary of the Daugava River outlined the eastern track for Scandinavians arriv- ing from the western parts of the Baltic Sea area. Furthermore, Swed- ish used to be spoken on Runö, present-day Estonian Ruhnu, a small island located in the Gulf of Rīga. Historically, Swedish was also spo- 1. Introduction ken in western Saaremaa (Swedish Ösel) and several other islands on the northwestern and northern coasts of Estonia. The northernmost Livonian, the southernmost Finnic language, was first documented at Livonian villages had only a distance of 40 kilometres to Runö and a stage at which it had been a minority language for several genera- also to Saaremaa, which had a mainly Estonian-speaking population tions and many centuries. By that time language shift was intensive . This is reflected in the development of Livonian as well, although and the size of the speech community was small in comparison with Estonian influence is more difficult to identify in comparison with that the surrounding language communities and also their political, eco- of Latvian and German. Kettunen’s (1938) Livonian dictionary, for nomic, and cultural power. Conceivably, linguistic data originating instance, includes tens of words that are labelled as borrowings or pos- from the beginning of systematic documentation in the 19th and 20th sible borrowings from Estonian in Livonian; however, many of them centuries reflect a sociolinguistic stage that is characterised by ample are ambiguous. lexical borrowing and transparent foreign influence. The diverging of This article aims at an overview and description of different con- the two documented main variants, Courland and Salaca Livonian, tact-induced influences in Livonian with a special emphasis on lexi- took place no later than the 13th century (Winkler 2011: 231) during cal data. We maintain that although areas in which Livonian was last the rise of German colonisation. At this time, both variants are extinct spoken were subordinated to larger centres that had wider economic as languages of speech communities. and political networks, linguistically, Livonian was a contact point Extensive bilingualism among Livonians and the shift to Latvian for many languages. The focus is on the western variant of Livonian imported a considerable number of loanwords into Livonian vocabu- spoken in Courland until the early 21st century. The eastern variant lary as well as morphosyntactic patterns as functional borrowings of formerly spoken in Livonia proper on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Latvian grammar at the final stage before the extinction of the speech Rīga, often labelled as Salaca Livonian, is not discussed in detail. community. Besides Latvian, German influence is well-known due to transparent lexical parallels between Livonian and different German variants such as Low German and High German. Latvian and its local variants were the majority language that represented a higher social Baltic Languages and White Nights. 12– 67. 13 Uralica Helsingiensia 7. Helsinki 2015. RIHO GRÜNTHAL LIVONIAN AT THE CROSSROADS OF LANGUAGE CONTACTS 2. Historical overview of 2000: 216–218, 2001: 430–433). As Ariste (1973: 177) writes, there is the language contact area hardly any phraseological or syntactic construction consisting of sev- eral constituents that would not have been affected by Latvian. Thus, The identification of Latvian and Germanic loanwords in Livonian the grammatical influence of Latvian in Livonian is probably even is, in principle, based on the transparent similarity between words, more extensive than has been demonstrated so far. as the differing genetic source of these languages excludes a shared It is evident that Latvian influence is not exclusively limited to background. Livonian is the southernmost Finnic language belonging Latvian vocabulary and grammar, but that it has transmitted into Li- to the western branch of the Finno-Ugric languages, while both Lat- vonian numerous words that historically originate from some other vian and German are Indo-European languages that historically have language, most notably Low or High German but also Latin and Rus- a clearly different basic vocabulary and grammar in comparison with sian. In the latter case it must be noted that transparent Russian loans Livonian. The number of transparent Latvian loanwords in Livonian are typically newer and reflect the mobility of individual Livonians is considered to be very high in the evidence of printed vocabularies. in Russian-speaking environments instead of influence on the entire Winkler (2011: 232), for instance, claims that 37% of the Livonian vo- Livonian speech community. Winkler (2002) discusses 89 Livonian cabulary consists of borrowings of which 58,5% are Latvian and 38% words that have a Slavic origin. There are at least 24 words that have to German (either Low or High German). Suhonen (1973) lists 2534 Lat- be viewed in a wider context, whereas 65 are direct or indirect borrow- vian loanwords in Livonian. He evaluates the proportion of different ings from Russian, of which at least 26 were transmitted by Latvian. word classes and claims that, as expected, the vast majority (63%) of Recently, Lembit Vaba (2012,2014) has shed new light on the Latvian loanwords are nouns, 26% verbs, 9% adjectives, and 2% ad- Curonian substrate in Livonian. The hypothesis regarding the exist- verbs. Naturally, the numbers merely reflect the chosen sample and the ence of the Curonian language (cf. Kiparsky 1939), alternatively re- frequency of parts of speech. The real impact of bilingualism extends ferred to as Old Curonian, is repeatedly mentioned in Baltic studies; far beyond etymological word lists and lexical taxonomy. After all, however, it has been more difficult to argue linguistically regarding extensive borrowing very often signals the decrease of the functional the purported characteristics of Curonian. Vaba shows in a detailed space of the minority language and the progress of language shift. analysis, the Livonian features diverging from documented Latvian In fragmented speech communities there is typically a lot of idiosyn- dialects and probably originating from the extinct Baltic Old Curonian cratic variation and the influx of borrowed words and other contact- language. However, this influence can only be shown in terms of a induced changes is constant. careful analysis of substrate features and, consequently, differs con- The large amount of loanwords in Livonian shows the final stage siderably from other contact features discussed in this paper. of language shift with Livonian no longer being transferred to chil- Given that the diffusion of contact-induced phenomena takes dren. In documented Livonian vocabulary a high number of underived place at various levels of language and the adoption of new words and word stems actually is of foreign origin. Such an intensive foreign patterns is not uniform, it would be reasonable to discuss the scale of interference is considered a possible implication of grammatical in- foreign influence on Livonian. However, the linguistic heritage of a fluence. As a matter of fact, it has been pointed out that Latvian has Livonian-speaking community mainly consists of vocabularies, word influenced Livonian grammar as well. Verb prefixes, several adverbs, lists, and text samples that do not reveal the degree to which an indi- the extensive use and semantics of the dative and instrumental case, vidual loanword, for instance, was used in the speech community. Was case government in certain adpositional and verbal phrases have aris- there any synonym that was used parallel with it, were there many en through contact-induced change (Grünthal 2003: 177–202, Halling people who would use the same expression or just a few, and was a 1998, 1999, Koptevskaja-Tamm & Wälchli 2001: 677–679, Wälchli given loanword inflected as any other word of the same category? In 14 15 (Swedish) Livonian Estonian Swedish Latvian RIHO GRÜNTHAL LIVONIAN AT THE CROSSROADS OF LANGUAGE CONTACTS (Livonian linguistics, borrowing and language contacts have been accounted for and northern Livonia where it once had been spoken. This raises the in several ways (Hoffer 2008). In the following we use borrowing to question regarding the role of languages, such as German and denote a lexical trace of language contact regardless of whether it was Latvian, which used to be spoken in Latvia as well as the languages used only once in a multilingual context or could also be labelled as of the adjacent northern territories, namely Estonian and Swedish. a loanword, a lexeme that is fully adopted in the lexicon of the given Both of these latter two languages were once spoken just a short language. distance of only some tens of kilometres across the sea. Although this article focuses
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