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A typological coincidence: Word order properties in Trakai Karaim biblical translations Éva Á. Csató Uzun künlärdän tojdururmin ani „With long life will I satisfy him‟ The Trakai Karaim language The Karaim variety spoken in Lithuania is called Trakai (Polish: Troki) Karaim.* Trakai is a town in the vicinity of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where Karaims have lived for more than six hundred years. The area has been dominated by Slavic and Baltic languages, first by Polish and Russian, and more recently by Lithuanian. This has had a significant impact on the spoken language, which is today highly endangered because of the unfavourable situation of the religous minorities in the Soviet times. The Karaim variety spoken in Lithuania is considerably different from the language of the Karaim communities in Galicia (Western Ukraine), e.g., in Halich. The Turkic speaking Karaim scholars, educated in Biblical Hebrew, translated Bible texts into their Kipchak Turkic vernacular. A few translations were printed, but the majority is preserved in handwritten copies. The oldest known translation in Halich Karaim is from the 16th century and the oldest one in Trakai Karaim is from the 18th century. In the Karaim literature these Bible translations are called pešatlar. The term pešat stands as a term for literal exegesis that pursued the „plain sense‟ of the Bible. A pešat is a word-by- word translation of the Hebrew original. In order to mirror the original structure of the biblical text, the translators copied various linguistic features of the Hebrew original. The resulting texts are, as I will illustrate below, characterized by many non-Turkic syntactic features. In this paper, I will first illustrate some of these non-Turkic typological attributes of Karaim biblical texts as they are manifested in the Karaim translation of Psalm 91 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty.1 Then I _________________ * I would like to express my gratitude to my Karaim friends who have helped me understand their wonderful language, to Lars Johanson for his support, and to Birsel Karakoç, Zsuzsanna Olach and Lina Petersson at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, for their good advice and comments on a previous version of this article. 1 The Hebrew text and its translation are cited in this paper according to the Transliterated BHS Hebrew Old Testament 2001. BHT database by Matthew Anstey. 2 Éva Á. Csató will discuss the validity of the allegation that these features, which also characterize the spoken language, penetrated into the spoken language through the biblical translations. The influence of Hebrew on Karaim Every serious study of the Karaim biblical translations points out that the translations bear evidence of „slavish adherence‟ to the Hebrew origin (Kowalski 1929; Pritsak 1959; Musaev 1964 and 2004). A matter of controversy is, however, how much the Karaim language, and in particular the spoken language, has been influenced by biblical Hebrew. Two positions can be distinguished. One is represented by Turcologists such as Kowalski, Pritsak and Musaev, who acknowledged the obvious influence of Hebrew on the language of the Bible translations, but did not ascribe the non-Turkic properties of Karaim solely to copying from Hebrew. Kowalski emphasized that both the language of the translations and the influence of Slavic languages induced typological changes in Karaim: “Die Syntax ist durch den lange dauernden Einfluß des Hebräischen und der slawischen Sprachen, wenn man so sagen darf, ganz enttürkisiert worden. Dies kommt vor allem in der Stellung des Genitivs zum Vorschein. Diese Stellung ist ganz anders als in allen türkischen Sprachen, und zwar nicht vor, sondern nach dem regierenden Wort. Man sagt also: ałγyšy teńŕińiń „der Segen Gottes‟ […]. Die wichtigste Ursache dieser völligen Zersetzung der türkischen syntaktischen Verhältnisse war die Gewohnheit, biblische Texte sklavisch Wort für Wort ins Karaimische zu übersetzen. So setzte man auch der hebräischen Wortfolge zuliebe das enklitisch nachgesetzte -da „und‟ vor das betreffende Wort, um eine genaue Entsprechung der hebräischen Konjunktion wa zu gewinnen. Ähnlich wurde das Demonstrativpronomen oł zu einer Art bestimmten Artikel, der ja dem Türkischen von Haus aus ganz fremd ist, damit man nur den hebräischen bestimmten Artikel ha jedesmal genau übersetzen kann. Dem Einfluß der biblischen Übersetzungen konnte sich auch die gesprochene Sprache nicht entziehen. Dazu gesellte sich noch der Einfluß der jedem Karaimen geläufigen slawischen Sprachen, bzw. des Polnischen, Russischen, Weißrussischen oder Ruthenischen, je nach der Lage der betreffenden Ansiedlung und nach dem Bildungsgrad des betreffenden Individuums. Der slawische Einfluß macht sich vor allem in der Umgangsprache geltend und besteht in einer Menge slawischer Lehnwörter, sowie aus dem Slawischen wörtlich übersetzter Redewendungen.” (1929: xxxviii-xxxix)2 _________________ 2 “Under the long-lasting influence of Hebrew and Slavic languages, the syntax has been—if I may say so—fully deturkified. This is most conspicuous with respect to the order of the genitive. The genitive noun, differently from all other Turkic languages, does not precede but follows the governing word. Consequently, one says ałγyšy teńŕińiń „the blessing of God‟ [...]. The most important reason for this dismantlement of the Turkic syntactic setup was the habit to translate Biblical texts into Karaim word by word in a slavish way. For the sake of the Hebrew word order, the enclitic postpositive particle da was placed before the word in question so that it should mirror the ordering of the Hebrew particle wa. Similarly, the demonstrative pronoun oł was turned to a definite article, which is completely alien to the nature of Turkic, in order to translate the Hebrew definite article ha in a systematic way. Not even the spoken language could avoid the influence of the Biblical translations. This was accompanied by the influence of the Slavic languages as, for instance, Polish, Russian, White Russian or Ruthenian which were commonly known by the Karaim depending on the geographical location of the given speech community and the educational level of the given speaker. The Slavic influence is strongest in the colloquial language and manifests itself in a large number of loanwords and idiomatic expressions Word order properties in Trakai Karaim biblical translations 3 Kowalski also notes that Armeno-Kipchak and the language of the Codex Cumanicus exhibit the same non-Turkic genitive order. Thus, this word order property is not an exclusively Karaim speciality. Pritsak is also of the opinion that both the language of the biblical translations and the Slavic contact languages influenced the Karaim syntax. He mentions the same properties as Kowalski but also adds the Slavic equivalents, such as the Karaim conjunction da used as the Hebrew wa and the Russian i, ta (1959:338). Moreover, he adds a number of other syntactic features copied from Slavic languages. Musaev, in his Karaim grammar, makes critical remarks against the view of M. Altbauer who claimed, in an article written in Hebrew in 1957, that Hebrew played a decisive role in the formation of the Karaim language (Musaev 1964:32). In spite of the significant Slavic impact on Karaim, some authors still advocate that typological properties of Karaim, e.g. the word order, changed under the influence of Hebrew, and they do not even mention the role of the spoken contact languages of the area. Some quotations from Moskovich and Tukan (1985) and Shapira (2003) illustrate this position here. “The Karaite3 language was developing under a strong and continuous influence of Hebrew, the sacral language of the Karaites. […] The influence of Hebrew has been extremely strong in the area of the Karaite syntax. The tradition of the literal translation of religious texts from Hebrew caused far-reaching changes in the Karaite word order. The position of the names in the Genitive case changed from the place before the governing word (as in all other Turkic languages) to the place after it: H.4 dostu ivnin (instead ivnin dostu) „friend of the house‟, H. basy atnyn (instead atnyn basy) „the head of the horse‟, […] T. alnynda adonainyn (instead adonainyn alnynda) „before the Lord God‟, T. ortasynda azbarnyn (instead azbarnyn ortasynda) „in the middle of the yard‟, etc. In contrast to other Turkic languages where the conjunction -da „and‟ stands in postposition in Karaite it stands (as the Hebrew wa-) before the corresponding word. The demonstrative pronoun ol as the closest Karaite analogue of the Hebrew definite article ha acquired the functions of a definite article” (Moskovich and Tukan 1985:96). Shapira (2003) repeats these views: “This language [i.e. the Karaim of the Bible translations, É. Cs.] was unnatural, copying Hebrew modes and syntax, but enjoyed a high status. Among the Karaites, the translation of the Bible became tantamount to biblical exegesis, and the translators (mostly melammedim5) enjoyed the high status conferred upon the Rabbanite commentators […]. Several grammatical features of Hebrew, such as a calque of the Hebrew genitive form (as in beito shel adam, a man‟s house), the accusative pronoun et, and the definite article— all of them totally foreign to Turkic—became characteristic marks of this learned “language of translation,” which we can designate as Old Literary Karaite Turkic. In the due course of time, and especially in the learned but linguistically isolated northern communities many of these features, especially the Hebrew way of forming the genitive, penetrated even the spoken language” (Shapira 2003: 667-668). _________________ translated literally from Slavic.” 3 Karaite is a Latinized form of Karaim. The ethnonym in Karaim is karay. 4 H. stand for Halich Karaim and T. for Trakai Karaim. 5 Hebrew melammedim „schoolmaster‟. 4 Éva Á. Csató Both Moskovich and Tukan and Shapira mention exactly the same features as Kowalski (1929), however, without any reference to Slavic languages. In the following, I argue that word order properties of Karaim developed under the influence of the non-Turkic contact languages of the area.