43
Balt? kalBos i? indoeuropeistikos perspektyvos / Baltu valodas indoeiropeistikas perspektīvā /
Baltic from an indo-european perspective
Krzysztof tomasz WitczaK
University of ?ód?
krzysztof.tomasz.witczak@gmail.com
“The Pagan dialects from Narew” in the light
of Yatvingian onomastic remnants
30 years ago Prof. Zigmas Zinkevi?ius published a manuscript entitled “The Pagan Dialects from Narew”
(henceforth PDN) in Russian and Lithuanian (Zinkevi?ius 1984; 1985). It was a manual copy by Vyacheslav Zinov,
a young man from the city of Brest in White Russia. Later the Lithuanian scholar presented an English augmented
version of his paper with the same title:
A Polish-Yatvingian Vocabulary? (Zinkevi?ius 1992), as he suggested that
Zinov’s copy may contain not only Polish words, but also their equivalents in the lost Yatvingian language. Baltists
treat this discovery in different ways. Some of them accept Zinkevi?ius’ hypothesis, some reject the Yatvingian ori-
gin of the Baltic part, others believe that the manuscript, called Zinov’s dictionary after the surname of the young
copist, is a modern forgery.
In my presentation I would like to demonstrate that the Baltic vocabulary, attested in Zinov’s dictionary,
agrees very well with Yatvingian onomastic remnants. Observed differences are, in fact, doubtful or illusory. Thus
the Yatvingian hypothesis, suggested by Zinkevi?ius (1984; 1985; 1992) and accepted by a number of scholars (e.g.
Helimsky, Karulis, Orel, Sabaliauskas, Schmalstieg, Schmidt, Witczak and so on), seems the best possible conclusion.
The author wants to demonstrate additionally that a forgery is impossible for a number of reasons. Firstly, a
linguistic calque attested in the post-Yatvingian toponymical area (
Windoba?a –
Wiatro?u?a), confirmed by Zinov’s
dictionary, was unknown in the eighties of the 20th century (Witczak 2004). Secondly, some toponyms from the
post-Yatvingian area cannot be correctly explained without Zinov’s dictionary, e.g. the
Kojle lake near Suwa?ki,
originally ‘a silent [lake]’, refers only to
kaj?i ‘silently’ [PDN 125] and not to OPrus.
kails ‘healthy’, Latv.
kails ‘naked,
bare’, Slavic
*cělъ‘whole, intact’ (< BSl.
*kailu-). An alleged forger would have to be an excellent Balto-Slavic linguist
and dialectologist, exceeding all the modern specialists of the Baltic onomastics. Thirdly, Yatvingian is the only
Baltic language showing the depalatalization of palatalized syllabic resonants after Baltic
*v at an early period. It
is attested in three different sources: (1) Maleckis’ relation from 16th c. on the Sudovians (i.e. Yatvingians) in Sam-
bia mentions “an aged priest offering a goat” called
wurszajtis, cf. Lith.
vir?áitis ‘village-mayor, village-chief, elder
in a village’, Latv.
virsaitis ‘village-mayor’ (Witczak 1989); (2) the Masovian river name
W?gra, W?gra represents
(Yatvingian)
*Wungrā and Baltic
*Wingrā f. ‘winding, tortuous, crooked [river]’ (Witczak 2015); (3) “the Pagan
Dialects from Narew” demonstrates two examples of the observed phenomenon, cf.
wu?k∫ ‘wolf’ [PDN 25] < Balt.
*wilkas, cf. Lithuanian
vil?kas, Latvian
vìlks, OPrus.
wilkis ‘id.’;
wu?d ‘to want’ [PDN 3] < Balt.
*wiltēi, cf. Lith.
vìltis ‘to
hope’, Latv.
vilt ‘to cheat, swindle, delude’. This phonological process (i.e. Yatv.
vul-,
vun-,
vur- < Baltic
*vil-,
*vin-,
*vir-)
was unknown and completely unrecognized before the publication of Zinkevi?ius’ articles (1984, 1985). Generally,
it is impossible to suggest that an unknown forger had better knowledge than all the Balticists, who existed and
worked in the 20th century. In other words, Zinov’s dictionary entitled “The Pagan Dialects from Narew” should be
treated as a copy of a lost authentic document. My final conclusion is that Prof. Zinkevi?ius correctly named it the
“Polish-Yatvingian dictionary”.
44
Balt? kalBos i? indoeuropeistikos perspektyvos / Baltu valodas indoeiropeistikas perspektīvā /
Baltic from an indo-european perspective
references
Witczak K. T., 1989, Wurszajtis – ja?wi?ski kap?an-ofiarnik. Przy-
czynek do identyfikacji “Gwar pogańskich z Narewu”, Acta
Baltico-Slavica XX, pp. 339–342.
Witczak K. T., 2004, Linguistic Calques in the Old Prussian and
Yatvingian Toponymy, Baltistica XXXIX(2), pp. 309–313.
Witczak K. T., 2015, W?gra – dawny hydronim ja?wi?ski [W?gra – a
former Yatvingian hydronim], Onomastica LIX (in press).
Zinkevi?ius Z., 1984, Pol’sko-jatvja?skij slovarik?, Balto-slavjan-
skie issledovanija 1983, Moskva, pp. 3–29.
Zinkevi?ius Z., 1985, Lenk?-Jotvingi? ?odyn?lis?, Baltistica
XXI(1), 1985, pp. 61-82, oraz XXI(2), pp. 184–194.
Zinkevi?ius Z., 1992, A Polish-Yatvingian Vocabulary?, Linguistic
and Oriental Studies from Poznań I, pp. 99–133.
