Jonas Jablonskis
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Jonas Jablonskis (pseudonym Rygiškių Jonas; 1860-1930) was a distinguished Lithuanian practical linguist and the founder of Standard Lithuanian.
Biography
Jonas Jablonskis was born in Kubiliai, county of Šakiai, on December 30, 1860. Later his family moved to Rygiškiai; hence the pseudonym.
Jablonskis studied classical languages at the University of Moscow from 1881-1885. The most distinguished among his professors were F. Fortunatov and F. Korsh, both of whom knew Lithuanian and urged their student to devote himself to research in his native language. Unfortunately, being a Lithuanian Catholic, he was unable to find employment as a teacher in Lithuania when he finished his studies in 1885. He was therefore constrained for a time to give private less'ons and to serve as clerk in the court of Marijampolė. In 1889, however, he succeeded in obtaining an appointment as teacher of Greek and Latin in Jelgava, Latvia, where he remained until 1896. His home became a frequent gatheringplace for educated Lithuanians. During summer vacations Jablonskis collected data for his linguistic studies among native speakers in Lithuania. His activities 'on behalf of Lithuanian causes prompted his removal to Tallinn, Estonia.
The Russian Academy of Sciences, which regarded Lithuanian studies in a better light than did the Russian administration, charged Jablonskis with editing the dictionary compiled by the recently deceased Antanas Juška, a task on which he continued in Pskov after he was dismissed from his teaching in Tallinn in 1901 and, in addition, banished from Lithuania in 1902. At that time he wrote his Lietuviškos kalbos gramatika (Lithuanian Grammar, 1901) under the name of P. Kriaugaitis, his first pseudonym. Since the Russians had prohibited the printing of Lithuanian books in Latin characters, the grammar was published in Tilsit, East Prussia.
When Jablonskis regained permission to enter Lithuania, he went to Šiauliai in 1903 and to Vilnius the next year. After the press ban was lifted in 1904, he served on the editorial boards of the newspapers Vilniaus žinios and Lietuvos ūkininkas and edited the publications of Aušra (The Dawn), a publishing house which he himself founded.
From 1906-1908 he taught at the Pedagogic Seminary of Panevėžys. A difficult financial situation forced a move in 1908 to Brest-Litovsk, where he taught until 1912, when he was transferred to Grodno. At the beginning of World War I the entire school was evacuated to Velizh, Russia. From 1915-18 he taught at the Lithuanian refugees' gymnasium in Voronezh, from where he returned to Vilnius almost totally disabled and confined to a wheel-chair.
When Poland seized Vilnius in 1919, the Lithuanian government had him brought to Kaunas. When the Lithuanian University of Kaunas opened in 1922, he was elected honorary professor and taught Lithuanian until 1926. Concurrently he produced texts for schools, translated and edited others' translations from foreign languages, participated in commissions set up to normalize terminology and orthography, and wrote reviews of philological literature. He died in Kaunas on February 23, 1930.
Works
Jablonskis' greatest achievement was his contribution to the formation of the standard Lithuanian language. This language was already on its way in the 19th century, but Jablonskis, in the introduction to his Lietuviškos kalbos gramatika, was the first to formulate and expound the essential principles that were so indispensable to its later development. His proposal for Standard Lithuanian was based on the western High-Lithuanian dialect, whereas the linguists A. Schleicher and F. Kuršaitis (Kurschat) had used the dialect of Prussian Lithuanians. Having thus chosen one dialect, Jablonskis held close to the living speech of the people, with its vocabulary and forms untainted by foreign influences. In contrast the literary language of the period suffered from heavy admixtures of foreign, especially Slavic, elements. Thus Jablonskis' efforts changed the direction of the evolution of written Lithuanian toward a form that was purely and authentically Lithuanian.
Tireless work over a period of nearly 50 years gradually brought the following results: variations and inconsistencies in orthography were reduced to an absolute minimum; a multitude of unnecessary foreign loan words were replaced by appropriate Lithuanian expressions; the formation of neologisms became subject to principles that were consistent with the rules of Lithuanian; and in general greater order and consistency were introduced into the grammar, particularly the syntax, of written Lithuanian. Moreover, the direction in which Jablonskis set the evolution of modem Standard Lithuanian is one in which the language continues to evolve successfully, constantly enhanced by fresh facts and insights.
Being in the first instance a practical linguist, Jonas Jablonskis asserted himself above all through works designed to serve practical ends, such as Lietuvių kalbos sintakse (Lithuanian Syntax), 1911; Rašomosios kalbos dalykai (Matters of Literary Language), 1912; Lietuvių kalbos gramatika (Lithuanian Grammar), last edition 1922; Lietuviu kalbos vadovelis (Manual of Lithuanian), 1925; Linksniai ir prielinksniai (Cases and Prepositions), 1929. In addition, alone or with the help of his students, he translated scientific popularizations and educational works by Russian (M. Bogdanov, I. Krylov) and British (S. Smiles, G. Sand) authors. His most significant work, however, remains Lietuvių kalbos gramatika, which for a long time was the only comprehensive manual available to schools and generally to people wishing to improve their knowledge of the language. The purification 'of the language from relatively recent foreign accretions was also tremendously helped by his frequent articles in periodicals, where he repeatedly pointed out unacceptable and non-Lithuanian grammatical and syntactical forms.
Some of Jablonskis' works, even though meant to serve practical needs, are still important from the point of view of scientific theory. The linguistic material which he collected is being published in the large dictionary of the Lithuanian language multitude of unnecessary foreign loan words were replaced by appropriate Lithuanian expressions; the formation of neologisms became subject to principles that were consistent with the rules of Lithuanian; and in general greater order and consistency were introduced into the grammar, particularly the syntax, of written Lithuanian. Moreover, the direction in which Jablonskis set the evolution of modem Standard Lithuanian is one in which the language continues to evolve successfully, constantly enhanced by fresh facts and insights. The linguistic material which he collected is being published in the large dictionary of the Lithuanian language and is being used in research and in the correcting of texts. Because he was well-trained in linguistics, had a sharp sense for matters related to language, and knew Lithuanian extremely well, Jablonskis was better able than others to notice and to bring into due prominence features that were highly characteristic of the Lithuanian language. For example, the formation of Lithuanian words is described with greater perspicacity, even if only briefly, in his grammar, than in the German philologist August Leskien's monumental Bildung der Nomina im Litauischen, 1894.
A complete edition of Jablonskis' works was prepared by Jonas Balčikonis and published as Jablonskio raštai, 5 volumes, Kaunas, 1932-36. Later Jonas Palionis edited a selection of his works titled Rinktiniai raštai, 2 volumes, Vilnius, 1957-1959.
References
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