Category: Old Prussian grammar

OLD PRUSSIAN GRAMMAR BY V. P. PETROV

A significant part of V. P. Petrov’s archive consists of material he collected in the 1950s and 1960s for his planned historical grammar of the Old Prussian language. The material is organized into 14 folders, each containing approximately 500 loose-leaf or notebook pages.

Most of these pages (folders 266/1–266/6) are filled with words extracted by Petrov from Old Prussian texts, grouped into sections according to grammatical forms. Each section typically begins with a general list of attested endings, followed by comprehensive lists of examples for each ending, with an indication of their source and, where appropriate, their syntactic context. The sections conclude with a detailed commentary on the endings and their origin. Petrov supplements his own text with frequent quotations from earlier Old Prussian grammars, particularly Berneker 1896 and Endzelin 1944. When discussing the broader Indo-European context, reference is usually made to Meillet 1938, 1951, Chantraine 1953, Zhirmunskiy 1956 and other authors.

In a similar manner to earlier authors’ works on Old Prussian, Petrov had apparently planned to finish his grammar with a concise etymological glossary, but was only able to complete the beginning of the glossary (the letters A and E, and only a few words beginning with other letters; see folders 266/7 and 266/8).

[Note by Oleksandra Buzko: The collection still contains a large number of unsystematized boxes of grammar. It is likely that all the other letters are there. So this part of the collection requires further processing and research].

Petrov’s lists of Old Prussian cognates in other Indo-European languages were largely based on earlier Old Prussian grammars (Berneker 1896, Trautmann 1910, and Endzelīns 1943), occasionally supplemented by data from etymological dictionaries of other Indo-European languages (e.g., Preobrazhenskiy 1956 or Machek 1957).

Folder 266/7 also contains a notebook with a list of relevant bibliographies. The arrangement of the bibliography is subject-based rather than alphabetical. Most of the referenced works are cataloged with the codes from the State Library of Russia, utilized by Petrov to compile his materials.

Folders 266/9–266/14 contain summaries of literature used in compiling the material for the grammar. The most detailed summaries are of classical Old Prussian studies, such as Nesselmann 1845, 1873, Berneker 1896, Schulze 1897, Trautmann 1910, Gerullis 1922, Endzelīns 1943, and Endzelin 1944. Extracts on Old Prussian linguistic facts from various other works on Baltic or Slavic linguistics, such as Leskien 1876, 1891, Berneker 1908, Mikkola 1903, Endzelin 1911, 1922, Stang 1942, and Būga 1958, also occupy a significant amount of space. The motive for including quotations from works that have little to do with Old Prussian remains unclear. These sources include Jokl 1929, Krahe 1954, Sobolevski 1905, 1906, and PLKG.

Finally, folder 266/12 includes some of Petrov’s preliminary drafts, which have only a tangential connection to Old Prussian. These present various reflections on Slavic and Baltic ethnonyms and theonyms, folklore similarities, and related subjects.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

  1. Berneker 1896 – Erich Berneker, Die preußische Sprache, Straßburg, 1896.
  2. Berneker 1908 – Erich Berneker, Slavisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 1, Heidelberg, 1908.
  3. Būga 1958 – Kazimieras Būga, Rinktiniai raštai 1, Vilnius, 1958.
  4. Chantraine 1953 – П. Шантрен, Историческая морфология греческого языка (перевод со 2-го французского изд.), Москва, 1953.
  5. Endzelin 1911 – И. Эндзелинъ, Славяно-балтійскіе этюды, Харьковъ, 1911.
  6. Endzelin 1922 – J. Endzelin, Lettische Grammatik, Riga, 1922.
  7. Endzelīns 1943 – Jānis Endzelīns, Senprūšu valoda, Rīga, 1943.
  8. Endzelin 1944 – J. Endzelin, Altpreußische Grammatik, Riga, 1944.
  9. Gerullis 1922 – Georg Gerullis, Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen, Berlin, Leipzig, 1922.
  10. Jokl 1929 – Norbert Jokl, Thraker B. Sprache, Berlin, 1929.
  11. Krahe 1954 – Hans Krahe, Sprache und Vorzeit, Heidelberg, 1954.
  12. Leskien 1876 – August Leskien, Die Declination im Slavisch-Litauischen und Germanischen, Leipzig, 1891.
  13. Leskien 1891 – August Leskien, Die Bildung der Nomina im Litauischen, Leipzig, 1891.
  14. Machek 1957 – Václav Machek, Etymologický slovník jazyka českého a slovenského, Praha, 1957.
  15. Meillet 1938 – А. Мейе, Введение в сравнительное изучение индоевропейских языков (перевод Д. Кудрявского), Москва, Ленинград, 1938.
  16. Meillet 1951 – А. Мейе, Общеславянский язык (перевод с второго французского издания), Москва, 1951.
  17. Mikkola 1903 – Joos. J. Mikkola, Baltisches und Slavisches, Helsingfors, 1903.
  18. Nesselmann 1845 – Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann, Die Sprache der alten Preußen, Berlin, 1845.
  19. Nesselmann 1873 – Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann, Thesaurus linguae Prussicae, Berlin, 1873.
  20. PLKG – Pirmoji lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius,1957.
  21. Preobrazhenskiy 1958 – А. Г. Преображенский, Этимологический словарь русского языка 1–2, Москва, 1958.
  22. Schulze 1897 – Martin Schulze, Grammatik der altpreußischen Sprache, Scholtze, Leipzig, 1897.
  23. Sobolevskij 1905 – A. Sobolevskij, Einige Hypothesen über die Sprache der Skythen und Sarmaten, Archiv für slavische Philologie 27, 1905, 240–244.
  24. Sobolevskij 1906 – A. Sobolevskij, Γ im Skythischen, Archiv für slavische Philologie 28, 1906.
  25. Stang 1942 – Christian S. Stang, Das slavische und baltische Verbum, Oslo, 1942.
  26. Trautmann 1910 – Reinhold Trautmann, Dei altpreußischen Sprachdenkmäler, Göttingen, 1910.
  27. Zhirmunskiy 1956 – В. М. Жирмунский, Немецкая диалектология, Москва, Ленинград, 1956.

Vytautas Rinkevičius