Insights into the Baltic and Finnic Languages

Introduction: The languages and language systems that meet at the Baltic Sea

The Circum-Baltic (CB) area is a meeting point of two Uralic branches – Finnic, Saamic – and three Indo-European branches – the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages. The term “Circum-Baltic languages” was coined to denote the area around the Baltic Sea where these languages are spoken, however, the exact delimitation of this area is left intentionally vague (see Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001a). A notable feature of the CB area is the continuity of contacts over time (Koptjevskaja-Tamm & Wälchli 2001: 726). For instance, the presence of Finnic and Baltic in northeastern Europe can be traced back to the prehistoric era (Kallio 2014: 78). According to the current viewpoint, which finds support in archaeology and genetics, Finnic speakers reached the Baltic Sea approximately 2800–3200 years ago (e.g., Lang 2018). Contacts between the Finnic and Baltic languages, however, started even before that. Namely, the Baltic language area is thought to have once stretched to the Upper Volga region, although the Baltic languages were probably only secondarily spoken in the Volga-Oka area (Kallio 2014: 78; see also Nichols 2021: 355). The Slavic expansion began no earlier than the middle of the first millennium AD (ibid.).

Similarities between the languages of the Circum-Baltic area have led to attempts to establish a Sprachbund or even several Sprachbünde in the area. The first researcher to use the term for the area was Roman Jakobson (1971a [1931a], 1971b [1931b]), who identified common phonetic features among the languages of the area. The idea was developed further, and – in addition to phonetics – common features were also discovered in morphosyntax (e.g., Mathiassen 1985). An extensive treatment of the topic is provided by Thomas Stolz in his monograph “Sprachbund im Baltikum?” (1991), in which he focuses on areal phenomena primarily in the southern and eastern parts of the region and demonstrates that especially Latvian and Estonian show convergence; his research was mainly concentrated on the standard languages. In 2001, the two-part compendium “The Circum-Baltic languages”, edited by Östen Dahl and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001a, b), was published; this work presents an overview of the development of the region, its language groups and common linguistic features, and continues to be a valuable source of information on the entire area. In the summary article “The ←11 | 12→Circum-Baltic languages: An areal-typological approach”, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Bernhard Wälchli (2001) present a new viewpoint on the Circum-Baltic language area. In their thorough and multifaceted areal-typological analysis, they conclude that the Circum-Baltic area cannot be treated as a language union defined by some set of common features. Thus, they suggest the term “Contact Superposition Zone”, as the CB linguistic area can instead be characterised by intensive linguistic contacts between small groups of languages and the continuity of these contacts over a long period of time, rather than by isoglosses covering all the CB languages. As shown, the isoglosses pick up different subsets of languages and there are only a few common innovations in the area. Lyle Campbell (2017), generalising from a number of different language areas, finds that language areas are inherently uneven in their nature and their development, and that they lack clear boundaries. The articles in this volume also show that there are different contacts and common features between languages and language groups in different parts of the region.

The described unevenness in these areas has also been shaped by different contact situations, as well as economic, political, and religious processes. Regarding such factors, Riho Grünthal (2020) argues in favour of a diversification of the Finnic languages into three zones already in the medieval period. The core of the southern zone is made up by Livonian and the Estonian varieties (excl. Northeastern Estonian); the eastern zone includes Veps, Ludic, Karelian, Ingrian, Votic, Northeastern Estonian, and the eastern Finnish varieties; the northern zone is reserved for the Finnish varieties spoken in western Finland. More specifically, these groupings reflect different trade routes, contacts with neighbouring communities, and relationships between centres and peripheries (Grünthal 2020: 13). Among the three zones, the southern zone is claimed to stand out due to the faster speed of language change on all levels (phonology > morphology, syntax, lexicon). The southern zone stretches to/partly overlaps with the area where Latvian is spoken. As generally agreed, Latvian has been more innovative than Lithuanian and it is known to have gone through a more rapid development (see, e.g., Balode & Holvoet 2001).

The languages of the area also differ in terms of their description and standardisation. The written traditions of Estonian, Finnish, and Latvian have their roots in the 16th century. The tradition of writing in Latgalian goes back to the 18th century (Cibuļs 2009: 27). As regards several of the Finnic varieties also discussed in this volume (Livonian, Votic, the South Estonian language islands, etc.), more systematic documentation began only in the second half of the 19th century and written standards started to appear in the late 20th century or even ←12 | 13→more recently. It is not rare, however, for speaker communities to have diminished considerably or become non-existent by the start of the 21st century. In the latter case, today’s linguists can only rely on the data collected earlier. An example of this is the primer on Lutsi (see Balodis 2020), a South Estonian language island in Latvia that faded out of use in the 1970s–1980s (Vaba 2011). The study of Livonian also must rely primarily on older written sources. However, the development of standardised language also brings about typological differences between the language form developed by scholars and the language as spoken natively (Laakso, present volume).

The present volume has its roots in the workshop “Circum-Baltic languages: varieties, comparisons, and change” (convenors: Liina Lindström, Helle Metslang, and Andra Kalnača) from the 51st annual conference of the Societas Linguisticae Europaea held in Tallinn in 2018, containing expansions of presentations from the workshop as well as other submissions. The articles herein focus primarily on the southern and eastern parts of the CB area (see Figure 1), addressing the structure and usage of Baltic and Finnic languages today and in the recent past and discussing different contact situations in the area. All the articles contain comparisons of different languages or language variants within the region. Particular attention is given to structural features influenced by contact between Livonian and Latvian (the articles by Milda Dailidėnaitė, Milda Dailidėnaitė and Valts Ernštreits, Miina Norvik and Jurgis Pakerys). As Milda Dailidėnaitė (present volume, p. 88) writes: “understanding any phenomenon is not possible without broader areal research in this region, also, in this case, many of the common developments are not unique to Livonian and Latvian”. Similarities and differences in structure and use are analysed for Latvian and Lithuanian by Daiga Deksne, and for Ingrian and Votic by Fedor Rozhanskiy and Elena Markus. The articles by Andra Kalnača and Ilze Lokmane, Kristīne Levāne-Petrova, and Laimute Balode and Laura Grīviņa deal with Latvian morphosyntax and onomastics, taking into account the areal context. Emīlija Mežale’s article on pronoun use in Finnish and Latvian offers a contrastive viewpoint on two languages which share common features despite not being in direct contact with one another. Uldis Balodis’ analysis of form variation in dialects within the Lutsi language island shows the reciprocal effects of language varieties on one another. Helle Metslang, Külli Habicht, Pärtel Lippus, and Karl Pajusalu provide a typological comparison of historical and modern varieties of Estonian, and Johanna Laakso does the same for standard and dialect forms of Veps and Võro.

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Andra Kalnača and Ilze Lokmane’s article “The Latvian Oblique Forms: An Interaction of Evidentiality, Epistemicity, and Mirativity” focuses on the oblique mood in Latvian. The primary function of the oblique mood is to express reported evidentiality. Evidentiality is grammaticalised in verb forms in the ←14 | 15→languages of the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea – Lithuanian, Estonian, Livonian, and especially Latvian. This article examines the morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the oblique mood in different contextual conditions, in political discourse and fairy tales, and includes comparisons with Lithuanian and Estonian. The results show that in different instances, epistemic (disbelief, irony) and mirative (surprise, usually unpleasant) meanings may be layered on top of the core evidential meaning. In political discourse, evidentiality is used in expressing scepticism and negative judgements, while in fairy tales it is used in the context of evidential narration, telling a story heard from someone else.

Miina Norvik and Jurgis Pakerys’ article “Periphrastic Causative Constructions in Livonian: An Overview” examines Livonian periphrastic causative constructions formed with five different verbs functioning as auxiliaries, distinguishing permissive and factitive causation, with curative causation being a subtype of the latter. Parallels to these constructions and the meaning ←15 | 16→shifts that have motivated their emergence can be found in other Circum-Baltic languages from the Baltic, Slavic, and Finnic families. As causative constructions are attested in all Finnic languages, they are likely quite old in Livonian as well. However, as regards the meaning shifts seen in the auxiliarisation, verb loans, and case assignment of the causee and permittee, Latvian-like features can be seen in the Livonian constructions.

Uldis Balodis analyses the variation of case forms of nominals in the Lutsi South Estonian language island in Latvia in his article “The Distribution of Inessive Case Endings in Lutsi”. The Lutsi language variety was spoken in villages near the city of Ludza and its development is characterised by intense language contact with Latvian and Latgalian as well as Russian, Belarusian, Polish, and Yiddish. Today its speakers have passed on, but written material has been preserved from the 19th and 20th centuries. The origin of the Lutsi people is unclear; they likely emigrated in several waves from various dialect areas of ←16 | 17→southern Estonia. This article examines one linguistic phenomenon – the variation in the inessive case ending in nominals – in different Lutsi villages. It draws on material from two collections of texts, one of which is from 1893 and consists primarily of folk songs and the other from 1925 to 1971, containing narratives of various sorts told by language informants. The research results are a step forward in a study which aims to identify the subdialects of Lutsi and the origin of the Lutsi people from different dialect areas in Estonia.