> New Prussian

LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES OF THE RECOVERY OF OLD PRUSSIAN

 

1. The Prussians, “Ideal Prussians”, Old Prussian and New Prussian

2) Old Prussian died out in the 16th c.

The Old Prussians never created a centralized state, but their tribes became united and comprehended as one nation only under the rule of the German Order. Even more: the first Prussian state was an independent Baltic state and was not any Germany in spite of the German language of the authorities of the German Order. After bloody almost a century-long wars against the Baltic Prussians, even the authorities of the state were mixed, being representatives of different European nations who had participated in crusades against Baltic Prussia in the 13th c.

The Old Prussian nobility became linguistically Germanized already in the 14th c. Linguistic Germanizing of free Prussian peasants began in the middle of the 15th c., when after the catastrophe of Tannenberg (1410) the Free Prussians fled to Germanized towns in order not to be sold as serfs together with their land for the debts of the state. Finally, the remaining Prussians serfs preserved their language up to their physical extinction during the plague and famine of 1709–1711.

Had the language been extinct in the 16th c., what would have been then a need to translate M. Luther’s “Enchiridion” into it in 1561? References to still spoken Old Prussian existed at the end of the 17th c.

The spread of the name Prussia as well as a multicultural history of this Baltic land, rich with legends and archaic folk-lore, maintained local and international interest for Baltic Prussians during centuries. In the 1st half of the 20th c. Pan-Baltic ideas appear with parallel attempts to revive Old Prussian on the basis of attested monuments. This was hindered by the official German state patriotism of the Nazis but after 1945 all autochthons became victims of the genocide and total deportation. In spite of such unfavorable development, the Prussian romanticism became noticeable in the last quarter of the 20th c., but it gets organized forms nowadays.

At the same time the task is to recover Old Prussian as New Prussian for the needs of all possible Prussian communities. New situation in Europe allows the Prussians to hope to participate in further development of the part of their native land in the region of Kaliningrad, where a Prussian settlement is hoped to be created as a World Center for all Prussians. This Center may help current inhabitants of the region to solve the question of their identity, so urgent for them today, as well as to give back to the land its authentic face and thus to integrate all stages of its history. New Prussian must become instrument to rebuild mental and cultural grounds for the ethnic group of the Prussians by creating Basic Stock of native literature re-coded into Prussian from historical local languages, German, Lithuanian and Polish. Thus the national cultural memory will be restored.

The New Prussian language fitting to fulfil this task must be a high-level falsification which could represent not only the language known from the 16th c., but also its missing period up to nowadays as if Ideal Prussians have always spoken it in all period of their history. These Ideal Prussians may be called New Prussians who have absorbed all influences during all periods of their history including the German influence experienced by Estonians and Latvians too.

2. Recovering Prussian: the Comparative Linguistics and the Interlinguistics

From the point of view of the grammatical structure and basic Lexis, New Prussian is the same Baltic language, which is known from 3 Old Prussian Catechisms, authentic printed documents of the 16th c. (1545, 1561). The main basis of the language includes also material from 2 authentic manuscripts, the Elbing Vocabulary of 802 entries rewritten on the boundary of the 13th / 14th c., and words from 100-entries Simon Grunau’s Vocabulary of the 1st quarter of the 16th c.

Of 2 main tendencies to interpret them (as “spoiled by the German copyists” and as “roughly well corresponding to the spoken language”) I adhere to that of my teacher prof. Vytautas Mažiulis, who considers the texts (except Grunau’s Vocabulary) to be roughly authentic. Such view is not very popular because it demands wider comparative efforts to treat Prussian, a West-Baltic language, as essentially different even in grammatical structure from well-known East-Baltic Lithuanian and Latvian languages.

3. Transposition of all attested material onto one common level

The language attested in historical documents, reflects different Old Prussian dialects. The dialect of the Elbing Vocabulary is assumed to be Pomezanian. The Catechisms come from Samland, the 3rd Catechism having been translated in Pobethen. Presence of o (*/ō/) in the Elbing Vocabulary against -a < -*ā, ā /ā/ in the Catechisms is the main feature making difference between these dialects, cf. Towis E vs. Tāws III ‘father’.

The 1st Catechism distinguishes itself with the long e (*/ē/), absent in the other Catechisms but present in the Elbing Vocabulary, cf. Swetan E, swetan I vs. swytan II, swītan III ‘world’.

There are more dialectal and sub-dialectal differences in attested texts, of course (cf. the difference in the inflection of the nom. sg. masc. Towis E vs. Tāws III). New Prussian as a language for all modern Prussians must be standardized on the basis of one of the attested old dialects. The language is best represented in the 3rd Catechism, which is a translation of Martin Luther’s Enchiridion. Therefore the dialect of the 3rd Catechism has been chosen as a literary norm, on the system of which all other attested material is phonetically and morphologically transposed. Thus, in accordance with the pair Towis E vs. Tāws III with (tāws) as a norm, a literary word rāks ‘crawfish’ appears from the attested rokis E 584.

Nevertheless recent investigations allow to doubt authentic Prussian character of the language of the 3rd Catechism. It seems probable that the latter was a kind of Prussianized Yatvingian of the descendants of 1600 Soudovians, resettled by the Teuton Order in the North-West of Samland after conquering Soudovia. In this case one should take into consideration the coinciding phonetic system of Samlandian geographic names in their German spelling and of Pomezanian Elbing Vocabulary. The latter system (with its long ō instead of long ā of the Catechisms) appears to be really Prussian with subsequent morphonologic implications (cf. Grammatical Incompatibility of 2 Main Prussian “Dialects” as Implication of Different Phonological Systems). In this case the created norm may be revised (it should not be revised provided the future Prussian Center will be set up in Samland, where the said Yatvingian dialect prevailed).

4. Prussian complemented by Slavic, Lithuanian and Latvian

The Prussian language is recovered as a West-Baltic one keeping in mind that the system of Prussian developed in the same periphery of the parent linguistic community of the related dialects, in which Proto-Slavic dialects originated in their turn (the concept of Vladimir Toporov – Vytautas Mažiulis).

E.g. the word for ‘dream’ has not been attested (one has only the word for ‘sleep’, i.e. maiggun III 101). Nevertheless one finds Common-Indoeuropean sapnis in Latvian, sapnas in Lithuanian (< East-Baltic *svapna-), *supno- in Slavic. This shows that the words of the same root had to exist in Prussian too. In this concrete case one must even reconstruct a more archaic form, than in East Baltic Lithuanian and Latvian, i.e. *supnas, having in mind the data of Slavic, for which Proto-Baltic may be regarded as Proto-language according to Vl. Toporov–V. Mažiulis. The Slavic form in its turn corresponds to Greek hypnos < *supnos, as well as to Latin somnus < *swepnos / swopnos, Sanskrit svapna- etc. from the IE root *swep- / sup-. On these grounds one cannot doubt that there existed archaic *supnas in O.Prussian. Basing only on both East Baltic languages is insufficient. Basing on only 1 East Baltic language is unwelcome.

5. Recovering the attested part and recovering the lost part of Prussian

The attested part is recovered on the basis of the sequential treatment of spelling. Vytautas Mažiulis significantly contributed to this field with his transliterated and commented edition of the Old Prussian texts (Prūsų kalba II. Vilnius: Mokslas 1981) as well as by his Etymological Dictionary (Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas. Vilnius: Mokslas, Vo. 1–4, 1988–1998).

First and foremost the researcher must take into consideration peculiarities of forms of Gothic letters of corresponding epochs. Thus the correction of ‘t’ to ‘c’ or of ‘c’ to ‘t’ cannot be even regarded as a correction because the both letters are often confused and lightly differ one from the other. This allowed V.Mažiulis to solve a “mystery” of the Prussian word ‘forehead’, which had been unanimously read as batto E 77, but usually corrected to *ballo, by almost all linguists. In fact, the form of the small ‘b’ is similar to that of the big ‘C’ (most of the words in the Elbing vocabulary begin with the big letters) while ‘tt’ may be read ‘ct’ without any discussion. As a result a normal Baltic word Cacto [kaktō] appears equal to Lithuanian kakta ‘forehead’.

Next, one must have in mind that the letter ‘e’ may render an unstressed short i as in rekian I ‘Lord” rendering [rikījan]. On the other hand, the letter ‘o’ may render a short bright u as in meddo E ‘honey’ rendering [medu].

The great advantage of V. Mažiulis is pointing out to the palatalization expressed by the letter ‘i’ as in Polish tradition (cf. the spellings Polish się and Prussian sien ‘self’, Polish pięć ‘five’ and Prussian piēncts ‘fifth’), what is evident by comparing parallel spellings gēide III and giēidi III ‘waits’ with the palatalized [g’ ]. Analysis of the attested spelling is crucial for each kind of serious prussological work.

One of the elementary procedures may be called complementary explication (a term proposed by Vladimir Toporov, cf. Palmaitis M.L., Toporov V.N. From the reconstruction of Old Prussian toward the recreation of Neo-Prussian [in Russian], p. 59 / In: Balto-Slavic Researches. Institute for Slavic and Balkan Studies [Moscow], 1983, p. 36 — 63). I have in mind not only such simple instance as using a word in grammatical forms, in which it has not been attested. The procedure is more than simple in such instance: from the sequence e.g. nom. sg. masc. deiws ‘God’, gen. sg. deiwas, dat. sg. grīku ‘sin’, acc. sg. deiwan, nom. pl. grīkai, gen. pl. grīkan, dat. pl. waikammans ‘servants’, acc. pl. deiwans one gets automatically dat. sg. *deiwu, nom. pl. *deiwai, gen. pl. *deiwan, dat. pl. *deiwammans.

By revealing systemic relations between stems a lot of not-attested case forms may be easily reconstructed in the similar way. Thus on the basis of the attested a-stem nom. sg. deiws, dat. pl. waikammans, i-stem acc. sg. nautin ‘trouble’, u-stem nom. sg. Soūns III, gen. sg. Sunos I [sūnus] ‘son’ one may reconstruct the i- and u-stem nom. sg. *nauts (but cf. Dantis E 93 ‘tooth’ in Pomezanian), gen. sg. *nautis, dat. pl. *dantimmans, *sunummans.

Nevertheless one faces problems when trying to reconstruct i- and ja-stem adjectives because of the confusion of these stems in the Catechisms. With all probability this points to the tendency of the merge of the both stems in the 16th c. Therefore, no doubt, there must be only a common i-/ja-stem paradigm of the adjectives in the 21st c.

Much more problematic is the reconstruction of the verb. The attested data allowed V. Mažiulis to come to the conclusion that the forms of the presence coincided with the forms of the past tense in a lot of instances except athematic stems (ast–bēi), praes. ja- – praet. i-stems (New Prus. lānke–lānki, cf. the attested praes. perlānkei III, i.e. [perlank’a] with the generalization of the ending -a/-ai, -e /-ei, Lith. praet. lenkė), the suffixed (presta–pretta, attested praes. 1 pl. poprestemai III, Lith. praet. prato), infixed (palīnka–palikka, attetsed praes. polīnka III) or apophonic stems (rēisa–rissa, gabja–gūbi, attested inf. perrēist, but partic. praet. pass. senrists III, Lith. praes. gobia, attested partic. praet. pass. pergūbons III with ū < *ō after the guttural) as well as rare instances of stems with the suffixed preterit (klānta–klantēi, attested praes. 1 pl. klantemmai with the 1st syllable stressed vs. partic. praet. act. klantīuns). In other instances one should reconstruct some analytical means as well as the use of the participles instead of personal forms, cf. praes./praet. 1 pers. as segēi (the verb ‘to do’), but praes. as segīnts (< *segīj(i)nts < *segējants) vs. praet. as segīwuns, or as bēi segīwuns (as if a past perfect form).

6. Semantic system of the derivative elements

These rules are revealed by V. Mažiulis in his etymological studies, based on the comparative historical analysis of the derivative material of the Baltic languages.

Let us compare the etymology of OPr. enterpen (ka ast enterpen stawīds īdis ‘was nuetzt... solch Essen’ III) by V. Toporov (Toporov V.N. The Prussian Language, Dictionary E–H [In Russian]. Moscow: Nauka 1979, p. 55 f.) with that of V. Mažiulis (Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas, Vo. 1, A–H, p. 277 f., Prūsų kalbos paminklai, II, p. 69).

Being not able to understand the form, V. Toporov follows J. Endzelins who takes analogous phrase of the 3rd Catechism with the word enterpo and regards the latter being a correspondence of the German verb nutzet in the original text. On such a ground enterpo is corrected to *enterpa and is declared to be a verb ‘to profit’, i.e. the 3rd pers. praes. ‘profits’. After that this verb is compared to Lithuanian tarpti ‘thrive’ (by the way, the latter is a sta-suffixed verb in the presence, not any praes. ^otarpa or ^oterpa!) and to a lot of words taken from various IE languages. This is a good example of useless volitional etymology.

V. Mažiulis, on the other hand, first cites all analogous phrases, among which not only the forms enterpen, enterpo, but also the form enterpon is found. Further, on the ground of the whole character of spelling endings in the Catechisms, V.Mažiulis confronts the spellings (enterp)-en, (enterp)-on with analogous spellings e.g. of the accusative singular -en, -on reflecting nothing else but the unstressed -an. Thus the analysis of the spelling precedes all etymological procedures. On this background, the spelling enterpo appears to be a misprint for usual enterpon [enterpan]. In this instance all cited phrases may be translated with the adverb ‘useful’, ‘profitable’, Germ, ‘nützlich’ = ‘was nützt’. If then the word enterpan appears to be an adverb (the Prussian an-adverbs are equal to Lith. gera, baisu, Polish dobro), its nearest source is found in the combination *en terpan. The combination *en terpan, in its turn, is immediately comparable with OPr. emnen... ny anterpinsquan menentwei ‘den namen... vnnützlich füren’ III, i.e. ‘name (of God)... useless to mention (Germ.: ‘to carry, to bring’)’. Thus the meaning ‘use, profit’ is easily extracted from the ny anterpinsquan ‘useless’ as a combination of ny ‘not’ + adv. anterpinsquan ‘useful’. The latter is a compound of en ‘in’ and the acc. sg. fem. (ending in -quan adapted to the nom. fem. -kwā /-kū < -kā with -ā > -ū after the guttural!) terpiniskan, i.e. ‘in (for) the profitability’. Thus the word of the abstract meaning fem. *terpiniskā ‘profitability’ is reconstructed, which is a derivative with the suffix -isk- from the adjective OPr. *terpin(a)s ‘profitable’. The latter can be derived (by means of the suffix -in-) only from the substantive OPr. *terpā ‘use, profit’. Such word automatically presumes the existence of the source verb OPr. *terp- ‘to thrive’ which only on this stage of the analysis may be compared to Lith. tarpti. The semantical origin of the word OPr. *terpā ‘use, profit’ is therefore ‘a profit got from the thriven crop’. This is parallel in its turn to OPr. *bandā ‘a profit got from cattle’ (cf. Lith. banda ‘herd’) which is reconstructed analogously from OPr. ni enbāndan ‘useless’ III = OPr. ny anterpinsquan III.

Then a deeper comparison of the OPr. *terp- and Lith. tarp- follows with the conclusion that the verb *terp-/*tarp- must have been Common-Baltic. Only after that a broader Indoeuropean comparison begins which is usually the starting one for all traditional etymologists. Nevertheless even on this stage V. Mažiulis first searches for the nearest source of the verb CB *terp- which must be IE *terp-/*trp-, but the latter goes back to the root IE *ter- ‘to rub, to perforate (by rubbing)’ with the extension *-p: ‘to perforate by sprouting’. Now, at the very end (not in the beginning!), the latter root is compared to a lot of related words from various IE languages, as Lith. terpti ‘to squeeze into’, Russian torop ‘one who hurries squeezing into’, O.Isl. tharfr ‘useful’ < ‘properly rubbed’, Skr. tarpati ‘becomes satisfied < ‘proper’, Gk. térpō ‘sate, gladden’, Tokh. AB tsārw- ‘to be glad’ etc.

As seen, such consequent and deep analysis appeared to be extremely important for the recovery of Prussian. Not aiming to do this, V. Mažiulis demonstrated that Old Prussian had possessed the words *terpiniskā (NPr. terpinisku) ‘profitability’, *terpins ‘profitable’, *terpā ‘use, profit’, *terptwei ‘to thrive’ which were not attested in any historical document of this language.

7. Defining the inventory of grammatical categories

The attested categories correspond to those known in East-Baltic Lithuanian and Latvian. These categories are: the Gender (cf. masc. num., subst. Antars Pallaips III, fem. Antrā Maddla III, neutr. pronom., adj., subst. stae neuwenen Testamenten II), the Number (cf. sg. pron. (adj.), subst. twais malnijks III, pl. adj., subst. tickrai malnijkai III, sg. pron., verb. as madli III, pl. Mes madlimai III), the Case (cf. nom. (sg.) num., subst. ains Waix III, dat. (pl.) pron., subst. Steimans Waikammans III), the Degree of Comparison (cf. positive adj. Vrs, adv. arwiskai III, comp. adj. vraisins, superl. adv. ucka isarwiskai III), the Person (cf. 3 pers. pron., verb. [kāigi] tāns [...] giwa, 2 pers. sg. pron., verb. tou [...kuilgimai] giwassi, 1 pers. pl. pron., verb. mes [...] giwammai III), the Tense (cf. praes. verb. pers. dāst, praet. dai III, fut. dāts wirst), the Voice (cf. act. prowela(din) I, II, pass. prawilts postāi III), the Mood (cf. ind. ast, opt. seisei, boūsei III, conj. boūlai III, imp. seīti III, relat. praes. astits, poquoitēts III, praet. ymmits I, lymuczt II). The category of the relative mood (presented also in Lithuanian and in Latvian) has been postulated by myself on analyzing the usage of the forms in -ts and insufficiency of their traditional explanations (cf. Baltistica 25, 2, 126–133). The Reflexivity is not regarded to be a morphological category. Nevertheless, it is worth to mention that in Old Prussian the same types of the reflexives are attested as in Lithuanian, even the transitive reflexives (cf. Erains mukinsusin [mukinsei sin] swaian mukinsnan ‘Let everybody learn own lesson’ III). As for the Aspect, no grammatical means to express perfectivity / imperfectivity are apparent, nevertheless there are means (the verbal prefixes and the vowel gradation) which are consistently used to differentiate terminativity, iterativity, continuity etc.

Those scholars, who have gone the way of “Lithuanizing” the Prussian material, do not want to acknowledge the evidence of 4 cases in Old Prussian. This seems to them to be a result of spoiling the language “by the Germans” who (Abel Will) as if translated the text literally (although there is enough instances of the deviation of the translated text from the German original). The kernel of the discussion are always 2 instances of the “instrumental” case: the phrase sen wissans swaieis ‘with all his (people)’ III (as if with the Lithuanian ending instr. pl. masc. -ais) and a pronominal form 1 pers. dat. māim (2x), maim (1x) (a dash over the letter ‘a’ is said as if being a sign of the omitted ‘n’ (Lith. instr. manim). As for swaieis, with all probability this is a simple misprint instead of usual spelling acc. swaiens. As for the form māim, it is highly incredible that the omission of the latter ‘n’, so typical for manuscripts for the sake of saving paper, took place in this printed text in the same word and even 3 times. The reconstruction of the stem man- is excluded because of the well attested stem dat. mennei (9x) having the archaic -e- in Prussian (West Baltic) as well as in Slavic (one should expect “instr.” ^omenim, not ^omanim). In Old Prussian the instrumental meaning is expressed by means of the preposition sen + either the accusative form (the new development), or the dative form (archaic senpackai ‘sicher’ III, as in German or in Greek). Since the expression As N. imma tin N. māim prei ainan Salūbin ‘Ich N. neme dich N. mir zu einem Ehelichen Gemahel’ III undoubtedly demonstrates the dative meaning, not any instrumental (^omanim) meaning, one may consider māim to be dative / accusative, probably an archaic enclitic māi (in Pomezanian – *mōi due to the circumflex, cf. Grunau’s Dam thoi ‘I am giving to you’), dativized with the formant -m.

Some “Lithuanisers” also used to negate the original nature of the Prussian a-stem gen. sg. masc. -as, saying it was a German generalization of the gen. sg. -s and pointing to as if preserved gen. butta tawas (beside buttastaws) ‘house father, master’ III = Lith. gen. (but)o. Such authentic instances of compounds with the genitive in the first component, as silkasdrūb’ E 484 [silkasdrimbis] ‘silk cover’ or topon. Wilkaskaymen ‘Wolf’s village’, make any Lithuanisation senseless.

8. Systemzwang

This German term means a paradigmatic constraint under which phonetic rules do not operate if they resulted in changing a standard appearance of the paradigm. In Samlandian the long vowels *ā, *ō turn into *ū after labial and guttural consonants. In many case-forms e.g. nom. sg. fem. -a < *-ā is reprersented as (-u <) -ū < *-ā in the Catechisms (gallū III 103 < *galwā ‘head’, mergu III 67 < *mergā ‘maiden’ etc.). In New Prussian all such cases are eliminated in accordance with the Systemzwang (galwā, mergā etc.).

9. Some innovations in Samlandian

A very interesting innovation of New Prussian comes from using a phonetically conditioned -u < -*ā after k for a class of substantivised adjectives in *-iskā with an abstract meaning, cf. deiwūtisku III 75 ‘bliss’ and New Pr. retawīngisku ‘oddity’. This is done to preserve maximum nearness of New Prussian to attested Samlandian of the Catechisms. In this case a special paradigm has been created for these feminine abstracts: nom. sg. deiwūtisku, gen. deiwūtiskwas, dat. deiwūtiskwai, acc. deiwūtiskwan (not -un, to show a difference from neuter forms!) on the basis of attested forms. In Samlandian of the Catechisms the segment -kwa- in oblique cases occasionally appeared due to contamination of the nom. *-kū < *-k^wā (long) and the gen. -kas, dat. -kai, acc. -kan (short, i.e. shortened already in a pre-historical epoch).

In Samlandian all inga-stem adjectives had to turn into ingja-stem adjectives very early (cf even neuter-form adverbs as e.g. poklūsmingi III 93 etc.).

10. Euphonic changes in the nominative singular

Samlandian of the Catechisms (Cat.) differs from Pomezanian of the Elbing Vocabulary (E) in further shortening of the nominative singular of the a-stems. This form ends in -is (or in -s) in E, but it ends in -s in C. E -is comes from *-as and is equal to a reduced -^us, -ⁱs, -^es < -as in Lithuanian Panevezys sub-dialects, while -s of the Catechisms is the same as in Samogithian dialects or in Latvian. Nevertheless i-stem nominatives show that there was NO reduction of vowels in Pomezanian! This mystery points to some morphophonetic processes of changing pre-historical “active” linguistic structure into historical accusative structure, when the nominative (Balt. *-(a)s) and the genitive (Balt. *-(a)s) cases of the agent appeared on the basis of former split common “active” case (Balt., Hittite *-(a)s). In East Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian) this coincidence was eliminated replacing gen. *-as with a lengthened-stem form in (Mažiulis, Kazlauskas) *-ō, while in West Baltic (E, Cat) it was eliminated by reducing the nominative *-as. Possibly Samlandian *-s comes from West-Baltic *-Vs due to further pure phonetic reduction. As a result, the pre-historical *-as appears to be euphonically “restored” in positions which were difficult to pronounce, as e.g. nom. sg. aj *-isks (Baltic *-iskas) > -iskas. Other positions show that the coincidence with the Common-Baltic inflection is occasional: there occurs euphonic a-stem nom. sg. -us after the labial consonants even in Pomezanian, cf. kalmus, i.e. *kalm^us ‘stub’ (instead of E *kalmis < Balt. kelmas), its genitive being kalmas, of course. More trivial cases of euphonic epenthesis are attested in Samlandian, as e.g. nom. sg. Cat. (tick)ars = (tik)ars = NPr. (tikk)ars instead of *(tik)rs < *(tik)r^Vs / *(tik)^Vrs < Balt. *(tik)ras, the genitive being (tik)ras, of course. All these peculiarities are reflected in New Prussian.

11. One paradox

In Prussian, similarly to Latvian, s became palatalized into before j followed by a, o, u (cf. E schuwikis = *uvikis, Latv. šūt vs. Lith. siuvikas ‘sewer’, siūti ‘to sew’ < Balt. *sju-/*sjū-). This means that z in Prussian had to be palatalized into ž in its turn (cf. Latv. nom. sg. f. dzeguze ‘cuckoo’ but gen. pl. dzegužu < *geguzjōn). No instances of Pr. ž < *zj have been attested! On the contrary, Cat. 3 sg. praes. līse ‘crowl(s)’ = *līz’a < *līzja is a sample of usual positional palatalization (the difference a : e neutralized after a palatalized consonant), i.e. *zja > z’a, not *zja > ža. No native ž is attested in Prussian. This makes a problem to New Prussian.

12. The influence of German on the Prussian syntax

Having in mind that the translation (as possibly the Prussian language of the 16th c. itself) was strongly influenced by German, one should acknowledge that the number of deviations from the German original is impressive. Cf. e.g. Stwendau wirst pergubons vs. Vondannen er kommen wird II ‘from there he will come’, bhe ka tans toūls prīkan Deiwas pallaipsans bhe swaian bousennien ast seggīuns vs. Vnd was er mer wider die gebot Gottes vnd seinen Standt gethan III ‘and what more he has done against God’s commandments and his own position’, bhe ickai ainonts ēnstan turīlai preiwaitiat vs. Vnd hat jemands darein zu sprechen III ‘And if somebody has [anything] to say on this issue’, en tīrtian deinan etskīuns esse gallan vs. am dritten Tage wider Aufferstanden von den Todten III ‘on the third day resurrected from death’, preilīginton stans geīwans bhe Aulausins vs. zu Richten die Lebendigen vnnd die Todten III ‘to judge those living and deceased’, stesmu polīgu vs. Deßgleichen III ‘similarly to that’, etc.

It is really doubtful, whether the translation of the German reflexive pronouns of the 1st and 2nd persons with the Prussian personal pronouns of the 1st and 2nd persons was anything more as a bare slavish following the original: turei toū tien Siggnat vs. soltu dich segnen III ‘you must cross yourself’.

As for putting the verb at the end of the complex sentence (cf. ka twaiā Seilisku dāst ‘was dein andacht gibt, what your piety gives [to you]’ III), this might have been a tendency in the speech of the “enlightened” Prussians (those who spoke German and translated from German). The same may be said about constructions with the translated German particle ‘zu’ before the infinitive form: preilīginton ‘to judge’ (cf. no less exotic passive reflexive constructions of the Russian origin in colloquial Lithuanian).

Typical is the use of the arthroid stas corresponding to German article der. The arthroid was used to specify coinciding case forms acc. sg., gen. pl. -an, -un in the language of the Catechisms (not in Pomezanian!) because the corresponding forms of the arthroid were different, cf. prei etwerpsennien stēison grijkan ‘zur vergebunge der Sünden’ III ‘for the forgiveness of sins’. To understand phrases of this sort without the precising arthroid was impossible (whether the forgiveness of sins or the sin of the forgivenesses was in mind).

13. Restoring Vocabulary:

E.g. OPr. subst. Kupsins E 46 ‘mist’ > NPr. adj. kupsīniskas ‘misty’ with the denominal suffix –isk(a)-,

OPr. verb intrans. etskīmai III ‘we are standing up’ > NPr. verb caus. etskajjintun ‘to raise’ with the apophony of the root vowel in accordance with OPr. bia III ‘is afraid’ vs. pobaiint III ‘to punish, to frighten’,

OPr. verb ūlint III ‘to struggle’ > NPr. nomen actionis ulinsnā ‘struggle’ with the deverbal suffix -snā, etc.

Such new words are as if broadening of the same attested lexemes, they are beyond doubt and even there is no need in hurrying to put them into the New Prussian Dictionary.

The other source of the Prussicisms is Lithuanian of Lithuania Minor, mostly – works of Johannes Brettcke (Jonas Bretkūnas) who himself was of the Old Prussian origin. Of his lexis the word nepuotis ‘grandson’ is highly interesting as showing Prussians having had this old Idoeuropean word, known to everybody from Latin (nepos). For some reasons this word has disappeared in East-Baltic (cf. Latv. mazdēls, but Lith. Russicism anūkas). Its New Prussian form is nepūts in accordance with the “Yatvingized” phonetics of Samlandian. The German East-Prussian vernacularism Zarm ‘funeral repast’ was with all probability of the Old Prussian, not Lithuanian origin. By comparing it with Lith. ermenys, a NPr. word pl. tantum sārmenis has been recovered.

Finally, one must search for the Prussicisms in Polish, not only in former Prussian Mazurian. Many known Polish persons have been of Old Prussian origin (cf. famous Maria Skłodowska-Curie whose ancestors came from Old Prussian noblemen Sclode). In this respect the name of Pope Johannes Paulus II is very sig-nificant: the word Wojtyła demonstrates Prussian derivation with the suffix -il(a)- (cf. of another root doc. Waidel ‘vaidila, OPr. wizard’, waidleimai III < *vaidilējamai ‘we conjure’) from the verb waitiāt III ‘to speak publicly, to inform’. Thus the word NPr. wāitils ‘speaker’ is restored (with the circumflex āi > Pomezanian ōi).

A root may be retrieved from a Prussian toponym and comprehended due to old German parallel name. Thus the German translation of Tapelawke as Warmfelt permits to reconstruct a ja-stem adj. *tapja- ‘warm’ > NPr. tappis. Many toponyms are clear due to coincidence with corresponding Lithuanian words: Bluskaym – cf. Lith. blusa ‘flea’, kaimas ‘village’ > NPr. blussa ‘flea’. Similarly, such wide-spread second components of Old Prussian toponyms as -pelk, -brast(um), -tilte point to Prussian words NPr. pelki ‘swamp’ (attested in E 287), brastan ‘ford’, tiltan ‘bridge’ (the neuter is reconstructed in accordance with Finnish borrowing silta vs. Lith. masc. tiltas, Latv. tilts). Some of such toponymic elements are even attested as vernacularisms in German dialects of Baltic Prussia (cf. the toponym Campolaukis and the dialectal Polonism Kampe ‘Schilf- und Binsen-Inseln in den Haffen und Strömen, namentlich an den Mündungen der letzteren ins Haff’, Frischb., Polish kępa > NPr. kampa ‘reed island in delta’).

A number of roots retrieved from proper names are comprehended by means of etymological analysis. Thus V. Mažiulis has reconstructed the Prussian word *dīws ‘quick’ by analyzing the Old Prussian name Diwanus [dīwans] (cf. Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas, vol. 1).

By recovering a root, which is used in East Baltic and in Slavic (cf. Lith. sapnas, Latv. sapnis, Polish sen ‘dream’, Lith. vakaras, Latv. vakars, Polish wieczór ‘evening’, Lith. ugnis, Latv. uguns, Polish ogień ‘fire’), one reconstructs its older meaning and sees whether a word with similar meaning exists. The existence of the similar meaning (bītan ‘evening’ III : *wakkars; pannu ‘fire’ E : *uguns) is a source of essential expansion of the vocabulary on the basis of typological comparison with the development of the meaning in neighboring languages.

Thus no Prussian word for the ‘West’ is attested, but it is namely the abstract plural of the word “evening’ which is used for the meaning ‘West’ in Lithuania. Such parallel beside theoretic existence of the untied Prussian word *wakkars with a “vacant” meaning permits to create NPr. pl. tantum wakarāi ‘West’, what is not any repetition of the Lithuanian word. The Prussians had to go the same way (bītan may have appeared in a later epoch as an euphemism due to the tabu of ‘evening’), as is indirectly confirmed by analogous area building of the word ‘West’ in Polish: zachód, i.e. ‘place of the sunset, evening’.

No Prussian word for ‘conflagration’ is found in the attested material. Nevertheless one has an “empty” Prussian word *ugnis with its initial meaning ‘fire’. This word should have had a profane meaning in Old Prussian beside the sacred meaning of pannu. The word *ugnis therefore suited for such profane phenomenon as conflagration > NPr. uguns.

13.6. Competition of the recovered words: synonyms

If several solutions are possible, a competition takes place. Twenty years ago Vladimir Toporov was pleased with my mathematical (re-)creation of the Prussian word panzdauniks ‘descendant’: panzdau ‘after’, Slavic ‘po’ + suffix -enīk(a)- (cf. OPr. maldenīks < adj. *malda- ‘young’ + suffix -enīk(a)-) according to area building Polish potom- ‘after’ + suffix -ek (cf. Russian potomok). Nevertheless a more credible word is found in the texts written by J. Brettcke: palikkis. Since the word panzdauniks is constructed logically and accurately, it may be also used. The language cannot be without synonyms.

13.7. Use of German vernacularisms

When no evidence for any etymological recovery may be found, vernacularisms of former East and West Prussia may be transposed into Prussian since the Prussians could not but know and use them in any case. I have in mind not only such words as EPr. Lith. Plicipēds ‘bicycle’ // > NPr. welsipēds, or such slang words as Kaluse ‘prison’ > NPr. kalūza (l is palatal) or Geseires (from Yiddish) ‘jabber, nonsense’ > NPr. gezēiras, but also even some native words.

These are words which really existed in Prussian but cannot be recovered. The German East- and West-Prussian vernacularism Aust ‘harvest’ < August was widely spread, so that the Ideal Prussians had to use it, while speaking German, and therefore spontaneously used it as a Germanism in their own speech > NPr. āusts.

13.8. Artificial constructing and pseudo-sources

If a word should have existed and is very important, but neither an evidence for its recovery is found, nor any wide-spread German vernacularism of East and West Prussia may be used, one may try to create a West Baltic word on the basis of comparison and analogy. This is the single circumstance when one can take risk to create a Baltic word artificially.

The word for ‘attention’, ‘Achtung’, ‘uwaga’, ‘dėmesys’, ‘uzmanība’ is extremely necessary. Each language has its own word to render this meaning. For the Prussian correspondence I have used typological comparison taking into consideration the root compound ‘to put’ in the Lithuanian neologism dė-mesys as well as the root compound ‘over’ in Latvian uz-manība, German Auf-merksamkeit. As a result I got a NPr. nōda with the same compounds nō ‘over’ + -d ‘put’ (for the root *d(ē) cf. NPr. dītun reconstructed on the basis of OPr. audeiānsts, senditans III and Lith. dėti, Slavic dētü). This new word nōda may be explained as ‘smth. what is additionally put, put over usual seeing’, i.e. ‘attention’ as well as ‘remark’ (curiously reminding of Latin nota). I think the Prussians had the same right to neologisms as any other nation (cf. Lithuanian neologism dėmesys).

An instance of artficial creation of a source is an adjective debs ‘great’ made from debīks ‘big’ according to Lithuanian pair didis ‘great’ vs. didelis ‘big’. There existed no differentiation between ‘great’ and ‘big’ in O.Prussian with all probability. Such a dichotomy is needed for a modern life only.

13.9. Loanwords

Each language is not free from internationalisms. International loanwords are especially important for New Prussian because of the insufficiency of its lexicon. Nevertheless, the sphere of the internationalisms must have restrictions defending the authenticity of Prussian as any other language. A loanword must be as authentic as possible.

Having no evidence of the “missing period” of the language between the 16th and the 21st c., the revivers must fill in for the Ideal Prussians the international loanwords into lacunas according to corresponding epoch and the source place of the loan of these words.

Prussian was really still spoken when the German word dial. Spittel ‘hospital’ had to be introduced in the form NPr. neutr. špitlin (it seems to be safe, at least on the current stage of the recovery, to “(re-)loan” words into Prussian in the same gender as in the source, when the source is local German dialects, although deviations must have existed, of course).

In the period of the Prussian enlightenment and spread of learning, when the source of the knowledge was no more local but centered in Germany (the 18th – 19th c.), a lot of “intellectual” words had to penetrate into Prussian from literary German as e.g. NPr. firmamēntan ‘Firmament’.

Finally, the 20th c. comes with its routine order in offices, factories and organizations. Then the loanword for ‘vacation/ holiday’ had to come from German Urlaub in the form NPr. ūrlaups, similarly as it penetrated even into literary Polish in the form urlop.

13.10. Creation of new cultural words

Creation of new cultural words is a natural and desirable process. Here the Modern Prussians of the current epoch have the same rights as the Old Prussians in their epoch.

Nevertheless the lacunas of the “missing period” must be also filled in for the Ideal Prussians of corresponding periods. In any case, area environment and epoch of creation (whether “today” or “yesterday”) must be taken into consideration.

In time, when the railway appeared, the Prussians had either to create corresponding terms, or to loan them from the nearest culture, i.e. from German. As a cultural loanword, NPr. gelzāpints ‘railway’, a literal translation from German Eisenbahn, may serve. On the other hand, the word for ‘train’ could be created independently as NPr. tensīlis from the verb tensītun ‘to haul, draw’ analogously to Germ. Zug, Lith. traukinys, Latv. vilciens etc.

The urban culture spreading, terms for flat conveniences were introduced. What could be the way to create a word for ‘sink’? It is something for pouring out wash water into the water-supply. The Germans have created Ausguss, the Latvians – izlietne, and the Poles – zlew. An independent Prussian analogue should be NPr. izlija.

In the beginning of the aviation epoch the Prussians had to create the word for ‘airplane’. One of the first words of their neighbors Lithuanians was “air-ship” (orlaivis). This model suited for the Prussians too: NPr. winalaīwan (the word NPr. neutr. laīwan ‘ship’ has been reconstructed first on the basis of East-Baltic neutr. *laivan, cf. Lith. masc. laivas, but Latv. fem. laiva, secondly – having in mind the existence of the same word in Gothic, hlaiw: Old Prussian demostrates traces of the contacts of Common Prussian with Gothic).

A New Prussian word for the post-envelope NPr. zūrbrukis is a combination of semantic loaning with own derivational model. The second component of this compound corresponds to the second component of the German compound Um-schlag. As for the first component zur-, it is taken from the word OPr. Surturs E 326 [zūrturs] ‘cover of the mill-wheel’. All these words are no less authentically Prussian, as those attested in old texts.

14. The main shortcoming

The main shortcoming is that in many instances the accent is not clear and is defined volitionally. Of course, main principles persist. The Prussian accent is mobile and melodic, i.e. it is a syllable accent: an acute or a circumflex one in long syllables (or on the second or on the first component of the diphthong respectively) but a simple dynamic one in short syllables. Accentuation of the 3rd Catechism shows that the Prussian accent was of the Latvian (or Slavic, Greek, not Lithuanian) type. Whether an accent paradigm is mobile, or not, depends mostly on the root. In many instances the same roots show the same Indoeuropean accent in Baltic and in Slavic. A broken tone in Latvian points to acute in a corresponding Prussian word, of course. There are cases of the metatony, when the accent is not clear unless the purpose of the metatony is not defined. In long syllables the metatony usually converts the original acute tone into secondary circumflex tone in Lithuanian and in Latvian, although a number of exceptions take place. Verbs with the suffix -in- make a separate problem. No special investigation of the Prussian accent exists up to now. In most cases new Prussian words are provided with an accent mechanically taken from Latvian and Slavic, or even without any grounding, by personal intuition only. No traces of Saussure’s law have been found in Prussian monuments yet. This law as if does not operate in Samlandian and in New Prussian. Nevertheless inconsistencies may be found since I am under a subconscious influence of Lithuanian. I am also intended to see some third tone in Prussian, i.e. in instances when no tone is marked in the 3rd Catechism (the tone is never shown e.g. in the word Deiws there). Maybe this occured due to some historical attraction which caused forming of the third kind of tone. In spite of this I write a tone corresponding to Latvian in all these cases (i.e. Dēiws, dēinan). As a result, the accentuation is the weakest and often unreliable feature of this Dictionary.

15. Will Old Prussian dissolve in New Prussian?

It is sufficient to recover no more than 5000 words and to create main vocabulary in this way. Further on words may be borrowed from various sources but the (re-) creation will be continued too. The attested language will never “dissolve” in the recovered one. There are languages with more than 70 percent loanwords (Turkish), but Prussian will be incomparably more pure because share of the loanwords will be always smaller than share of the recovered words in it.

16. Significance of the practical revival

Practical revival of the language means creation of oral and written texts, what is used for the verification of the recovery as well as for the verification of pure linguistic reconstruction.

Up to now academic articles are published in which their authors theorize how their imaginable “pure Prussian” should have been spoken in the 16th c. without “mistakes” made by the Germans, i.e. without features which are not found in Lithuanian or in Latvian.

A good example is the logic of Anželika and Jurgita Zigmantavičiūte in their article “Forms and use of the dative and the genitive in the Prussian Catechisms” (cf. Vakarų baltų kalbos ir kultūros reliktai, III / Klaipėda 2000, p. 36). First they cite several phrases, as stesse gāntsas swītas grijkans ast pūdauns ‘der gantzen Welt Sünde getragen’ III, where Prussian genitive and accusative forms occur. Finally they say: “Had the construction genitive + accusative + accusative been authentic in Prussian, then only the arthroid should have been in the genitive case, but the other components should have been expressed by the accusative”.

In fact, the word grijkans is a direct object determined in a regular Baltic manner by a non-agreed genitive attribute stesse gāntsas swītas. The word swītas in its turn is determined by the attribute gāntsas, agreed with it in the same genitive case. Therefore the construction with the Baltic sequence of determination ostesse gāntsan swītan grijkans ast pūdauns is a non-sense and really impossible, but not because “the construction genitive + accusative + accusative was not authentic in Prussian”. If one reshapes the construction in another manner (ast pūdauns grijkans stesse gāntsas swītas), when the sequence of the determination is not Baltic, then the use of the forms in -an appears really possible (ast pūdauns grijkans stesse gāntsan swītan), but not indispensable.

Why was it possible? Because instances, where the arthroid was indispensable, really existed.

The cited instance is not the instance the authors had to discuss. The use of the arthroid is really indispensable in case of the coincidence of the forms of the accusative singular and the genitive plural (en / prei etwerpsennien stēison grijkan). On the other hand, there was no “construction genitive + accusative + accusative” in Prussian at all, because the forms of the genitive case in -an were not any “accusatives”. This “case” is named “general” (casus generalis), having in mind the form only. Syntactically one has either genitive (of the arthroid) + genitive (ending in -an) or dative (of the arthroid) + dative (ending in -an(s)).

My explanation may seem to be complicated only to persons who do not want to perceive character of Samlandian linguistic thinking. Any confusion would have been impossible if the authors had had wish to think in Prussian by experimenting with corresponding phrases.

> New Prussian