Prof.
Dr. Hab. Vytautas MAŽIULIS was born on 20 August 1926 in
Rokėnai, Lithuania. After finishing a high-school in Rokiškis,
for a short time he was a student of theological seminary,
as it was almost a tradition for gifted children from
well-to-do farmers’ families in Lithuania. Acquaintance
with Latin language, so similar to Lithuanian in many
aspects, arouse in him interest in linguistics and
comparison of languages. In 1947–1952 he studies classical
philology at Vilnius university. As an advanced student he
was recommended to write doctor theses at the Chair of
Comparative Historical Linguistics at Moscow university.
With a research of Lithuanian numerals he acquired the
degree of Dr. Phil. in 1956.
His academic activities at Vilnius university began in 1955
and lasted 43 years. In 1968–1973 he headed Chair of
Lithuanian Language at Vilnius university and habilitated in
1969 (professor since 1969).
This was time of his fruitful cooperation with outstanding
Lithuanian linguist Jonas Kazlauskas (1930–1970) who
introduced methods of modern linguistics into comparative
historical studies of Baltic languages. Together with J.
Kazlauskas, V. Mažiulis developed and grounded an idea of
Christian Stang (1942) concerning transition of IE *ō
both into Baltic *ō and *ā: 2
allophones of Balt. *ō were defined, of which an
accented and narrow one developed into Pr. *ō,
Lith., Latv. uo, but an unaccented and broader one
coincided with a broad Baltic *ā of the low timbre.
In paradigms with the mobile accent the broader allophon of
Baltic *ō was generalized in Prussian and coincided
with Pr. *ā (Saml. dātwei), while the
narrower allophon was generalized in Lithuanian (duoti)
and in Latvian (duot). However in stabile unaccented
positions an unstressed Balt. allophone *ō turned
into Lithuanian o (vilko) and coincided with
Balt. *ā > o (Lith. motė). This
concept is known as Kazlauskas’–Mažiulis’ hypothesis.
Together with J.Kazlauskas, V. Mažiulis initiated Vilnius
international journal for Baltic linguistics Baltistica
(since 1965), but he established Chair for Baltic philology
in 1973 after the murder of J. Kazlauskas. More than 20
years Prof. Mažiulis headed this Chair which became an
international centre of Baltic studies and organiser of
international congresses of the baltists.
An explanation of Lith. gen. sg. (vilk)-o had wide
Indoeuropean implications. It led to a conclusion about
origin of o-stem IE dative which appeared to be “a
lengthened stem”, identical with Lith. dial. dat. (vilk)-uo
< *ō, but this finally allowed to question not
only the myth of Common-IE dat. *-ōi, but to create
a new theory of Indoeuropean declension.
This theory is set forth in V. Mažiulis' monograph “Relations
of Baltic and other Indoeuropean languages” (1970).
When nominative, accusative and genitive were products of
reshaping pre-accusative Common-Indoeuropean structure, the
secondary cases formed in separate IE dialects separately,
although by different paradigmatising of the same elements
of adverbial meaning. Thus the myth of the 7-cases
“Common-IE” declension was ruined. Baltic appeared to be
an archaic representative of former “ocean of Indoeuropean
dialects”, from which Slavic dialects differentiated among
the last after the Germanic dialects. In this book for the
first time was set forth an idea of the formation of Slavic
amid the same peripheral Baltic-Slavic dialects, where
future West-Baltic dialects were formed.
This was a period of a very close cooperation of outstanding
Indoeuropeanists, Baltists and Slavists with the Chair of V.
Mažiulis. Then Victor Martynov published his theory of
Slavic as first italicised and then iranicised Baltic but
Wolfgang Schmid defined Baltic as a centre of IE continuity,
so that a difference between this centre and any other IE
group is always smaller than between any other groups among
themselves.
The problem of Baltic-Slavic relations and Western Baltic as
a continuation of the same peripheral dialects stimulated V.
Mažiulis’ interest in Prussian. This interest in a
fruitful way coincided with the interest in Prussian of an
outstanding Russian Indoeuropeanist and Slavist Vladimir
Toporov who had also contributed to the development of all
mentioned ideas. V. Toporov is author of an unfinished
Dictionary of Prussian which is a huge philological
encyclopaedia of cultural linguistic relations of Prussian
with the neighbouring region and all Indoeuropean world.
In 1966 V. Mažiulis published facsimile of all Prussian
written documents, but in 1981 he published transliteration
and philological translation of these documents. Finally, in
1988–1997 he published his main work: 4 volumes of
Prussian etymological dictionary, which presents the deepest
linguistic analysis of Prussian and Baltic word derivation.
This work will remain indispensable for future generations
of prussologists.
In 2004, after V. Mažiulis had been 8 years ousted from
academic activities, he published a short "Historical
Grammar of Prussian" in which he partly yielded to
decades-long pressure of his plentiful rivals, although they
had proved nothing new, especially in the field of Prussian.
Among their arguments is since long-ago debated Samlandian
form dat. māim from the 3rd Katechism. This form
occurs in a printed text even 3 times, of which once
without any dash above the letter a. Nevertheless
poor critics of V. Mažiulis' theory do not hesitate to
repeat in all publications that the dash as if means an
omitted letter n but not a circumflex tone on a.
Thus an unattested pure Lithuanian instrumental form manim
as if is restored but this goes as one of the main arguments
for former existence of the instrumental in Prussian.
Vytautas Mažiulis was a member of Lithuanian Academy of
Sciences, as well as of Mainz Academy of Science and
Literature.
Vytautas Mažiulis
died in Vilnius on 11 April 2009. With no doubts he remains
among outstanding Lithuanian and European linguists.
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