Die Sprache der lettischen juristischen Dokumente vom Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts. EinBeitrag zur lettischen Sprachgeschichte by Konstance KļavaReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 140-141Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210869 .

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Reviews Kiava, Konstance. Die Sprache der lettischen juristischen Dokumente vom Ende des

17. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur lettischen Sprachgeschichte. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in Baltic Languages, no.4. Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, I 989. I 38 pp. Tables. Notes. Biblio- graphy. Facsimiles. Index. No price available.

IN I 696 Erik Dahlberg, the recently appointed Swedish Governor General of Livonia, commissioned a Latvian version of those sections of Charles xi's Articles of War which were of concern to the common soldier, with the express intention of henceforth pre-empting pleas of ignorance from monolingual Latvian serving men. Rather less than half of the original one hundred and forty-five articles were thought necessary for this purpose. This is the most substantial of the four legal documents which are the subject of Dr Klava's dissertation; the others comprise a law against infanticide (i 684), a decree issued by Dahlberg in I 699 detailing the degrees of affinity incurring the death penalty for adulterous relations and finally the oath of loyalty taken by Latvian artillerymen ( 70 ).

The main body of the work is a linguistic analysis of these early examples of Latvian legal texts, with approximately equal space given to morphology, syntax and lexicology. The first of two introductory chapters is concerned with technical matters such as method of research, mode of transliteration and the characteristics of a specialist vocabulary and terminology; the second includes a discussion of the sources against the historical background, a table showing the content of Dahlberg's abridgement and Charles xi's original Articles, a comparison of two printed versions of the Latvian translation revealing minor divergences in orthography and morphology but scarcely any deviation in lexis, identification of the translator, comments on unusual punishments some of these illustrated by facsimiles of rather gory woodcuts, German translations of the minor Latvian texts and parallel extracts in Swedish, German and Latvian from the law on infanticide, indicating a Swedish original for the Latvian version.

Much of the chapter on morphology is concerned with lexicological topics: word-building, compound words, derivation, suffixation, prefixation of noun, adjective and verb. Purely morphological topics covered are nominal declen- sion, verbal categories - somewhat restricted in the legal contexts, modal verbs and the Latvian debitive mood, seemingly custom-built for legislators. The chapter on syntax has sections on the usage of participles, prepositions and conjunctions; an analysis of subordinate clauses reveals a preponderance of Subjektsatzen, fulfilling the same protatic function as the conditional clauses, the second most numerous type.

In the sections on lexicology and semantics there is discussion and compari- son of legal terms and formulations used in the various sources. This is followed by a consideration of foreign influences on thejuridical terminology, presenting examples of words from Slavonic, Germanic, Lithuanian, Livonian and Latin. The single presumed source for the Slavonic elements is Russian.

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REVIEWS I 41

In one case, at least, this could be disputed. Latvian karogs, 'flag', appears in the documents also with the secondary military connotation 'company'. The semantic model for this usage is found in sixteenth-century Polish chorqgiew, although the immediate source may have been Belorussian xarugva. The mysterious mauka, 'camp follower, whore', bears a possibly accidental resem- blance to sixteenth-century Polish malpa of similar meaning. Perhaps on the analogy of the gangster's 'moll', it originated in an affectionate diminutive of a proper name. An interesting and unusual feature of this study is the compari- son of juridical and military terms from the documents with their synonyms found in folksong.

This welcome contribution to Baltic studies is further enhanced by socio- logical observations, helpful footnotes, an informative bibliography and fac- similes of most of the texts. Few misprints were noted but one might be mentioned as an orthographic manifestation of Murphy's Law: Latvian un displacing German und in a book title (p. i i 6). London H. LEEMING

Lachmann, Renate; Lauhus, Angelika; Lewandowski, Theodor and Zelinsky, Bodo (eds). 'Tgolz'chole Mestro'. Gedenkenschrifitfir Reinhold Olesch. Slavist- ische Forschungen, vol. 6o. Bohlau Verlag, Cologne and Vienna, I990. xxxiv + 580 pp. Tables. Notes. No price available.

THE German slavist, Reinhold Olesch, who died while this intended Festsch- rift was in preparation, had a distinguished and productive career notjust as a scholar, but also as editor (or joint-editor) of such series as Slavistische Forschungen, Biblia Slavica and Die Welt der Slaven. This compendious and splendidly produced volume makes a most fitting tribute to his achievements.

It is, however, by no means easy to review. There are no fewer than fifty-four articles, the majority in German, but with Polish, Russian, (Serbo-)Croat, Slovak and English also represented. The contributions are divided into five sections: 'Zum Dravanopolabischen' (Polabian, one of Professor Olesch's main interests, is the language of the volume's title), 'Zum West- und Suidslavischen', 'Zur slavischen Lexik', 'Zu Werken und Autoren als Quellen der slavischen Philologie und Geistegeschichte' and 'Zur slavischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte', though even these sometimes not over-precise for- mulations do not always give a very clear indication of the actual contents. The last section, admittedly the least clearly defined, includes, for example, articles on Polish baroque poetry, early twentieth-century Belorussian spiritual poetry and Velimir Khlebnikov's theories on the connotations of particular sounds. Virtually every Slavonic language, whether extant or dead, is the subject of discussion at some point or other in the book, and while some articles are speculative in approach, this reviewer was particularly struck by the wide range of sources, both published and unpublished, which form the basis of so much of the research reflected herein.

As is customary in volumes of this nature, a high proportion of the articles, especially in the first three sections, is devoted to very specific, narrowly defined topics. There is clearly nothing wrong with this (though in some

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