Bilingualism and text edition
English
journal number:
Journal’s Subject Headings:
Philology
About author:
Sipos Maria, Senior Research Fellow, Head of Department, Department of Finno-Ugric Studies and Historical Linguistics, Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (33 Benczúr Str., Budapest, Hungary-1068)[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Introduction: the present paper focuses on the practice of editing texts before the formation of the study of bilingualism, by means of a representative example of a Šerkaly Khanty chrestomathy. Objective: the theory and practice of every field of science are continuously developing and refining, due to, among other things, the appearance of new research areas that may enrich the methodology of the related disciplines with many useful aspects and considerations.
Research materials: the present case study is intended to illustrate that, accordingly, in Uralic studies, the principles of text edition before the rise of documentary linguistics and investigations in bilingualism were considerably different from today’s expectations.
Results and novelty of the research: the paper focuses on the syntactic differences between two versions of one and the same text, which was produced by a bilingual speaker. The syntactically modified excerpts were published by Wolfgang Steinitz himself in 1950, in his Šerkaly Khanty chrestomathy, whereas the whole text became available in a posthumous volume of Steinitz’s heritage in 1989, unchanged. Khanty word order is traditionally considered verb final (SOV, SXV). By going through the modified clauses, it is shown that the proportion of non-verb-final sentences was radically decreased during the editing process, i.e. in the chrestomathy, numerous clauses were adjusted to the expected pattern by modifying its structure. Furthermore, the excerpts published in the chrestomathy were selected from sections exhibiting a relatively low number of SVO / SVX sentences. All this indicates that in the middle of the 20th century, i.e. before the formation of contact linguistics, the authenticity of a text that bears the consequences of Khanty-Russian bilingualism was not considered of primary importance.
Key words: Šerkaly Khanty, SOV word order, bilingualism, authenticity, text edition.
For sitation: Sipos M. Bilingualism and text edition // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric studies. 2018; 8(1): 86–97.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: the present paper focuses on the practice of editing texts before the formation of the study of bilingualism, by means of a representative example of a Šerkaly Khanty chrestomathy. Objective: the theory and practice of every field of science are continuously developing and refining, due to, among other things, the appearance of new research areas that may enrich the methodology of the related disciplines with many useful aspects and considerations.
Research materials: the present case study is intended to illustrate that, accordingly, in Uralic studies, the principles of text edition before the rise of documentary linguistics and investigations in bilingualism were considerably different from today’s expectations.
Results and novelty of the research: the paper focuses on the syntactic differences between two versions of one and the same text, which was produced by a bilingual speaker. The syntactically modified excerpts were published by Wolfgang Steinitz himself in 1950, in his Šerkaly Khanty chrestomathy, whereas the whole text became available in a posthumous volume of Steinitz’s heritage in 1989, unchanged. Khanty word order is traditionally considered verb final (SOV, SXV). By going through the modified clauses, it is shown that the proportion of non-verb-final sentences was radically decreased during the editing process, i.e. in the chrestomathy, numerous clauses were adjusted to the expected pattern by modifying its structure. Furthermore, the excerpts published in the chrestomathy were selected from sections exhibiting a relatively low number of SVO / SVX sentences. All this indicates that in the middle of the 20th century, i.e. before the formation of contact linguistics, the authenticity of a text that bears the consequences of Khanty-Russian bilingualism was not considered of primary importance.
Key words: Šerkaly Khanty, SOV word order, bilingualism, authenticity, text edition.
For sitation: Sipos M. Bilingualism and text edition // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric studies. 2018; 8(1): 86–97.
