Etudes finno-ougriennes, vol. 38

Thu May 10 17:20:42 UTC 2007

Dear Ura-list members,
The new issue of "Etudes Finno-Ougriennes" (vol. 38) just came out. You will
find below the table of contents of this volume, as well as abstracts in
English.

Etudes Finno-Ougriennes
ADEFO
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Internet: http://www.adefo.org/

Order from:
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ETUDES FINNO-OUGRIENNES
Tome 38 - Année 2006 - 251 p. - 28 euros
ISSN 0071-2051   ISBN 978-2-296-03250-7

ARTICLES:

- Eva TOULOUZE: Le «danger» finno-ougrien en Russie (1928-1932) : les signes
avant-coureurs des répressions staliniennes

- Jean PERROT: L'eurasiatique de Greenberg : monument de science ou «fresque
d'artiste»?

- Petar KEHAYOV, Florian SIEGL: The evidential past participle in Estonian
reconsidered

- Jean-Léo LÉONARD: Variation, diversité, classes équipollentes et aréologie
dans le réseau dialectal estonien

- Jean-Pierre MINAUDIER: Karl Ristikivi, un écrivain d’Europe

- András KÁNYÁDI: Le Juif errant hongrois, un grotesque du XXe siècle

- Bernard LE CALLOC'H: Pourquoi le prince Imre fut-il appelé Dux Ruizorum?

COMPTES RENDUS:

- Jean PERROT, Études de linguistique finno-ougrienne (Jean-Luc Moreau)
- Les langues ouraliennes aujourd’hui : approche linguistique et cognitive
(Jean Perrot)
- Ksenija DJORDJEVIC, Jean-Léo LÉONARD, Parlons mordve: une langue
finno-ougrienne de Russie (Jean-Pierre Minaudier)
- Michel CABOURET, La Finlande (Jocelyn Parot)
- Mario ALINEI, Etrusco : una forma arcaica di ungherese (Jean-Léo Léonard)
- Anna SŐRÉS, Le hongrois dans la typologie des langues (Bertrand Boiron)
- Bernard LE CALLOC'H, Les Csángós de Moldavie (Anna Keszeg)
- Jenő VÁRALLJAI CSOCSÁNY, A magyar monarchia és az európai Reneszánsz
(Bernard Le Calloc'h)

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ABSTRACTS:

Eva TOULOUZE: The Finno-Ugric “Danger” in Russia (1928-1932): The Forerunner
of the Stalinist Repressions

In 1932-33, the first trial aimed at Russia's nationalities and at their
intelligentsias took place in Udmurtia. The main issue, the main charge
against the arrested intellectuals was being spies on behalf of Finland and
Estonia. The evidence was to be found in their contacts with other
Finno-Ugric intellectuals as well as with foreign scholars. These contacts
were based on "Finno-Ugric kinship": this concept was actually criminalised
in order to warn all the non-Russians who intended to resist. In this
article, I present an overview of the main Udmurt writer and scholar Kuzebaj
Gerd’s Finno-Ugric links, and I show how all kinds of scientific research
became a target for political repression. In conclusion, I comment on the
trial run, the 1931 process of a few Mari intellectuals, who were also
accused of working for Finland. The scenarios were in place.

Jean PERROT: Greenberg's Eurasiatic: a monument of science or an artist's
panoramic vision?

Despite the very wide extent of underlying research, Joseph Greenberg's
Eurasiatic vision was not as successful as he might have hoped. In this
paper, the presentation of this vision in the French translation of
Greenberg's last book is subjected to critical examination, particularly on
some important points in the method, which make the argumentation rather
flimsy. First, he often compares elements, the functions of which do not
belong to the same syntagmatic level: in his effort to establish relations
between grammatical forms in several languages, he considers very disparate
elements (case endings, person markers, derivative suffixes, even lexical
roots). Then, most of those elements are very thin, often reduced to one
very common consonant, (t, k, m, n, r), and by this very fact involve a high
risk of homonymy. Moreover, Greenberg, except on very rare occasions, does
not take into consideration the small systems in which the grammatical
elements are involved. Greenberg's attempt to establish a connection between
elements from Indo-European languages and from other Eurasiatic families
does not constitute a convincing whole, compared with the very striking
contrast between the presence of grammatical gender in the Indo-European
family and its absence in all other Eurasiatic families, as well as the
quite different functions of two phenomena which Greenberg puts together,
namely vocalic alternations in Indo-European (apophony: e/o/zero
alternation) and vowel harmony in other Eurasiatic languages.

Petar KEHAYOV, Florian SIEGL: The evidential past participle in Estonian
reconsidered

The paper deals with the development of the past participle in Estonian into
an evidential predicate. It is a reply to a recent reconstruction attempt
(Metslang, Muižniece & Pajusalu 1999) which advocated a linear development
from the ancient use of participles as predicates into their evidential and
other finite uses. We argue that this reconstruction suffers both
methodologically and from incorrect interpretation of the cross-linguistic
evidence. Our conclusion is that the evidential use of the past participle
in Estonian is by no means derived from the functions of its proto-language
ascendant as implied by Metslang, Muižniece and Pajusalu, but rather is due
to reanalysis of a grammatical construction containing the past participle.
In other words it is the meaning of the construction itself and not the
ancient function of the participle which is projected onto the modern
evidential usage. This conclusion is reached after a thorough examination of
the corresponding grammatical phenomena in Eastern Finno-Ugric and Baltic.

Jean-Léo LÉONARD: Variation, diversity, equipollence and areas in the
Estonian dialectal network

In this paper, we try to show, on the basis of the Estonian case, that, in
dialectology, underlying structural (i.e. typological) continuity is more
important than discontinuity in surface patterns. The Small Atlas of
Estonian Dialects, by Andrus Saareste, provides interesting clues on
typological shifts from the agglutinative to the fusional type throughout
the whole dialect network of Estonian. Several inflectional paradigms, such
as *keüti : *keüde-n = Finnish köysi : köyden, modern Estonian dialects
köis: köie, keits : keitse, köüs : kövve, köyvve, and ladv : ladva < *ladva:
*ladvan, together with the first-person pronoun genetive-accusative *minu-n,
the modus obliquus (or evidential mood) and the illative case marking, allow
us to have a glimpse of two underlying configurations under the present
dialectical network of Estonian: an East-West major division, instead of the
currently accepted North-South split, and a centrifugal space, where an
innovative centre, in Central Western Estonia, has pushed apart a dense
circle of structural continuity.

Jean-Pierre MINAUDIER: Karl Ristikivi, a writer of Europe

The Estonian novelist Karl Ristikivi (1912-1977), who lived in Sweden from
1944 to his death, made in the 1960s a somewhat unusual choice for an exile
writer: he decided not to devote his novels to his fatherland any longer.
Most of his ten historical novels take place in the Middle Ages in Western
Europe or in the Mediterranean. Estonia is not even present between the
lines or metaphorically; it is referred to only in a few allusions.
Ristikivi was allergic to political activism and, although a patriot, had
nothing of the nationalist about him. In his historical novels, he carries
out a systematic reflection about Europe, its roots and its ideals, which,
according to him, lie in the Middle Age more than in classical Antiquity. He
gives an important place to the Christian heritage and, as a good Estonian,
to the cultural diversity of the ancient world. Above all, he emphasizes
that Europe lives only through its struggle against the empires which
threaten it continuously.

András KÁNYÁDI: The Hungarian Wandering Jew: a grotesque of the twentieth
century

The mythical figure of the Wandering Jew goes a long way before emerging in
Hungarian literature. As a contamination of several biblical characters and
stories, the myth has been crystallised in the seventeenth century around
the figure of Ahasver, the shoemaker. Hungarian poets took an interest in it
during the Romantic period. In the twentieth century, the Magyar narratives
focused on the main invariant of the story: the fatal dialogue. The latter
condenses the essence of the grotesque as an aesthetic category: an
ambivalent clash of comical and tragic-overshadowed fantastic. Due to its
flexibility in time, the story of the Wandering Jew also allows a meditation
on the limit experiences of contemporary history, perceived as the
expression of the grotesque as well. Works discussed: "Ahasver" by István
Örkény and two "numbered phrases" of Péter Esterházy's Harmonia caelestis.

Bernard LE CALLOC'H: Why was Prince Imre called “Dux Ruizorum”?

The annals of Hildesheim, in lower Saxony, relating Prince Imre of Hungary's
unexpected death during a boar hunt, in September 1031, call him "Dux
Ruizorum". To all appearances, this uncommon Latin term, caused no
astonishment in the circle of Hungarian historians. They generally admit
without reserve that it must be translated by "Duke of Russian Life-guards",
though none of the documents in our possession refers to such a bodyguard
existing in the Hungarian royal court during the reign of Stephen I. Anyhow,
no other Russian state existed in the first part of the eleventh century
than the principality of Kiev, named "Russ". As a matter of fact, the quaint
Latin phrase in question does not concern Russian mercenaries attending the
Hungarian heir apparent, but the Rugs, i.e. the inhabitants of Rugiland, a
country in lower Austria which had been conquered by Prince Imre after
Emperor Conrad II had vainly tried to invade Hungary in 1030. As a reward
for his successful counter-offensive, Imre had been made, by his father the
king, Duke of Rugiland.

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