Nazarii Nazarov

ABSTRACT

Multilingual milieu of Grand Duchy of Lithuania was formed by several languages, each of which (except less numerous, though in no way less important, diaspora groups) belonged to Indo-European languages family. Thus they shared not only some common lexicon, but also common customary law formulas which were firstly encoded in folklore and eventually included into official codes such as Lithuanian Metrica. In the practices of land courts, a lot of archaic customs were preserved up to their extinction in the first half of XIX c. Each of these customs was accompanied by specific vocabulary and formulas. The Book of Kyiv Chamberlain which contains acts from XVI-XVII cc. demonstrates this vital blend of languages, customs, and worldviews. A lot of elements of custom law can be explained only against the common Balto-Slavic and even Indo-European mythological background (like the role of oaks and bees in the boundary setting). Thus, complex sustainability of language and cultural interfaces of Early Modern society of Grand Duchy of Lithuania is revealed through the close reading of several seemingly distant texts in Lithuanian, Latvian, Old Ukrainian, and Church Slavonic. It is an important source of contemporary practices of managing multilingual societies.

Keywords

multilinguality; early modern time; mythology; customary law; formulaic language; etymology

References

1. Nimchuk V. et all. (1991). Knyha Kyjivs’koho pidkomornoho sudu (1584-1644). Naukova dumka.

2. Švābe A. et all. (1952-1956). Latviešu tautas dziesmas, (Chansons populaires lettonnes), 1–12. Imanta.

3. Watkins C. (1987). Indo-European Legal Language and Comparative Law. In Wolfgang Meid (Ed.) Studien zum indogermanischen Wortschatz, 305–314. Innsbruck.