Latvian tvert and Its Derivatives in Early Written Latvian Texts: The Development of Meanings

Abstract

Through an analysis of the semantics of the verb tvert and its derivatives in early written Latvian texts, the aim of this article is to try to determine the development of the meanings of tvert, to establish whether the specific meanings inherent in these texts are calques influenced by source-texts, or independent meanings in Latvian that have been lost to the present day, and to determine whether these words had already been used metaphorically in early written texts where the verb expresses concrete, physical action, and takes on abstract, cognitive meanings, thus distinguishing several semantic groups.

The article concludes that the verbs tvert, tverties used in 16^th and 17^th century texts have the principal meanings ‘to grip, to grab, to catch’; ‘to hold’; ‘to save oneself’, and the same semantics is also evident in the derivatives. The development of the meaning has apparently been ‘to grip, to grab, to catch’ → ‘to hold’ → ‘to find shelter’.

Although in some cases, for example, a metaphorical transfer of meaning can be observed for the verb satvert; for the most part tvert and its derivatives in early written texts denote concepts expressing a physical rather than a cognitive action. Certain words of this root – aptvert and uztvert – had acquired the cognitive meaning ‘to understand’ in Latvian already several centuries after the Old Latvian period by the end of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In some cases, in the 17th century, derivatives from tvert are calques from the source text, and they usually have occasional usage (for example, satvert ‘to compose, to write’ < German verfassen ‘id.’, aiztvert ‘to attack’ < German angreifen ‘id.’). In the 17^th century, the word patvērums was already used expressing the concept of ‘rescue, shelter’ in the written language; however, there was a considerable variety of synonyms in the subdialects of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and they have been lost nowadays.