‘Hope’, ‘Cunning’ and ‘Disappointment’ in Old Texts: the Verb vilt and its Derivative Semantics

Abstract

The work on formulating explanations for the meanings of entries in “The Historical Dictionary of the Latvian Language” (LVVV) gives an opportunity to study changes, development and, to the contrary, permanence of meanings in depth. Since the first usage of many words in texts, namely, since the end of the 16^th century and the beginning of the 17^th century until now, many words have undergone a shift in meaning; however, the approximate context of usage has not really changed. Therefore, the identification of the fact of a shift in meaning has also been difficult. In addition, the semantics of the verb vilt and its derivations, for example, vilties, vilināt, viltība (16^th, 17^th c.), in many cases differs substantially from nowadays.

On the basis of the materials in the entries from the nascent “Historic Dictionary of the Latvian language” and the corpus of old Latvian texts, the aim of the article is to determine the semantics of the verb vilt and its derivatives in Latvian texts of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and to analyse them according to specific groups of meaning, and to attempt to clarify the semantic development of the word root as described by J. Endzelīns. As words of this root in the Indo-European parent language have opposite meanings, it was attempted to determine whether these words in the Latvian language also underwent a change in meaning.

Religious texts in Latvian were dominant in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and they were mostly translations from other languages. Many of these texts were identified with source texts in Old Greek, Old Hebrew, Middle Low German, and other languages. Likewise, many such source texts, for example, Biblical texts and religious chants, also have translations in other languages. To identify the correct meaning of a word in a specific old text, the usage of words in the texts from the 16^th and 17^th centuries was compared with the original and the translation in other languages; additionally, a comparison was made with earlier or later translations of the texts in the Latvian language.

The semantics of the word vilt and its derivative semantics in the Latvian texts from the 16^th and 17^th centuries have been studied according to groups of meanings in chronological order in this article. The article concludes that:

• vilt and its derivations in old texts have mainly different negative properties and meanings that express an action. An exception is the word vilties with the meaning ‘cerēt’ (hope); in this meaning, the word is used in a negative context – a hope that is impermanent as contrasted with faith in God.
• The development of the meaning in the root of the word could have been ‘vēlēties (wish)’ → ‘cerēt (hope)’ → ‘vilināt (allure)’ → ‘pievilt (deceive), piekrāpt (cheat), nodot’ (betray), ‘būt viltīgam (be cunning)’. The meaning ‘nepamatoti cerēt (hope in vain)’ → ‘tikt pieviltam, piekrāptam (be deceived)’ → ‘kļūdīties (be mistaken)’; ‘vilties (be disappointed)’ could have developed parallelly from the meaning ‘cerēt (hope)’.
• A shift in meaning ‘cerēt (hope)’ → ‘vilties (be disappointed)’ possibly happened when the context of usage changed, namely, the word began to be used with a negative connotation.
• The origin of opposite meanings in words of this root was the result of a complex and gradual shift in meaning, and this was characteristic not only of the Latvian language, but also of words in related Lithuanian.
• The most characteristic peculiarities of the semantics of the word roots in Latvian texts from the 16^th and 17^th centuries relate to the usage of vilties and nevilties in the meanings ‘cerēt (hope)’ and ‘necerēt (not to hope)’, the usage of the words vilt in the meaning of ‘vilināt (allure)’, and viltība, viltīgs (cunning) and viltnieks (fraudster)/ viltenieks/ viltinieks used in a broader and more negative meaning than nowadays.