Bernhard Wälchli

Stockholm University

Logophoricity in Eastern Vidzeme: The Literary Latvian idiolect of Andrievs Niedra and Leivu Estonian

Eastern Vidzeme is an important, hitherto neglected, area for the study of logophoricity in the Circum-Baltic languages. This paper shows, on the one hand, that logophoricity in Latvian is not restricted to Latgalian dialects, but is almost fully consistent in the writings of the novelist Andrievs Niedra (1871–1942) originating from Tirza, and on the other hand, that Leivu Estonian, a moribund South Estonian language island in Northeastern Vidzeme between Gulbene and Alūksne, is the only Estonian variety having developed a logophoric pronoun.

Given the high diversity of logophoricity in Latvian, it is important to study idiolects with large corpora, and written language deserves more study. Like Finnish dialects and Leivu Estonian, Niedra’s idiolect uses logophoric pronouns even for marking the report addressee in questions. Unlike in the Latgalian tales discussed by Nau (2006), logophoricity can be extended beyond the domain of report to thought. A distinction between allophoric (frame and report speaker are different) and autophoric reports (frame and report speaker are the same) is introduced. It is argued that logophoric pronouns are a non-deictic and noncoreference-based strategy to mark reports, that their function is not primarily reference tracking, and that logophoric pronouns in Latvian are constructionalized rather than grammaticalized.

Keywords: logophoricity, Latvian, Leivu Estonian, pronouns, speech act participants, evidential, constructions, reference tracking, logophoric middle, Andrievs Niedra