Kazimieras Būga

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Kazimieras Būga (born November 6 1879 at Pažiegė, near Dusetos - died December 2 1924 in Königsberg, buried in Kaunas) was a Lithuanian linguist and philologist. He was professor of liguistics, worked mainly on the Lithuanian language.

Appointed as personal secretary of lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Jaunius he showed interest in the subject and 1905-1912 studied in St. Petersburg University. After that continued his work on indoe-european language under supervision of Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay, later moved to Köningsberg to further study under directions by Adalbert Bezzenberge. In 1914 he received master degree in linguistics.

His research of Lithuanian personal names led him into the study of place-names. From them he was able to determine that the homeland of the Lithuanians and other Baltic peoples up to the 6th to 9th century AD had been just north of Ukraine around the Pripet River. In addition, he studied the chronological sequence of Slavic loanwords in the Baltic languages.

He did linguistical reconstruction of early Grand Duchy of Lithuania Princes lithuanian names, and proved they are not of Slavic origin. Main power behind idea and beginning of Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian language (Didysis Lietuvių Kalbos Žodynas) in Lithuanian.

[edit] References

Antanas Klimas (The University of Rochester), Kazimieras Būga and the Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian, Lituanus, Volume 27, No.4 - Winter 1981
Kazimieras Būga, from the Encyclopedia Lituanica I-VI, Boston, 1970-1978, published in the Lithuanian Word by the Seimas Commission on Traditions and Herritage of Lituanistics