Jolita Urbanavičienė, Ritutė Petrokienė (sudarytojos). „Rytų aukštaičių tarmė: kaita ir pokyčiai“

EDMUNDAS TRUMPA University of Latvia Research areas: geolinguistics, dialectology. Jolita Urbanavičienė, Ritutė Petrokienė (editors) THE EASTERN HIGHLANDERS DIALECT: CHANGE AND CHANGES COLLECTIVE MONOGRAPH Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2018, p. 392. ISSN 2538-9211, ISBN 978-609-411-21-8 The collection of articles “The Eastern Highlanders Dialect: Change and Changes,” published in 2018 by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and edited by J. Urbanavičienė and R. Petrokienė, presents twelve studies conducted by thirteen authors. These describe the past and present state of one of the three subdialects of the Highlanders dialect—the Eastern Highlanders subdialect—and the directions of its change. Wherever the subject and material of the research permit, the contributors seek to adhere to the central theme; certain systemic changes are viewed from a broader or narrower diachronic perspective, while experience gained through synchronic research is enriched with newer and deeper insights based on facts or their interpretation. In terms of methodological innovations, the articles are heterogeneous: taking into account the introduction’s postulation of three possible approaches to dialectology, ranked according to their novelty—traditional dialectology, structural dialectology, and geolinguistics—they represent mainly the first two (especially the first), while elements of the third occur only in individual articles. This heterogeneity, however, does not hinder the pursuit of the stated goal: to introduce readers to the processes in depth and show the new 21st-century picture of local language varieties—regiolects and geolects. The book is valuable, first and foremost, because the articles were written by leading specialists in particular fields—phonetics, phonology, accentology, morphology, lexicology, and old written texts—as well as experts on specific territories, many of whom were born there and know the speech “from the inside.” It may be that, in this respect, the Eastern Highlanders subdialect—studied by everyone Straipsniai / Articles 289 ĖMUNDAS TRUMPA With the most capable linguists representing the various levels of language, it now finds itself in a favorable position (until quite recently, the Samogitian dialect would have had such opportunities). The book is therefore extraordinarily important for the development of Lithuanian areal research: it could serve as a kind of representation of other subdialects and the processes taking place within them. There is no doubt that most phenomena characteristic of Eastern Aukštaitian could also be observed across the rapidly changing expanse of Lithuanian dialects. The book’s structure is symmetrical and easy to survey: the articles are arranged in four sections according to the systematic levels of language (phonetics and phonology, accentology, morphology and syntax, lexicology and semantics), with three studies in each section. The introduction by J. Urbanavičienė, one of the book’s editors, lends the volume monographic coherence. It substantiates the collection’s aim: to verify, on the basis of the latest empirical material, the existing facts about the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect documented in written and spoken sources, and to identify systematic changes or shifts that are occurring or have occurred in the phonetic, accentual, morphological, and lexical levels of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect. The introduction discusses the methods, terminology, and structure used in the authors’ work, and presents important reflections defining the changing paradigm of Lithuanian dialects and their study. These prepare readers to see how this collective work symptomatically reflects the situation of our times and charts a course toward a new dialect. It is no coincidence that Vytautas Kardelis’s article Changes in Consonantism and Vocalism, Prospects for Research on the Consonantism of the Vilnius Subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian, appears first in the subsection: it is, as it were, the lead article of the entire book, addressing the dialect situation most broadly and indicating the direction that future dialect research should take using modern methods—systematic description of the consonantism of Lithuanian subdialects, with proposals for their synchronic descriptions and typological analyses. The article identifies the consonant inventory of the Vilnius subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian, establishes relevant distributional positions, comments on regular and irregular distribution, and identifies optional variants and positions of neutralization. The analysis of the Vilnius phonological system is excellent. Perhaps it would be worth noting only that the consonant distributional position identified at the beginning of a word before a back vowel ([#–V) does not differ in any way from the analogous position inside a word ([–V); therefore, it would be inaccurate to claim that essentially all sounds contrast before the former, but only hard consonants before the latter (pp. 39–41). This characterization of the first position applies to vowels, not consonants. The author aptly interprets cases of consonant hardening and palatalization as distinct phenomena of either phonetic or phonological origin. Of all the articles, Jolita Urbanavičienė’s article Diphthongization of Baltic *ā, *ē in the Speech of the Middle and Younger Generations of the Vilnius Subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian is perhaps methodologically the closest to the new canons of geolinguistics. 290 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXX Jolita Urb anavičienė, Ritu̇ Petrokienė (sudarytojos) Rytų aukštaičių tarmė: kaita ir pokyčiai The author establishes a direct correlation between informants’ age and their use of several language varieties: the younger generation chooses variants closer to the standard language four times more often and uses the dialect twice as rarely as the middle generation. Diphthongization in stressed positions is avoided (prominent dialect features are abandoned), but variants close to the Baltic vowels *ā, *ē have been retained in unstressed positions (*ā > ā, *ē > ē.), and these are regarded as recessive features of the subdialect. This makes it possible to identify an informant who speaks the dialect only weakly as still belonging to the Vilnius subdialect (this recessive feature is shared by the Vilnius and Utena areas, though for certain reasons these areas still do not form a continuous region in the east). In her article Adaptation of Loanwords in the Kupiškėnai Subdialect, Vilota Černė discusses the phonetic adaptation of loanwords. Presenting hundreds of examples of entire series of sounds and their combinations, the linguist argued that phonetic variants, which occur more frequently in unstressed positions, generally arise because certain sounds are difficult to pronounce. It is likely that most of the author’s insights would also apply to loanwords adapted in other Lithuanian subdialects. The book’s second subsection, Changes in Accentuation, opens with Bonifacas Stundžia’s article Circumflex Metatony in Lithuanian Dialects in Derivatives with the Prefix be- and Compounds with a Stressed Second Component, and Its Origins. The article presents diachronic arguments in a sound manner and statistically substantiates them with data from fieldwork conducted by the author and students. These data make it possible to determine how circumflex metatony developed in Lithuanian dialects after Saussure’s law, differing substantially between the western and eastern parts of Lithuania: through analogical processes, the circumflex in pėntimos became established in the Samogitian dialect, which represents the regular circumflex metatony of the dialects under discussion; Eastern Aukštaitian, in turn, retained a tendency to generalize the acute accent of pėntimos in derivatives. Here, circumflex metatony is most often experienced only by some derivatives based on nouns of accentuation class 3. The author also gives a detailed account of the range of variants in other Lithuanian subdialects, which are transitional in terms of the study’s subject. In her article Accentuation of Adjectives with the Suffix -inis, -ė in the Eastern Aukštaitian Dialect, Rūta Kazlauskaitė classified and discussed a wealth of factual material—more than a thousand examples of adjectives with the suffix -inis. She found that the base word is most often a noun, and less often a verb or adjective; that most derivatives are accented according to the same natural principles as in the standard language, on the basis of the dative plural form of the base word; and she also discussed the tenth of cases that do not follow this tendency. The author demonstrated that semantics is an important factor in determining accent placement, analogy matters in rare cases, and rhythm determines accent placement in exceptional cases (in poetic language). Vilija Ragaisienė’s study Changes in the Accentuation System of the Kupiškėnai Subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian in the 7th–9th Decades of the 19th Century is interesting and methodologically well grounded (it draws on sources showing changes over a century and is illustrated with map data). Recenzijos / Reviews 291 ĖMUNDAS TRUMPA the 1960s–1970s, which demonstrated that the more intensive conditional rule of stress retraction in the Kupiškėnai subdialect developed relatively late, no earlier than the second half of the 20th century, and unevenly—from the eastern edge of its northern part toward the south. The author indicated that the baritone stress paradigm that had previously prevailed in the subdialect was pushing oxytonic forms out of use, and that differences in the accentuation of feminine and masculine declension types were beginning to emerge; in turn, baritone forms remained more widespread along the southern and southeastern edge of the area. In the article Morphological and syntactic changes The Utena subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian: the situation at the beginning of the 21st century, Regina Rinkauskienė discussed the speech of the middle and younger generations, which attests to the considerably “worn down” state of all systemic layers. Only faint features have been retained (unstressed vowels o and ė reflected as a and e; unstressed diphthong ie reflected as e; soft consonants preserved at the ends of words, diphthongal plural dative forms, and the old masculine noun and adjective ending -ys; the suffixes -okas and -otė still survive; the object nominative is still used). These secondary or tertiary faint features form the basis of the regiolect that is becoming established in the Utena, Anykščiai, and Kupiškis areas. The tendencies described in the article for Eastern Aukštaitian subdialects to turn into regiolects are undoubtedly symptomatic of many other Lithuanian subdialects. Žaneta Markevičienė and Aurimas Markevičius’s study Adverbs in Konstantinas Sirvydas’s dictionaries and the present-day Eastern Aukštaitian dialect demonstrated that examples written in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect in K. Sirvydas’s dictionaries included cases of dotted hypercorrection, partial reflection of certain features (žalininkavimas and žadininkavimas), or their possible complete absence (rotininkavimas). The authors describe in detail how most of the Lithuanian adverbs listed in the dictionaries have been preserved in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect to this day—they are still pronounced that way now—although some have disappeared or changed. Some adverbs that have not survived to the present were neologisms coined by Sirvydas. In those days, unlike in the present-day Eastern Aukštaitian dialect, there were few adverbs of non-Lithuanian origin. The authors classify adverb types in detail by origin and derivational formants, helping readers better grasp their multifaceted diversity and assess the development of word-formation principles over the centuries. Davos Kardelytė-Grinevičienė’s innovative study, grounded in interdisciplinary theories, The relationships between locative constructions in the Vilnius subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian made it possible to substantially revise claims found in the dialectological literature to date, according to which only isolated instances of interaction between the locative cases (inessive and illative) occur in the Vilnius area—such instances are more numerous and regular. The linguist distinguished the neutralization of locative forms caused by the aforementioned morphological processes (morphological and semantic shortening), familiar to and interpreted by Lithuanian scholars, 92 Acta Linguistica Lituanica LXX Jolita Urbanavičienė, Ritė Petrokienė (sudarytojos) Rytų aukštaičių tarmė: kaita ir pokyčiai where shortened plural illative forms in locative constructions coincide with the plural inessive, from competition between locative forms motivated by semantic factors (essentially a new approach proposed by the author), which may have arisen because inessive and illative locative constructions have the potential to project almost identical spatial situations in language. The author’s argument that “inessive locative constructions refer to movement in a particular space; only the verbs used in them encode dynamism. Since [...] verbs, rather than cases, carry a greater semantic load, in spontaneous discourse the inessive and illative cases, as secondary indicators of the static or dynamic nature of a spatial scene, may have lost their distinctive function for these features” (p. 281) is very interesting and well founded. The author convincingly showed that competition between locative forms motivated by semantic factors among the Vilnius speakers resembles that found in the Southern Aukštaitian subdialect. The final three studies, which concern Eastern Aukštaitian lexicon and semantics, appear in the book’s fourth chapter, Lexical change. In her article Utena dialect pejoratives with ū-durniai, Birutė Jasiūnaitė convincingly confirmed that the naming of people through vivid expressions, especially on the basis of negative character traits, remains alive in the Eastern Aukštaitian area. Drawing on material from the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, the author classifies the meanings of Utena dialect pejoratives according to their components and the type of semantic transfer, and highlights ethnocultural features. She shows that the subdialect is dominated by more finely classified metonymic and metonymic-metaphorical formations, whose second component is motivated by a body-part name. Most pejoratives are names for people based on their manner or character flaws; somewhat fewer relate to unattractive appearance or other physical shortcomings. Reading both the aforementioned article and the following article by Aurelija Gritienė, which continues the same theme, Vivid names for people in Northern Panevėžys dialect, one cannot help but admire speakers’ inexhaustible inventiveness. This fairly substantial and cohesive study discusses 300 names for people based on negative character traits. The author confirmed the familiar truth that vivid names are based on verbs; when the verb falls out of use, the vivid noun derived from it is forgotten as well. It was also established that Slavic loanwords are better preserved in the subdialect than Germanic ones. The examples discussed also reveal certain aspects of the national worldview and morality—a critical but not vulgar attitude among ordinary Lithuanians toward other people’s shortcomings. Most lexemes have a derogatory connotation, while only a small proportion are contemptuous or vulgar. Ritė Petrokienė’s article The influence of the standard language on Eastern Aukštaitian vocabulary discusses material comprising dictionaries and texts of Eastern Aukštaitian dialects published from the second half of the 20th century through the 21st century; the analysis of the data presented could undoubtedly be used to describe the dialect situation across the Lithuanian language as a whole. The article may perhaps lack more detailed interpretations, but the author correctly observed that in the dialects Recenzijos / Reviews 293 EDMUNDAS TRUMPA Only in rare cases does indigenous vocabulary compete; most often, the second and stronger competitor is a standard-language word. Borrowed vocabulary is strongly displacing it, although this layer, too, contains words resistant to competition. The article demonstrates the need to investigate more thoroughly the processes and patterns associated with the decline of lexical diversity in the dialect. The sections presented here provide information about the overall picture of contemporary dialects: the Supplementary Card File of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and the Digital Dialect Card File, with scanned examples of cards and questionnaires, supplement the Card File of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language with a list of relations between localities. The lexicographic book’s appendix is no coincidence. The idea for the book arose and matured through the implementation of various projects to supplement the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. This collection of articles is an excellent example of how research in a single field (lexicography), seeking to identify trends in linguistic development within one geographically defined area, can, through its wealth of facts and ideas, become a comprehensive study of various levels of the language system, spanning a very broad period diachronically—from the 17th century (the time of K. Sirvydas’s work) to the second decade of our 21st century. In this case, any potential fragmentation of the research should be regarded not as a shortcoming but as an advantage, as part of the full range of possibilities already achieved and still to be pursued. In the preface, editor J. Urbanavičienė rightly acknowledged that “the researchers’ different viewpoints, the various methodologies applied, and the ‘blank spots’ left behind (not all levels of all subdialects have been investigated) should give readers not the impression of a complete picture of the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect, but rather bring to mind a mosaic with missing pieces. A mosaic that arouses curiosity, raises new questions, and encourages further exploration.” It must be acknowledged that, as a mosaic, this collection of articles is exceptionally solid, reliable, and admirable. With its programmatic ambitions, broad subject matter, detailed analyses, and high quality of research, the book is important not only for the present but also for the future—it will help us better understand the development of Lithuanian and, more generally, Baltic dialects, as well as ways of describing it. Received on 12 June 2019. EDMUNDAS TRUMPA Latvijas universitātes Visvalža 4a, Rīga, LV-1050, Latvija [email protected] 294 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXIX