DAIVA VAIŠNIENĖ

Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences

Research areas: dialectology, Baltic philology.

JUOZAS ALEKSANDRAVIČIUS’S DICTIONARY OF THE KRETINGA DIALECT: PRINCIPLES OF TRANSPOSITION AND PROBLEMATIC CASES

The Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect by Juozas Aleksandravičius: Principles of Transposition and More Problematic Cases

A B S T R A C T

The compilation of a dialect dictionary involves not only the presentation of words and illustrations, but also quite problematic issues concerning the correspondence between the sound systems or prosodic elements of the dialect and the standard language, as well as the ambiguous interpretation of dialectal phenomena. Reliable and linguistically grounded transposition of headword forms or illustrative examples determines the accurate presentation of dialectal lexis in dictionaries, its authenticity, and its interaction with standard-language forms. This is especially relevant when compiling lexical resources covering the entire Lithuanian language area, such as the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. Nevertheless, the same phonetic phenomena under the same conditions can be transposed in different ways, even though the general principle is applied—to transpose strictly and consistently, according to some general law of sound correspondence.

The article presents several schemes for applying this principle that lead to different transposition results. It also discusses the principles for transposing headwords and their basic forms, as applied in compiling Juozas Aleksandravičius’s Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect, and presents problematic cases of transposition.

A N N O T A T I O N

The compilation of a dialect dictionary is not only related with the problems of presentation of words and illustrations but also with rather delicate problems of equivalence of the

K E Y W O R D S: dialect, Northern Samogitian Kretinga dialect, dialect dictionary, transposition.

K E Y W O R D S: dialect, Northern Samogitian dialect of Kretinga, dialect dictionary, transposition.

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sound system or prosodic elements of the dialect and the standard language, as well as ambiguous interpretation of dialectal phenomena. A reliable and linguistically grounded transposition of headword forms or illustrative examples determines an accurate presentation of dialectal lexis in dictionaries, authenticity and correlation with the forms of the standard language. It is especially relevant in compiling the lexical resources covering the overall Lithuanian language domain, such as The Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. Nevertheless, the same phonetic phenomena can be variously transposed under the same conditions, even though the general principle is applied – the transposition in strict compliance with the consistent patterns, following a universal law of equivalence of sounds.

The article presents several schemes of application of this principle determining varying transposition results; the principles of transposition of headwords and their principal forms applied in the compilation of The Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect by Juozas Aleksandravičius are discussed; the cases of problematic transposition are addressed.

The treasury of Lithuanian vocabulary is enriched today by dialect data from dialect dictionaries published each year, which record not only new meanings of words but also new words or word forms. The accurate presentation of dialect vocabulary in dictionaries, its authenticity, and its interaction with Standard Lithuanian forms are particularly important in compiling lexical resources that encompass the entire Lithuanian linguistic domain, such as Lietuvių kalbos žodynas (hereafter LKŽ). The principles of transposition refined¹ in preparing this dictionary are being applied to the rapidly growing number of dictionaries of individual dialects or subdialects.

Reliable and linguistically grounded transposition of dialectal phonetic phenomena addresses not only the presentation of words and illustrations, but also sometimes quite challenging problems of correspondence between the sound systems or prosodic elements of the dialect and Standard Lithuanian, ambiguous interpretations of dialectal phenomena, and so on. This is not merely a technical task in compiling a dialect dictionary or in scholarly editing, but also the resolution of a scholarly problem: how to present the most accurate possible transposition of dialect forms so that dialectal features are appropriately represented and so-called nonexistent words and unattested forms are avoided (such inaccuracies have occurred since the very beginning of the preparation of LKŽ; cf. Būga 1959: 724), since they distort the picture of the phonetic, accentual, and morphological structure of dialectal forms. Thus, when writing a dialect dictionary, lexicographic competence must be combined with an exceptionally thorough knowledge of the dialect and experience in dialectological research, so that any questionable transposition of a word does not create unattested forms and such cases, carried over from one lexicographic source to another, do not distort dialect facts or their interpretation.

The principles of transposition are usually discussed when a dictionary is introduced and differ essentially only in their interpretation of phonetic phenomena, scholarly justification, and transposition

¹ Cf. in the 1963 Lietuvių kalbos žodynas instructions, transposition is discussed in barely five and a half pages (LKŽI 1963: 87–92), whereas by 1980 this section had grown several times larger (LKŽI 1980: 88–104).

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sources for the rules². The main principle, declared in LKŽ and commonly applied in dialect dictionaries, is that words must be transposed strictly and consistently, taking account of the phonetic (and morphological) features of dialects and observing examples of regular sound correspondences in Standard Lithuanian (Vitkauskas 2006: 35, 38). It is based on correspondence with Standard Lithuanian³, that is, the principle is followed that transposed forms should be phonetically as compatible as possible with the Standard Lithuanian system. Naturally, exceptional cases must be distinguished in which phonetic change is irregular and is transferred directly into the transposed form, that is, no law of sound (phenomenon) correspondence applies.

In the General Requirements for the Preparation of Dialect (Subdialect) Dictionaries, approved by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language through a resolution recorded in the minutes of its meeting of 21 December 2006 (Recommendation R-4; Inf. pran., 2007-12-29, No. 100), general principles of transposition were also established, based on correspondence with Standard Lithuanian: regular sound features of a dialect (subdialect) and cases of retracted stress are transcribed in accordance with the sound and accentuation system of Standard Lithuanian, while irregular morphological features of word forms and word structure are not transposed (see point 10⁴).

According to the general principle of transposition discussed above, correspondence between a dialectal phenomenon and its Standard Lithuanian counterpart could be understood as a consistent linear process. A spoken sound or prosodic phenomenon is transcribed as accurately as possible using transcription symbols, then, according to the established phonetic regularity, transposed into its Standard Lithuanian equivalent—a sound, pitch accent, and so on.

¹ DIAGRAM

² The accuracy and quality of transposition depend greatly on the diversity of sources—that is, on new dialectological research and scholarly interpretations of dialectal phenomena. Cf. the 1980 instructions for Lietuvių kalbos žodynas, which recommend basing transposition solely on the isoglosses in Zigmas Zinkevičius’s maps of the principal features of Lithuanian dialectology (LKŽI 1980: 88), whereas the corrections to Lietuvių kalbos žodynas cite more numerous and varied sources, such as the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language and other dialectological studies (Vitkauskas 2006: 20).

³ The 1963 LKŽ instructions use the expression “translate dialect forms into Standard Lithuanian” (cf. LKŽI 1963: 87).

⁴ Internet access: http://www.vlkk.lt/lit/programos/zodynu-reikalavimai.html#tarmes, accessed 2012-04-22.

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Of course, individual irregular changes should be distinguished, where the sound correspondence rule cannot be applied; however, such cases are certainly not numerous. For example, we might speak of the adaptation of some borrowings, new words’ failure to conform to regular phonetic features, sporadic phonetic change, and so on.⁵

Nevertheless, the result of applying the general principle is not always so clear and straightforward; that is, the same phonetic phenomena under the same conditions may be transposed in different ways by applying the same general correspondence rule. In more complex cases, when the dialect forms to be presented have no particular features that would help establish exact equivalents, Vytautas Vitkauskas proposes drawing on data from those dialects in which the equivalent is clear and unambiguous (Vitkauskas 2001: 36). In this way, data from one dialect are not interpreted as units of a separate dialect system, but are incorporated into the set of dialect correspondences and are generally aligned with the standard-language system. Thus, sometimes it is not enough merely to establish a regular correspondence; one must consider how that correspondence will function within the standard-language system and how it will accord with the correspondences of other dialects.

2 S C H E M E

The differences between the two approaches discussed are well illustrated by the transposition of a and e in the dictionaries of subdialects that lengthen stressed short vowels; cf.: In the Kupiškėnai Dictionary, the word lemã.na. is transposed as liemėnė, and nõ.mas as nàmas. In this case, regular correspondence is followed, taking account of the dialect’s quantity system and bearing in mind that the Kupiškėnai lengthen inherently short vowels to half-long, as these vowels were historically a, e. However, this kind of transposition is not customary—in standard Lithuanian, inherently short a and e generally lengthen under stress; therefore, the forms given in LKŽ are liemėnė and nàmas, without taking account of a possible differing interpretation of the development of these vow-

⁵ Daugiau atvejų žr. Vitkauskas 2001: 17–20.

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els in the dialects. Cf. Aleksas Girdenis: while acknowledging that in this position transposing the short vowel would also be more accurate for the Samogitians, he himself likewise does not choose that option, since it runs too counter to our dialectological traditions (Girdenis 2008: 23, n. 12).

These examples are not sporadic, isolated changes; thus, the interaction between dialect forms and their transposed forms is considerably more complex than a direct sound- or phenomenon-to-sound correspondence and equivalence with a standard-language form. This may be partly related to the author’s subjective interpretation—for example, his view of cases traditionally considered regular, which have clear standard-language equivalents. Cf. the transposition of the long acute-accented forms gýrn̄os, múrgdyti, and the like, in the Daukšiai Region Dictionary, which would suggest the author’s view that this change is not regular⁶.

Thus, differences among transposed forms are primarily determined by the chosen approach to the relationship between dialect forms and standard-language forms. In other words, will a form simply be transposed using standard-language equivalents, treating the dialect as a separate linguistic system and assessing only the origin and historical development of sounds (see Scheme 1), or will account also be taken of correspondences in other dialects and in the standard language—that is, when there are two possible interpretations of a dialect phenomenon, will the one that better accords with the standard-language system be chosen (see Scheme 2)?

How are these schemes applied in one of the most recent sources on Samogitian dialect lexicon—Juozas Aleksandravičius’s Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect? What principles for transposing headwords and their principal forms had the author envisaged, and what changed during the editing of the dictionary? It should be noted that most of the features of transposition and practical aspects of editing will not be mentioned here, since they have already been discussed in the dictionary’s introductory article (Vaišnienė 2011: XXIX–XXXIII). The discussion below will draw on examples given in the dictionary.

The dictionary’s author, Juozas Aleksandravičius, who submitted the manuscript for publication, did not have time to read it from beginning to end, standardize it, and make decisions about how the words or forms under consideration should be presented. Some problems were discussed with the author, but many linguistic questions remained to be resolved; answers were sought by drawing on more recent studies and sources on the North Samogitian dialect, especially the Kretinga subdialect. It must be acknowledged that reliable data were not always sufficient to resolve problematic issues of stem mixing and accentuation, so in such cases the author’s opinion was given greater weight during editing. On the other hand, the author’s own views on some phonetic and morphological phenomena under consideration had also changed, while in some cases no firm decision had been reached; this is indicated by alternative possible variants left in parentheses, question marks, or notes in the margins.

⁶ Although one may assume that this unusual decision was made only because this feature of the sound system is particularly striking and specific (cf. Labutis 2002: 6).

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Having reviewed the inconsistencies in the manuscript’s transposition and the cases requiring editing, it can be concluded that, in preparing Kretingos tarmės žodyną, Aleksandravičius applied two principles governing the interaction between a pronounced sound and its transposed letter, thereby producing forms that were not entirely accurate. It should be noted, however, that he did not always follow these principles consistently; he had probably not formulated them for himself, but instead made a decision in each individual case.

Principle I. Direct transfer of a dialectal phonetic form into the standard language, taking into account only dialectal regularities. The basis for the transposed sound is the pronounced dialectal sound, which is transcribed and transferred directly into the transposed standard-language form if no regular phonetic sound change occurs; cf.:

This principle would partly accord with transposition scheme 1, which takes into account only regular dialectal correspondences. The essential difference is that traditional transposition usually takes into account universal phonetic sound changes—as assimilation, accommodation, degemination, and so on—regarding them as regular, even though they are not dialectal. It seems that Aleksandravičius regarded only regular dialectal correspondences as phonetic changes that should be transposed into their standard-language equivalents.

The following cases may be cited as examples of the inappropriate application of the principle discussed above:

• Although the author had chosen a morphological method of representing consonants in transcription, he did not follow this principle in the clusters nb, np, which are transcribed according to their phonetic pronunciation—as mb, mp, altered through accommodation. Since this is a universal phonetic change rather than a regular dialectal one, when applying the principle of direct correspondence with standard-language equivalents, Aleksandravičius consistently transfers the m in transcribed examples into the transposed headwords, e.g.: sémbernis, šiempjūtė, and so on.

It is worth noting that inaccuracies in transposition were avoided in cases of consonant assimilation according to voicing, because in the transcription the author

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consistently followed the morphological principle of consonant spelling. We can only speculate why a different interpretation of consonant interaction was chosen in the case of accommodation under discussion.

• The same occurred with geminates: the transcribed examples do not follow the morphological principle of consonant spelling, and only one of the two identical consonants is written. This is also carried over into the headwords, e.g.: ādaras, ādrēkis, dālkotis, saūšakė, and so on.⁷

Principle II. Constructing a correspondence according to the regularities governing the functioning in the standard language of a sound of identical origin. Forms transposed according to this principle prompted perhaps the most discussion, since the choice of a correspondence—and in some cases even its theoretical construction—is associated with subjective interpretation and may depend on how a regular equivalent, or one considered by the author to be of identical origin, functions in the standard language (cf. transposition scheme 2). For example, in view of the regularity that stressed a and e in the standard language usually lengthen to long vowels, this principle is followed without exception, even in cases where standard-language a and e remain short; see the first example:

The second example is more complex: feminine *i̯ā-stem words in the Kretinga dialect tend to shift to the *ē̯ stem, so in his dissertation Kretingos tarmė Aleksandravičius states that the paradigms of the two stems essentially coincide (Aleksandravičius 1967: 195). It seems that this is how the author interprets them: in the standard-language system, they should function as identical forms. The author consistently maintained that a word-final sound in an open syllable, shortened from *ē̯ and represented by ē in the standard language, should be marked in transcription with a special symbol—ę.

⁷ Daugiau pavyzdžių žr. Vaišienė 2011: XXX–XXXI.

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Thus, in all cases, such a sound should be transposed into the standard language as ė, e.g.: saujė > saujė, kūojė > kójė, mėlninčė > mėlninčė, dešinúojė > dešinójė, and so on.

Difficulties arise when this ending is stressed, because its vowel is short and therefore cannot be transposed as ė in a stressed position, e.g.: áldabėjė, dvàšė. According to the principle discussed, an identical transcribed sound should be transposed using the same standard-language equivalent—in all cases ę would correspond to ė, e.g., aldabijė, dvasė, and so on. But how can the quantity of long ė be reconciled with its stress, given that the final syllable of the word is short? In the manuscript, the author tried to find a compromise: while retaining the headword ending -ià, he indicates in parentheses alongside it that the word has an ė-stem, e.g., aldabijà (ė-stem), dvasìà (ė-stem). In preparing the dictionary for publication, illustrative examples were taken into account in these cases, since some inflected forms, such as the singular locative, clearly reveal the word stem. If there are no illustrative examples that show the stem precisely, the principle followed was that the ending of unstressed words is -ė, whereas a stressed ending is -ià (the different development of the *i̯ā stem in declension is also emphasized by Vladas Grinaveckis: words with root stress shifted to the *ē stem, while those with ending stress retained it (Grinaveckis, 1973: 141)⁸.

Only a few more consistent examples of difficult transposition are presented here; they can be explained as the result of applying the principles discussed. It should be noted that, when editing similar cases, the transposed headwords in the Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect were revised in accordance with the following provisions:

1) where possible, illustrative examples and the principle of analogy were used;

2) in the absence of clear illustrative examples, the form written by the author was retained; however, it is clear that addressing problems in presenting some debatable cases would require further research.

It should be noted that the principles presented in the article were formulated on the basis of data from a single source—the Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect—but it is clear that they can be applied, at least in part, when analyzing problematic cases of transposition in other dialect dictionaries as well. It should also be noted that in more recent dictionaries, cases of direct transfer of a dialectal phonetic form into the standard language are almost nonexistent (unless, as in the aforementioned case of the Dictionary of the Daukšiai Region, the dialectal feature is interpreted differently than usual). The most difficult cases of transposition concern the theoretical choice of an equivalent, taking into account how a regular or etymologically identical counterpart functions in the standard language. If the nature of a feature has not been sufficiently researched, the scholarly justification for its transposition depends greatly on the author’s subjective interpretation.

⁸ Unless a new e stem is assumed here, which, according to Aleksas Girdenis, would be suggested in the Samogitian dialect by expressions such as jaunystė: durnystė (Girdenis, 1996, 83). In Vytautas Vitkauskas’s view, it is questionable whether a new stem should be sought here; this should be interpreted as a mixing of stems (Vitkauskas, 2001, 76, footnote 7).

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LITERATŪRA

Aleksandravičius Juozas 1967: Kretingos tarmė. Filologijos mokslų kandidato laipsnio disertacija. Vilnius.

Aleksandravičius Juozas 2011: Kretingos tarmės žodynas. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.

Babickienė Zofija, Birutė Jasiūnaitė, Angelė Pečeliūnaitė, Rūta Bagūzytė 2007: Centrinė šiaurės žemaičių kretingiškių tarmė: Tarmės tekstai su komentarais ir žodynėliu. Vilnius: Baltos lankos.

Būga Kazimieras 1959: Rinktiniai raštai 2. Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla.

Girdenis Aleksas 1996: Taip šneka tiršliškiai: Šiaurės žemaičių telšiškių tekstai su komentarais. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla.

Girdenis Aleksas 2008: Žemaičių dzūkai: Tekstai su komentarais. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.

Grinaveckis Vladas 1973: Žemaičių tarmių istorija. Vilnius: Mintis.

Labutis Vitas 2002: Daukšių krašto žodynas. Vilnius: Alma littera.

LKŽI 1963 (II leidimas 1980) – „Lietuvių kalbos žodyno“ instrukcija. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos ir literatūros institutas.

Tarmių (šnektų) žodynų rengimo bendrieji reikalavimai. Interneto prieiga: http://www.vlkk.lt/lit/programos/zodynu-reikalavimai.html#tarmes.

Vaišnienė Daiva 2011: „Kretingos tarmės žodynas“: pagrindiniai medžiagos pateikimo principai. – Kretingos tarmės žodynas, XX–XXXVII.

Vitkauskas Vytautas 2001: Lietuvių kalbos tarmių morfoneminiai reiškiniai. Vilnius: Žara.

Vitkauskas Vytautas 2006: „Lietuvių kalbos žodyno“ taisymai. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.

Vosylė Kle멘tina 2010: Kupiškėnų tarmės žodynas I–O. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.

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Juozo Aleksandravičiaus Kretingos tarmės žodynas: transponavimo principai ir keblesni atvejai

The Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect by Juozas Aleksandravičius: Principles of transposition and problematic cases

SUMMARY

The compilation of a dialect dictionary is not only related with the problems of presentation of words and illustrations but also with rather delicate problems of equivalence of the sound system or prosodic elements of the dialect and the standard language, as well as ambiguous interpretation of dialectal phenomena. Nevertheless, in dialectal dictionaries the same phonetic phenomena can be variously transposed under the same conditions, even though the general principle is applied – the transposition in strict compliance with consistent patterns, following a universal law of equivalence of sounds. The article presents several schemes of application of this principle determining varying transposition results; the problematic principles of transposition of headwords and their principal forms applied in the compilation of the dictionary of the Northern Samogitian dialect The Dictionary of the Kretinga Dialect by Juozas Aleksandravičius are also discussed; the cases of problematic transposition are addressed: a) a dialectal phonetic form is directly transposed to the standard language taking into account the dialectal consistent patterns exclusively, with no regard to the universal phonetic sound changes – assimilation, accommodation, degemination, etc.; b) the choice of equivalence of a dialectal form depends on the functioning of a regular equivalent or, according to the author, an equivalent of identical origin, in the standard language.

Įteikta 2012 m. rugsėjo 14 d.

DAIVA VAIŠNIENĖ

Lietuvos edukologijos universitetas

Taraso Ševčenkos g. 31, LT-03111 Vilnius, Lietuva

[email protected]

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