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Vaskelaitė, R. 2003: Lietuvių kalbos daiktavardiniai junginiai sintaksinių ryšių požiūriu. Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 48, 143–158.

Vytautas Ambrazas Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Lietuva

Received 2005 04 22

A Chrestomathy of Lithuanian Dialects

Compiled by Rima Bacevičiūtė, Audra Ivanauskienė, Asta Leskauskaitė, Edmundas Trumpa

Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2004, 328 [16] p., ISBN 9986-668-56-5

For a long time, our great linguists Juozas Balčikonis, Zigmas Zinkevičius, Adelė Laigonaitė, and others taught us about the great significance of the people’s language (the living language, dialects) for the culture and scholarship of national life, and we welcomed every book about dialects with joy. We are equally delighted by the new A Chrestomathy of Lithuanian Dialects. It was prepared by a younger generation of linguists specializing in dialectology, who have often studied and continue to study our local varieties using new methods (scientific editor Associate Professor Dr. Laima Grumadienė).

All the material is presented from tape recordings (which is why the 1970 chrestomathy is passed over in complete silence); texts containing violations of the dialect system are not avoided (Professor Juozas Balčikonis taught long ago that nowadays one can find anything in dialects, since much has been corrupted by writing and schools). Since village communities have all but disappeared, everyone now learns from radio, television, and schools of all kinds; consequently, in conversations with dialect speakers one hears them adjusting to “correct” speech—a recording of 15–20 minutes cannot even be made, because it is merely a minute-long utterance, a display of “learning,” rather than an inherited dialect. This chrestomathy contains examples of such things; the “Introduction” warns about them—we all know the present situation and understand that this also happened in recordings and various articles in the past. This may mislead other linguists, who find very recent forms alongside inherited ones.

The transcription currently in use is presented in full, although many issues remain unresolved (especially the notation of palatalization in consonant clusters, ankščiau, kel'ti, and so on; the writing of reduced vowels, from Chylinski’s time onward, vaikas Dv, maišas Drsk, Rtn, etc.). Errors are apparent: deŋ'.kt' = deŋgt', mėːdis = mėːd'is, uːks = u̯o̯ks (pp. 18, 19); the Šiauliai dialect does not have the form ž'uŋkšn'us = ž'uŋkšn'us, but rather the Eastern Lithuanian žiuŋgsnys (see also LKŽₓₓ, from LD 67, Grv).

It is stated that “in the standard language, the first element of falling diphthongs i, u + l, m, n, r is short, so their pitch accent is marked with a grave (`), e.g., gìrtas, kùrmis,” but the book no longer includes places where this is said to be the case: among the Kaunas, Jurbarkas, and Žagarė dialects, the first components are only long or half-long (only the diphthong ùi has been overlooked).

Were the new dialect names coined by Alekso Girdenio alone, or did Professor Zigmas Zinkevičius have no part in them (p. 26)? Accuracy and truthfulness are essential in scholarly works.

The book begins with the section “Western Aukštaitians” (subsection “Kaunas and Klaipėda Region Aukštaitians”). The introductory article on the history of these local varieties is interesting; it recalls the subdialects of Lithuania Minor striūkiai and baltsermėgiai. The Jurbarkas dialect is also included among the Kaunas varieties (summarizing

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It is not even remembered that they say mā.ta ~ māto, sā.k'e there, and that these forms differ especially from those of the Kaunas-area dialect speakers. It is hard to believe that Jurbarkas, like all of Prussian Lithuania, and the Zanavykai around Šakiai pronounce and pronounced pí.rmas, dú.nda (this is not confirmed by the volumes of the Dictionary of the Zanavykai Dialect edited by Aldonas Pupkis and Vilija Sakalauskienė, with Dr. Rima Bacevičiūtė at the helm, nor by many other people who were interviewed) (p. 40). Listening to the CD recordings, one can hear more clearly the shortening of i and u (they are lengthened around Marijampolė and Prienai, but not elsewhere); the authors themselves state in a special map (after p. 36) that they are pronounced short even in Kybartai and Pajevonys, whereas here there is some muddle: who is telling the truth, Rima Bacevičiūtė, the map, or Frydrichas Kuršaitis, Jonas Jablonskis, and LKA? On that map, the villages of Eglinė and Vaiponys are classified as belonging to the Punskas subdialect, whereas in fact they belong to the Liubavas–Kalvarija area, having been cut off by the League of Nations with France’s help. It is a great injustice to claim that JRB says mā.tu, mā.ti—only mā.ta, sā.k'e, and so on (for this reason they were assigned to the northwestern highlanders, but have now been reassigned to the Kaunas-area dialect speakers).

The text in the Katyčiai dialect is very interesting (the author spoke there in 1964 with someone from Buikiškė village, reached on foot from Vainutas): they said būva ~ būvo, išvā.r'e ~ išvārė, sā.k'e ~ sākė, šė.n'd'ie šā.lta ~ šiandien šalta, but the book has it differently. In the text from Baltkojai (Šakiai district), all unstressed e sounds turn into the Samogitian ę (when listening to the recording, this is just a slightly more retracted e, not Samogitian ę), while í.r is ī.r. An instance of misplaced emphasis (pp. 51, 52). In the Garliava text, the transcription is problematic: āštuntais, devintais, the instrumental case, indicates stress pattern 2, but it is transcribed āštuntāis, devintāis; the secondary stress in the numeral kā.turez'dāe.šims, on the syllable -de.-, has been mistaken for primary stress (pp. 51, 52), and so on. In the Birštonas text from Žemaitkiemis village, the diphthong ua ~ uo was not heard, although several men at Kederis’s farm pronounced it that way, as did women in town near the church (including the late Kajetonas, brother of Prof. Jonas Kazlauskas). Could ua (p. 54) be uo rather than va? í.rgi is also problematic (it should be ī.rgi in Garliava).

The Šiauliai-area dialects are also introduced with an introductory section and a map; the map is certainly valuable and interesting (the only problematic forms are muziká.nc = muzikāntas (Žagarė) and, across all the dialects, pasiž'ā.uk't' = pasiž'āukt', bė.k't' = bė'kt'; fully unstressed vowels that are somewhat retracted would be Samogitian ę, while plāukai is unlikely to be plāukai (p. 63), plākas ~ plēkas (with a hardened l) (p. 65), and so on).

In the texts from the Žagarė area, it was not noted that the circumflex accent does not lengthen the first component of a diphthong—these are merely the musical contour of the accent in īšein, šāugdava, and so on (this has been discussed extensively by dialectologists). The widespread lengthening of short vowels in bū.va, ži.na is very unexpected (there has been much discussion with people from Šakyna; I have not heard this, though perhaps things have become mixed up by now), whereas they clearly distinguished and still distinguish pa'kíla from pa'kíla (Šakyna and Žagarė are full of newcomers from all over); they pronounced š'v'ėlp'n, š'v'il'p'n.

There are also doubts about the transcription: mušó.ika (1), not mušėikā; trō.ba, not trōba; there is no such retracted stress in gi.lei; ta.s (that) is some kind of surprise, and tu.s (the tree stumps) as well; ū.žlips' lā.kstā.r—could this not be the participle lā(k)stās, rather than a reflexive verb? tēmi is not ‘in that’, but a completely different root, with a different irregularity as well (e.g., paš'l'auž' ~ pašliaužia, not pašliaužia (p. 70), etc.). The forms look the same, but the pronunciation is different: bā.ndo.s ganī't' and bāndas než'u.rėsi (p. 71). Unexpectedly, tuos is transcribed as tuōs, although it is quite far from Samogitian.

In the Krakių material, dúos has been turned into dúos (!!), braj.gus mokeš'č'ei into brāngūs mókeščiai, ū.li'č'os into ūlýčios, rėi.škē into reiškia, and so on (p. 75).

The Southern Highlanders are the genuine Dzūkai; their territory keeps shrinking—it is becoming Slavic-speaking, or increasingly eastern- or Kaunas-area Highlander-like. The introduction is well prepared, though bė'kti = begtė and lań.k'e = lań.k'e should perhaps be corrected (p. 77). It is also unclear why the map shows the eastern boundary of the ʒ vowel running along the Nemunas, while ʒ'škā ~ ožkā and kǝ'pa ~ kǝ'pǝ are pronounced far to the east, in Varėna, Maceliai, Valkininkai, Paparčiai, and Ramaškonys (p. 78); compare the map after p. 76 (that vowel is also pronounced by BrS, DrS, and even the Vilnius-area dialects—what kind of game is this?).

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There are all sorts of things in the texts: the texts from Paparčiai, Mačėliai, and Varėna transcribed by Dr. Asta Leskauskaitė are entirely correct (except that “now” should also be stressed; the loss of two t’s in attrūktu was not heard there; parvaž iav[o] should be transcribed; ri.tōːi = ri.tɔːj (p. 92), namōpi = namɔːp'i (p. 93), pauõːk = pauõːk (p. 93), ti·če = ti·če); in the Kučiūnai text, it is doubtful that dúos ~ duõs occurred (p. 95), dalí·kas = dal'i·kas (p. 95), and so on. The bibliography contains a considerable error: A. Jonaitytė and T. Sudnik’s article is about the Apso dialect (of the Eastern Highlanders), not the Southern Highlanders (p. 86).

Probably the longest chapter is “Eastern Highlanders” (pp. 100–171). This is where dialectal diversity is greatest, and the authors have had to work very hard. The map is very well prepared, with clear and fairly precise dialect boundaries (map after p. 100). The introduction, too, is carefully prepared; only the stress in laukúošna = laukúosna and dantýsan = dantýsan (p. 105) is questionable. It is unclear how the vowel e becomes more fronted and turns into a when the consonants k and s are fronted: seserės > sasaras (?) (p. 105).

The name of the village in Pastovys district (a Lithuanian settlement in Belarus) is Juravas, not Jūravas (p. 113) (verified); nešìės = nešìės (p. 115); we are reluctant to accept the past-tense form bèks ~ bègs (p. 115); the same applies to uždės (p. 115); vilkas didzú.use(s) is an adverb (formerly a noun), and whether the s is followed by a consonant is irrelevant (p. 115); žósti is stressed that way very rarely; žósti ‘to begin speaking, to start talking’ would be better (p. 130), and so on. Another unexpected bibliographic note: an account of the Lauksargiai dialect, 9 km from Tauragė, is hardly suitable even for children seeking features of the Eastern Lithuanian dialects (p. 130).

In the texts, ma.mi·tæ. should be transcribed as momýtė (pp. 136–137), kótas (p. 137) = kótas; surely smalė·kai cannot mean ‘smalėkai’ (p. 137); namúošna = namúosna, pir'k'õ·sna = pirkiõsna (p. 138), svietas = svietas (p. 139); the song lyrics have the stress on langą, kiaulės (p. 139), žìnta., i.e. žento (p. 139), dú.kte, i.e. duktė, and šu.ni(s), i.e. šunis (ibid.).

The same applies to the important text from Baltmuižė (near Daugavpils): durnì·s'te = durnýstė (2), nedó·ra.s ă.ki.s = nedó·ra.s ă.ki.s; kaimí.nka, not kaiminkà; apibū.ra. = apibū·ra. ~ apibūro. The same applies to the Anykščiai-area texts: bú.dava = bú·dava.; liktarne.la.s = liktarnėlės; išplė·ždava. has been transcribed as plėšdavo at least twice. Is the form ustāvas from the Žadininkai dialect authentic? They pronounce ustā·vas (ustā·vas), Rk ustɔ·vas ~ užstovas (p. 147); suplā·iš'ā.ji. = supleišėję; aždun.cū = uždunsu (after n, the consonant s often becomes c) (p. 148).

The Kupiškis-area texts are very interesting, but there are comments to make as well: bagõ·tas = bagõ·tas, gera = gera, važúos = važiuos; krikš't'i·nɔ.s = krikštynɔ.s, jí ~ jy (not ji) (p. 157); atɔ.gal'u ranku = atāgalia rankà (p. 159).

Širvintos-area luŋ'·kt' = luŋ.kt' is like a nail in one’s shoe (p. 162); vìlko būta =...būta, laukúos(na) = laukúosna (p. 163); pakin'k'l'u.kai = pak'in'kl'u.kai; mergi·tes, suknì·te, nabagì·ču—does the suffix -ytė not occur throughout? (p. 166); rit'ōi = rit'ōi (p. 166); dirvó·na (only K has written it this way) = dirvó·na (p. 170), and so on.

Among the Panevėžys-area dialects that remain most robustly in use today (their speakers have reproached me for using the term panevėžiškiai), the introduction and texts are among the most exemplary; only blógūs should perhaps be corrected to blógūs (p. 180). Panevėžys-area dúos = duõs (at least three times), abžó·t' = ab'žó·t', ž'ūrė·t' = ž'ūrė·t' (p. 185); ė·dal's = ė·dal's (p. 186); d'i·k's = d'i·k's, blō·ga = blō·ga, apibė·ks = apibė·ks; á.ic'vars is á.ic'vars (?).

The problems with the Samogitian little organs are greater; in the introduction, at least àv'ieč'ė, kàmu.li·s, sú.nòs (p. 196) should have been corrected. The distribution of the affricates č and dž is not properly described here (p. 198). In many northern and Varniškiai-area dialects, pronominal adjectives are plāt'ė·s'is, žāl'ė·sis, not plačiā­sis, žāliasis (p. 201). The word balandis is known throughout Lithuania, not only among Samogitians (p. 203); soda means ‘a village that has not been dispersed’, not just any kind of village (p. 203).

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The map is more or less beyond reproach. Prof. Albertas Rosinas has written about the Šaukėnai *žunsis* and related forms; examples of this kind also occur in the Vaiguva texts for the “Atlas.”

It is said that i˙, u˙ are distinguished from i˙, u˙˙, while the spelling is uoki.č'ū. (all have -i˙t'is | -i˙t'e—why do the southern subdialects omit this? (p. 208). Metatony in the future tense does not occur in words with an acute root or suffix (dįrbs, aūgs, gyvēns), while the circumflex and short forms remain unchanged (p. 209). On the same page, the extensive area with the plural dative and instrumental ending -ums is not indicated: only Nemakščiai, rather than half the duchy, including Jurbarkas and its other neighboring areas.

From the extensive distinction between i˙ < ie came vyresnyjai = vir'es'n'i˙jai ~ vyresnieji (p. 210), and further: nuri˙t'ėje = nurietėjo, again vi˙resni˙j'ė (!), uoki.t'i (?) (p. 219); seni˙je: from Varniai (p. 230), ani˙je ~ anyjai (?), didi˙je ~ didyjay (3 forms) (p. 231)!

The pronoun form is not our usual one, but mu˙su | mu˙su | mu˙sa and related forms ~ mūsų, mūsų and related forms (p. 212). These forms are unexpected too: skerdī˙nes = skerdynės; ga˙l' ~ galia; aŋ'kš'č'ā.u = aŋkš'č'āu | ankščiau means “very early,” and that g' occurs before hard k; kā.r.šls = kā.r.šc (pp. 215–216); jū˙s'us ~ jūsius (among all Samogitians—how do the Nemakščiai forms stand out here?); drū˙c = drū˙kc (heard firsthand in 1998); the form tuoki˙s is entirely unheard of (p. 220); Šv has n'eši, vė˙ž'i, not nešė, vė˙že (p. 224); malū˙i no longer has u˙u (p. 230); plū˙ga = plū˙ga, ši˙mta li˙tu =...li˙tu (p. 232); vā˙kū˙ likewise no longer has u˙u (p. 233); l'u˙b appeared late, and Kv again has susišukūos after transposition (p. 233); even the softening sign is stressed in žiūburius (p. 233), and so on.

The northern Samogitian material has similar shortcomings: mė˙ŋkəs = mė˙ŋ'k'ęs (p. 238), but m'i˙n'ku = mi˙ŋ'ku; there, people are not heard saying tộp'ò, only tốpò ~ tupù, tôpâ.m ~ tūpam, and so on (p. 242). Other ghostly pronominal forms have appeared: pilkėjai, gerėjai, didėjai from p'elk'ė˙je: (ėi + i˙e- – i and i merged), so the forms are pilkėjai, gerėjai, didėjai (p. 242); they say dâ.inas, not dā.inàs (p. 248); i˙štū˙r ~ iš tū˙ra, not iš tūri (p. 248); people in Klỹkoliškiai say mô.n šā.lt palė.ka, not šalt(a) (p. 249); the Tirkšliai form skambà is suspicious, whereas tôupi˙te or taupyti is reassuring (p. 251)—did the Latvianist E. Trumpa really understand it this way? In Seda, i˙ bažn'i˙č'ė (!) varā˙, dę.rps' = d'i˙rpsi, jį˙ms = ji˙ms (p. 252); surely the Telšiai forms šuoks, šiesā.s (p. 252), ožō.us (p. 253) should be šōks, šėsas, užuōs in the book; jaunė˙jė, only jaunėjai, jaunā.s's = jā.unā.s's, vėšos = višūs (p. 253); ɔnti˙rto = ant rytù (p. 254); trôpėnė˙l's = trupinėlius, not trupinėlius (p. 254); vė˙iŋok'ūos = vienokios, not vienokios (p. 253).

In the very interesting Kretinga texts, the following forms seem almost unbelievable: ė(š)~šėrdė˙j ~ iš širdie = iš širdė (p. 263), dōuses ~ duōsis = duosis (p. 264); there, n'ories is said to mean norės, while šiedėis is actually sėdes(is), not sėdės or sėdėdama (p. 265); on tou kā.rtė = an tā karčia (not an ta kartė), liŋgōus = lingūos, not linguōs (p. 265). In the Pryšmančiai locality, devintais has the second accent, but the fourth is assigned to it (p. 265); āudrūos is an impossible form—ā.udras (gen. sg.)—and juk should not be translated (p. 265). In Plungė, ė.žis is more common than ėži˙s (p. 266); lūos is rendered as lōs (p. 266); žėnōtumė mū˙sa gi.vė.nimā = žinōtumi mūsų gyvenimą, not žinōtumei mūsų (?) gyvenimą (p. 267); i.dūomė. = idōmiai (p. 267); and padįrbs, not padįrbs; not beprōtis, but bėprōt'is = bėprōtis (p. 267).

In the Endriejavas locality (Lelėnai village, Judrėnai area), the Samogitian Dzūkian variety is shown most clearly. At first there is a “more modern” speaker: papā.sakuos'ō (traditional papāsakuoso), vėl'nes (traditional v'ė.l'n'c'), vā.ka.rs (traditional vākā.rs), and so on; but ėšė˙t(u) cannot be obtained by transposition (p. 268), ė˙t'ō ~ eitū, not eitū, pāka.l'nė = pākalnė[je], not pākalnėje (ibid.), and so on.

The section on the western Samogitian (donininkai) dialect is an example of already jumbled subdialects. Their history can be shown both by W. Fenzlau’s book about the Germanization of surnames in the Klaipėda region and by folklore records (not even the occasional *dūnininkavimas* has been noticed—this is evidenced by u.dinē in Sausgalviai, ūdinėti < uo-dinėti (p. 284). The speech of the much-respected J. Užpurvis is known only from recollections, with its morphology corrected

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(In 1958, the author lived for three weeks with his brother’s family, so the speech of his sister and brother is much more archaic and systematic). There the moustache is ó:zná· ~ uõznai, not užnai (p. 275), auštrinis (áuštrenis), not áuštrinis. Of course, the speech of Palanga belongs to the northwestern Samogitian dialect (the third confusion of Lithuanian geography; see p. 276). And Degučiai is in the so-called dūnininkai area, not among the Klaipėdiškiai. Doutù, invali.dọ.m(a), vã·ikã. are not from that dialect: dọ·tọ, invaledọma, vã·kõ, the plural locative šeš·õ·s m'etõ·s was supplied by the transcriber or someone else.

A book of very fine design, with much work and hope invested in it, but attention to detail was lacking; the transcription is greatly outdated, and there is much that is untrue. The project supervisor, sociolinguist and dialectless Vilnius native Assoc. Prof. Dr. Laima Grumadienė, evidently could not help the compilers much, given her many other commitments and limited practical experience in dialect research. Let us use this book with some caution for scholarly purposes.

Vytautas Antanas Vitkauskas

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

5 P. Vileišio St., 10308 Vilnius, Lithuania

Received 2005 06 09

Dictionary of the Zanavykai Dialect II, L–R

Text authors: Rima Bacevičiūtė, Giedrė Čepaitienė, Vilija Sakalauskienė, Janina Švambarytė, Klementina Vosylytė

Editors: Vilija Sakalauskienė (chief editor), Klementina Vosylytė.

Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 2004, 595 p., ISBN 5-420-01550-1 (2 tomas), ISBN 5-420-01506-6 (bendras).

We now also have the second volume of the Dictionary of the Zanavykai Dialect, containing words beginning with the letters L–R. This comprehensive (exhaustive) dialect dictionary presents all the vocabulary that the dialect underlying the standard language managed to record and that was excerpted from the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language without being filtered through expeditions; it uses a simplified phonetic transcription (regrettably, it has no lax vowel ɔ or consonants ŋ, ŋ’, x). It is very good that sentences and words by literary authors have been excluded (since even neologisms coined by writers from that region and words picked up from elsewhere had been included—these are not the subject matter of dialect dictionaries).

The dictionary provides a great deal of reliable, entirely new dialect material and examples of living, highly expressive folk speech, which many researchers of the Lithuanian language, and especially its dialects, will undoubtedly use and discuss in their work. The dictionary is also important in the historical circumstances of today, when the inherited linguistic systems of all the dialects are strongly influenced by the standard language and by the means through which it exerts its influence, especially radio, television, administration, and politics. This is particularly evident in the Sūduva region, where people eagerly embrace innovations, and slang, with all sorts of borrowings and calques, is heard from the lips of the local people of Jono Jablonskio’s homeland! A few such items are included here; perhaps dictionary users should have been warned that these words and forms are recent. This is the “contribution” of the bureaucracy to the entire stock of our language: mašiniai Šk “en masse” (p. 130); pramatyti (meaning foresee) (p. 135); phraseol. control node “brain” (p. 139); [woman] apsivė·dus (p. 157); mišiuginis “fool” (from Jewish life) (p. 201); motininė [sow] “breeder” (p. 216); pamušti blatą “to pull strings,”