Trisdešimt Jono Jablonskio konferencijų

Bendrinė kalba / Standard Language 2025, Nr. 98, p. 1–23 Turinიო nuoroda / Contents link ISSN 2351-7204 (elektroninis / online) THIRTY CONFERENCES OF JONAS JABLONSKIS Thirty Conferences of Jonas Jablonskis IRENA SMETONIENĖ Vilnius University Institute of Applied Linguistics ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5165-8078 https://doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2025.98.09 Reading about the thirty conferences named after Jonas Jablonskis, one might wonder why Jablonskis, rather than another prominent linguist, was chosen as their namesake. Jablonskis was commonly associated with language standardization, so critics have been heard to say that these were internal conferences devoted to a narrow aspect of language, unlikely to reach an international level. Yet the conference organizers have shown that those who assess Jablonskis in this way are unfamiliar with the full scope of his work and with the efforts he devoted to Lithuanian scholarship, language, and public life. Historian Eligijus Raila, for example, regards Jonas Basanavičius, Vincas Kudirka, and Jonas Jablonskis as the principal creators of the ideology of modern Lithuanian identity and pillars of modern Lithuanian culture, although Jablonskis’s public and political activities have so far been discussed only in passing (see Grigaravičius 2021). This gap has been partly filled by Algirdas Grigaravičius’s edited volume “Jonas Jablonskis in Politics and Society” (2022). There is no doubt that Jablonskis is associated with the beginnings of Lithuanian pedagogy and its theoretical foundations. He served on competitive commissions that considered the quality of Lithuanian-language textbooks, raised questions about textbooks in the press, and wrote reviews of them. Jablonskis prepared the first official Lithuanian language curriculum for primary schools. Of course, even beyond Lithuania, Jablonskis is known as a creator, standardizer, and promoter of the Lithuanian language, as well as a scholar. The 2010 international academic conference “Jonas Jablonskis and the Century of Standard Lithuanian,” dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the linguist’s birth, covered many aspects of Jablonskis’s work. Today, therefore, this eminent figure is viewed much more broadly, and conferences named after him have become interdisciplinary and interesting not only to linguists. Before reviewing the individual conferences, it is important to note that they are a joint initiative of Vilnius University and the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. At first, the conferences were organized jointly; later, as they grew into international events, the two institutions took turns hosting them. With the exception of the 4th conference, all were held either at Vilnius University or at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, and at roughly the same time of year: September, October, or November. Copyright © 2025 Irena Smetonienė. Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. // Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the “Creative Commons” Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of the content in any medium, provided that the author and source are credited. Received: / Received: 2025-12-03. Accepted: / Accepted: 2025-12-11. 1 1993 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “The Category of Case and the Use of Cases” As Rita Miliūnaitė wrote in 1994 in the first issue of the “Gimtoji kalba” Chronicle section, “[W]ith the joint efforts of linguists from Vilnius University’s Department of Lithuanian Language and the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, the Jonas Jablonskis Conference “The Category of Case and the Use of Cases” was held on October 11 at the University’s Faculty of Philology. The idea of holding it had emerged well over a year earlier, and preparations were made meticulously. Consideration was given to what direction to take for this event—which was expected not to be a one-off—and how it should differ from other similar conferences held occasionally and probably destined to become traditional, such as those devoted to Būga, Balčikonis, Kazlauskas, and others” (Miliūnaitė 1994). At the first Jablonskis Conference, efforts were made to combine grammatical theory and practice, so the conference papers (13 were delivered) were divided into two parts. In the first part, A. Valeckienė spoke about primary and secondary functions of cases; V. Labutis about the asymmetry between case forms and their functions and semantic roles; A. Paulauskienė about the vocative as a member of the case paradigm; J. Šukys about the genitive of negation and purpose in Donelaitis’s “Metai”; S. Valentas about the category of case in poetry; and A. Vidžiūnas about J. Jablonskis’s views on various variations in morphological forms and the evaluation of alternatives. In the second part, conference participants listened to P. Kniūkšta’s paper “More Unusual Forms of Foreign Words”; L. Grumadienė spoke about case usage in the Punsk dialect; E. Valiulytė compared the use of constructions pro and per su with the accusative and their relationship to the norm; and Anglicist I. Šeškauskienė compared the semantics of certain English and Lithuanian prepositions. 1994 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “Language Norms and Usage” The conference took place on November 11, and 20 papers were delivered; speakers came from both Šiauliai and Kaunas (Vileikienė 1995). Papers presented at the plenary session included “Grammatical Norms in Relation to Their Functions” (V. Labutis), “Distinctive Features of Teaching Language Culture at a Technical University” (L. Barzdžiukienė), “What We Gain and What We Lose by Standardizing Language” (P. Kniūkšta), and “The Linguistic Market” (L. Grumadienė). J. Vileikienė introduced the new work of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language’s Language Culture Department—a language-planning information database. Two papers addressed language culture abroad: E. Jakaitienė’s “Problems in the Development of the Standard Language in Norway” and L. Laužikaitė’s “The Maintenance of the Danish Standard Language.” Work continued in two sections devoted to practical issues of the norm. Topics analyzed included distinguishing and expressing indefinite quantity and totality (J. Švambarytė); the relationship of the constructions užmiršti ką ir apie ką to the norm (E. Valiulytė); the influence of language contacts on business style (R. Kvašytė); the use and meanings of spatial prepositions in Lithuanian and English (I. Šeškauskienė); names of goods and dishes on menus (A. Kupčinskaitė); the use of the verb priduoti (D. Vinauskienė); errors in the use of the adverbial participle in diploma theses (V. Žilienė); and errors involving prefixed words in technical language (V. Celiėšienė). V. Garliauskas spoke about the standardization and use of place names in the Sugintai parish; V. Rimša about an imagined common Baltic language; A. Malakauskas about accentuation variants in the third edition of the DLKŽ; V. Vitkauskas discussed systematic issues of accentuation; and A. Vidžiūnas the accentuation norms for suffixed nouns. 1995 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “The Practice and Methodology of Promoting Language Culture” The idea that linguistic phenomena cannot be measured by a single yardstick was developed consistently. P. Kniūkšta stated: “In language-culture work, it is essential to distinguish genuine (major) errors in the language system and codification. The latter should not be turned into mortal sins, much less used as a reason to despise and insult language users, as is often done” (KTTS 1995: 5). It was also noted that 2 improving the state of the Lithuanian language requires research into what the language is like at the time in question and what determines its quality (V. Labutis). Issues touched upon included the selection of loanwords according to meaning (D. Mikulėnienė), language consultations (A. Kupčinskaitė), computerization of administrative-language data (D. Vainauskienė), promoting language culture on Lithuanian television (I. Smetonienė), and the spelling of foreign names (M. Tamošiūnas). L. Grumadienė presented English code theory, which can also be applied to Lithuanian, while J. Švambarytė proposed viewing language culture as fashion and shaping it accordingly. Another topic of relevance to language standardizers was explored: public attitudes toward linguists (R. Miliūnaitė, L. Vaicekauskienė). Considerable attention was also paid to teaching language for specific purposes at higher-education institutions (J. Pabrėža, Z. Alaunienė, L. Barzdžiukienė, V. Žulienė and R. Žukienė, E. Molytė, V. Liolienė, L. Pečkuvienė and V. Žilinskienė). 1996 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “On the Boundary between Language Culture and Stylistics” On October 4, the 4th Jonas Jablonskis Conference was held at the Rygiškių Jonas Gymnasium in Marijampolė. This time, the chosen topic was “On the Boundary between Language Culture and Stylistics,” and the conference was dedicated to commemorating the 70th anniversary of J. Pikčilingis’s birth (RE 1997). Papers were given by specialists in language culture and stylistics from higher education institutions and the Institute of the Lithuanian Language: K. Župerka, R. Koženiauskienė, R. Marcinkevičienė, J. Šukys, J. Barauskaitė, G. Čepaitienė, N. Linkevičienė, V. Labutis, A. Drukteinis, L. Grumadienė, A. Kupčinskaitė, P. Kniūkšta, R. Vladarskienė, V. Žilinskienė, A. Šiupienienė, language editor for the city of Vilnius, and I. Smetonienė, linguist at LTV. The conference examined contemporary language issues, the interaction of style and culture, and the relevance of language norms: the concept of stylistic culture in J. Pikčilingis’s works (K. Župerka), criteria for distinguishing language errors from stylistic errors (A. Drukteinis), the relationship between rhetorical elocution and language culture and stylistics (R. Koženiauskienė), euphemization (R. Marcinkevičienė), and others. 1997 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “Language Culture: Tradition and the Present” The fifth Jonas Jablonskis Conference took place on October 3. As Ramunė Vaskelaitė writes in issue 70 of the journal “Kalbos kultūra,” “a sizeable group of linguists and editors from the old university, other higher education institutions, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, the Language Commission, and the Language Inspectorate gathered in the Kazimieras Būga auditorium at Vilnius University to discuss” (Vaskelaitė 1997: 32). The conference organizers chose the topic “Language Culture: Tradition and the Present.” Not all the papers focused on the intersection or opposition of tradition and the present; ideas were also shared about the teaching and oversight of language culture, while discussions after each paper repeatedly returned to questions of tradition and innovation (Vaskelaitė 1997). It was noted that many foreign words are appearing in Lithuanian, but clear criteria for standardizing foreignisms have still not been formulated, making it difficult to discuss how to regulate them; even the term foreignism is treated differently in various publications on language standardization (J. Girčienė). It was emphasized that a new approach is needed not only to foreignisms but also to spoken language; research on the latter, corpora, and, more generally, an approach to this variety of language are lacking (L. Vaicekauskienė). A. Ryklienė’s paper addressed the greatest advantage of corpus linguistics—that is, the authenticity of the language data collected in corpora, which is so lacking in normative works on Lithuanian language usage. As a result, examples in those works are correct but unnatural, perhaps making them unacceptable to users. The conference also considered more specific language issues. J. Švambarytė spoke about the expansion of the meanings of international words, R. Vladarskienė about the syntactic expression of precision in the language of state documents, and A. Paulauskienė about the category of mood. P. Kniūkšta discussed usage trends and shifts involving the words national and national, state and of the state. D. Mikulėnienė, deputy chair of the Language Commission, introduced the Commission’s work and activities, while E. Mikulėnaitė, a representative of the Language Inspectorate, reviewed television journalists’ 3 errors. The course in language for specific purposes at universities and colleges was also discussed, including its importance and challenges (V. Labutis, Z. Alaunienė, E. Molytė). 1998 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “New Language Phenomena and Their Evaluation” It has become customary to hold the Jonas Jablonskis conferences in early October. This time, 19 papers on various topics were presented at the conference, and interesting discussions ensued. “Both linguists with extensive scholarly experience and doctoral students, assistants, and people concerned about language issues shared their thoughts” (Vileikienė 1998: 95). The questions raised by the speakers included: how to enhance the prestige of the language; what to do so that Lithuanian is not regarded as second-rate; how to guide the development of the standard language systematically; and how to understand language ecology (D. Mikulėnienė); and how to maintain a balance so that, by excessively restraining the emergence of new features in the language, its inherent tendency to develop is not disrupted (R. Miliūnaitė). The latter speaker presented rational and logical stages for standardizing language innovations, which remain relevant today: recording innovations, observing them, and identifying connections with similar phenomena; formulating the problem; deciding whether to leave the phenomenon to natural selection or to try to influence how it functions; issuing a recommendation if immediate codification is not possible, or clear positive or negative codification; and implementing the recommendation in usage. “Sometimes we should offer more advice and recommendations, rather than merely correcting,” said V. Labutis, speaking about the challenges of explaining minor breaches of norms. The conference addressed terminology management, foreignisms and their equivalents, and indeclinable words in Lithuanian (J. Girčienė, L. Vaicekauskienė, A. Ryklienė); corpora and automated searches within them (J. Mikelionienė); the language of advertising (I. Smetonienė); punctuation in poetic language (J. Abaravičius); the formal and syntactic structure of documents (R. Vladarskienė); and the use of the illative in journalistic writing (R. Vaskelaitė). 1999 Jono Jablonskis Conference “Changes in Norms and Usage” Fifteen papers were presented at the conference, and a number of problematic issues were discussed. The paper by D. Mikulėnienė, chair of the Language Commission, “Public Language: Norm and Usage,” prompted much discussion; the problem of teaching pronunciation was raised, and participants debated what constitutes correct language in general, and whether language can be appropriate without being entirely correct (Vileikienė 2000b). The conference also addressed the “Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian” and problems of language standardization (variants should not be accepted or rejected on the basis of a linguist’s native dialect or other individual usage tendencies; norms should be established objectively, following careful research into actual usage), as well as the dictionary’s significance and appealing format—an electronic version (G. Naktinienė, D. Murmulaitytė). The distinctive expression of electronic language was examined: in terms of both style and norms, this language is highly heterogeneous, and decisions are needed on how it should be evaluated and standardized (A. Ryklienė). R. Miliūnaitė’s paper, “Degrees of Evaluation of Language Phenomena in the Language Advice Handbook,” considered the flexibility of standardization, the possibility of variants, and the principles for evaluating linguistic phenomena in the “Language Advice Handbooks.” In his paper, V. Labutis raised the question of what contemporary language is, how we should understand it, and whether everything found in texts written in Lithuanian really belongs to the Lithuanian language. Another syntax specialist, J. Šukys, argued that the use of nominal infinitives is declining, and that language supervisors, editors, and teachers should help preserve it. As always, some papers focused on specific cases of usage: expressing a state with the instrumental (P. Kniūkšta), use of the preposition per with the accusative (V. M. Knabikaitė), use of the locative with nouns (R. Vaskelaitė), the language of legal documents (D. Černiauskienė), correct stress in teaching professional language (V. Žilinskienė, D. Vainauskienė), standardization of foreign words (J. Girčienė), standardization of terms (S. Zajankauskas), and the meaning and use of quotation marks (J. Abaravičius). 4 2000 Jono Jablonskis Conference “Levels of Language Norms and Usage” In an overview prepared for the “Topical Issues” column of Gimtoji kalba, Janina Vileikienė writes: “Continuing the discussion at last year’s conference on standard spoken language, Rita Miliūnaitė, senior research associate in the Language Culture Department of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, characterized standard spoken language in terms of the various phenomena that function within it—foreignisms, bureaucratic expressions, slang, and the like. Compared with written language, contemporary standard spoken language is highly heterogeneous and has recently been drawing ever closer to what is known as street language. Language specialists’ recommendations are heeded more often in written language, while they cannot always be applied to spoken language. Users of standard language must be encouraged to seek their own means of expression for standard spoken language” (Vileikienė 2000a: 15). The conference also discussed the distinctiveness of stylistic norms (K. Župerka), variants of stylistic terms (V. M. Knabikaitė), deviations from the norm in advertising language (D. Blažinskaitė), foreignisms in spoken and written usage (J. Girčienė, A. Ryklienė), causes of variation in dialectal language (L. Grumadienė), issues of semantic word formation and translation (A. Kaulakienė), terms for the inhabitants of countries (D. Liutkevičienė), encounters between phonetic theory and practice (R. Petkevičienė), and swear words in youth language (R. Apanavičius). Matters concerning the developing “Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian” were raised: what the criteria for selecting words should be and how scholarly vocabulary should be presented (G. Naktinienė and D. Svetikienė, L. Puzinienė). Several papers addressed the practical application of language norms: use of the locative to denote an area of activity (P. Kniūkšta), agreement of compound subjects and predicates in documents (R. Vladarskienė), and use of derivational synonyms (J. Vaskelienė). 2001 Jono Jablonskis Conference “Language Usage and Management” In the keynote paper, R. Koženiauskienė spoke about elite language. The presenter emphasized that standardization alone is not enough for elite language; it also requires communicative and ethical dimensions. The paper listed the features of elite language and concluded that its future depends on the media’s attitudes and sense of responsibility. Other papers discussed actual usage of standard language, breaches of norms, and the erosion of the boundary between private and public language (L. Grumadienė, J. Girčienė, A. Ryklienė). P. Kniūkšta noted that language management is becoming increasingly administrative, constrained by rules and bureaucratized, though another paper showed that ordinary language management also has its shortcomings (E. Rimkutė). R. Miliūnaitė explained how usage tendencies would be presented in the “Language Practice Advice” handbook and reflected on what a norm is in general. Several papers showed that there are uncodified language phenomena associated with foreign influences: fillers (G. Akelaitis), acronyms (R. Marcinkevičienė), and foreign words (V. Zubaitienė). Other linguistic phenomena discussed included adjectives used attributively (L. Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė) and the concept of stylistic management in J. Pikčilingis’s Lietuvių kalbos stilistika (V. Knabikaitė). As Ramunė Vaskelaitė summarized the conference, “new areas and varieties of usage, and new phenomena, not only invigorate the work of language management, but also compel us to reconsider the concepts of norm and standard language and to redefine the boundaries of normative language” (Vaskelaitė 2001: 113). It is also important that the conference participants expressed concern about the translation of European Union documents and decided to issue an appeal to government institutions and the public. The appeal proposed involving qualified language specialists in drafting and translating documents, since current documents do not always use normative language, which affects public usage. It must be acknowledged that, after some time, the linguists’ demands were heard, and language editors began working in the institutions of the European Union. 2002 Jono Jablonskis Conference “The Boundaries of Standard Language” As usual, overview and problem-oriented papers were presented. Some addressed theoretical questions, others the evaluation of specific linguistic phenomena, and still others matters of language management, 5 the fourth of language users’ attitudes. The papers at the opening session (V. Labutis, J. Klimavičius) focused on understanding the standard language and its boundaries; L. Grumadienė’s paper raised the question of changing language policy and how future membership of the European Union might affect it. Later papers raised further problems and questions: the pronunciation standards and development trends of standard Lithuanian (R. Petkevičienė), the relationship between the norms of the standard language and those of functional styles (K. Župerka), stylistic parallels between Lithuanian and Latvian (R. Kvašytė), the need for text typology (A. Bitinienė), linguistic pluralism in the electronic environment (A. Ryklienė), the realities of accepting or rejecting loanwords (J. Girčienė), the legitimization of the preposition virš in the standard language (P. Kniūkšta), the spread of the illative from administrative language into other official styles (R. Vladarskienė), metaphor and occasional formations in advertising texts (I. Smetonienė), and the expression of the relationship between addresser and addressee in one sermon by Father Stanislovas (G. Čepaitienė). Language use in society was also discussed. R. Miliūnaitė emphasized that the evaluation of linguistic phenomena is not simply binary—either a norm or an error—and that the boundaries between norms and errors are not always easy to define; it is therefore important for language planners to distinguish norms clearly from errors and to assess intermediate variants more flexibly. E. Zaikauskas drew attention to the spread of slang and its existence alongside the standard language; R. Koženiauskienė discussed the use of words such as autoritetas, garsenybė, įžymybė, pažiba and so on with distorted meanings; G. Akelaitis discussed the concept of linguistic fashion; and D. Smalinskas and R. Kanišauskaitė examined the relationship between language planning and everyday language management. 2003 Conference of Jonas Jablonskis, “Standard Lithuanian and Loanwords” At the very beginning of the conference, attention was drawn to the fact that the terms skolinys, svetimybė, svetimžodis may not be entirely clear; participants called for their more responsible use and more precise definition (Rudzevičius 2003). It was suggested that the List of New Foreign Words Not to Be Used, approved in 1997, was not so much perfect as problematic. Criteria for standardizing, selecting, and evaluating loanwords, their application in recommendations, and principles for standardizing loanwords were considered (R. Miliūnaitė, D. Mikulėnienė, L. Vaicekauskienė, R. Urnežiūtė). L. Grumadienė presented the nature of borrowing in Lithuanian in the context of the world’s languages. The papers showed that not only are loanwords spreading, but familiar international words are also being used with meanings uncharacteristic of Lithuanian (J. Klimavičius, R. Vladarskienė, P. Kniūkšta); musical genres are named using foreign words even in scholarly works (V. Černiūtė); there is reluctance to remove loanwords from dictionaries (A. Malakauskas); and competition between loanwords and their equivalents is particularly evident in spoken language (J. Girčienė). The conference offered many concrete examples of foreign-word usage, prompting discussion of possible equivalents. 2004 Conference of Jonas Jablonskis, “Lithuanian Word Formation” As P. Kniūkšta emphasized in his opening address, neologism formation is understood very broadly: it encompasses not only the formation of new words, but also new linguistic phenomena, processes, and tendencies in general (Blažinskaitė 2004: 201). The conference papers discussed a cognitive model of the reasons for lexical borrowing (L. Vaicekauskienė), the ways in which new words emerge and the purpose of their use (J. Girčienė, P. Rudzevičius), the formation of new terms (J. Klimavičius), and the spelling of food-product names (P. Kniūkšta). R. Vladarskienė drew attention to the influence of the language of European Union documents on Lithuanian administrative language: international words and cumbersome names had become more numerous, while noun-based constructions were overshadowing the verb-based expression characteristic of Lithuanian. R. Koženiauskienė examined the necessary moderation in the use of rhetorical embellishments in professional texts; D. Blažinskaitė, the use of terminological and stylistic neologisms in advertising; and I. Smetonienė, the stylistic punctuation of advertisements. R. Miliūnaitė’s paper explored textual pressure as a precondition for the emergence of new linguistic tendencies. A. Ryklienė 6 focused in her paper on contextual abbreviations in electronic language, while E. Bondzinskinė examined journalists’ incorrect stress placement. 2005 Conference of Jonas Jablonskis, “Standard Language and Society” For the first time, the conference became international. Eighteen papers were presented, seven of them by guests from abroad (Norway, Sweden, Estonia, and Latvia). The conference covered a broad range of topics, from language policy and language planning to in-depth studies of usage and speakers’ attitudes, and thus “made it possible not only to raise and discuss issues of concern to Lithuanian linguists, but also to share experience and engage in discussion with scholars from other countries, especially neighboring ones” (Blažinskaitė 2005: 275). In addition to Lithuanian language policy in a changing society and preparations for a new edition of the Language Law (I. Smetonienė), participants were introduced to language policy and standardization in Norway (R. V. Fjeld), Swedish language policy (B. Lindgren), public attitudes toward standardization in Italy (S. M. Lanza), the consultations provided by the Estonian Language Institute (S. Mäearu), the management of Estonian anthroponymy and toponymy (P. Päll), a new type of Estonian dictionary (T. Leemets and M. Raadik), stylistically marked verbs in Latvian and Russian (S. Polkovnikova), and an experiment concerning the distinctive worldview of trilingual speakers (M. Zavajalova). Current issues in Lithuanian were also discussed: the relationship between public signage and other types of signage (P. Kniūkšta), the relationship between codification and usage in contemporary Lithuanian (R. Miliūnaitė), how users understand the concept of bendrinė kalba and how they evaluate the language itself (L. Grumadienė, M. Ramonienė), the influence of English on television advertisements (L. Vaicekauskienė), child language (L. Kamandulytė, I. Savickienė), and even the use of quotation marks (R. Marcinkevičienė). L. Murinienė’s paper was devoted to language consultations, more specifically, the electronic consultation bank of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. 2006 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “The Standard Language and Other Language Varieties” The conference subtopics covered a fairly broad range, from the origins of the standard language to the present day; they addressed the standard language and dialects, and the functional spread of the standard language (Rudzevičius 2006: 291). Z. Zinkevičius’s paper presented a fairly detailed history of written and spoken Lithuanian standard language, arguing that the origins of the standard language should be sought in the mid-13th century, in the time of King Mindaugas. P. V. Subačius examined the polytext of “Anykščių šilelis,” while V. Zubaitienė considered how much and what kind of semantic information about Lithuanian words is provided in old dictionaries. R. Koženiauskienė pointed out that the concept of language culture also has a broader meaning, and that teaching language culture should not be confined to a circle of theoretical discussions. The relationship between the standard language and dialect was discussed (the case of Joniškėlis) (M. Ramonienė), as were the Kazlų Rūda variety (A. Pupkis), conflict between dialect and the standard language (I. Balčiūnienė), and the problem of the quasi-standard (D. Aliūkaitė). A. Gritėnienė’s paper on plant names in dialects and R. Miliūnaitė’s discussion of feather names from the perspective of schoolchildren supplemented the topic. Under the subtopic “The Functional Spread of the Standard Language,” papers were presented on international vocabulary in terminology (A. Čižikaitė), phenomena on the margins of norms in administrative language (P. Kniūkšta, R. Vladarskienė), the intersection of functional styles in the press (A. Leonavičienė), and learning Lithuanian as a foreign language (L. Čubajevaitė). 2007 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “New Loanwords and Their Standardization” This conference focused on “perhaps the most dynamic layer of vocabulary at present (2007 – author’s note)—new loanwords and the language policy that regulates them” (Bertašavičiūtė 2007: 192). A number of topical questions were considered and presented. One of these was the influence of foreign languages and its control (P. Kniūkšta), when encountering different realities of life: attitudes toward Russianisms were a form of national self-healing, whereas new loanwords from the West spread freely because they are not associated with coercion. Z. Babickienė reviewed current issues in standardization 7 in linguistic literature; L. Nevinskaitė examined language standardization and the dissemination of recommendations from the perspective of communication theory; standardization issues were also raised in L. Vaicekauskienė’s paper “Conservatism and Modernity in Loanword Standardization Policy.” In response to questions raised at earlier conferences, the conference addressed administrative language (R. Vladarskienė), translations of European Commission texts (J. Morkus and E. Zaikauskas), and the newest loanwords in radio and television broadcasts (R. Kanišauskaitė). The third session explored specific cases of new loanword usage: old loanwords in the contemporary context (L. Kalėdienė), loanwords for naming cheeses (D. Liutkevičienė), words containing the element technovartosena and the norm (J. Mikelionienė), and loanword usage in discussion forums (G. Tamaševičius). During the conference, a discussion entitled “Language Standardization in Lithuania: Needs, Measures, Attitudes” was held, addressing the reasons for discrepancies between loanword standardization and actual usage, variation, unsuccessful cases of codification, the problem of adapting foreign words, and specific words from the new culture, their usage, and the norm (I. Smetonienė, N. Kardelis, S. Drazdauskas, S. Žukas). 2008 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “Sociolinguistic Studies of the Lithuanian Language” This was the 16th Jonas Jablonskis Conference. As Erikė Jasionytė writes in her review (2008), the papers presented sought to encourage sociolinguistic research on the Lithuanian language, spark academic young people’s interest in sociolinguistic topics, and reveal various methodological aspects of sociolinguistic research. This time, only 7 papers were presented, followed by a discussion. In the first paper, M. Ramonienė introduced conference participants to an international project whose aim was to analyze the relationship between the languages and other language varieties used in Lithuania’s major cities and national identity. The other papers highlighted specific features of various language varieties. They examined the language of blogs (R. Miliūnaitė); manipulation through phraseological expressions, the possibilities of language games, and the resulting need for linguistic expertise (R. Koženiauskienė); vocabulary characteristic of spoken language, its usage and relationship to Lithuanian dictionaries, and the possible inclusion of spoken words and their meanings in the “Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian” (G. Tamaševičius); attitudes toward dialectal speech (D. Aliūkaitė); differences between men’s and women’s speech (L. Simonavičienė); and sign language (D. Mantrim'as). “At the end of the conference, participants shared opinions and advice on how to conduct sociolinguistic research” (Zubaitienė 2008: 322). 2009 Jonas Jablonskis Conference “Language Variation and Language Attitudes” At the 17th conference, considerable attention was again devoted to sociolinguistic issues, and participants were introduced to the latest research and findings in this branch of science (Aleksandravičiūtė 2009: 351). The first session presented a joint Lithuanian-Latvian project, “Baltic Sociolinguistics: Linguistic Self-Awareness in Society in Lithuania and Latvia” (L. Vaicekauskienė, I. Druviete, L. Lauze, J. Girčienė, L. Nevinskaitė, R. Vladarskienė). A second project, “Language Use and National Identity in Lithuanian Cities” (M. Ramonienė, K. Geben, L. Kalėdienė, A. Lichäčiova), was presented at the second session. Researchers from Latvia presented the system for assessing linguistic competencies used in Latvia (R. Zauere) and discussed correlations between forms of address used in Latvian general education institutions and sociolinguistic factors (A. Blūmane). The talks addressed not only dialect codes (D. Aliūkaitė and E. Merkytė), but also the language attitudes of hearing people and members of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community (B. Sušinskaitė); manifestations of colloquial style in public speech, public inscriptions, and politicians’ speeches (R. Koženiauskienė, G. Tamaševičius); and women’s surnames without suffixes (R. Miliūnaitė). 8 2010 International Jonas Jablonskis Conference, “Jonas Jablonskis and the Centenary of Standard Lithuanian” The conference was devoted to the 150th anniversary of Jonas Jablonskis’s birth—to commemorating his legacy, discussing the characteristics of the formation and development of standard languages, and examining current problems of language standardization and future prospects (Aleksandravičiūtė 2010). Among the participants were 7 speakers from abroad. The first part featured presentations about the book of letters and memoirs “Konstancija and Jonas Jablonskiai” (J. Jablonskis’s prov Aikaitė E. Lukėnaitė-Griciuvienė), J. Jablonskis’s linguistic, pedagogical, scholarly, and public activities (A. Piročkinas, V. Labutis, G. Čepaitienė, V. Sakalauskienė, G. Akelaitis, I. Čiužauskaitė, V. Buivydienė, L. Lapinskienė), and his attention to style (R. Koženiauskienė). In the conference session devoted to standard European languages and their development, guests from abroad reviewed the development and current state of standard German (G. Stickel); S. Walton introduced the audience to the biography and work of I. Aasen, the creator of the Norwegian written language; K. Upt on discussed the standardization of English; Dz. Šulce’ė discussed the use of proper names from other languages in Latvian; V. Laugale’ė addressed issues in standardizing school names; P. Pällas discussed documents governing the Estonian language; and his colleagues T. Paet and T. Rehemaa recounted the history of compiling Estonia’s popular “Dictionary of International Words,” discussed problems in classifying words by origin, and highlighted the main improvements in the new edition. Relevant issues for Lithuanian were also discussed: how the understanding of standard-language norm-setters has changed since Jablonskis’s time (R. Miliūnaitė); the history of correcting the nominative case, from Jablonskis’s “Cases and Prepositions” to the present day (I. Smetonienė and B. Dambrauskaitė); students’ knowledge of language culture and usage skills (K. Bredelis); and pupils’ linguistic attitudes (D. Aliūkaitė and J. Jončaitė). The 2011 conference was not held. After the Standard Language Department was established at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, the conference resumed in 2012 and has since continued to be organized in turn through the joint efforts of both institutions: the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Vilnius University. 2012: The 19th Jonas Jablonskis Conference, Commemorating the Centenary of “Lithuanian Language Syntax” This time the conference had a specific focus: it was devoted to the centenary of “Lithuanian Language Syntax” by Rygiškių Jonas (J. Jablonskis), published in Seinai in 1911. Five papers on syntactic theory and practice were presented: they addressed the usage of words, word combinations, and sentences, and discussed trends in the development of syntax. The benefits and importance of Lithuanian syntax—which was described as a gift to the Lithuanian language—for schools were emphasized: until then, there had been a great shortage of textbooks that included a section on syntax. In his paper “Examples from Part I of Rygiškių Jonas’s Lithuanian Language Syntax, Their Sources, Purpose, and Methods of Presentation,” V. Labutis discussed the more than 2,900 examples from spoken and written language included in the 110-page publication; some of them had not been recorded anywhere else. A. Drukteinis spoke about speaker intention and the formation of subordinate clauses, while R. Miliūnaitė discussed constructions expressing states. R. Vladarskienė examined the standardization of complex subordinate sentences, and D. Šveikauskienė raised the problem that Lithuanian is one of the least computerized languages in Europe. No corpora in Lithuania yet include syntactic-function annotations, although such corpora are very popular worldwide, so the proposal was made to compile a syntactic corpus of Lithuanian (Tamašauskaitė 2012: 230–231). 9 2013: 20th Jonas Jablonskis Conference, “The Life and Renewal of the Lithuanian Language in Contemporary Society” On October 4, the Lithuanian Language Institute hosted the jubilee 20th Jonas Jablonskis Conference, devoted to examining changes in the norms and usage of the standard language and discussing the status of the Lithuanian language and how it is implemented. Seventeen papers were presented at the conference. The first part of the first session was devoted to the life and work of linguist Jonas Jablonskis, the functioning of Lithuanian as the state language, and language policy. Speakers discussed guidelines for language development and emphasized that J. Jablonskis should be seen as an integrated, modern personality—a scholar who, when standardizing the language, always drew on how people spoke (J. Klimavičius). They also discussed the standard language and changes in how it is understood (L. Kalėdienė), language policy in today’s multilingual and multi-temporal world (D. Vaišnienė), the origins of place names and hydronyms in the Vilnius and Šalčininkai districts, and the spelling of personal names (K. Garšva). The second part examined phraseology, which demonstrates the particular stylistic vitality of the Lithuanian language (R. Koženiauskienė); intertextuality in advertising (I. Smetonienė); language change in the media (R. Dobržinskienė, I. Nanartonytė); and blended formations in contemporary usage (R. Miliūnaitė). The second part of the conference discussed lexical innovations in administrative language (R. Vladarskienė), problems in translating administrative texts (A. Leonavičienė and D. Liepuoniūtė), principles governing the adaptation of international words in a given language (Dz. Šulcė), and included two papers on the Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian (D. Murmulaitytė, A. Tamulionienė). A separate part of the session was devoted to issues of evaluating linguistic phenomena and to syntax: degrees of evaluation of linguistic phenomena (L. Murinienė), syntactic features of legal documents (L. Pečkuvienė and G. Čepaitienė), the usage and evaluation of the expression tikėti į ką (“believe in something”), and locative forms to be avoided when expressing an object's attribute (V. Valskys). The speaker maintained that locative constructions are quite numerous and productive in current usage, and therefore invited discussion on whether the constructions under consideration should in fact be avoided (Tamulionienė 2013; Urnėžiūtė, Valskys 2013). 2014: 21st International Jonas Jablonskis Conference, “Contemporary Language Research and Problems” The conference covered a very broad range of topics and sought to bring together researchers from all fields of linguistics. It focused on research and issues in phonetics, lexicon, grammar, syntax, stylistics, and rhetoric, as well as changes in norms in contemporary language (Tamulionienė 2014). Speakers from various institutions in Lithuania and abroad took part, presenting 27 papers. Participants in the plenary session heard papers on the conception of phonological science (A. Andronov), style as a linguistic sign (J. Bartmiński), the survival and development of Estonian (B. Klaas-Lang), and conversational endings in Latvian (L. Lauze). Participants then split into four sections. The first discussed names of plant-based characters in contemporary Lithuanian children's prose (A. Gritėnienė), problems in standardizing biblical names (B. Gudelienė), features of stress in nouns in Vilnius colloquial speech (J. Urbanavičienė), the pragmaticalization of mental verbs (J. Liauksmnienė), the semantic map of the Italian definite article (A. Keturakis), and the role of words in creating the image of contemporary politicians (M. Stasilo). The second section addressed the evaluation category “to be avoided” (R. Miliūnaitė), orthoepic problems in Latvian (Dz. Šulcė), accompanying texts in collections of works by Latvian and Lithuanian philologists (D. Laiveniece), the language of blogs written by upper-grade students (A. Tamulionienė), reasons for the spread of constructions with the intensive preposition dei in administrative language (R. Vladarskienė), and the question of whether the List of Major Language Errors remains relevant (E. Rimkutė). The third section examined innovations in experimental prosody research—the analysis of pitch accents among Telšiai speakers of Northern Samogitian (E. Švageris), secondary predicates in positional constructions (B. Riaubienė), comparisons of English and Lithuanian word combinations and word sequences (L. Vilkaitė), and terminological synonymy between native and borrowed words in literary stu- 10 dies (A. Helviga); features of a corpus of Estonian students' texts (K. Sõrmus); and the text rewriting method and blind text entry (S. Makarova). Papers in the fourth section addressed features of rhetoric: extended metaphor as a means of argumentation in the media (R. Koženiauskienė), the function of synecdoche in advertising texts (I. Smetonienė), the concept and functions of opinion leaders (D. Liepinytė-Kytrienė), the use of fillers in spoken Lithuanian (L. Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė and P. Godliauskas), and an overview of the theory of precedent phenomena and its principal concepts, defining its relationship with intertextuality theory and discourse analysis (S. Amankevičiūtė). 2015: 22nd Jonas Jablonskis Conference, “The Lithuanian Language in Contemporary Schools” The conference topic was highly relevant, focusing on research into students’ language and language attitudes, as well as on teaching and assessment practices. Guests from the Seimas Committee on Education, Science and Culture, the Ministry of Education and Science, the National Examination Centre, and Lithuanian-language teachers from schools across Lithuania came to listen to the papers and take part in discussions (Labanauskienė 2015; Tamulionienė 2015). Speakers discussed teaching standard pronunciation and stress (L. Kalėdienė), the spoken language of school students in southeastern Lithuania and its evaluation (K. Garšva), rhetorical argumentation at school and the composition of argumentative essays (R. Koženiauskienė), scent in contemporary Lithuanian children's prose and Lithuanian language classes (A. Gritėnienė), the comprehension of literary texts and reading experiences (A. Jovaišienė and K. Bredelis), software and hardware defects that negatively affect students’ language culture (G. Grigas and T. Jevsikova), the use of double case forms in school-leavers’ essays (S. Labanauskienė), the most characteristic spelling errors in blogs and essays written by upper-grade students (A. Tamulionienė), the essay assessment system in general education schools (Z. Nauckūnaitė), and the teaching of problematic Latvian spelling issues at school (Dz. Šulce). Questions were raised about what kind of student the Lithuanian language and literature school-leaving examination educates (S. Vasiliauskas), what should be improved in the work of examiners assessing Lithuanian language and literature essays (R. Miliūnaitė), and whether the oral presentation assessment is a test or a kingdom of distorting mirrors (R. Urnėžiūtė). At the end of the conference, after all the papers had been heard, a discussion was held on “The Concept of Style at School: We Know That We Know Nothing Anymore?” (I. Smetonienė, V. Dailidienė, V. Lisauskienė, K. Bredelis). The 23rd International Jonas Jablonskis Conference, “Meaning in Language and Culture,” 2016 The conference focused on the area of J. Jablonskis’s research that had received the least attention to date: semantics. Thus, for the first time in the conference’s history, attention was concentrated for two days on problems of semantics in old writings, dialects, and the standard language, as well as on aspects of cultural meanings. The event was attended by 69 researchers from various countries around the world: Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. Participants also came from various institutions in Lithuania. During the conference, participants worked in four sections: Standard Language, Dialectology, Ethnolinguistics, and Old Writings. The plenary papers addressed diverse and wide-ranging topics. They were presented by invited scholars from Lithuania and abroad, each representing one of the conference sections: J. Bartmiński represented the Ethnolinguistics section, P. U. Dini the Old Writings section, D. Mikulėnienė the Dialectology section, and A. Smetona the Standard Language section. J. Bartmiński presented his methodology, which focuses on the worldview encoded in language; P. U. Dini spoke about the difficulties of translating Martin Luther’s “Small Catechism,” noting the need to study translations made in all the Baltic languages, comparing them with the source and with one another, as well as with other related texts; D. Mikulėnienė presented J. Jablonskis’s views on dialectology, explaining how he regarded and evaluated dialects; A. Smetona raised the following questions: how do today’s principles of language standardization accord with J. Jablonskis’s teaching? Does the spirit and principles of J. Jablonskis’s language modernization still remain in today’s standardization work 11 or do we recognize J. Jablonskis’s importance at a particular historical moment and then forget it? The Standard Language section addressed changes and shifts in meaning, neologisms (I. Migla, R. Mikelionytė, R. Miliūnaitė, D. Murmulaitytė, R. Stunžinas, J. Vaskelienė, A. Veisbergs, J. Zabarskaitė), the semantics of individual verbs in the standard language (A. Gaidienė, L. Vaičiulytė-Semenienė), conceptualization in the standard language (D. Aliūkaitė, A. Gritėnienė, V. Sakalauskienė), problems in presenting meanings in dictionaries (D. Liutkevičienė, J. Lubienė), and language use brought to the fore in public discourse (R. Baranauskienė). The Dialectology section discussed the meanings of certain dialect words (P. Grablunas, A. Leskauskaitė, J. Lubienė and D. Pakalniškienė, A. Stafecka), other problems in dialectology and recent research (R. Bakšienė, M. Jankowiak, V. Kardelis, V. Meiliūnaitė, Ch. Schneider, F. Sommer), and examined the meanings of sounds and stress patterns (I. Isajev, L. Murinienė, J. Niewulis-Grablunas, V. Ragaišienė, E. Trumpa). Participants in the Old Writings section devoted considerable attention to the meanings of individual lexemes in old writings (E. Andronova, A. Cerri, B. Maskuliūnas, N. Ostrowski, J. Wiśnioch). Two papers addressed problems in Baltic studies (D. Ardoino, I. Lemeškin). Several researchers discussed various lexicographic problems (Ch. Schiller, A. Trumpa, V. Zubaitienė); other papers related to semantics and old writings were also presented (K. Dambrauskas, D. Jakulytė, M. Sinkūnas, J. Pajėdienė, S. Piccini, L. Plausinait y tė, P. Vanags). The Ethnolinguistics section addressed schools of ethnolinguistics (S. Talstaja, A. Gudavičius) and specific ethnolinguistic issues in descriptions of concepts (S. Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska) and dictionaries (Z. Sawaniewska-Mochowa); participants also heard analyses of specific concepts (M. Bogdzevič, S. Papaurelytė, M. Smetona, I. Smetonienė). The second day’s sessions examined specific problems: the expression of (im)politeness in crime discourse (S. Jakimovienė), names for the devil in dialects and folklore (B. Jasiūnaitė), THE STRANGER and ONE’S OWN in the Aukštaitian Vilnius dialect (D. Kardelytė-Grinevičienė), the positive pathos of discourse in European institutions (R. Petrauskaitė), ways of using data from the documents of the Kraków Ethnographic Museum for research purposes (D. Rak, M. Rak), and the significance of superstitions and proverbs for reconstructing people’s social life, customs, superstitions, and value systems (M. Tolstaja, K. Rutkovska) (Judžentytė 2016). The 24th Jonas Jablonskis Conference, 2017: “Digital Language Resources, Their Development Directions and Possibilities for Use” This year’s conference focused on issues arising at the intersection of languages and digital technologies, encountered in developing digital resources and creating a common digital market. Speakers from various Lithuanian and foreign institutions participated in the conference. The conference featured presentations on living language in artificial intelligence (A. Saudargas); the state of native-language technologies, quantifying the economic, social, and linguistic consequences of language policy in the digital age, and the European Union’s information and communication technology policy (R. Rivera); and written and spoken Lithuanian in conventional and electronic media (L. Telksnys). Speech-controlled services LIEPA (A. Valotka and G. Navickas), digital Lithuanian-language resources (J. Zabarskaitė, S. Šermukšnis, D. Budriūnaitė), the Database of New Lithuanian Words (R. Miliūnaitė), and the Lithuanian Geographical Names Geoinformation Database (L. Bilkis) were presented. There were also presentations on research into word formation of neologisms and prospects for investigating emerging neologism-formation phenomena (D. Murmulaitytė), on the state and prospects of Lithuanian speech-controlled services and work to develop and expand their use (L. Telksnys and G. Navickas), and on the present and prospects of Lithuanian speech synthesis (P. Kasparaitis 12 and G. Skersys), corpus linguistics, and two annotated Lithuanian-language corpora (E. Rimkutė, A. Bielinskienė, L. Buazu, J. Kovalevskaitė, I. Bumbulienė, T. Krilavičius, J. Mandravickaitė, L. Vilkaitė). Drawing on the Student Written Work Corpus being compiled at Vilnius University, G. Judžentytė and V. Zubaitienė discussed the structure and semantics of academic-language phrases. At the conference’s final session, “Automated Analysis of Language Structure and Texts,” presentations were heard on the latest achievements in machine translation, projects carried out by various institutions, and new breakthroughs using neural machine translation (D. Ralys); the development of a new-generation computational morphology for Lithuanian, morphological analysis and synthesis of words, and intelligent text-information retrieval (V. Dadurkevičius); and the digitization of grammar (D. Šveikauskienė and V. Šveikauskas). The conference concluded with M. Šinkūnas’s presentation on the automation and visualization of research into the history of Bible translations (Tamulionienė 2017). The 25th International Scholarly Jonas Jablonskis Conference, 2018: “Variability in Languages and Their Varieties” The conference attracted no fewer than 66 participants, more than half of them from abroad. As conference organizer Gintarė Judžentytė wrote in the October issue of “Gimtoji kalba,” “in view of current issues and trends in linguistics, the Jablonskis conference aimed to: 1) invite an international community of linguists interested in variation at different levels of language to engage in academic dialogue; 2) move beyond the narrow issue of language standardization, broaden the range of scholarly interests, and focus on research into language variation” (Judžentytė 2018: 20). The conference organizers noted that variation also falls within Jablonskis’s own field of work, although until now it has most often been emphasized from the perspective of language standardization. The aim was to consider the difficulties Jablonskis may have faced and how language varies today; accordingly, “the conference sought to attract speakers who would analyze questions and problems of variation relevant to other languages as well, not only Lithuanian. In this way, another aim of the conference was to consider what problems arise when standardizing languages in other countries and what universals characterize different languages” (Judžentytė 2018: 20). Participants came from various countries (Algeria, Italy, Japan, China, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Nigeria, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Germany) and from various Lithuanian institutions (Klaipėda University, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, Šiauliai University, Vilnius University, the Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius University, and Vytautas Magnus University). Work was conducted in four sections: Standard Language, Phonology and Dialectology, Ethnolinguistics, and Old Writings. The plenary session addressed the influence of J. Jablonskis’s work on linguistic discourses and his image as a linguist, teacher, and father of the standard language (D. Mikulėnienė); the form of Martin Luther’s “Small Catechism” (or “Enchiridion”) ainawijdi (P. U. Dini); the concept kaltūnas in Polish and Lithuanian languages and cultures (Z. Sawaniewska-Mochowa and M. Kasner); and phraseological variation in Latvian (I. Migla). Presentations in the Standard Language section examined grammatical variation in fixed Lithuanian expressions (A. Bielinskienė, J. Kovalevskaitė, E. Rimkutė, and L. Vilkaitė-Lozdienė); infantile language emerging in electronic discourse (R. Miliūnaitė); the use of academic-language phrases in bachelor’s theses by students of natural and biomedical sciences (L. Plaušinait ytė); higher-education students’ attitudes toward varieties of English and their intercultural understanding (Z. Xi); constructions with indeclinable participles ending in -ot(ies) and -am(ies)/-ām(ies) in Latvian (A. Kalnača and I. Lokmane); the relative order of attributive adjectives (J. Okami); paradigms of English verbs with alternating past-tense and second-type participle forms (E. Shekhtman); levels and sources of verb variation in the Baltic languages (J. Korostenskienė); the color khaki in contemporary written Lithuanian (L. Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė); and slang-derived adverbs formed with suffixes 13 variation (R. Kudirka), the role of paronyms in standard language (I. Urbanoviča), names for characteristics in the Database of Lithuanian Neologisms (A. Aleksaitė), the influence of English on social media (S. E. Nwachi), archetypal features of English folkloric texts (L. Tatarenko), quantitative indicators in the analysis of the functional styles of written texts (J. Mandravickaitė), the morphological adaptation of nouns of foreign origin (S. Vaičiakauskienė); A. Vitale discussed the transformation of the word hostis, and the “private” and “public” in Baltic and Slavic languages. The Dialectology and Phonology section discussed the features of correct language as assessed by an ordinary member of a speech community (D. Aliūkaitė), the durability of dialectal features and their expression in Lithuanian quasi-standards (D. Mikulėnienė), the lexical system of dialects in north-eastern England in 2000–2010 (M. Kolisnyk), variation and change in Lithuanian (Ch. Schneider), the formation of the Anglo-Norman dialect of French (Y. Višenskaja), Lithuanian in borderland areas (N. Tuomienė), whether a grandfather and his grandchild can still understand one another in the Punsk region (J. Niewulis-Grablunas), somatonyms in the Northern Samogitian subdialect (J. Lubienė and D. Pakalniškienė), studies of Latvian vowels (S. Čeirāne and I. Indričāne), what individual phonetic variation can explain about phonology (M. Nakamura), energy paradigms (A. Kalyta), positional variants of /l/ in standard Latvian (J. Taperte), nouns in the Warmia and Masuria dialects (E. Grześkiewicz), a study of the quality of labialized and nasalized vowels in Standard Lithuanian (E. Ledichova), and the dependence of intonation-unit variability and perception on position (I. Gorbačiova). The Ethnolinguistics section analyzed the meaning of words and their cultural connotations based on the concept of earth (K. Rutkovska), variation in death (M. Smetona), the conceptualization of truth (I. Snukiškienė), models of perceiving shame (M. Bogdzevič), the words laumė and ragana in Lithuanian (J. Vaskelienė), names for devils derived from names of social estates or nationalities (B. Jasiūnaitė), the names cow, bull, calf and the diversity of their motivations (Ž. Šalaviejūtė), the evaluation of people in Lithuanian dialect paremiology (V. Sakalauskienė), Russian, Slovenian, and Lithuanian biblical phraseology (J. Konickaja), natural diversity as a source of ethnolinguistic multidimensionality (M. Abdennour), parallels between surnames in Latgale and Lithuania (A. Stafecka), and variation in the phraseology of Polish dialects (A. Tyrpa). In the Old Writings section, conference participants heard papers on the linguistic biography of the Lithuanian proverb God gave teeth, God will also give bread (D. Ardoino), N + N compounds in Donelaitis’s texts (A. Cerri), the use of the -am, -at and -ahm, -aht endings of the first- and second-person plural present and past indicative forms of verbs in seventeenth-century Latvian writings (J. Wiśnioch), spelling variants of proper names in unpublished eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Latvian texts (I. Jansone), changes in Latin-language interference in fifteenth-century France (I. Borbenčiuk), the use of Latin and its reflection in works by Lithuanian authors (C. Barna), athematic verb conjugation in sixteenth-century Lithuanian writings of the reforms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (K. Dambrauskas), the functions of the semantically empty conjunctions kad and jog in nineteenth-century writings in the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect (R. Rinkauskienė), and the history of language editing in Maironis’s “Voices of Spring” (J. Venskienė). The closing plenary session addressed variation and its importance to the history of the early period of Latvian writing (P. Vanags), features of synonymy in concepts (I. Smetonienė), and the areal-typological complexity of Lithuanian dialects (V. Kardelis). The 26th International Scientific Jonas Jablonskis Conference, 2019: “Linguistic Diversity in the Contemporary World: The Power and Prestige of Language” The conference theme was also very broad: “the organizers brought together the international academic community to discuss linguistic diversity in languages, dialects, and speech communities; the use of languages and its particularities; language standardization; changes in language norms; standard 14 language and the relationship between dialects and other language varieties; trends in European language policy and planning; the power and prestige of language; the development of advanced linguistic tools and electronic services; the benefits of digital language resources; and more. Participants from 15 countries delivered 45 papers on these topics” (Jaroslavienė, Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė 2019: 1). The first plenary session covered current language-policy topics. Particularly important was the paper by S. Kirchmeier, Vice-President of the European Federation of National Institutions for Language and Chair of the Danish Language Technology Committee, formerly Director of the Danish Language Council. She introduced the Federation’s activities and surveyed European language-policy issues, policy-planning trends, and the state of language-technology development in Denmark and other European countries. Her paper challenged narratives then circulating in Lithuania that language was regulated only in Lithuania, while standardization and language policy in other European countries were left to develop on their own. “Drawing on the results of one of the most recent studies, Dr. Sabine Kirchmeier noted that in 21 European countries, languages are regulated by a constitution, a language law, and/or other documents. Differences in regulation depend on historically established circumstances and traditions, the formation of standard languages, and other particularities” (Jaroslavienė, Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė 2019: 3). F. Hinskens introduced the past and present of standard Dutch, drawing attention to rapidly changing language norms and to how language is regulated by law. A. P. Kristinsson spoke about the current situation of Icelandic, discussing the importance of language policy in Iceland, the need to inform the public, and the availability and dissemination of measures for language cultivation. He emphasized the impact and importance of language technologies and other advanced digital tools in cultivating the native language and strengthening its prestige. The next four sessions discussed the importance of language to a nation, drawing on the example of the history of Catalan (P. U. Dini); prescriptivism and scientific rigor in linguistics (A. Valotka); the use of adjectives from a psycholinguistic perspective and their variation in French (N. Dankova); the formal basis of Lithuanian noun declensions (J. Pakerys and I. Rudaitis); ways of revitalizing an endangered language and applying culture and art to rekindle the power of language (D. Z. Kumar); Samogitian and Southern Aukštaitian linguistic attitudes and their paradoxes, and the vitality of local varieties (D. Aliukaitė); questions of linguistic identity and attitudes in the Visaginas community and related realities (I. Dabašinskienė); mapping linguistic variation (Ch. Schneider and V. Kardelis); and language use in borderland areas (N. Tuomienė). The conference also featured a statistical parametric synthesis of Lithuanian speech (P. Kasparaitis and M. Beniuše) and a description of typical phonoconcepts in English folk literature (L. Tatarenko). Papers analyzed the category of repetition in linguistic discourse (Z. Pakholok), dictionary definitions and their theoretical and practical problems (S. Jerėnė), specific linguistic and non-linguistic aspects affecting the process of style generation (Y. Vyshenskaya), and the diversity of Slavicisms and hybrids in Motiejus Valančius’s “Samogitian Proverbs” (A. Smetonienė). At the second day’s plenary session, B. Klaas-Lang presented issues of Estonian language policy and sustainability in higher education; R. Miliūnaitė discussed the status of Standard Lithuanian in the context of the dynamics of standard languages in Europe during the post-standardization period; and I. Smetonienė explained what the concept language means to a Lithuanian and how customs can be transmitted through language, regardless of a person’s place of residence. In the other sessions on the second day, a considerable number of papers were devoted to experimental phonetics (A. Kalyta, M. Kutsenko, V. Artjomenko and S. Čėirāne, E. Riekhakaynen and I. Telova) and specific language issues. These included peripheral folktales as a linguistic and motivational distinctive feature (M. Gavurová); the Lithuanian prefix su- and the Classical Greek prefix συν- (C. Barna); features of the formation of the Raseiniai geolect (D. Dambrauskienė); how ‘far’ sometimes becomes ‘near’ in Aukštaitian speech (G. Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė); and proper names in the Panevėžys subdialect (K. Garšva). Poster presentations were delivered in the seventh session. The conference’s closing session focused on Lithuanian studies in schools: discussion centered on Lithuanian language and literature 15 the necessity of changing the maturity examination, and presented the results of the latest research and insights into students’ attitudes and the impact of other languages on students’ Lithuanian; the relationship between language use, teaching, and learning was discussed (Z. Nauckūnaitė, N. Poderienė and S. Vaičiakauskienė, A. Tamulionienė). Two further presentations devoted to language issues were heard at this session: L. Murinienė’s presentation on the names of legal entities and their linguistic conformity to standards, and A. Aleksaitė’s on emotional-expressive lexis in the Database of Lithuanian Neologisms. The 27th International Scholarly Conference of Jonas Jablonskis, 2022: “(Language Variation, Change, Standardization” The conference took place after a two-year break. The aim was to continue the themes of the 25th Jonas Jablonskis Conference: to explore issues of variation further while also examining other related aspects—language change and standardization. The conference addressed a range of questions: linguistic diversity in languages, dialects, and linguistic communities; language change; features of language use and standardization; relations between the standard language, dialects, and other language varieties; and current issues in language policy and standardization. Language technologies and questions of language and identity were also included in the conference program (Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė 2022: 27). The event was attended in person and remotely by 27 researchers from abroad and 22 from Lithuanian institutions, and work was carried out in five sections: Dialectology and Phonology, Language and Identity, Language Diversity and Standardization, Early Writings and Language Development, and Variants and Norms. At the first plenary session, presentations were heard on problematic links between language change and standardization (P. Cuzzolin), and on the model of language standardization and the place of multilingualism in the text of language standardization (N. McLelland). The Dialectology and Phonology section explored issues of empirical documentation and problematic aspects of corpus formation (V. Kardelis), considered whether dialect features can be identified in archival court documents (Ch. Schneider), discussed the language of residents of villages formerly located in the Kaunas Lagoon area (Ž. Šidlauskas), the dialect features of the Southern Samogitian Raseiniai subdialect (D. Dambrauskienė), somatonyms in the Northern Samogitian subdialect (J. Lubienė and D. Pakalniškienė), the interaction of Lithuanian and Polish in the vicinity of Rodūnia (N. Tuomienė), the acoustic structure of stress in Lithuanian and Latvian (E. Švageris), and the three-gender system in the Eastern Campania dialect (G. Visco). The Language and Identity section discussed the concept of democracy (I. Smetonienė), vocabulary used in Eastern Poland in connection with Christmas and related traditions (D. K. Rembiszewska), the concept of patriotism in times of peace and war (M. Smetona), the media image of Barack Obama as a charismatic politician (M. Boičenko), the Eastern Lithuanian diaspora and its identity: the cases of the Trans-Volga region and Kazakhstan (L. Vilkienė), and what the Polish Dzūkians think about their language and which language they feel most comfortable speaking (P. Grablunas and J. Niewulis-Grablunas). K. Konczewska presented the scholarly legacy of Wandalin Scukiewicz as new research material for studying the Slavic and Baltic language community in the border area of Lithuania, Belarus, and Poland. The Early Writings and Language Development section examined the Prussian language (P. U. Dini, I. Lemeškin), changes in Lithuanian lexis at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (V. Zubaitienė), the development of dictionaries of contemporary and standard Lithuanian from the late 19th century to the 21st century (V. Sakalauskienė), the authorship of the work “Poesia in lingua Biruta,” found in Giuseppe Mezzofanti’s manuscript archive (D. Ardoino), Latvian house names (A. Trumpa), and the constituent parts of Kiprijonas Lukauskas’s manuscript and the sermon “Kada wisa žaymibe Kiemioniszku Žmoniu...” (J. Pajėdienė). Presentations in the Language Diversity and Standardization section ranged from theoretical insights to practical matters. Topics included competition between Vilnius and Kaunas in the mental maps of young Aukštaitians and Samogitians (D. Aliūkaitė), the Podhale dialect (A. Mlekodaj), the bilingual situation in Malta and the path of the local language toward standardization (J. M. Brincat), the state 16 centenary of the Lithuanian language (A. Antanaitis), language use guided by the principle of economy (I. Urbanoviča), the criterion of language functionality and its significance in codification (A. Drukteinis), and the experience of language consultants at the Latvian Language Agency (E. Zilgalve). The Variants and Norms section explored the relationship between personal names and plant names (L. Balode), variants and norms in Lithuanian nomenclature (K. Garšva), the use of participial forms in spoken Lithuanian (J. T. Ramonaite), why and when speakers choose a “softened” way of expressing their relationship to an object (L. Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė), vocabulary-teaching issues arising in the preparation of textbooks and teaching materials for Lithuanian as a foreign language (A. Kaškelėvičienė), what is considered an error, and why, when learning Italian as a second language (A. Migliorelli), the linguistic identity of students returning from abroad (A. Tamulionienė), and the vocabulary of children of returning emigrants and its use (N. Poderienė). At the second (closing) plenary session, J. D. Fleischer discussed areality and contact in a multilingual dialect continuum, and J. Gelumbeckaite and K. Chiarcos presented the interdisciplinary project “PosTiMe,” devoted to early Lithuanian Lutheran postils. The 28th International Scientific Jonas Jablonskis Conference, 2023: “Language and the Times: Representations of the Individual, Generation, and Society in Language” The conference stood out for its interdisciplinarity: linguists, literary scholars, and historians delivered papers exploring such topics as the construction of reality and language, the linguistic and cultural integration of immigrants and national minorities, language and society, language policy and language ideology, language and identity, and more (Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė 2023). Over the two-day conference, 48 researchers from institutions in Lithuania and abroad presented papers. Three papers were heard at the plenary session on the first day: I. Druviete spoke about the languages of the Baltic states in the era of new multilingualism, B. Klaas-Lang about language policy at the University of Tartu, and I. Koroliov about various representations of refugee crises on the websites of English-, Ukrainian-, and Lithuanian-language media, as well as in visual art and poetry. Work then continued in no fewer than nine sections. One of them, devoted to discussing questions of the construction of reality and language, addressed postwar Lithuanian linguistics (D. Mikulėnienė), the image of people’s good, happy lives created in Soviet-era journalism (A. Gritėnienė), the interwar campaign to Lithuanianize surnames in Lithuania and its purpose (D. Mačiulis), and the creation of a Lithuanian world in “Auszra” (A. Martišiūtė-Linartienė). The section on the linguistic and cultural integration of immigrants and national minorities examined the significance of easy-to-understand language for a particular segment of society (L. Vilkaitė-Lozdienė), how immigrants understand Lithuanian identity (A. Peccini), how Venezuelans living in Lithuania assess the Lithuanian language teaching programme intended to support their linguistic integration in Lithuania (Y. Starodub and M. I. De Potestad), the expression of personal identity in language, based on research findings on national minorities (Polish and Russian) in Lithuanian schools (A. Tamulionienė), and the problems in teaching Lithuanian faced by Lithuanian-language teachers working in schools for national minorities (S. Vaičiakauskienė). The section devoted to media language—propaganda, myths, and reality—analysed the Latvian, Russian, and English lexicon used in propaganda and reflections of fascism and liberalism in political narratives (A. Veisbergs); from a stylistic perspective, the 44 commentaries on the Russia–Ukraine war published by Rimvydas Valatka in 2022 (A. Aleksaitė); the image of people with disabilities in Latvian media (V. Polinska and D. Liepa); and the quality of Latvian in social media (L. Lauze). The section on language and societal development featured papers on the language, dialect, and orthography of the periodical “Auszra” (J. Venckienė), the lexical underdevelopment characteristic of the language of children aged 5–6 (L. Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė), and literacy in Lithuanian-as-a-first-language curricula and primary-school textbooks from the Soviet era and the present day 17 (R. Čičirkaitė); and users’ linguistic beliefs concerning their understanding of the value of language, comparing the experience of the European Union and the Republic of India (V. Požarnova). The section on language policy and language ideology considered the understanding of linguistic correctness and functioning in the State Language Law, and the relationship between linguistic correctness and functionality across various domains of public language use (R. Miliūnaitė); how education policy for Lithuanian and other languages reflects the ideologies shaping education, which form the content and value orientations of Lithuanian as an object of teaching and learning, define national identity, and drive sociocultural change in society (N. Poderienė); the paradox of declaring Lithuanian a value to be preserved and nurtured while seeking to change its structure according to the model of other languages that are, in essence, entirely structurally different (V. Meiliūnaitė); and the transcription of proper names from foreign languages into Lithuanian (K. Garšva). The section on language varieties discussed the identity of residents of southeastern Lithuania (N. Tuomienė); which phonetic and morphological features of place names teachers and foresters completing questionnaires in the 1930s considered dialectal, what principles they applied when recording place names in the standard language, and what factors may have influenced their choices (D. Tamulaitienė); northern Samogitian dialect differentiation from the perspective of speakers from the Kretinga and Telšiai subdialect border area (S. Vyniautaitė); and the distinctive phonetic, morphological, and other features of the speech of Žasliai, Paparčiai, and Kaugonys (A. Leskauskaitė). The section on the semantic level of language in contemporary society raised the question of what and how people speculate—how the meanings of the Lithuanian verb spekuliuoti (to speculate) are changing and what is driving this change (A. Gaidienė); presented the variety of naming and motivation for vištos, viščiuko, gaidžio (hen, chick, rooster), not only from onomasiological and semasiological but also from ethnolinguistic perspectives (Ž. Šalaviejūtė); examined the associative field of the word dukra (daughter) (S. Papaurelytė-Klovienė); addressed the linguocultural component of Ukrainian equivalents in the bilingual “Lithuanian–Ukrainian Dictionary” (S. Hrycenko); explored the linguistic means and aspects through which conceptual metaphors revealing dehumanization—HUMAN BEING AS RAW MATERIAL (FOOD)—are realized (E. Lipartė); discussed the misinterpretation of idioms in translations from English and French into Latvian (E. Kirsakmene); and examined the image of the Latvian woman in contemporary Lithuanian texts (V. Čižik-Prokaševa). The section devoted to questions concerning various levels of language discussed a perceptual study of Lithuanian sonorants, in which the sonorants are identified solely on the basis of the spectrum of the consonant itself (J. Urbanavičienė); using legends about King Arthur as a basis, the prosodic devices of legends and their features that can powerfully affect the addressee’s subconscious and convey the emotional and pragmatic charge of the text (L. Taranenko); the linguistic means by which interlocutors from different sociocultural groups perform the speech act of prohibition in English (O. Isniuk); communication strategies and hierarchical complexes of verbal and nonverbal means that help a charismatic speaker, in invariant communication situations, fully activate language’s pragmatic potential: to convey their vision and message to an audience, influence it, and establish an emotional connection with it (M. Boichenko); and derivational productivity, drawing on data from the Joint Corpus of the Lithuanian Language (J. Pakerys, V. Dadurkevičius, and A. Navickaitė-Klišauskienė). The section on language and identity shared reflections on whether (and how) the metropolis changes perceptions of dialectal speech (D. Aliūkaitė and A. Čižikaitė); the correlation between the size and stability or dynamism of South Samogitian Raseiniai communities and the development of settlement infrastructure (D. Dambrauskienė); competition between Polish and Lithuanian in the environs of Dieveniškės from the early 20th to the early 21st century (A. Gudaitis); the dialectal distinctiveness and dynamism of the area of the flooded Nemunas valley, now the bed of the Kaunas Lagoon (Ž. Šidlauskas); and the Varėna geolect (D. Valentukevičienė). 18 At the closing session, conference participants listened to M. Kasner’s paper, “Giving Voice to Urban Space: Lukiškės Square and Piłsudski Square in Warsaw”; two poster presentations were also presented at the conference, and a discussion entitled “The Language Shaping Today’s Reality: Connections, Distinctions, Trends” was held. The 29th International Scientific Jonas Jablonskis Conference, 2024: “Spoken and Written Language: Synchrony and Diachrony” “At the conference held for the 29th time, an effort was made to preserve the spirit of Jonas Jablonskis’s research: participants were invited to focus on spoken and written language from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Jonas Jablonskis emphasized the importance of living, ‘people’s language’; drawing on it, he proposed language norms and coined neologisms. It was repeatedly stressed at the conference that studying spoken language and its relationship with written language remains relevant to this day. At the conference held for the 29th time, an effort was made to preserve the spirit of Jonas Jablonskis’s research: participants were invited to focus on spoken and written language from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. It was repeatedly stressed at the conference that studying spoken language and its relationship with written language remains relevant to this day” (Jasionytė-Mikučionienė 2024: 30). More than 50 scholars from Lithuania and abroad took part in the event. A total of 51 oral presentations were delivered; alongside the plenary sessions, work took place over both days in sections on Dialectology and Phonology, Word Formation, Early Writings and Language Development, Language Attitudes, Language and Identity, and Language Varieties. At the first day’s plenary sessions, participants heard P. U. Dini’s paper “The Spoken Word in Written Text: Luther’s Concepts and Baltic Translations,” as well as A. Kalnača’s paper on the use of vocative forms in Latvian and the relationship between usage variants and the norm. At the evening session, papers were presented on the application of machine learning in historical sociolinguistic research (Ch. Schneider) and on manifestations of spoken language in dictionaries of Latvian and Lithuanian place names and personal names (L. Balode). The Dialectology and Phonetics section addressed systems of deictic pronouns in the Skuodas subdialect (G. Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė); K. Būga’s letters to J. Gerulis and J. Gerulis’s letters to J. Būgienė and the administration of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Lithuania, written after K. Būga’s death (D. Mikulėnienė); the reasons for the movement of communities at points in the “Atlas of the Lithuanian Language” through geographic space in the Varniškiai subdialect of Southern Samogitian (D. Dambrauskienė); trends in grammatical variation of verbs in rhymed dialectal grapholects, comparing similarities and differences in the variability of verb forms recorded in poems from the late 19th and early 21st centuries (A. Balčiūnienė); factors determining vowel duration and their interactional and hierarchical relationships (I. Urbanavičienė); relationships among factors affecting the formant structure of vowels, with the results of a preliminary study of long and short vowels in Standard Lithuanian presented (E. Švageris); consonant duration in Latvian (I. Indričāne and S. Čeirāne); and stress variants of Lithuanian dialect verbs with the suffix -uoti, based on the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” (S. Lukšaitė-Ramonienė). The Word Formation section presented a pilot version of a list of suffixed nouns and their base words, compiled using material from the Joint Corpus of the Lithuanian Language (J. Pakerys, V. Dadurkevičius and A. Navickaitė-Klišauskienė); data from an analysis of compound nouns in the German part of the Septuagint and their Lithuanian derivational equivalents (D. Jarmalavičius and J. Pukevičiūtė); atypical submorphemic formation in Lithuanian neology (G. Brazaitytė); the semantic distance between synonymous terms (A. Mitkevičienė); adjective formation patterns with neo- ultra- mega- hyper- and super- in Latvian (D. Deksne); relationships between certain verbs and prepositions and adverbs in Latvian (I. Auziņa); and sociolinguistic research on spoken language in Latvia and its significance (L. Lauze). The Early Writings and Language Development section explored questions concerning the origins and formation of Lithuanian short-vocalism infix and sta-stem verbs with the root į. 19 (D. Pakalniškienė), the source of the translation of Kiprijonas Lukauskas’s “Historia labay grazi” (18th century) (J. Pajėdienė); textual features of the pericope “Reading for Low Sunday” (K. Kazarinova); the Prussian ethnonym “Prezzun” and the manuscript in which it was recorded (D. Ardoino); possibilities for automatic source retrieval in early Lithuanian Lutheran texts (L. Buazu); annotation of verb conjugation types in the corpus of old Lithuanian Lutheran postils (PosTiMe) (M. Drach); the Rumkian language, spoken by the Greek minority in Ukraine near the Sea of Azov (J. Lebetska); and a comparison of the Basel colophon with its contemporary, the Prague colophon from the second half of the 14th century (I. Lemeškin). The Language Attitudes section examined language attitudes toward Lithuanian expressed on online news portals (E. Gudavičienė); the attitudes of people in Lithuania toward Russian in the context of war (I. Hilbig and S. Ivanovaitė); students’ language attitudes toward their native languages (Mandarin Chinese and Lithuanian) and English (K. Jakaitė-Bulbukienė); the extent to which, in the view of Lithuania’s residents, Lithuanian and English are considered suitable in various areas of life (business, education, services) (L. Vilkienė); the aesthetic value of regional varieties (D. Aliūkaitė and A. Čižikaitė); young Eastern Aukštaitian speakers’—Anykščiai, Kupiškis and Utena speakers’—images of dialectal speech (L. Brazaitienė); and a holistic semantic study of the hand-related thematic subgroup of somatonyms in the Northern Samogitian subdialect (D. Pakalniškienė and J. Lubienė). The section devoted to Language and Identity examined the concepts TOLERANCE (I. Smetonienė), CITIZENSHIP (M. Smetona), MOTHER (S. Papaurelýtė-Klovienė), and BARLEY (V. Sakalauskienė). Two presentations on terminology were delivered: G. E. Klimenka’s on problems in the use of esotericism terminology in the pastoral work of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, and E. Liparte’s on occasional neologisms with the components kovid-, covid-, koron-, coron-, kron-, karantin-, and pandem- in Lithuanian and Latvian. The Language Varieties section addressed the interaction between dialectal and non-dialectal speech in Rumšiškės (Ž. Šidlauskas); Latgale’s multilingualism and the mechanisms of its existence, maintenance and disappearance (P. Grablunas); whether students in grades 10–12 at selected Kaunas district gymnasiums distinguish extended attributes from subordinate attribute clauses, and whether they differentiate between these two cases of punctuation (E. Rimkutė); how and why students in grades 1–4 write mostly on the basis of spoken language (R. Čičirkaitė); the interaction between standard and spoken language, based on the speech of speakers of one Latvian dialect (Malēnian) (D. Markus); manifestations of spoken language in J. K. Rowling’s book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and its translations into Finnish, Swedish and Faroese (D. Ebner); how elements of spoken language and prosodic and paralinguistic markers are encoded in Latvian texts (S. Kaukītė); and contacts between Chinese and Vietnamese (M. Schwarz). At the closing plenary session, A. Cerri analyzed the category of definiteness and its expression in old Lithuanian and Latvian texts; V. Šeferis examined Kristijonas Donelaitis’s German autographs; and in his presentation “Spoken—Written,” J. Niewulis-Grablunas discussed the language of Lithuanians in the Puńsk–Sejny–Suwałki region, most of whom are Dzūkai, focusing especially on its written form and on cases of language mixing. The 30th International Scientific Jonas Jablonskis Conference, 2025: “Language and Linguistics: Continuity of Tradition and New Directions” According to the organizers’ announcement, the aim of this conference is to discuss the links between tradition and the present, present new interpretations of linguistic phenomena related to contemporary sociocultural changes and new theoretical approaches to language research. Indeed, the conference addressed the themes and issues of previous conferences and presented new directions— 20 artificial intelligence and language research. Sixty presentations by Lithuanian and international researchers from countries around the world were delivered. The presentations at the first plenary session served as an introduction to the conference: J. Venckienė spoke about Standard Lithuanian in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as Jablonskis’s contribution to the formation of the standard language; drawing on her ethnolinguistic research, K. Rutkovska offered timely insights into the relationship between language and culture and research on this connection. The morning plenary session on the second day examined issues in typology (M. Gordon), metaphor theory (G. Steen), and the place of large language models (LLMs) in the history of semantics (D. Geeraerts). In the section devoted to the significance of Jonas Jablonskis for the Lithuanian language and state, presentations addressed parallels between J. Jablonskis and K. Būga in Lithuanian studies at the beginning of the 20th century (D. Mikulėnienė), the significance of J. Jablonskis’s card index for compiling major explanatory dictionaries of Lithuanian (V. Sakalauskienė), and the connection between J. Jablonskis and P. Būtėnas (L. Lapinskienė). The section on language system and usage (syntax) considered specific linguistic issues: the valency of the verbs diskutuoti, disputuoti (L. Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė); the valency of the noun pyktis (V. Čižik-Prokaševa); and the characteristics of subordination in Lithuanian syntax (D. Šveikauskienė). The phonetics and phonology subsection addressed acoustic features at the ends of phrases in read and spontaneous speech (E. Kalašinskaitė-Zavišienė), the phonetic realization of stress in Standard Lithuanian under different intonational conditions (E. Švageris), and the methodology of experimental phonetic research on leaders’ public speeches (M. Boichenko). Presentations in the section on words and dictionaries explored changes in meaning in the Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian (A. Gritėnienė), the pitfalls of defining terms in the same dictionary (A. Gaidienė), the meanings of animal names (Ž. Šalaviejūtė), features of Lithuanian neologisms (R. Miliūnaitė), the use of the loanword parkingas and its equivalents in real estate advertisements (A. Aleksaitė), and politeness pragmatemes in bilingual dictionaries (E. Sidorovič). The section on language and identity discussed the vitality of Lithuanian in pupils’ linguistic environment (A. Tamulionienė), food-related words in teaching Polish as a foreign language (M. Hartenberger), and linguistic and cultural studies (D. Gocół). Presentations of ethnolinguistic research have become an established feature of the J. Jablonskis conference. This time, the concepts FATHER (S. Papaurėlytė-Klovienė), TIME in systemic data and paremias (I. Snukiškienė), the image of the CHURCH in the autobiographical narratives of residents of the Šalčininkai region (V. Švaikovskaja), and WORK as a value and cultureme in Samogitian discourse (based on sources from the first half of the 19th and second half of the 20th centuries) (J. Pajėdienė) were presented. In the section on dialectology and geolinguistics, attention focused on dialectal aspects: who is prone to a dialect (inferiority) complex (D. Aliūkaitė); aspects of the local character of street names (the case of Rumšiškės) (Ž. Šidlauskas); the dialectal heterogeneity of the southern Samogitian Varniškiai subdialect in handwritten sources from the 1950s and 1960s (S. Vyniautaitė); and lexical change in areas of active language contact (A. Leskauskaitė). On the second day, the same section featured presentations by guest researchers: T. Król (a Flemish dialect or the Wymysorys language (English wymysorys)?), K. Konczewska (combining ethnographic and dialectological methods to study the Baltic-Slavic border region), M. Jankowiak (the adaptation of Baltic loanwords in Belarusian dialects in Lithuania), and K. Zagłoba (is there room for local dialects in museums?). Presentations in the section on the history and interaction of languages focused on appellative oikonyms in a multicultural region (P. Skorupa), conflicts over the use of Lithuanian and Polish in Catholic churches in the Republic of Lithuania (1918–1940) (D. Mačiulis), and Baltic toponyms in the Dnieper River region (A. Iliadi). In the section devoted to the functioning of language in society, attention focused on the standardization of Lithuanian on the border of Lithuania Minor in the early 20th century, based on the periodical “Svečias” (G. Judžentyė-Šinkunienė), multimodal argumentation in Lithuanian 21 in social advertising (E. Gabrėnaitė and V. Nausėdaitė), and the subconscious potential of the emotional appeal of public speeches (L. Taranenko and A. Kalyta). The papers in two sections (Language Data Collections and Their Analysis; Artificial Intelligence and Language Research) focused on innovation and future research: A. Utka spoke about the latest projects underway at Lithuanian universities to expand Lithuanian-language resources, while M. Žemrietė introduced work on a more accurate morphological tagger; V. Zubaitienė, I. Rizgelienė, and N. Maliukevičius presented research on propaganda texts, and J. Kovalevskaitė illustrated the value of collocations in explaining word usage in explanatory dictionaries. J. Kapočiūtė-Dzikienė, T. Bergmanis, and M. Pinnis discussed how large language models understand low-resource languages (Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian); M. Glebus described how large language models can be used to detect neologisms and whether quotation marks affect this; J. Mandravickaitė examined the relationship between disinformation and reliable news; and G. Valūnaitė-Oleškevičienė, R. Žiūrienė, and S. Kim presented students’ views on the use of artificial intelligence in university studies. The closing session paper reviewed 30 J. Jablonskis conferences (I. Smetonienė). Looking back to 1993, we can see how what began as a collegial exchange of ideas about linguistics and research has led to major international conferences, where theoretical works and practical research of importance to linguistics worldwide are discussed, and papers are presented by participants from distant countries. At the plenary session of the 25th J. Jablonskis Conference, I said at the outset that “today Jablonskis has travelled to many countries around the world; while alive, he probably never expected such recognition.” Now I say that he has travelled to many countries around the world, and his name is known to scholars worldwide; I have no doubt that it is also known to students and the wider public. This dissemination of information was undoubtedly aided by the fact that papers based on conference presentations were published in Kalbos kultūra, later in Bendrinė kalba, in the electronic scholarly journal Lietuvių kalba, and elsewhere, and by the 2025 publication by Cambridge Scholars Publishing of the collection Language Variation, Change and Standardisation (ed. G. Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė). Thirty conferences are not the end: scholars at the Centre for Standard Language Research of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and the Department of Lithuanian Language of the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University, are committed to continuing to organise J. Jablonskis conferences, surprising audiences each year with a variety of topics and interesting research. REFERENCES AND SOURCES Aleksandravičiūtė Skaistė 2009: Septynioliktoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 82, 351–354. Aleksandravičiūtė Skaistė 2010: Jonas Jablonskis ir bendrinės lietuvių kalbos šimtmetis. – Gimtoji kalba 11, 20–22. Bertašavičiūtė Rima 2007: 15-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 80, 192–194. Blažinskaitė Dalia 2004: 12-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 77, 201–204. Blažinskaitė Dalia 2005: 13-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 78, 275–279. Grigaravičius Algirdas 2021: Jonas Jablonskis lietuviškoje politikoje. Prieiga internete: https://www.bernardinai.lt/jonas-jablonskis-lietuviskoje-politikoje/. Jaroslavienė Jurgita, Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė Gintarė 2019: Kalbinė įvairovė šiuolaikiniame pasaulyje: kalbos galia ir prestižas. 26-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Bendrinė kalba 92, 1–12. 22 Jasionytė Erika 2008: Šešioliktoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Gimtoji kalba 11, 16–17. Jasionytė-Mikučionienė Erika 2024: Kronika. Konferencijos. – Gimtoji kalba 11, 30–33. Judžentytė Gintarė 2016: Etnolingvistikos problemos 23-iojoje Jono Jablonskio konferencijoje „Reikšmė kalboje ir kultūroje“. – Slavistica Vilnensis 61, 429–434. Judžentytė Gintarė 2018: 25-oji – jubiliejinė – Jono Jablonskio konferencija „Variantiškumas kalbose ir jų atmainose“. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 20–24. Judžentytė-Šinkūnienė Gintarė 2022: Kronika. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 27–30. KTTS 1995: Kalbos tvarkybos tikslai ir strategija. Kalbos kultūros diegimo praktika ir metodika, pranešimų tezės, Vilnius; Vilniaus universitetas. Labanauskienė Solvita 2015: Dvidešimt antroji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 10–15. Miliūnaitė Rita 1994: Kronika. – Gimtoji kalba 1, 23–24. RE: Events, expeditions. – Gimtoji kalba 6, 30. Rudzevičius Povilas 2003: 11-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 76, 179–180. Rudzevičius Povilas 2006: 14-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 79, 291–293. Tamašauskaitė Ugnė 2012: 19-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija „Lietuvių kalbos sintaksės“ šimtmečiui paminėti. – Kalbos kultūra 85, 230–231. Tamulionienė Aurelija 2013: Lietuvių kalbos gyvavimas ir atsinaujinimas šiuolaikinėje visuomenėje. – Kalbos kultūra 86, 317–321. Tamulionienė Aurelija 2014: Šiuolaikinės kalbos tyrimai ir problemos. 21-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Bendrinė kalba 87. Tamulionienė Aurelija 2015: Lietuvių kalba šiuolaikinėje mokykloje. 22-oji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Bendrinė kalba 87, 1–3. Tamulionienė Aurelija 2017: Kalbų ir skaitmeninių technologijų sandūroje. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 22–24. Urnėžiūtė Rita 2002: Dešimtoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 19–23. Urnėžiūtė Rita, Valskys Vidas 2013: Dvidešimtoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Gimtoji kalba 10, 21–24. Vaičiulytė-Semenienė Loreta 2023: 28-oji tarptautinė mokslinė Jono Jablonskio konferencija „Kalba ir laikmetis: asmens, kartos, visuomenės reprezentacijos kalboje“. – Bendrinė kalba 96, 237–244. Vaskelaitė Ramunė 1997: Penktoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 70, 32–35. Vaskelaitė Ramunė 2001: Jono Jablonskio konferencija: laisvėjanti vartosena, griežtėjanti tvarka. – Kalbos kultūra 74, 113–119. Vileikienė Janina 1998: Šeštoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 71, 95–97. Vileikienė Janina 1995: Kronika. – Gimtoji kalba 2, 22. Vileikienė Janina 2000a: Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Gimtoji kalba 11, 15–17. Vileikienė Janina 2000b: Septintoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 73, 123–127. Zubaitienė Vilma 2008: Šešioliktoji Jono Jablonskio konferencija. – Kalbos kultūra 81, 319–322. 23