Metodologinės naujovės kalbinio variantiškumo tyrimuose

DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0346-8421 RESEARCH AREAS: sociolinguistics, geolinguistics, perceptual dialectology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2024.97.11 JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2988-5194 RESEARCH AREAS: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2024.97.11 NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language ORCID id: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-4615 RESEARCH AREAS: sociolinguistics, geolinguistics, language contact, code-switching. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35321/bkalba.2024.97.11 METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC VARIATION On 10–11 October 2024, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language hosted the international academic conference METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC VARIATION (METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC VARIATION). The conference was organized by researchers from the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, who brought together the international academic community to share insights into geolinguistic traditions and innovations, the word and its meaning, regionality and variation, the standardization and substandardization of the standard language, and the interaction of languages and cultures. Over the conference’s two working days, 48 participants from eight countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania) delivered 36 papers. The abstracts of the papers were published on the ILL website1. 1 See the paper abstracts at https://lki.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Anotacijos_Konferencija_Metodologines_naujoves_kalbinio_variantiskumo_tyrimuose.pdf. DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ, JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ, NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ. 231 Metodologinės naujovės kalbinio variantiškumo tyrimuose The first day began with a plenary session chaired by Prof. Habil. Dr. Danguolė Mikulėnienė, head of the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. Dr. Albina Auksoriūtė, director of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, welcomed the conference participants and audience with opening remarks. The first paper, Distant Horizons in Dialectology (The near Horizon in Dialectology), was delivered by Prof. Dr. John Nerbonne of the universities of Groningen in the Netherlands and Freiburg and Tübingen in Germany. The speaker highlighted the importance of linguistic research in dialectology and discussed new technologies and theories that make it possible to study the distribution of linguistic variants in new ways. The invited guest praised the new methods for studying linguistic variation employed by researchers at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. Another invited guest, Prof. Dr. Jožica Škofic of the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, presented a developed interactive Slovenian language atlas in her paper Interactive Slovenian Linguistic Atlas – New Tools in Slovenian Geolinguistics for International Use (Interactive Slovenian Linguistic Atlas – new Tools in Slovenian Geolinguistics for International Use). The atlas provides easy access both to dialect material important for research and to scholarly works. In addition, the digital atlas can be continuously supplemented with language data, including through public participation. The session continued with Aidas Gudaitis, a doctoral student at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, and Dr. Agnė Čepaitienė, a researcher at the same centre. The authors of the paper Application of GIS Tools and Geospatial Analysis Methods in the Study of Lithuanian Linguistic Variation (Application of GIS Tools and Geospatial Analysis Methods in the Research of Lithuanian Variation) introduced their latest research and a new methodology for using GIS technologies in Lithuanian dialectology to collect and analyze perceptual dialectology data. The speakers familiarized the audience with the possibilities of geospatial analysis for identifying hotspots in the use of dialect variants, the prestige of local language varieties, and the values associated with people who speak dialectally, as well as for discerning their connections with various socioeconomic factors. The plenary session concluded with a paper by Prof. Habil. Dr. Danguolė Mikulėnienė, The Ideological Narrative of the Soviet Period in Lithuanian Dialectology (Ideological Narrative of the Soviet Period in Lithuanian Dialectology). Taking into account the different periods of the Soviet era and the multilayered nature of the ideological narrative, the presenter discussed several stages in the development of Lithuanian dialectology during the Soviet period and outlined the main features of the vulgar ideological narrative. 232 BENDRINĖ KALBA | 97 The scholar noted that this period did not have time to exert a greater influence on the development of dialectology: at that time and later, the interwar Lithuanian studies tradition was preserved in Lithuania, acting as an antidote to the narrative of drastic ideological adaptation. In her concluding remarks, the professor emphasized that the linguists themselves had curbed ideological influence on scholarship. The research presentations and discussions then continued in two sections: the first was devoted to Geolinguistic traditions and innovations, and the second to Word and meaning. A total of 15 papers were delivered in four sessions across the two sections. The sessions of the Geolinguistic traditions and innovations section were chaired by Dr Asta Leskauskaitė and Rima Baksienė, researchers at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. At the first session, Florinas-Teodoras Olariu, Silviu Bejinariu, Veronica Olariu, Ludmila Malahova, and Tudoras Bumbu of the Iași Branch of the Romanian Academy and Moldova State University outlined the challenges of digitizing a language atlas and shared their experience of transliterating dialect texts into the Latin alphabet. Heiko Kammers, Simonas Kasperis, and Jeffrey Pheiffas of the Research Centre of the German Language Atlas at the University of Marburg, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, and the University of Bern presented an atlas in preparation devoted to morphological and syntactic variation. It is being compiled with reference both to older dialects and to local varieties of language in current use, while also incorporating their vertical relationship to the standard language. Anna Stafecka and Liene Markus-Narvila, representatives of the University of Latvia, introduced the origins of geolinguistic research in Latvia and discussed the field’s most important publications. The presenters drew attention to the methods used to create geolinguistic maps of Latvian in different periods, noting that the maps in several volumes of the Latvian dialect atlas published in the 21st century were created using the “Paint Shop Pro” program, and that the website dialekti.lu.lv, created by the Latvian Language Institute in 2022, provides free access to digital maps of Latvian dialects. Another University of Latvia scholar, Lidija Leikuma, described Adalbert Bezzenberger’s 1885 publication Lettische Dialekt-Studien, the first monograph devoted to Latvian dialects, and discussed in detail the difficulties faced by non-native speakers in recording the phonetic nuances of dialect texts. She emphasized that Bezzenberger’s monograph provoked a scientifically productive debate between the clergy and intelligentsia of Latgale, and that dialect discrepancies and errors recorded by non-native speakers were corrected in later studies by speakers of Latgale varieties. DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ, JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ, NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ. 233 Metodologinės naujovės kalbinio variantiškumo tyrimuose At the second session of the section, Edmundas Trumpa of the University of Latvia introduced conference participants and attendees to an innovation in the study of the intonation patterns of Latvian standard language and the Courland Livonian dialect, conducted at the Latvian Language Institute of the University of Latvia: a method developed to visualize relatively quickly the movement of the first and second formants (F1/F2) between consonants. He also presented selected research findings and shared insights into patterns of change in allophone quality. Rima Bakšienė and Agnė Čepaitienė, researchers at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, described the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols used in Kazimieras Šaulys’s 1988 work Juodžiūnų tarmė to transcribe examples from the Kupiškėnai subdialect of Eastern Aukštaitian, and compared them with the current set of IPA symbols provided for Lithuanian dialects. The presenters revealed the contrast between the Kupiškėnai subdialect of the past and that of today, highlighted the importance of the data collected by the author, and also briefly discussed the current sociocultural and socioeconomic situation in the Kupiškėnai area. Asta Leskauskaitė, a researcher at the same centre, emphasized in her paper not only the growing importance of morphological features in identifying dialectal variants, but also the significance of the complexity of dialectal features for both theoretical linguistics and the creation, modelling, and improvement of speech-recognition tools and artificial intelligence. The researcher drew attention to certain aspects of morphological change and its relationship to the horizontal and vertical continua. Daira Vēvere, representing the University of Latvia, discussed the need to review the classification of Latvian dialects and develop terminology for individual varieties. She also raised the issue of the historical classification of the Courland Livonian varieties, known as tamnieku, according to deep and shallow dialect features, and proposed classifying these varieties according to four phonetic features and adopting terminology suitable for describing the Courland Livonian varieties. The sessions of the second section, Word and meaning, were chaired by Dr Vilija Sakalauskienė and Dr Loreta Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė, researchers at the Centre for Standard Language Research of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. The first session opened with papers by Ihoris Koroliovas, Aurelija Gritėnienė, and Svitlana Hrycenko, researchers from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. The presenters introduced the macrostructural and microstructural data fields of the Lithuanian–Ukrainian Dictionary, with particular attention to illustrative examples. Vilija Sakalauskienė, who chaired the session, discussed ethnolinguistic information in the macro- and microstructure of dictionaries and showed what kinds of ethnolinguistic infor- 234 BENDRINĖ KALBA | 97 mation that can help create a linguistic and cultural picture of plants can be found in dictionary entries, illustrative sentences, terms, phraseological units, proverbs, derivatives, collocations, and so on. Vilija Ragaišienė, a researcher at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, invited discussion of the importance of dialect dictionaries for studying perceptions of the linguistic worldview. The scholar presented lexicographic entries for the word miškas ‘forest’ and its synonyms from an ethnolinguistic perspective, revealing the principal understandings of the concept of miško ‘forest’ attested in dictionaries. Silvija Papaurėlytė-Klovienė, a researcher at the Centre for Standard Language Research, analyzed associations with the word mama ‘mother’ and discussed its associative field in the Lithuanian worldview. She concluded that Lithuanian speakers register the main characteristics of a mother through their emotional relationship with her, do not focus on her appearance or work, and describe her only as someone who evokes positive emotions. Opening the second session, Veslava Čižik-Prokaševa, representing the Centre for Standard Language Research of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, examined the image of the Russian woman on the basis of literary and non-literary works and journalistic texts from the late 20th and early 21st centuries included in the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language. According to the presenter, the image of the Russian woman is not particularly distinctive: she is portrayed in physical, character, social, local, domestic, occupational, ideological, and religious terms. Speaking about the image of loneliness in journalism, Loreta Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė argued that, in light of the definitions of the word vienatvė ‘loneliness’ in the main Lithuanian dictionaries and a brief review of other scholars’ research, the question arises whether a lonely person is always alone, whether (or when) loneliness may be necessary for them, and how the semantic continuum of loneliness unfolds. Rūta Kazlauskaitė of Vilnius University Šiauliai Academy analyzed the semantics and motivation for naming the colours of stars depicted in the poetry of Lithuanian authors and concluded that the colour of stars—or their tone of light and often their radiance—is named in poetry both literally and metaphorically. On the evening of the conference’s first day, guests and organizers took a tour of the Sapieha Palace, which had recently opened its doors to visitors. They explored a unique architectural ensemble from the Baroque period, whose appearance and purpose had changed over the years. On the second day of the conference, 14 papers were delivered in three sections: Regionality and variation, Standard language standardization and substandardization, and Interaction of languages and cultures. DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ, JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ, NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ. Metodologinės naujovės kalbinio variantiškumo tyrimuose 235 At the first meeting of the session Regionality and Variability, chaired by Dr. Simona Vyniautaitė, a researcher at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, papers were presented by researchers from the Geolinguistics Centre. Dalia Kiseliūnaitė discussed competition between the locative and prepositional constructions in the latest texts in the Curonian language, recorded during expeditions from 1961 to 2014, and noted that these forms do not compete as equivalents in the speech of all informants or in every case: this depends on their syntactic semantics, the structure of prepositional phrases, the semantics of the noun, and its declension type. Continuing the meeting, Jogilė Teresa Ramonaitė shared insights from her and translator Ieva Frigerio on strategies for translating Italian dialect passages in fiction into Lithuanian. The speakers drew attention to the translation strategy, rarely used to date, of replacing a dialect in the source language with a dialect in the target language and, with reference to Lawrence Venuti’s theory of domestication (domestication) and foreignization (foreignization) in translation, analyzed the translations of Sicilian passages in the Lithuanian text of Stefania Auci’s Italian novel The Florios of Sicily: The Saga of a Family I (2023). Diana Dambrauskienė and Simona Vyniautaitė analyzed the causes and directions of mobility among communities around Šilalė and tentatively assessed the correlation between mobility and the realization of dialectal features. The speakers emphasized that language users’ dynamism and their ties with speakers of other subdialects are among the most important factors determining, and that will continue to determine, changes in the local language varieties of settlements around Šilalė. Danutė Valentukevičienė, who used quantitative methods to study changes in the realization of the hardening consonant l in the speech of informants from three generations living in the Varėna geolelect zone, showed that in young people’s speech this feature has become an unstable marker of dialectality associated with the regiolect, reflecting convergence with the standard language. At the second meeting, chaired by Nida Poderienė, a researcher at the Centre for Standard Language Research of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, geolinguist Laura Brazaitienė compared several dialectal features characteristic of central Lithuanian varieties that are classified differently in Lithuanian dialect classifications. This comparison showed that the mapped directions of change in the area under study, which is classified differently, remain essentially unchanged. Žydrūnas Šidlauskas, a researcher at the Geolinguistics Centre, showed how assessments from an emic perspective do or do not correspond to statistical estimates of dialectality: even if informants indicate at the emic level that they do not speak dialectally, dialectal features are generally found in their speech from an etic perspective. He emphasized 236 BENDRINĖ KALBA | 97 the importance of qualitative and quantitative dialectological research that reveals ordinary language users’ (lack of) dialectal competence. In the final paper of the meeting, Nida Poderienė presented the theoretical basis and construct of an ethnolinguistic questionnaire on tendencies and attitudes concerning the use of Lithuanian and local dialects. The speaker emphasized that the questionnaire is a tool that facilitates research assessing the vitality parameters of regional linguistic communities. The meeting of the section Standard Language Standardization and Substandardization was chaired by Dr. Aurelija Tamulionienė of the Centre for Standard Language Research at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. All the papers in this section were presented by researchers from the Centre for Standard Language Research. Rita Miliūnaitė drew attention to the increase in hybrids with the suffixes –istas, –ė, which are recorded in the Dictionary of New Lithuanian Words and have a specific connotation in public usage. The researcher outlined mechanisms of interaction between standard-language and substandard phenomena and linked these processes to the substandardization of linguistic phenomena. Drawing on the responses of 4,305 pupils to questions about language choice and use in everyday life, Aurelija Tamulionienė presented the domains in which language predominates in everyday usage, assessed pupils’ language preferences across different communicative situations, and revealed commonalities and differences in language use across different localities in Lithuania. Žydrūnė Šalaviejūtė focused on the motivational features of Lithuanian fish names. Analyzing fish names found in Lithuanian lexicographic sources, the speaker showed which conceptual features are brought to light by analyzing the motivation of lexemes. Daiva Šveikauskienė raised the issue of computerizing the linguistic information presented in printed grammars and discussed cases of government and adjacency involving an indeclinable attribute. She noted that, in attempts to automate Lithuanian syntactic analysis, it is highly inconvenient for computer processing that the indeclinable attribute is considered to be governed by the word it modifies. The meeting of the section Interaction of Languages and Cultures was chaired by Dr. Violeta Meiliūnaitė, a researcher at the Geolinguistics Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. She opened the meeting with a paper on the linguistic environment and its influence on Lithuanian identity in the Šalčininkai district. The researcher examined linguistic information in places of worship and sacred buildings, analyzed the language in which key information is provided to worshippers, compared linguistic landscape data with official information about the language of religious services, and raised the question of whether this sphere of language use DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ, JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ, NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ. 237 Metodologinės naujovės kalbinio variantiškumo tyrimuose in the Šalčininkai district fosters positive attitudes toward the state language. Nijolė Tuomienė, a researcher at the same centre, considered the communication patterns of bilingual (multilingual) local residents in southeastern Lithuania. The researcher emphasized that situational code-switching becomes a universal strategy for achieving communicative goals and performing certain conversational functions, and noted that analysis of formal and private conversations on different topics in bilingual and multilingual communities in southeastern Lithuania made it possible to identify eight situations—possible code-switching strategies. Violeta Švaikovskaja, a doctoral student at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, drew on the concept of education explored in the accounts of residents of the Šalčininkai region to argue for the status of education as a possible cultureme. According to the speaker, education is measured by the skills acquired at school or in other ways, as well as by the circumstances that led to non-attendance at school. The conference concluded with a final plenary meeting chaired by Prof. Dr. Kristina Rutkovska, a researcher at Vilnius University. Three papers were presented at the meeting. The first paper, Polish Dialectology in the Face of Changing Linguistic Conditions in Rural Areas: New Methods under New Conditions (Polska dialektologia wobec wyzwań zmieniającej się sytuacji językowej na wsi – nowe metody w nowych warunkach), was delivered by Prof. habil. Dr. Maciej Rak of Jagiellonian University in Poland. The invited guest noted that changing linguistic conditions in rural areas of Poland call for a new approach: sociolinguistic factors are becoming important in dialectological research, and research methods are therefore increasingly converging with those used in sociolinguistics. In the second paper, Methods of Ethnotheology in the Study of Early Texts, plenary meeting chair Prof. Dr. Kristina Rutkovska examined the application of ethnotheological methods to the study of religious monuments and discussed the development and dissemination of theological thought arising from the interpretation of Holy Scripture. The researcher focused primarily on Konstantinas Sirvydas’s lecture notes, Explanationes in cantica canticorum Salomonis et in Epistolam D. Pauli ad Ephesios, prepared in 1620. Having outlined the structure of the lectures and their links with Sirvydas’s Points of Sermons, the speaker showed how these works, which express Sirvydas’s own thought, reveal original elements arising from the cultural context of Jesuit activity in Vilnius. The third and final paper, In Search of New Methods in Border Studies. Archival Ethnographic Material as a Source for Research into Historical Multilingualism on the Belarusian-Lithuanian Border (In Search of New Methods of Border Studies. 238 BENDRINĖ KALBA | 97 (Archival Ethnographic Materials as a Source of Research on Historical Multilingualism on the Belarusian–Lithuanian Borderland) was delivered by Dr. Katarzyna Konczewska, representing the Institute of the Polish Language of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Illustrating her point with a specific example, the scholar emphasized the importance of historical documents for linguistic research in areas for which historical linguistic data are unavailable or particularly scarce. In summing up the work of the international scientific conference, Dr. Vilija Sakalauskienė, Deputy Chair of the Research Council of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, expressed her satisfaction with the conference’s international character and large number of participants, emphasized the importance of the humanities, and thanked the scientific and organizing committees. The conference concluded with a documentary film We Preserved the Language, shown to conference participants. It was produced in 2023 at the request of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the restoration of the state language’s status. Received 2024-11-15 DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius [email protected] JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius [email protected] NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ Institute of the Lithuanian Language Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius [email protected] DIANA DAMBRAUSKIENĖ, JOGILĖ TERESA RAMONAITĖ, NIJOLĖ TUOMIENĖ, 239 Metodologinės naujovės kalbinio variantiškumo tyrimuose