Language variation and change in Lithuania

Schneider, Christa (27 September 2018). Language variation and change in Lithuania (Unpublished). In: 25th Jonas Jablonskis Conference. Vilnius. 27.-28.09.2018.

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Language variation and change in Lithuania

The history of variationist linguistics is structured as follows: the paradigm of traditional dialectology followed by the paradigm of structural dialectology and the contemporary paradigm of "modern" or "new" dialectology. "Modern" or "new" dialectology is an extended version of a combination of traditional and structural dialectology and has to be understood as a dynamic sociolinguistically and perceptually orientated field of research. The aims of "modern" or "new" dialectology are:
• To collect empiric data according to lately developed methods
• To verify old or to define new isoglosses
• To analyse and understand dialect data together with its sociolinguistic components

The present project is methodically based on "modern" or "new" dialectology, as it fulfils the requirements presented above.
1. Data collection according to contemporary methods
The recent development of crowd sourcing methods which are used in variationists' projects have created a new way to collect large data corpora in a short time. Such methods are also highly applicable for the dialect situation in Lithuania due to the existence of a dialect atlas (Lietuvių kalbos atlasas).
Therefore, an online questionnaire, which consists of a short set of questions, has been launched. These questions have been chosen on the basis of the most salient variables found in the Lietuvių kalbos atlasas.
2. Verify old and/or define new isoglosses
We expect to verify old (found in the Lietuvių kalbos atlasas) and to define new isoglosses on the basis of the new data collection.
3. Analyse and understand language variation and change on the basis of the sociolinguistic component of the data.
The online questionnaire does not only collect language/dialect data but also a set of selected sociolinguistic data. As already shown by Labov in 1972 (cf. the Martha's vineyard study), language variation and change also depends on social factors. Analysed together with the linguistic data, we expect to understand the contemporary language/dialect situation in Lithuania better as we already do today.

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