A study in modern dialectology in Lithuania

Kardelis, Vytautas; Schneider, Christa (23 June 2018). A study in modern dialectology in Lithuania (Unpublished). In: 23. SIDG Conference. Vilnius. 23.-27.06.2018.

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A study in modern dialectology in Lithuania

The history of Lithuanian dialectology 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. Thus, research in traditional dialectology was oriented strictly towards Neogrammarian guidelines and resulted in unidirectional, punctual and areal research, e.g. in dialect grammars. Research in structural dialectology zoomed into a certain structural subfield of a local dialect, as in phonology or morphology, and resulted in multidirectional, punctual and areal descriptions of a dialect, as for example in phonological descriptions of a local dialect. "Modern" or "new" dialectology is an extended form 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 the newest methods
• To verify old or to define new isoglosses
• To analyse and understand dialect data together with its sociolinguistic components
The following 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 via cell phone applications, 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 Lithuania due to the dialect situation and the existence of a historical dialect atlas (cf. Lietuvių kalbos atlasas 1977-1991).
Therefore, we plan to release a dialect App, which consists of a short set of questions. 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 presented App will 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 sociolinguistic factors. Analysed together with the sociolinguistic data, we expect to understand the contemporary language/dialect situation in Lithuania better as we already do today.
As this talk is result of a Lithuanian-Swiss collaboration, it will be in Lithuanian and English

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