LTŠioje monografijoje pateikiamas apibendrintas daiktavardžio gramatinių kategorijų vaizdas, sisteminiai ir netipiniai gramatiniai požymiai, atskleidžiamas pietų aukštaičių patarmės nevientisumas, aiškios ir tikėtinos kaitos tendencijos, bet ji jokiu būdu neaprėpia visų galimų tyrimo aspektų ir problemų. Tarkime, mažai kalbama apie amžiaus kintamojo ir daiktavardžio linksniavimo paradigmos kaitos santykį arba šiaurinės patarmės arealo dalies specifiką, nes tikslioms išvadoms suformuluoti dar reikia tiek papildomos empirinės medžiagos, tiek kitomis teorinėmis bei metodologinėmis prieigomis paremtos gilesnės, išsamesnės ir įvairiapusiškesnės analizės. Tačiau šis darbas padeda numatyti tolesnių tyrimų kryptis ir gaires, kurios ateityje neabejotinai leis patikslinti, praplėsti čia pateiktas prielaidas ir įžvalgas. Pridurtina, kad tokio pobūdžio tyrimai labai svarbūs dar ir dėl to, kad pietų aukštaičiai išskiriami kaip viena iš stipriausią kaitą XXI a. pradžioje patiriančių patarmių. [Iš Pratarmės]
ENThe categories of number, gender and case possessed by the noun in Southern Aukštaitian are probably most extensively covered in the fundamental dialectological works of the second half of the 20th century, namely Lithuanian Dialectology (1966) by Zigmas Zinkevičius and the third volume of Atlas of the Lithuanian Language (1991) dedicated to the questions of morphology. The works of other linguists usually limited with fragmentary insights into more interesting phenomena observed in the study of specific subdialects: the old case forms and their reduction, the existence of grammatical variants, etc. It was the time when descriptivism, structuralism and areal linguistics gained ground in Lithuania. Therefore, the grammatical structure of the noun was usually described drawing on the theoretical and methodological principles of these fields of study. The theory of natural morphology and its research methodology opened broader research horizons for the scholars specializing in the morphology of Lithuanian dialects. The underlying ideas of this field of study started taking shape in the 1970s. Foundations were laid by German and Austrian linguists Willi Mayerthaler, Wolfgang Ullrich Dressier, Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel.The core of the natural morphology theory draws on several major, though partly contradictory, principles: 1) universal preferences (or universal naturalness, markedness), which rests upon cognitive and semiotic principles; 2) typological adequacy (or typological naturalness)-, 3) language-specific system adequacy (or language-specific naturalness). The above theory found application in Lithuania at approximately the same time as in Western Europe. Linguists followed its theoretical approaches in describing the declension system of the noun in Standard Lithuanian, the old Lithuanian written monuments and the Latvian language, the semantic and morphological structure of pronouns in the Baltic languages and later the children’s language. The theory of natural morphology also found its way to the studies addressing the declension system of the noun in Lithuanian dialects. Out of all the Southern Aukštaitian subdialects, a synchronic approach was only employed to describe the subdialect of Varėna. Generally speaking, the contemporary research of Southern Aukštaitian subdialects usually focuses on phonetics, accentuation, vocabulary and various sociolinguistic aspects, whereas the questions of morphology draw little scholarly attention. Therefore, the aim of this monograph is to fill this gap in research at least partially. It takes a synchronic perspective to address the categories of gender, number and case of the noun in Southern Aukštaitian by adhering to the theoretical approaches of traditional dialectology as well as natural morphology.Certain questions, such as the neutralization of locatives, are investigated by also resorting to the principles of functional grammar, areal and cognitive linguistics, historical grammar. The study is predominantly based on the empirical data collected in the first two decades of the 21st century from the speakers of Southern Aukštaitian born between the 1920s and 1950s (old-generation speakers). It shows the current situation in the southwestern, southern and northern part of the area of Southern Aukštaitian. The eastern part dominated by the non-dialectal language variant and the Slavic languages, from which dialectal data have not been collected in recent decades, was not included in the study. The analysis of the grammatical categories of the noun in Southern Aukštaitian leads to several important conclusions. [From the publication]