Rytų aukštaičių vilniškių konsonantizmo tyrimų perspektyvos

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Rytų aukštaičiai; Rytų aukštaičiai vilniškiai; Rytų aukštaičiai vilniškiai; Konsonantizmas; Vokalizmas; Fonologija; Tyrimai; Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect; Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius; East Aukštaitians of Vilnius; Consonantism; Vocalism; Phonology; Research.

ENThe main aim of the present article is to present a brief synchronic-type review of the phonological system of consonantism of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius with a focus on the main phonological oppositions. Also, attempts were made to shed light on methodological contradictions in the scarce investigations accomplished to this day, and to present the prospects for further research. The investigation material comprised audio recordings and transcribed texts from the corpus of Northeastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius (Northeastern Aukštaitian: www.baze.vilniskiai.eu), audio recordings from a personal archive. The consonantism of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius has not been studied in a detailed and complex manner, and no works of monographic nature on this issue are available. Considerable attention has been devoted to consonantism in the paradigm of traditional dialectology; however, all these works are united by an atomistic approach of traditional dialectology to consonantism: in principle, there are no phonological descriptions, only phonetic ones. One should expect the paradigm of structural dialectology to take a phonological viewpoint of consonantism of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius. However, it mainly focused on the vocalism of the subdialects of the Lithuanian language. Having examined the distribution of consonants in the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius, it turned out that the most important phonological oppositions are voiced-voiceless and hardness-softness; these oppositions participate in the neutralisation process too. The consonants č, ǯ, č, ǯ, x, x, h, ĥ, f, f are subject to the greatest number of distribution restrictions, their distribution is limited lexically (they are used in borrowings or in the words that newly came from the standard language, as well as in onomatopoeic words).The hard consonants t, d in the position before back vocalism [-V u] have no soft equivalents t, d. Their regular soft pairs in this position are the affricates ĉ, ǯ. There are cases in empirical material where consonants fail to form phonological oppositions, but they are linked by the relationship of optional variants. The most frequent cases are as follows: a) the consonants x, x, h, ĥ, f, f optionally alternate with k, k, g, ĝ, p, p; b) dzūkavimas [speaking in the Dzukian dialect] is optional too - ĉ, ǯ and č, ǯ alternate optionally and do not form phonological contrast; c) the third case of optional variants is found in the geographical range around Rimšė, Tverečius, Švenčionys, Svirkas where the consonants b, m, n, t, v before front vocalism (the vowels e, less commonly z, [C b d n t v - V e i]) can be not soft, however, soft variants are perhaps even more commonly used in the same position. The problematic cases covered in the present article are related to the so-called "consonant hardening". Dialectological literature takes a narrow, phonetic approach to this phenomenon. In fact, three phenomena should be distinguished: 1) most probably optionally used non-palatalised consonants b, m, n, t, v before front e and i vocalism (position [C b d n t v - V e i]) in separate geographical ranges of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius and Southern Aukštaitian most likely is a phenomenon of phonetic nature. 2) The second phenomenon is of phonological nature: it is the neutralisation of the vowels a : e (of different quantity) in the position following the consonants l, r, s.3) The third phenomenon, which is quite rare in the area of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius and much more frequent in separate geographical ranges of the Southern Aukštaitian subdialect, is related to the consonants c, č, dž, š, ž and most likely is also of phonological rather than phonetic nature and represents neutralisation of the opposition of the hard and soft consonants (c, č, ǯ, š, ž : ĉ, č, ǯ, š, ž) and, as far as it can be judged from the available data, in some geographical ranges it represents dephonologisation too. Short-term perspectives of the research of the system of consonantism can be as follows: a) eventually, to move on to the phonological analysis of the system of consonantism which does not only cover the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius but also all the subdialects of the Lithuanian language, as well as their synchronic descriptions; b) in investigating the phonological systems of consonantism, to clearly separate the phenomena of phonetic and phonological nature and to study them by applying relevant theoretical and methodological principles; c) in analysing the subdialects to carry out investigations of monographic nature and then move on to typology and comparison. [From the publication]