Lietuvių Kalba (Dec 2019)
Reflexive verbs of the environs of Kabeliai
Abstract
The article discusses the reflexive verbs in the environs of the village of Kabẽliai that belong to the Southern Aukštaitian subdialect. The diverse forms of the verbs have been described for the first time, their morphonologic features and morphologic paradigms as well as their original accent are discussed. The list of the material under investigation amounts to about 250 reflexive verbs. The material was collected from the 1950s and 1960s handwritten notes of the Kabẽliai (Ašãšninkai) subdialect by dialectologists Aloyzas Vidugiris and Žaneta Urbanavičiūtė, the first volume of the Dictionary of the Southern South Aukštaitians’ Subdialects and the personal audio records of the subdialects (2011–2019). The research demonstrated that in the subdialects of Kabẽliai ir Šklėriai because of the sporadic mixed usage of the consonants s, z and š, ž parallel reflexive forms with the reflexive affixes -si and -ši are in use. This phenomenon can be explained by phonetic causes. There is a tendency to shorten the reflexive affix in all the word’s positions. In the environs of Kabẽliai a peculiar stress//accent of the reflexive verbs’ ending or reflexive formant has been recorded, which until now has not been documented by the scholars who researched these subdialects. Such inflexional accentuation is a relic of the earlier accentuation system of reflexive verbs.
