| Abstract [eng] |
This publication is a report of the field studies carried out in July 2000 in the Smalvos area in Lithuania. This area is characterized by historically shaped multilingualism, where Lithuanian, Polish and Russian Old Believers’ villages are adjacent. Also frequent are contacts between local residents with family or friends who live in Belarus. As a result, the inhabitants of these villages are familiar with four languages: Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, and Belarusian dialect. The Polish villages preserved the basic Polish language which is used by all three generations as a home language, while in the external contacts other language varieties can be used. The ongoing research was not only aimed at examination of the language of these areas but also at documentation of very diverse cultural layers, therefore rites, customs and folk songs were recorded. Many different questionnaires were used in the study – linguistic, ethno-linguistic and social-linguistic. The source text in the book consists of stories kept in historical and ethnographic character, basic features of the informer, who represents a Smalvos variety of the Polish language in Lithuania, have been preserved in the phonetic record. |
