Danguolės Mikulėnienės mokslinės veiklos metmenys

AstA LeskAuskAitė, ViLijA RAgAišienė. Outline of Danguolė Mikulėnienės research activities 237 AstA LeskAuskAitė, ViLijA RAgAišienė Lietuvių kalbos institutas MikuLėnienės Year of Science In 2022, prof. dr. Danguolė Mikulėnienė has been working at the Lithuanian Language Institute for more than three decades (since 1990). In 2002, she took over from Dr. Kazis Morkūnas the position of Head of the Department of Language History and Dialectology, renamed the Geolinguistics Centre in 2015, and until now she has responsibly carried out her duties by mobilizing, motivating and directing her colleagues to take sometimes extremely difficult paths. Prof. D. Mikulėnienė’s activities are multifaceted and diverse – academic, pedagogical, social, cultural. She is the author of numerous scientific publications, teaching materials for general education and higher education schools, member of editorial boards of Lithuanian and foreign scientific journals and other publications, scientific editor, compiler and reviewer, consultant, organizer and participant of conferences and other events, former secretary and chairperson of the State Lithuanian Language Commission, etc. Photo by Astos LeskAuskAite. 238 Common LANGUAGE | 95-place communities. This linguist is a great teacher, who not only educated and continues to educate students of linguistics at Lithuanian universities, but also brought many of them to the Lithuanian Language Institute, encouraging them to study in doctoral studies. However, the greatest and most important place in D. Mikulėnienė’s life is occupied by scientific activity. One of her chosen early research topics is Lithuanian pronunciation (synchrony and diachrony). In 1987, she defended her doctoral dissertation at Vilnius University, under the supervision of Aleksas Girdenis and Adele Laigonaitė, titled Metatonija dabartinės lietuvių kalbos galūnių vediklių. The researcher considers metatonia as a morphological phenomenon, proved the synchronic and diachronic relationship between the change of the consonants and the place of the accent in the derived word. In her scientific articles she discussed other issues of pronunciation: the metatonia of perforated words in Lithuanian, the development of derivatives of the conjugated prefix *pand noun suffixes, the history of the pronunciation of nominative adjectives, diachronic studies of metatonia, etc. Many years of research have been summarized in the monograph Cirkumflexinė metatonija lietuvių kalbos nominatyviuose žodžiuose ir jos kilmė, published in 2005. Another area of D. Mikulėnienė’s research is related to spelling – contacts between Baltic and Slavic languages. According to her, there is a tendency to simplify the pronunciation system in the spoken Lithuanian language. especially the dephonologization of whims and the effect of this phenomenon on the further development of the dialect of border Lithuanian dialects is evident in border dialects. D. Mikulėnienė supports this statement in particular with the example of the blackberry snake. However, the paribic schnect is important not only for pronunciation but also for morphology, lexis and other linguistic aspects. This prompted D. Mikulėnienė and K. Morkūnas to compile Dieveniškių schnektas texts (1997), in which, for the first time in the history of Lithuanian dialectology, various fluctuations in the quality and quantity of sounds and other characteristics are consistently noted. Later, together with K. Morkūnas, Aloyzas Vidugiris and Laima Grumadiene (the author of the first volume) she prepared a dictionary of Dieveniškių schnektas (vols. i–ii, 2005–2010), and with A. Vidugiris – texts of Zietelas schnektas (vols. i–ii, 2005–2010). By applying traditional dialectology and new sociolinguistic and geolinguistic methods, she has written the monograph Change of Lithuanian dialects at the beginning of the 21st century: Polish Lithuanian schnektos (2016). In the second half of the 20th century, the constant need to collect dialectal material and the areaal studies of Lithuanian dialects became a prerequisite for dialectologists to prepare new research programs. D. Mikulėnienė was also involved in the implementation of these measures AstA LeskAuskAitė, ViLijA RAgAišienė. 239 preparatory works. It formed two parts of the research program on Lithuanian dialects and their interaction – Morphology (with k. Morkūnas, 1995) and Pronunciation (with Bonifacas Stundžia, 1996). The history of Lithuanian language and dialectology is an important and interesting field of research to which D. Mikulėnienė has focused her attention in the last decade. In scientific conferences, various other events and published works she constantly presents new, previously unpublished facts about outstanding and little-known linguists, descriptively and critically discusses the significance of their works and scientific ideas. The trilogy of monographs Lithuanian dialectology: genesis, development and paradigm breaks is dedicated to the formation and development of Lithuanian dialectology as a paradigm of language variantity. A few years ago, the first part – Prehistoric period appeared. The beginnings of Lithuanian dialectology: the distinction of dialects, the beginnings of research perspectives and their types (2018). This monograph, applying the provisions of linguistic historiography and critical linguistic analysis methods, discusses the pre-dialectological period and the beginning of Lithuanian dialectology. Summarizing the results of the research, the researcher notes that “linguistics, like all humanities, at the beginning of the 20th century becomes a kind of means of establishing (and confirming) local identity”. In the research study History of the Lithuanian Language Institute 1: Institutionalization of Lithuanian Language and Linguistics, published in 2021, D. Mikulėnienė, based on archive documents and other material, returns to the beginning of the institutionalization of Lithuanian language and linguistics and the activities of the Lithuanian Language Department of the Antanas Smetona Institute of Lithuanian Studies in 1939–1940. Another study – History of the Lithuanian Language Institute 2: Annexation of Linguistics (2022) – reviews the short but extremely complex period of 1940–1952, which had a decisive impact on the changes in Lithuanian linguistics. Through the transformations of different periods, the author tries to reveal the mechanism of annexation and the nature of its operation, to describe its most striking features – ideologization and nomenclaturization of the activities of the Lithuanian Language Institute and its employees, ideologization and simplification of scientific content. Great curiosity and perseverance – qualities that are simply necessary for a true scientist – encouraged D. Mikulėnienė to get involved in the search for new Lithuanian dialectology research and ways of publishing their results. In the late 1990s, after the establishment of the uneCo Department of Informatics for Humanities at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics and the rapid development of computer science in Lithuania, she came up with the innovative idea of presenting Lithuanian dialects to the general public in a modern way. D. Mikulėnienė and dialectologists of the Lithuanian Language Institute in cooperation with 240 General kALBA | 95 topics and the Institute of Informatics IT specialists saw the daylight bilingual computer dictionary Lietuvių tarmės = Lithuanian Dialects (1 d. – 2000, 2 d. – 2005, 3 d. – 2011). This work, Mr. Morkūno support, membership in the International Society of Dialectologists and Geolinguists and other factors encouraged the linguist to undertake broader geolinguistic research and to strive for this direction, successfully developed abroad, to be established in Lithuania as well. The first attempt to typologically compare and compare the data of the dialects of the Baltic languages is the brochure of the work Baltu valodu atlants = Baltų kalbų atlasas = Atlas of the Baltic Languages, published in 2009, prepared by dialectologists of the Institute of Lithuanian Language and the Institute of Latvian Language of the University of Latvia. D. Mikulėnienė is one of the main authors and compilers. Continuing the work started, the first volume of this atlas was published, dedicated to the discussion of flora lexicon (1st edition – 2012, 2nd revised and supplemented edition – 2013). The second volume, which describes the vocabulary of the fauna of the Baltic languages, has been prepared, but has not yet been published. In 2011–2014, the large-scale project initiated and led by D. Mikulėnienė – the general grant project Modern geolinguistic research in Lithuania: optimization of the point network and interactive dissemination of dialectal information, which brought together more than three dozen Lithuanian dialectologists – became a significant qualitative leap in Lithuanian dialectology. Over the course of 3.5 years, a huge amount of work was done – more than 700 points of the Lithuanian Language Atlas were checked and the geolinguistic situation of Lithuanian dialects and other languages of the early 21st century was assessed. Since then, new scientific ideas have begun to spread in the discourse of Lithuanian dialectology, new concepts and categories have begun to function (multimodal dialectology model, observational time, dialectic markers, discourse, etc.), modern research methodology and methodologies have begun to be applied. According to D. Mikulėnienė, this work should ensure continuity of Lithuanian dialect research, provide new data for Baltic studies and comparative linguistics, create conditions for prognostic sociolinguistic research and foresee further development of Lithuanian language and dialects. It has indeed opened wide research spaces and perspectives for Lithuanian dialectologists. Together with her colleagues, D. Mikulėnienė has already prepared and published significant works, in which methodological approaches and methodologies of perceptual dialectology, geolinguistics, sociolinguistics are applied: Variability of language and its evaluation from the point of view of perceptual dialectology: visuals of variants and places (2018), Dialectometric section of the classification of traditional Lithuanian dialects (2019), Lithuanian language variants: perspectives of the researcher and the ordinary member of the language community (2020). AstA LeskAuskAitė, ViLijA RAgAišienė. Outline of Danguolė Mikulėnienė’s research activities 241 other results of researches being carried out or already carried out are also waiting for their time of appearance. A number of significant insights have been published in scientific articles in various periodical scientific journals and other publications. One of D. Mikulėnienė’s recent initiatives is the database of local language variants of Lithuania, or Tarmynas1, which is being developed at the Lithuanian Language Institute. It is intended to include all dialect resources accumulated and being accumulated in this institute (audio recordings, texts recorded with international phonetic transcription, manuscripts of linguists, etc.), making them conveniently accessible not only to Lithuanian, but also to foreign researchers and the public. using Arcgis platform tools, geospatial analysis of Tarmyno data has already been tested and will be expanded in the future. This database is presented in more detail in the research study of D. Mikulėnienė and Agnė Čepaitienė Tarmynas – Lietuvos vietinių variantų duomenų bazės modelis (2022)2. Therefore, the initiatives and activities of D. Mikulėnienė in the last two decades can undoubtedly be considered as the emergence of a new school of research. She does not hesitate to involve her colleagues and students in the work she initiates and leads. In a short publication it is difficult to review and present all the works performed by D. Mikulėnienė. More detailed information about Professor Danguolė Mikulėnienė’s scientific and pedagogical activities can be found in the publication Danguolė Mikulėnienė, published by the Lithuanian Language Institute in 2022. Bibliography index. AstA LeskAuskAitė Lietuvių kalbos institutas Petro Vileišio g. 5, Lt-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] ViLijA RAgAišienė Lietuvių kalbos institutas Petro Vileišio g. 5, Lt-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] 1 See https://maps.lki.lt/portal/home/. 2 Čepaitienė Agnė, Mikulėnienė Danguolė. Tarmynas – Lithuanian local variants database model, 2022. Online access: http://lki.lt/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/tarmynas-%e2%80%93-Lietuvos-vietiniu-kalbos-variantu-duomenu-bazes-modelis_galutinis.pdf.