CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE RESEARCH AND ISSUES

The 21st Jonas Jablonskis Conference

On 3 October 2014, the 21st Jonas Jablonskis Conference was held at Vilnius University. As every year, the conference was organised by the Department of Standard Language at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language together with the Department of Lithuanian Language at Vilnius University. This year’s conference, Contemporary Language Research and Issues, was devoted to research and issues in phonetics, lexicon, grammar, syntax, stylistics and rhetoric, as well as to discussion of changes in norms in contemporary language.

Speakers from various Lithuanian and foreign institutions took part in the conference. Twenty-seven papers were presented.

Antanas Smetona, Dean of the Faculty of Philology at Vilnius University, welcomed the conference participants and speakers. The opening remarks were delivered by Rita Miliūnaitė, Head of the Department of Standard Language at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, and Regina Koženiauskienė, Professor in the Department of Lithuanian Language at the Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University.

Foreign scholars gave papers at the plenary session. ALEKSEJUS ANDRONOVAS of Saint Petersburg University presented the first paper, Phonology as an (In)dependent Science. He spoke about the conceptions of phonology as a field of study held by Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Alekso Girdenio and other linguists. JERZY BARTMIŃSKI of the Institute of Polish Philology spoke about style as a linguistic sign in his paper Style as a Sign and Derivation. In her paper Estonian Language Policy Guidelines in the Context of the Baltic States, BIRUTĖ KLAAS-LANG of the University of Tartu in Estonia examined how the survival and development of Estonian are ensured, and compared the situation of Estonian and Lithuanian. The final paper of the plenary session, Įsteikumu pāri sarunas nobeigumā, was presented by LINDA LAUZE of the University of Liepāja.

In the afternoon, the conference took place in four sections.

In the first section, the first paper, Names of Plant-Derived Characters in Contemporary Lithuanian Children's Prose, was presented by AURELIJA GRI-TĖNIENĖ, senior researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. The paper discussed the transformation of common nouns into proper names; it also examined the ways and formants used to form character names, presented the most frequent lexemes serving as base words, and discussed the function of such names in literary texts. In her paper Problems of Standardising Biblical Names in Simonas Daukantas and Simonas Stanevičius's Epistome Historiae Sacrae Translations, Past and Present, BIRUTĖ GUDELIENĖ, junior researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, discussed the nature of each author's approach to standardising biblical names, compared their translations, and established that S. Stanevičius provided more Lithuanianised proper names. JOLITA URBA-NAVIČIENĖ, senior researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, spoke about accentuation patterns of names in her paper Accentuation Patterns of Names in the Spoken Language of Vilnius. She presented statistically evaluated results from a study conducted as part of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language project “Vilnius Speaks II: The City and Language Diversity,” compared data from informants of different ages, genders and educational backgrounds, and analysed the influence of dialects and Slavic languages on the accentuation of Vilnius residents. Lithuanian

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In her presentation, the pragmaticalization of mental verbs in language Mental verbs in the Lithuanian language *manyti, galvoti, žinoti, suprasti* pragmaticalization was presented by JUSTINA LIAUKSMINIENĖ, an assistant at Vilnius University. The presentation discussed which forms of mental verbs function as epistemic markers and which as pragmatic markers, and what meanings emerge in the language of fiction. ANTANAS KETURAKIS, an assistant at Vilnius University, gave a presentation on the Italian definite article, The semantic map of the Italian definite article. In the presentation An analysis of the vocabulary of public statements by the presidents and presidential candidates of Lithuania and France following the announcement of election results (1993–2009), MIROSLAV STASILO, a lecturer at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, discussed the role of words in creating the image of contemporary politicians.

In the second section, the first presentation, Changes in standard language norms: a further look at undesirable language phenomena, was given by RITA MILIŪNAITĖ, senior researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. The presentation examined the theoretical grounds for distinguishing one of the most frequently debated evaluation categories—“to be avoided”—and practical aspects of its application. It sought to show that the “to be avoided” evaluation category helps maintain a balance in the functioning of standard language norms by mitigating occasional conflicts between the principles of systematicity and appropriateness, or by smoothing out irregularities in the internal development of the language system itself. ERIKA RIMKUTĖ, an associate professor at Vytautas Magnus University, spoke about major language errors in the presentation Is the list of major language errors still relevant? The case of calques. She examined one part of the list of major language errors—unacceptable calques and their usage in the Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language. In her presentation Orthoepic issues in the Latvian Language Grammar (2013), DZINTRA ŠULCE, a scholar from the University of Liepāja in Latvia, examined orthoepy problems in the Latvian Language Grammar. The presentation addressed norms for word stress and vowel and consonant pronunciation, and discussed problematic cases in the pronunciation of pitch accent. In her presentation The language of blogs by upper-grade students, AURELIJA TAMULIONIENĖ, a researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, surveyed blogs written by upper-grade students and their language, discussing in greater detail one aspect of blog language: English words. RASUOLĖ VLADARSKIENĖ, senior researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, discussed the reasons for the widespread use of constructions with the preposition dėl in administrative language, their relationship to competing forms, and problematic usage cases in her presentation The construction with the prefix dėl in administrative language. The final presentation in this section, Title texts in collections of scholarly articles by Latvian and Lithuanian philologists, was given by DIĀNA LAIVENIECE, a scholar from the University of Liepāja in Latvia.

In the third section, the first presentation, Innovations in experimental prosody research: an analysis of pitch accents in Northern Samogitian dialects, was given by EVALDAS ŠVAGERIS, a researcher at Vilnius University. He discussed several methods of data analysis (graphical representation and comparison) and the statistical Wald–Wolfowitz criterion, which had not previously been used in Lithuanian experimental studies. BENITA RIAUBIENĖ, a doctoral student at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, discussed Lithuanian posture constructions such as guli aukštielninkas, skaito stačias, pargriuvo kniūbsčias and similar examples in her presentation Secondary predicates in posture constructions. LAURA VILKAITĖ from the University of Nottingham in Great Britain gave the presentation Formulaic Nature of Language: Is It Language Specific?, comparing word combinations and word sequences in English and Lithuanian, as well as the methodologies used to study them. ANITA HELVIGA, a scholar from the University of Liepāja in Latvia, gave the presentation Terminological synonymy of words of native origin and borrowings in literary studies. KADRI SÕRMUS presented the Estonian student text corpus EMMA in the presentation Estonian student text corpus EMMA. SVETLANA MARKOVA, an assistant at Vilnius University, in her presentation Technologies for the development of literacy

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she presented three technologies for improving literacy: correcting errors using the hole-punch method, a text rewriting method, and blind touch typing.

In the fourth section, REGINA KOŽĖNIAUSKIENĖ, professor at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, gave the presentation The extended metaphor as a means of argumentation in the media. The presentation discussed one type of metaphor—the extended metaphor, in which the figurative transfer of the meaning of the same word is not a one-off occurrence but is developed throughout an entire article. IRENA SMETONIENĖ, an associate professor at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, examined advertising texts in her presentation The function of synecdoche in advertising texts. She discussed synecdoche, its types, and its potential in advertising. DIANA LIEPINYTĖ-KYTRIENĖ, a doctoral student at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University, emphasized in her presentation The concept and functions of opinion leaders that one of the main functions of an opinion leader is to influence the addressee, and described in detail the stages of actions involved in this function. The presentation Discourse marker use in spoken Lithuanian was given by LAURA KAMANDULYTĖ-MERFELDIENĖ, an associate professor at Vytautas Magnus University, and POVILAS GODLIAUSKAS, a member of the Vytautas Magnus University Student Parliament. They presented features of discourse marker use in spoken Lithuanian and analyzed fifty-two different discourse markers recorded in the Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian. SIMONA AMANKEVIČIŪTĖ, a doctoral student at the Kaunas Faculty of Humanities of Vilnius University, gave the presentation Transformation of precedent phenomena in press headlines, which reviewed the theory of precedent phenomena and its key concepts, and defined its relationship to intertextuality theory and discourse analysis.

The abstracts and information about this and previous Jonas Jablonskis conferences can be found on the website of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language at www.lki.lt.

Received 2014 12 08

AURELIJA TAMULIONIENĖ, Institute of the Lithuanian Language, Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, [email protected]

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