Lithuanian Grammars of the 20th and the Beginning of the 21st Century

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Lithuanian Grammars of the 20th and the Beginning of the 21st Century

Journal Title: Kalbu studijos / Studies about Languages - Year 2009, Vol 15, Issue 0

Abstract

The article focuses on Lithuanian grammars of the 20th and 21st centuries. The aim is to demonstrate the development of the traditional grammar of the 20th century and to present the course of its research in the 21st century. At the beginning of the 20th century a traditional synchronical grammar was created in Lithuanian. The prohibition of Lithuanian press lasted for a half of the century and was abolished in 1904, which required an immediate creation of rules and standards referring to the facts of spoken language applicable to standard Lithuanian. Hence, the first synchronical grammars focused on the form of grammatical meaning. That was determined by several factors: the inflectional nature of the language; the influence of comparative historical grammar; the model of Fortunatov’s formal grammar. The grammars of the 20th century were created on the basis of old writings, 15 dialects, folklore, classical fiction as well as the material and research of spoken language. Moreover, they were influenced by the traditional European grammar based on Aristotlean logic. Furthermore, pure synchronical grammars (except for schoolbooks) were not created till the second half of the 20th century. Thus, in 1985 original (except for some reservations, e.g., including examples from the writings of Donelaitis, Žemaitė, etc. which were applicable to standard Lithuanian) synchronical traditional grammars appeared. Afterwards functional grammar was created. At the beginning of the 21st century synchronical semantic and syntactical research, which was unrelated to tradition, dominated. However, theoretical statements are detached from the rules consequent on the real language. Therefore, science does not serve practice.

Authors and Affiliations

Aldona Paulauskienė

Keywords

sinchroninė gramatika istorinė gramatika praktinė gramatika teorinė gramatika dialektologija morfologija sintaksė gramatinės funkcijos

EP ID EP155565
DOI -
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