Nouns of feminine-type declension in the "Ziwato" of 1759 and the morphological development of those nouns

Straipsnyje analizuojamas geriausio XVIII a. šiaurės žemaičių kretingiškių tarmės raštijos paminklo - 1759 m. „Ziwato“ - moteriškojo linksniavimo daiktavardžių raida. Moteriškojo linksniavimo tipui priklauso trys kamienai: ā ir ḽă kamienai bei ē kamienas. Darbe „Ziwato” tarmės duomenys lyginami su dabartinės šiaurės žemaičių kretingiškių tarmės duomenimis. Analizuojamų daiktavardžių kamienų paradigmų lyginimas atskleidžia šiaurės žemaičių kretingiškių vardažodžio morfologijos raidos tendencijas ir bruožus. Lyginamoji analizė rodo, kad moteriškojo linksniavimo daiktavardžių formų kitimą ir homoniminių lyčių gausą lemia tarmės fonetikos raida, taip pat kirčiavimas. Taigi tarmės morfologijos raida priklauso nuo morfologijos ir fonologijos reiškinių.Aim of the article was to research and describe the development of the feminine-type noun declension, with the emphasis on the "Ziwato" of 1759, the written record of the 18th century Northern Žemaičiai of Kretinga Dialect. There are three kinds of stems identified in the feminine-type declension - ā and įū stems, and also ē stem in the "Ziwato" Dialect. The first two stems are very much alike, the only difference being the palatalized consonant in the immediate post-stem position. As the present research proves, a very close similarity can be observed between the stems įā and ē in the Žemaičiai Dialect. The research presents an accurate and consistent analysis of the aforementioned noun stems in terms of the study of their declension paradigms. The obtained data were compared with the data of the present-day use in the Northern Žemaičiai of Kretinga Dialect. With the help of the method of inner reconstruction, the following points were disclosed and given solid grounding: the origin of noun inflections, some processes in the historical development of proper names, causes and motives for change. The method of comparative study enabled us to present the reconstructed morphology of nouns of the feminine-type declension in the Northern Žemaičiai of Kretinga Dialect of the mid-eighteenth century. The thorough study and the subsequent analysis provide sufficient grounds to state that the singular locative case forms of the feminine-type declension in the Northern Žemaičiai of Kretinga Dialect in the 18th century had already undergone the processes of morphological reduction, although the forms of plural locative cases had not as yet been reduced. In the present-day use, reduced forms of this kind are typical only of the sub-dialect of Kretinga. The comparative study of the data of the "Ziwato" Dialect and of the Northern Žemaičiai of Kretinga Dialect revealed that in the "Ziwato" Dialect, in the nouns under discussion, the stems of the plural instrumental case and dative case forms differed only in the presence of the final vowel i. In the present-day dialect of Kretinga, in the feminine-type declension, these noun forms are differentiated only by the tonic accent and the related fronting of the stress shift. Thus, it is evident that the plural dative forms in the "Ziwato" Dialect had already been morphologically reduced. With reference to the nouns of the ē stem, it should be noted that the inflection of the nouns of the ē stem speaks for the fact that in the mid-18th century, the inflection -es <*-ēs still differed from the inflection -ẹs <*-ḝs, cf.: meyles 33,, <*-ē"s 'meilės' and ugnys 904 <*-ḝs 'ugnies' in the dialect of Kretinga