Rytinių kauniškių Prienų šnektos fonologija

The dissertation is the first consistent synchronic description of the phonological system existing in the subdialect of Prienai, a part of the Eastern Kaunas subdialect of Western Aukštaitian. It contains: 1) an analysis of the stressing system, the influence of stress on the prosodic structure of words, a usage review of secondary stresses and a description of primary stress acoustic features; 2) an analysis of the accent system, a related phonological interpretation and acoustic features; 3) a description of the vowel (vocalic) subsystem, a review of qualitative and quantitative peculiarities related to usage of vowel allophones and a presentation of typical acoustic and articulatory characteristics of vowels; 4) a description of the consonant subsystem and a review of the consonant combination structure; a description of acoustic and articulatory as well as some other distinctive features of consonant phonemes. Facts of the subdialect of Prienai accumulated individually since 1996 are mainly used to carry out an analysis of the present situation. In addition to subjective methods (empirical observation and audition of subdialect texts and recordings of the materials researched), objective (instrumental and statistical) methods are also applied. The sound analysis software PRAAT was used to measure and analyse spectral qualities of vowels and consonants, and numeral prosodic experiments were carried out. Some of the phenomena of the analysed subdialect are compared to linguistic facts of other, mostly bordering, dialects and subdialects as well as Standard Lithuanian