Development od the i, e, and ia stem nouns in the Northern Širvintiškiai subdialect

The present article is a joint analysis of three noun stems, as the majority of their endings have become syncretic due to phonetic and morphological development, and the above process resulted in good conditions for mixing of the said stems. Mostly the development of baritone stress i, ē and iā stem nouns is discussed in the article, as unstressed endings have changed to a greater extent than stressed ones in the majority of Eastern Aukštaitian dialects. Quite a number of linguists attribute the majority of morphological changes to essentially phonetic changes. Numerous phonetic and accentual processes have taken place in different case endings of i, ē and iā stem nouns of the Northern Širvintiškiai subdialect (in the localities of Kavarskas, Vidiškiai, Ukmergė and Pašilė). The main processes were Leskien's law (having resulted in the shortening of as many as fifteen case endings), shortening of unstressed long vowels (as unstressed endings were devoid of long vowels), fronting of the vowels a and ā preceded by palatalised consonants (this resulted in conditions for the baritone stress iā stem to develop into the ē stem, cf. nom. sg. *saujā > *saujē “handful” vs. *dulkē “dust”, gen. sg. *saujās > *saujēs vs. *dulkēs etc.), monophthongisation of circumflex and unstressed word-ending diphthongs -ai, -ei and -ui (the dative case singular endings of all-stem nouns have become syncretic, e.g. ká.rvi “for a cow”, i.lti “for a fang”, se.seri “for a sister”), etc