Pērkones izloksne Liepājas dialektoloģijas kolekcijā

The Liepāja dialectology collection comprises materials from student dialectology practices, Lower Kurzeme expeditions, and students’ works. Since there is limited research on the Pērkone subdialect, the goal of this research was set as follows: to identify Pērkone subdialect materials in the Liepāja dialectology collection, characterise their content, and analyse the phonetic and morphological features characteristic of the subdialect, considering the areal context. It was determined that the Liepāja collection contains few Pērkone subdialect data: two students’ works (1973, 2004) and two individual manuscript-based practice collections without audio recordings (1993, 1997). The dialectal features of the phonetic and morphological subsystems found in each material were identified and compared with the 1978 materials from the Atlas of Latvian Dialects, as well as with the data from the neighbouring Nīca subdialect. Although the Pērkone data in the Liepāja dialectology collection is a small-volume testimony to the subdialect’s language over 30 years (1970s – early 21st century), the texts in the Liepāja collection reveal both stable and vanishing subdialect features when compared to the sounds and forms recorded in 1978. Stable features include, for example, the use of the broad vowel e̦ in the verb infinitive (ce̦pt, re̦ʒê̦t, te̦cê̦t), parallel forms of -ē and i-stem nouns for more frequently used nouns (zives // zivis), as well as final-syllable reduction, which may historically be an areal feature but also aligns with Latvian language speech processes. In contrast, features found only in the older text (1973) include, for example, the lengthening of a short root vowel in combination with r (dârva, atstârpes), and the diminutive suffix -in- (laĩvina, tìklini, gabalinus). The comparison with the corresponding data in the Nīca subdialect confirms the remarkable similarity between the Pērkone and the coastal part of the Nīca subdialect (the lejnieki) and their belonging to the area of the Couronian subdialects. Given that the Liepāja dialectology collection contains unique, previously undescribed subdialect materials, its digitalisation is necessary.