Baltų kalbos pasienio areale

ENIt is necessary to highlight the impact of social and linguistic environments on the borderline languages: ethical processes, population and migration, economic processes, occupation, the language functioning, the language contacts and the relationship between languages. The research on the dialects spoken in south-eastern Latvia is linked to the expeditions carried out by August Bielenstein and A. Becenberger in Sėlia and Latgalia (1882). A. Bielenstein was the first Latvian researcher who used a new method - the geolinguistic method - for investigating Latvian dialects. The population censuses were of utmost importance: the first censuses of the population were carried out in the years of the Russian Empire (1897) and the years of the Republic of Latvia (1925, 1930, 1935). The materials obtained from dialectological, ethnographic and folklore expeditions (the 2nd - 7th decades of the 20th century) revealed the situation existing at that time. They helped disclose the development of the linguistic situation. For example, the population censuses showed that more than half of Lithuanian families were speaking Lithuanian, while mixed families - Latvian (1925); the percentage of Lithuanians residing in Ilūkstē parish was decreasing (1930). According to the data of ethnographic expeditions, the most common languages of the people living along the border were Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish. The sociolinguistic analysis allows us to draw conclusions that in essence, the intermingling of speakers of different languages and dialects has been existing until this day, which resulted in bilingualism or multilingualism. The contemporary situation of Sėlia dialects of Latvian people could be described as the dialect alignment process.The expanding contacts, current changes in political, social, cultural and educational spheres, the impact of the relationships between the standard languages (the disappearing of some dialects) and dialects (the characteristic features of one dialect are transmitted to another dialect) is considered as the dialect alignment process. The relationships between the Baltic languages, spoken on either side of the border, resulted in the emergence of the language borrowing process. This process is affected not only by geographical situation, historical context and social and economic situation, but also by customs and traditions of ethnic groups, various religious influences and language awareness. Historical records mention that the Latvian language has incorporated almost three hundred words borrowed from the Lithuanian language/dialects. The most abundant group of the language borrowings includes the names of professions and occupations (bičiulis, ģirkilis, klumpenieks, pečkuris, šeriks), social and interpersonal relationships (izniķēlis, piršļis, padegėlis, žmuogs), personality traits and physical characteristics (aitivars, aldavnieks, bumdnza, sapuvēlis, tingins). Unfortunately, not all the borderline languages have been identified, since they are constantly changing or disappearing; linguistic processes in dialects - the relationship between languages and the standard language transition into the literary one; however, Selia dialect has retained some Lithuanian words, so called the language borrowings.