Знаки ударения в орфографии Катехизиса М. Даукши 1595 года: опыт количественного исследования

ENThe text of the first known Lithuanian book printed in the mainland (M. Daukša's Catechism of 1595) is analysed in a quantitative way. Thorough study of diacritic marks is attempted. It is confirmed that the text actually contains three different diacritics: a circumflex, an acute and a dot; the two latter are at variance with each other, but the choice of the main variant appears to depend on the role of the sign. It is discovered that, unlike previously thought, the distinction between long and short accented vowels is maintained in the text, at least for vowels which exhibit phonological opposition between long and short ones. There are several cases where the distinction between long and short vowels is possibly maintained even in an unaccented position. Other vowels demonstrate greater variance in accent mark usage, but generally it may be assumed that a circumflex sign denotes a long vowel. Frequent omission of an accent mark over short lower vowels is linked to a pholonologically conditioned difficulty to distinguish an accented short vowel from unaccented one. The distribution of various accent marks in diphtongs still remains an unsolved issue, though, pending for future research.