Juozo Vainos kalbinis (Punsko apylinkių šnektos) palikimas
ENThe article discusses linguistic materials collected by Juozas Vaina. He is well known for the Lithuanians living in Poland as a teacher of mathematics, social activist, and ethnographer (founder of the Ethnographic Museum in Punskas) as well as a collector of Lithuanian folklore. Juozas Vaina is the author of several articles in which he describes the specific language features of the Punskas dialect, including phonetic and accentative (for example: assibilation, depallatalization, palatalization, and prie-labialisation) as well as morphological and syntactic (for example: the usage of the illativus form instead of a locist, deminutive forms, verb cojugation, borrowings). J. Vaina also analyzes the etymology of toponyms and hydronyms and the influence of the Western Balts on the Polish dialects (Kurpie, Mazurzy). Two volumes of the book Nuo Punsko iki Seinų (From Punskas to Seinai), which contain the collected material, are very important for the description and characterization of the Lithuanian dialects from Poland [Krištopaitė: 1997, 1998]. Due to the variety of texts presented in books (songs, stories, legends, proverbs, sayings, riddles), it is possible to trace not only the preserved phonetic and morphological features of the Lithuanian dialects from Poland, but also analyze their syntax. 6,000 index cards prepared by Juozas Vaina are particularly noteworthy. He carefully registered the words used by the speakers of the Punskas and Seinai dialects (nouns, adjectives, participles, verbs, prepositions, pronouns, numerals). Each word was presented in its basic form and also illustrated by numerous examples (from 3 to 7 sentences). Additionally, it should be emphasized that he marked the place of the accent in each word, also in the example sentences. Therefore, the works of Juozas Vain are extremely important for research on the Lithuanian dialects in Poland.It should be emphasized that all the texts and language data collected by the ethnographer come from a period when investigation of the Lithuanian dialects from Poland was not and now it is valuable for language historians or contact linguistics researchers.
