Summary

The sub-dialect of Gelgaudiškis

Rima Bacevičiūtė

The sub-dialect of Gelgaudiškis (Šakiai district) belonging to the Western Aukštaitian dialect of Kaunas is described. The features of vocalism, morphology, syntax and vocabulary are analysed in the article. 

The sub-dialect of Gelgaudiškis belongs to the northern part of the Kaunas dialect that is distinguished by shortened unstressed endings. The drawn tone is one of the most important features of prosody in this sub-dialect. This tone is distributed equally on both components of the diphthongs and semi-diphthongs. 

The most important features of morphology are the morphological shortening of endings, the usage of the definite pronouns and dual forms of verbs.

Due to its geographical position and contacts with East Prussia, the vocabulary of Gelgaudiškis sub-dialect abounds in Germanisms.