published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Hock, Hans Henrich

Kenstowicz, Michael J.

English

IDEALS @ Illinois

Orthography

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liiORTHOGRAPHYSince many of the citations in this voliime are in the StandardLithuanian orthography, the following brief summary of the writingsystem is presented on the reader's behalf.There are three accent signs in the orthography. An acute,which indicates a falling contour on the accented syllable, a circum-flex indicating a rising contour, and a grave accent sign which indi-cates merely stress or accent without any perceptible contour on thesyllable.Lithuanian employs a Latin alphabet with a few modifications.Unless otherwise noted, the letters have the us.ual phonetic inter-pretation (i.e. "p" stands for a voiceless bilabial stop, etc.).Exceptions are "c" and "dz'' which are voiceless and voiced dentalaffricates, and "dz", the -voiced counterpart of "c", a palatalaffricate. All consonants except "j", a front glide, can be palatal-ized or "soft" and velarized or "hard". Consonants are palatalizedwhen followed by a front vowel letter, either "i" or ''e". Whenpalatalized consonants occur before a back vowel, the palatalizationis indicated by inserting the letter "i" between them and the follow-ing back vowel letter, this i" representing no additional sound.Thus, bli auti is Cb'l'aut'iD. Also, since the sound Cil never occursbefore a back vowel letter it always indicates a mere palatalization ofthe preceding consonants, the only exceptions to this being foreignborrowings like biologia , where the "i''s do represent high front vowels.There are six vowel letters: "a", "e"', "i", "o", "u", and "y".These have the usual phonetic veilue except that "y" represents Ci:3.These letters are modified in various ways to indicate vowel length.There are three ways in which vowel length is represented in theorthography. First, a given letter may always represent a long vowel.There are two such letters: "y" which always represents Ci:3 and "o"which always designates a long, tense Co:l except in foreign borrowingslike poetas where it stands for a short lax mid vowel, and in theivdiphthong "uo" where it stands for a reduced variant of the vowela ("uo ' = Cua3). Secondly, vowel length may be indicated by means of adiacritic. The letter "e" always represents long, tense Ce:!, while"u" represents Cu:D. The other diacritic used to represent lenp^h isa nasal hook written \jnder the letter. Note that this hook does notrepresent nasalization of the vowel, for all vowels are oral incontemporary Standard Lithuanian. Thus, "&'' - Ca:D, '§ ' = Ce:D,"i^ = Cl:l, and "y = Cu:D. The letters "e" and "9" do not occur.Finally, a letter can indicate a long vowel by virtue of its accentsign. This only happens with the letters "e" and "a", which designatelong vowels when the acute or circumflex is written directly abovethem. Here the long "e"' is open and lax Ce:! for exam|)le, ledas isCl'erdasD and rat as is Cra:tas3; also, gerti is Cg'err't'il andIangas is ClarngasD. In all other cases, the vowel letters indicateshort vowels.For ease of reference, the following short list if the vowelsounds and the letters used to represent them is provided.Cil

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