Salacas lībiešu valodas ceļvedis

Description

This book presents an overview of the Livonian variety historically spoken in the north central Latvian region of Vidzeme, which ceased to be spoken in everyday life during the 19th century. However, various written records remain of this Livonian variety, which has left a significant influence on the Latvian and Estonian dialects and place names of this region, and also continues to be used in poetry up to the present day. As Vidzeme Livonian was primarily documented in the Salaca area, it is typically referred to as Salaca Livonian. This book provides as comprehensive of a description as possible of the structure of this language and presents examples of Salaca Livonian vocabulary and texts.This book contains five sections. The historical development of Salaca Livonian as well as its most important sources and orthography are presented as an introduction. The first section, which is the longest, gives an overview of Salaca Livonian sounds, inflection, word derivation, and unique syntactic features. This overview is primarily based on the language materials collected by A. J. Sjögren and all example sentences are also taken from Sjögren's manuscripts (Winkler, Pajusalu 2016, 2018). The vocabulary section begins with an introduction to the historical layers of native and borrowed vocabulary in Salaca Livonian, which is followed by a topical dictionary.In order to present a more complete picture of the language, examples of different types of Salaca Livonian texts are also included. Further in-depth study is aided by the comprehensive list of categorised Salaca Livonian sources and studies given at the end of the book.