Method of commentary for linguistic data in SLA 2

Various types of commentaries have been developed alongside the mapping methods: from very simple to more extensive ones with an interdisciplinary interpretation. In 2007, when work on the first volume of the Slovenian Linguistic Atlas started, the participating dialectologists (Jožica Škofic as project manager, Vera Smole, Vlado Nartnik, Tjaša Jakop, Karmen Kenda-Jež, Danila Zuljan Kumar, Matej Šekli, Peter Weiss and Mojca Horvat and, from 2009, Januška Gostenčnik) began to form a uniform format for the commentary on the basis of their own experience as well as a study of other linguistic atlases (particularly the Czech Linguistic Atlas and the Slavic Linguistic Atlas). The commentaries, alongside an introductory presentation of the key, aimed to present morphological analyses, peculiarities of the mapping and the possible treatment of lexemes in the linguistic literature and other atlases that are addressing the Slovenian language (OLA – Slavonic Linguistic Atlas, ALE – European Linguistic Atlas, SDLA – (regional) Slovenian dialectologic lexical atlas by Rada Cossutta, ALI – Italian Linguistic Atlas, ASLEF – Friulian historical, linguistic and ethnological atlas, HJA – Croatian Linguistic Atlas and ÚMNyA – New Atlas of Hungarian Dialects). For the second volume SLA we also added a section with the ethnological interpretation of lexemes and sketches of named objects, drawn for this specific volume.

Commentaries in the SLA are made up of the following sections:

• Section 1 (Gradivo [Materials]) gives more details on the significance of the dialect material presented on the map. It also addresses possible ambiguity issues or words with more than one meaning (or a double meaning) in the questionnaire itself that might make interpretation problematic. Explanations and clarifications produced by field-workers and their notes on time and style in relation to the dialect material are also presented.

• Section 2 (Morfološka analiza [Morphological analysis]) shows the structure of the form (morpheme) of the lexemes on the map in their proto-Slavonic expressive form. Phonetically abstracted lexemes (following the phonetic rules of each dialect, subdialect or even local speech) are followed by their proto-Slavonic transposition and by their word-formational predecessors or sources from foreign languages (e.g. Italian, Friulian or German). Data generalisation (and therefore the reduction of the overly large number of data symbols) makes the lexical maps clearer and more expressive. The entries in this section are organised according to word-family order, from the most common or widespread to rare lexemes, from non- or less-compound forms are followed by compound forms with the same root or phrases with the same core. Inherited (Slovenian) lexemes are followed by borrowed ones (from the languages in contact), and the morphologically unclear and unexplained lexemes are presented at the end.

• Section 3 (Posebnosti kartiranja [Mapping features]) aims to explain the mapping (cartography) method.

  SLA includes lexical and word-formational symbol maps; isoglosses are used only to mark some specific phonological developments or morphological features of lexically otherwise not very diverse material. This section also mentions lexemes that only appear once (so-called enkratnice), unique phrases, descriptive denominations, descriptions, and even some unmapped material (marked on a map with an indicator pointing to the commentary or indicating that it is irrelevant to the map in question).

• Section 4 (Uporabljena dodatna literatura [Use of additional literature]) refers to those bibliographic units in the literature that are not marked with an asterisk in the Literature section (an asterisk is used to mark those books which are not specifically mentioned in this Section because they have been used in nearly every commentary).

• Section 5 (Primerjaj [Compare]) is directed towards those commentaries and maps in the SLA which cover the same lexemes as the questions presented. It also points towards other linguistic atlases that include the Slovenian language territory either in full or in part (smaller area). The number after the abbreviation of a particular atlas denotes the number of the question from a particular atlas, but the question itself is not specified here (unless perhaps the meaning is not exactly the same).

In the second volume of the Slovenian Linguistic Atlas (SLA) two new sections have been added:

• In section 6 (Etnološka osvetlitev [Ethnological section]) ethnologist Vito Hazler briefly presents each one of the discussed expressions from material cultural heritage. It seems that the linguistic analysis alone cannot explain the diversity of lexemes, which are used in different environments (provinces) and different time periods and therefore at different developmental stages of the Slovenian peasant houses and farms that are still more or less unchanged and used to the present days.

• Section 7 (Skica [Drawing]) further visualizes lexemes presented in this volume. These sketches appear necessary because the dialect material shows a different notion of named idioms.