LEXICAL INDICATORS OF THE HYPOTHETICAL MODALITY IN THE LITHUANIAN LOCAL DIALECT OF PUNSK WITH REFERENCES TO POLISH AND LITHUANIAN (Polish title below)

(Polish title: Leksykalne wykladniki hipotetycznosci w litewskiej gwarze punskiej z odniesieniami do jezyków polskiego i litewskiego). The dissertation discusses the problem of lexical indicators of the hypothetical modality in the Lithuanian local dialect of Punsk. The Lithuanian local dialect of Punsk is used by the Lithuanians living in the north-east regions of Poland. In these very regions there run important ethnic borders between Slavs and Balts, and between the Eastern and the Western groups of Slavs. The author has applied the method of theoretical contrastive studies to characterize the local dialect of Punsk. To begin with, the author forms the definition of the hypothetical modality along with its paraphrase. She analyzes the gradation of the hypothetical modality phenomenon. Therefore, she has distinguished 6 groups, each of which is characterized by a different degree of probability. Furthermore, she gives examples of all possible indicators of the hypothetical modality in the local dialect: lexical, morphological and syntactic, where lexical indicators are more precisely described. She has distinguished the differences and resemblances between the local dialect and the literary languages of Lithuanian and Polish. In the research area, she applies the experimental corpus of the local dialect of Punsk.