Abstract
Language plays a huge role in human life. By means of language, we think and communicate. Any language is closely related to the teleological system of its speakers. Therefore, changes in the teleological system affect the development of the corresponding language.
Folktales contain information about the traditions and values of people who pass them down from generation to generation. Scholars have studied the structure of folktales and the motives found in folktales, but not so much the language of folktales itself.
By implementing Roman Jakobson's communication model, which consists of six interrelated elements, I offer to look at a folktale as a channel through which a narrator, under certain circumstances and by means of a particular code (language), passes to his addressee a message. If one of these elements changes, the other five should evolve accordingly so that the communication flow in this model is not interrupted. Therefore, I assume that the language of folktales also transforms by taking into account the changes happening in the community they belong to so that they are still understandable and can find new narrators and addressees. If my assumptions are correct, then by studying the language of folktales diachronically, we could learn if and how their language has changed.
In my presentation, I will focus on the code (language) and carry out a diachronic analysis of the language of nine Lithuanian folktales, which August Schleicher collected in 1852 during his stay in Little Lithuania and which he later sent to Prague in his letters to Pavel Josef Šafařík. The purpose of this diachronic study is to trace how editors in 1857, 1903, and 1993 changed the language of these folktales to ensure that they would still be understandable to their contemporary Lithuanian readers.