The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, issued by the Second Vatican Council, recommended a wider use of vernacular languages. In line with the Constitution, Lithuanian Commission for Liturgy prepared a number of Lithuanian texts. Most of them have accent marks. This article presents an overview of accentuated Lithuanian liturgy texts and evaluates their importance in spreading the norms of standard Lithuanian. An account is given on the accentuation principles and trends of that time while some desirable corrections are also indicated. The article focuses on the following books: “The Roman Catholic Ritual”, “The Liturgy Prayer-Book” and “The Roman Catholic Missal” (Vol. 6). Some notes are also made concerning the accentuation of other Lithuanian Catholic texts.

The paper analyses word accentuation in the Lithuanian language textbooks for the IX–XI grades. The aim of the research is to try to assess the textbooks from the point of view of accentuation, to discuss accentuation mistakes in them, and to present some remarks concerning the word accentuation expediency in textbooks. In the three textbooks of the Lithuanian language 4236 word forms are stressed, 25 of them have a wrong stress. According to the author, there should be less stressed words in the texts of the textbooks for senior grades where the course on accentuation is taught. Only terms, place names and more difficult and rare words should be stressed. It is necessary to make teaching accentuation more effective in mainstream schools, to enhance pupils’ motivation to learn correct accentuation and put stress correctly while speaking in public.

Les recherches montrent que le langage des journalistes de la television et de la radio n'est pas toujours correcte. Le fait le plus alarmant c'est l'accentuation. L'objet d'etude de notre recherche - l'analyse de l'accentuation de l'emmision de basket-ball du championat final, d'hommes, de 2003 ou les Lituaniens ont merite le titre des champions d'Europe...

The language of television and radio journalists has the power to influence the language across the society, therefore, it should be subject to the highest requirements; language should be correct and prestigious. Correct accentuation is one of the weaker sides of the language of journalists. Studies show that the mistakes of pronunciation and accentuation in the language of journalists and programme presenters are rather common. The language of sports presenters and sports commentators does not make an exception – it is not always correct. The goal of the study is to analyse the language of Nerijus Kesminas, one of the most well-known journalists of football programmes in our country, in terms of accentuation. The language of 3 television programmes (commentary on 3 live football broadcasts) has been selected for the study. The results Characteristic accentuation mistakes in football programmes Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vidas Kavaliauskas, Laurynas Aržuolaitis Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences SUMMARY have shown that the language of Nerijus Kesminas is not poor. Nevertheless, accentuation mistakes, whether systematic or random, are rather numerous. The article discusses the accuracy of accentuation in the football commentator’s language and highlights the most characteristic accentuation mistakes of systematic type, which are juxtaposed to the standard accentuation cases; accentuation patterns in the standard language are explained; recommendations on how to avoid such mistakes are provided. The article could be relevant to the journalists of football and other television and radio sports programmes, students of physical education study programmes and teachers, coaches, and finally – athletes themselves.

The aim of this research is to analyze the importance of an accent in popular songs of young people: versification trends, intervals between accents, the relationship between grammatical and metric accents. 58 songs (1239 lines) from the lists of popular songs announced by radio stations were selected for the research. An accent in songs is an important means of rhythmics. However, only a half of the analysed songs was written by combining syllabic – accentual metres of versification. Only 10 songs were written in one metre. Authors of songs usually mind the general rhythmics rules of a spoken language: they avoid two side-by-side intervals of stressed or long unstressed syllables. Most frequently, one-syllabled (48 %) and two-syllabled (37 %) inter-accentual intervals are used in the analysed songs. Three-syllabled intervals make up only 12 %; while four or five unstressed syllables between accents, as well as two stressed syllables next to each other are rare. Intervals of long stressed syllables are eliminated by inserting secondary accents. When two stressed syllables meet, a word of lower importance loses its accent. The tendency of the Lithuanian language to the choree rhythm (every second syllable is stressed) is even more obvious in the songs. Various accentuation mistakes that have been identified in the songs amount to 66. 54 mistakes are due to the influence of the spoken language; the remaining 12 mistakes were conditioned by metre, rhythm or rhyme. An accent in a poetical language is not only a common pronunciation code of a word, but also a feature of the form or even the inner power of the entire work. Therefore song writers and singers should be especially careful with respect to accentuation.

The research object is primary features of the rhythm: length o f sentences in phrases, size of phrases, structure of phrase beginning and end, length of inter-stress intervals. Each of the chosen extracts from the prose of S. Nėris, P. Orintaitė, A. Vaičiulaitis, V. Ramonas and V. Mykolaitis-Putinas includes 1 thousand sentences. Research results show that in the Lithuanian prose two-phrase and three-phrase sentences (42%), the phrases of two and three stresses (phonological words) (69%), one-syllable and two-syllables inter-stress intervals (66%) predominate. Nearly half of all the phrases begin and end in one unstressed syllable, and every third phrase begins and ends in a stressed syllable. The rhythm of the prose is not limited by a metric scheme, however, it distinctly depends on meaning and syntactical structure, both of which are in need of future investigation.