Due to historical and political circumstances, diachronic linguistics and its problems as well as linguistic variation received little attention in Lithuanian linguistics until 1990, whereas the Lithuanian language itself was frequently in the focus of the leading Indo-Europeanists (Sabaliauskas 1979; 2019). Nevertheless, influenced by Western linguistic traditions over the last decades, modern research trends such as sociolinguistics, perceptive dialectology, dialecticity measurement and dialectometry have strengthened their position in Lithuania (cf., e.g., Aliūkaitė et al., 2017; Čepaitienė 2019; Mikulėnienė et al., 2019; Mikulėnienė, Meiliūnaitė 2014; Ramonienė 2010; 2013; Kardelis 2018, Schneider 2013).
All the aforesaid circumstances have predetermined the emergence of dialectological research trends and paradigms. The three paradigms of Lithuanian dialectology (traditional dialectology; structural dialectology; geolinguistics), however, are united by only two aspects:
a) a classification interest,
b) a belief that dialect differentiation is typical of the area of the Lithuanian language
These aspects result out of the fact that the structure of Lithuanian diatopic variations is based on a dialect classification, which was introduced in 1966 (cf. Girdenis, Zinkevičius 1966). For very long, Lithuanian research on language variation has been focussing on answering the following questions: how many Lithuanian dialects are there and what are the boundaries between these dialects.
A different approach towards diatopic variation is introduced in this presentation. The question “How many Lithuanian dialects are there?“ is replaced by the question “What is the diatopic structure of the Lithuanian language area?“ The answers are based on the following theoretical-methodological principles:
1) the concepts of TYPOPHOBIA AND TYPOPHILIA (cf. Goebl 1986).
2) the concept of AREAL TYPOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY (cf. e.g. Lameli 2013).
Areal typological complexity is not linked with a desire to classify dialects according to distinctive features, but with the idea, that the distribution of diatopic variations within a language area is highly complex. Moreover, the concept of areal typological complexity is efficiently connected not only to the concepts of typophobe and typophile thinking but also to the paradigm of quantitative analysis and dialectometry (cf. Goebl 1982; 1994; 2001). Research on diatopic variation, which is based on the just mentioned theoretical-methodological principles and their syntheses, allows withdrawing from the traditional approach prevailing in Lithuanian linguistics (traditional classification of Lithuanian dialects according to distinctive features, specification of isoglosses).
One result of this presentation is a suggestion of a new and innovative structure of diatopic variation based on complex phonological analyses. This structure is perceived as a communicative-functional concept representing a diasystem of the Lithuanian language and at least one component of the quadrinomial model of language architecture (diatopic-diastratic-diaphasic-diachronic) (cf., e.g., Berruto 2004; Coseriu 2007). Additionally, this presentation also focusses on another approach to diatopic variations by applying the method of dialectometry as in Goebl 1982. The combination of these two approaches will allow for a current clustering of the Lithuanian language according to its communicative-functional reality as well as the dynamic visualisation of the situation itself.