Baltic linguistics

The paper argues that the distribution of the two late PSl. reflexes of early PSl. *oi# (namely, *ě2# and *i2#) is governed in a regular fashion by the presence or absence of an original [+acute] feature on the original diphthong. The old "Jagić rule" (which is generally NOT believed to be borne out by the data) should be thought of as an exceptionless (Neogrammarian-style) sound law.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the semantic values of the Lithuanian perfect construction, putting them into perspective of grammaticalization. The paper is based entirely on the data from a 2-million-word Facebook comments corpus created ad hoc for this study. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the semantic values of the perfect tokens extracted from the corpus offers several previously unidentified features of this Lithuanian construction. A large proportion of structures formally corresponding to the perfect should be described as copular constructions with adjectivized participles. This formal coincidence and the ambiguity generated by it in certain cases should not be seen as accidental but rather considered a likely source of the grammaticalization of the Lithuanian perfect, as the influence of its semantic features can be seen in all other perfect values. Considering it as a source, it seems that the development of the Lithuanian perfect is going into two separate, but also related directions, each of which is based on a gradual abandonment of one of the two core features of the prototypical Lithuanian perfectsthe subject-oriented resultatives. In case of the transitive resultative perfects, the orientation towards the subject is lost, while in case of the experientials, it is the resultative meaning. Out of these two values, the experientials are twice as frequent, which shows that the resultative meaning is abandoned more readily than the need to express a state or a quality of the subject. However, the experiential perfects seem to present some formal differences from all the other perfect values, namely, a significantly more frequent auxiliary usage which has so far been considered accidental.

This work sets its aim at understanding the roots of the Indo-European language, whose existence has been validated by a large set of comparative evidence found in several languages spoken from Europe to Asia. comparing careful comparison of Sanskrit texts with Ancient Greek and Latin ones, together with textual sources from the other languages which we now recognize as part of the Indo-European family, linguists have tried to outline the societal structure that these people shared in their common stage, However, for most of the issues of Indo-European linguistics, the linguist data are the only real source eventually: no direct evidence of 'who' the Indo-European are available, of course, and even archaeologists and biologists often disagree on this topic. Thus, different methods were developed that focused on the lexicon and the grammatical structure of the Indo-European languages. One, called the lexical theory of Kuhn, focused on the roots of words, comparing similar ones and making conjectures given the existence or not of certain words-i.d. the existence of a word that is similar to the Latin "king", maybe proof that these people were in fact governed by a king. Another method was the "textual" one, that did not focus solely on the lexical side of the words, but also on their content, implying then a strong relationship between the language and the culture of these people. Hence, during the years, using these and other methods, linguist was able to define a quite general but valid picture of the verbal system of the Indo-European language. In this work, we focus on the different aspects that were indagated to outline the rules of this language. In the first chapter, we focused on the understanding of the morphological system used. In this sense, we indagated the relationship that the verbal form had with the respect to the time of the action. In this sense, the verbal system was built on three oppositions, which were realized respectively with the present stem and with the aorist stem. Beside them, another aspectual/actional category was available, namely the perfect, which indicated a state due to an event that occurred in the past.

The aim of the research is to examine Russianisms of Lithuanian language in a corpus collected from posts of Internet forums, by means of gathering and analysing them. In the course of the analysis of lexical Russianisms I examined phonological, morphological and semantic changes, which took place during the adaptation of Russianisms in Lithuanian language, as well as the distribution of Russianisms by word classes, the proportion of Russianisms derived from Russian literary language, slang and spoken language. I have found about 270 lexical units, which – apart from a few exceptions – do not figure in any dictionary, nearly 50% of them not even in the Database of Lithuanian Slang, collected by Vilnius University. It reinforces the presupposition, that Internet forums, just like spoken language, contain a huge quantity of Russianisms. Most of them are related to everyday life, a lot of them denote objects of everyday use. We can also find a significant amount of swear words. Russian...

The chapter offers a brief survey of the instances of Finno-Ugric substrate evidence in North Russian. While critically assessing most of the contact-induced features, the author surmises that it is practically impossible to prove without question that a given convergence is the result of contact or independent innovation. To overcome this impasse, the analysis of resultatives is based on the postulates of the sociolinguistic (systemic) typology, including description of the relevant societal factors and their variables which determine the grammaticalization of the -no/-to predicate and its optional adverbial modifiers. A typological drift from nominativity to ergativity and the development of a new structural alignment in northern Russian resultatives can be linked with changes in the respective speech communities. The author argues that the historical grammaticalization of resultatives was driven not so by Finno-Ugric interference as by the constellation of societal variables such as ‘small speech community,’ ‘dense social networks,’ ‘social stability,’ ‘large amount of background information,’ and ‘isolation’

The paper examines numerals 11-19 in Baltic (i.e. Lith and Latv, while in OPr these numerals are not attested). A review of their morphological structure is presented with particular attention to Mažiulis’ (1957) reconstruction. His ideas allow for reconstructing a deep morpho-syntactical structure of the type (1): X-remaining-after-10. This pattern not only accounts for the different morphological outputs displayed by Lith and Latv, but it also explains a common syntactical feature shown by both languages, that is the request of genitive plural on the quantified noun. Numerals 11-19 have the same syntactical behaviour of 10 and the other ‘round’ numerals. But while the latters originated from noun-like lexemes indicating a set of elements or a totality seen as a unit (as reflected in their singular forms), no similar argument can be used for 11-19. So, their peculiar syntax can only be explained with reference to that of 10, according to the structure (1). In the second part of the paper Luján’s (1999) typological classification of numeral systems in four types is taken into account. Special attention is paid to the concepts of proper/improper base and explicit/implicit improper base. The main hypothesis is that the series 11-19 reflects an ancient period of development of the common Baltic numeral system when it belonged to type III (improper base). Numerals from 20 on show several features of discontinuity with respect to the previous (and oldest) numerals. So, in a diachronically stratified view of numeral systems, at some point 11-19 represented the last series; and its upper limit, 20, was probably the highest lexicalized numeral. At this stage, the system was formed by: simple units (1-9); a higher unit (improper base, 10); nine units lexicalized according to the digital counting procedure x-remaining-after-10 (11-19); and, possibly, a second higher unit (20).

This paper is the first empirical study of the construction TAKE (and) V ("he took and left" = 'he left suddenly, unexpectedly') in contemporary Latvian and Lithu-anian, carried out on a large sample of corpus data. The results obtained for Baltic are compared with Slavic (Polish, Russian) and Finnic (Estonian, Finnish) data from comparable corpora. It is argued that out of all the languages under consideration, in Baltic the construction is the most frequent and the most fixed in its form, while at the same time being able to appear in various inflectional forms and in various functions. Other languages differ in how they deviate from the Baltic type. It is also shown that its semantics is largely context-dependent, being sensitive to the semantics of the inflectional form, subject and type of the lexical verb.

This paper is the first empirical study of the construction TAKE (and) V ("he took and left" = 'he left suddenly, unexpectedly') in contemporary Latvian and Lithu-anian, carried out on a large sample of corpus data. The results obtained for Baltic are compared with Slavic (Polish, Russian) and Finnic (Estonian, Finnish) data from comparable corpora. It is argued that out of all the languages under consideration, in Baltic the construction is the most frequent and the most fixed in its form, while at the same time being able to appear in various inflectional forms and in various functions. Other languages differ in how they deviate from the Baltic type. It is also shown that its semantics is largely context-dependent, being sensitive to the semantics of the inflectional form, subject and type of the lexical verb.

[Рец. на: / Review of:] P. Arkadiev, A. Holvoet, B. Wiemer (eds.).  Contemporary approaches to Baltic Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2015. viii, 554 p. (Trends in linguistics. Studies and Monographs. Vol. 276.) ISBN 978-3-11-034395-3.

The Baltic and Slavic reflexes of the Indo-European syllabic resonants *m̥, *n̥, *r̥, *l̥ are a combination of short vowel plus resonant (ĭm, ĭn, ĭr, ĭl with variants ŭm, ŭn, ŭr, ŭl possible); this is assumed to represent a common Balto-Slavic development (Shevelov 1965: 82). The subsequent lengthening of -ĭ- and —ŭ- to -i- and -y-, respectively, in verbs derived with the suffix *-ā- (often termed an iterative suffix, but in truth expressing a range of durative meanings, including states and cyclic activities), e.g., OCS -birati ‘gather’ (cf. non-lengthened -bĭrati) and Lithuanian klūpoti ‘be kneeling’ (cf. klupti ‘kneel down’), is also often claimed to be a common Balto-Slavic innovation (Schmalstieg: 2000; Villanueva Svensson 2011; Pronk 2012), formed through analogy with lengthened derivatives of e-grade verbs, e.g., Slavic -mětati ~ Latvian mę̃tãt ‘to throw repeatedly’ and Slavic -těkati ~ Latvian tę̃kãt ‘to be running’ (Endzelīns 1971: 227). Mathiassen (1974: 137–138) rejects this line of reasoning, arguing that the Slavic iterative derivation -mětati only came about after the rise of the perfective/imperfective distinction in Slavic. Schuyt (1990: 381) likewise proposes a separate origin for zero-grade lengthening in Slavic and Baltic, citing accentological evidence.

In this paper, I build upon Mathiassen’s initial criticism and argue that the current state of affairs in Baltic and Slavic could only have resulted from separate processes of zero-grade lengthening in the two language families, with apparent parallel forms such as (prefixed) Russian za-minaju ‘I crush’ (cf. non-lengthened za-mnu) and (simplex) Lithuanian mynioju ‘I trample’ (cf. non-lengthened minu) resulting not from shared innovation, but rather from formally similar yet functionally distinct processes. Specifically, I take a Construction Grammar approach and argue that the lengthened zero-grade in Slavic necessarily arose after the rise of the perfective/imperfective distinction. Prior to the grammaticalization of aspect, prefixes contributed spatial and directional meaning. Once prefix + verb combinations had become constructionalized (i.e., obligatorily expressing perfective meaning), a functional need arose for imperfective verbs with those same spatial/directional prefixes, and it was this need that drove the analogical extension of the lengthened grade from existing verb pairs, e.g., lětati ‘to be flying’ (cf. non-lengthened letěti) to zero-grade verbs. This paper thus contributes to a more detailed understanding of the grammaticalization of aspect in Slavic, and in particular, of the development of a major method of imperfective derivation. The relation of this zero-grade lengthening to the development of the Slavic imperfect tense is also considered, especially in light of Kamphuis’ (2014) view of the imperfect as the first derived form in the imperfective paradigm.

This paper is the first empirical study of the construction TAKE (and V (“he took and left” = ‘he left suddenly, unexpectedly’) in contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian, carried out on a large sample of corpus data. The results obtained for Baltic are compared with Slavic (Polish, Russian) and Finnic (Estonian, Finnish) data from comparable corpora. It is argued that out of all the languages under consideration, in Baltic the construction is the most frequent and the most fixed in its form, while at the same time being able to appear in various inflectional forms and in various functions. Other languages differ in how they deviate from the Baltic type. It is also shown that its semantics is largely context-dependent, being sensitive to the semantics of the inflectional form, subject and type of the lexical verb.

Predicative constructions with passive participles in Latvian and Lithuanian exhibit great variation in form, meaning and function, ranging from pure passive to various temporal, aspectual and modal meanings. This paper uses a set of formal and functional parameters to distinguish and profile several types and subtypes of such constructions. These types are mutually related by family resemblance and constitute a 'Passive Family'. They include dynamic and stative passives, three types of resultatives, several types of subjectless (impersonal) passives, modal constructions expressing possibility or necessity, and evidential constructions. Based on a thorough study of corpus data, the paper not only adds new insights about constructions that were already known, but also presents construction types that have not been discussed in the literature on the Baltic passive before: the Lithuanian cumulative-retrospective construction and the Latvian cumulative-experiential subtype.

Predicative constructions with passive participles in Latvian and Lithuanian exhibit great variation in form, meaning and function, ranging from pure passive to various temporal, aspectual and modal meanings. This paper uses a set of formal and functional parameters to distinguish and profile several types and subtypes of such constructions. These types are mutually related by family resemblance and constitute a 'Passive Family'. They include dynamic and stative passives, three types of resultatives, several types of subjectless (impersonal) passives, modal constructions expressing possibility or necessity, and evidential constructions. Based on a thorough study of corpus data, the paper not only adds new insights about constructions that were already known, but also presents construction types that have not been discussed in the literature on the Baltic passive before: the Lithuanian cumulative-retrospective construction and the Latvian cumulative-experiential subtype.

Emergence and spreading of book printing technique caused a radical status change of local vernaculars, that contributed substantially to their bloom. The opposite process, involving particularly a detrimental effect of book printing on once universal Latin as well as on some of the so-called „small“ languages, remains much less researched (and attractive). However, this process resulted in a complete vanishing of the latter. The aim of this article is to scrutinise practices of the Teutonic Order and (from 1525) the Duchy of Prussia. The author focuses (in the context of book printing) especially on the fate of the extinct Prussian language.

In this paper I briefly analyse how the categories of definiteness and indefiniteness are expressed in Old Latvian (16th–17th cent.). It is well known that the first texts written in this language were mostly translations from Middle Low German. After pointing out the differences between the strategies adopted in Old and in Modern Standard Latvian, I recall the systematic correspondence between the Old Latvian constructions and their German sources. Taking into account the sociolinguistic context of these documents, the diachronical evolution of such contructions, and the theory of grammaticalization, it is possible to conclude that the use of the numeral ‘1’ as a marker of indefiniteness in Old Latvian reflects the interference of Middle Low German. On the other hand, the use of demonstratives as markers of definiteness remains under debate.