On periphrastic causative constructions in Lithuanian and Latvian

Baltic Linguistics, 2018

Periphrastic causatives in Latvian, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian are discussed to differentiate shared and language-specific constructions. It is shown that factitive constructions evolved independently, while the permissive ones are partly shared. One of the possible reasons for this is that the Baltic languages had a productive category of morphological factitive causatives and periphrastic factitives were less salient in the past. In contrast, permissive causation could not be expressed by morphological means and, as a result, permissive constructions reflect some common innovations. The permissives based on the predicate 'give' are a Baltic or even a Balto-Slavic development areally shared with the Finnic languages. Latvian and Lithuanian share two roots *lḗid- 'release' and *vḗl- 'want', which gave rise to permissive constructions, but their root ablaut or inflectional stems differ and reflect independent morphological developments. Of note is that Baltic *lḗid- is a cognate of Germanic *lēt-, which is also used in permissive constructions (German lassen, English let, etc.) and is not found in Slavic. Only Latvian has fully developed permissive use of ļaut. Baltic periphrastic factitive constructions share some common paths of semantic shifts, but the verbs employed are unrelated and these developments are probably relatively late and individual.

Baltistica, 2019

This study analyzes periphrastic permissive and factitive causative constructions in a corpus of 16 th and 17 th century Old Lithuanian texts. In contrast to modern use, permissive constructions with duoti play a central role in many texts, while those with leisti are only more frequent in some sources and appear to have spread from the east to the west. Due to the influence of bifunctional German lassen constructions, duoti is used not only in permissive constructions, but also in factitive constructions, especially in Prussian Lithuanian. The permittees in duoti and leisti constructions are usually marked as dative, although the accusative is also attested due to the influence of German lassen + ACC constructions; however, in the case of leisti, the accusative may sometimes be interpreted as archaic, marking the direct object of the source construction leisti 'release' + ACC. In addition to permissive constructions with duoti and leisti, this paper also discusses rare cases of the archaic verb (pa-)velti and the borrowed Slavic permissives pa-velyti and pa-/pri-zvalyti. The majority of reflexive permissive constructions are based on duoti and contain a reflexive affixal marker on the matrix predicate, but constructions with an additional marker on the subordinate infinitive are also well-attested. In general, factitive constructions are less frequent than permissive ones and, just as in Modern Lithuanian, the most common factitive is (pri-)versti, but borrowed Slavic (pri-)sylyti is also attested in some sources.

Valency, Argument Realization and Grammatical Relations in Baltic, 2015

This paper investigates Latvian verbs with causative morphology and their relations to non-causative verbs. Causative morphology comprises vowel alternation and suffixation. The different techniques are largely synonymous, but differ in frequency and productivity. A major concern of this paper is to determine which kind of base verbs have corresponding morphological causatives and how the argument structure of a causative verb can be linked to that of the base verb. The great majority of Latvian morphological causatives represent the causative prototype: they are systematically related to patientive intransitive verbs whose single argument corresponds to the direct object of the causative construction. Variations to this pattern are found with causatives based on intransitive verbs whose primary argument is an Agent, Experiencer, or Theme. Morphological causatives related to transitive base verbs are rare and predominantly used in monotransitive constructions. In general, causatives with all kind of bases tend to be used in the basic transitive construction of Latvian with one direct object in the accusative, and possibly peripheral arguments marked with the locative or a preposition. [If you are interested in this paper, please ask me for an electronic offprint.]

We analyse morphological causative verbs in Lithuanian on the basis of an annotated corpus, studying the distribution of different causative suffixes across the valency types of base verbs, as well as the argument structure of the causatives themselves. We show that different causative suffixes are unevenly distributed with respect to the transitivity and agentivity of the base verbs and that morphological causatives in Lithuanian, being no longer productive, tend to pattern in their argument structure and interpretation together with ordinary transitive verbs. The not very numerous causatives based on transitive verbs are investigated, and it is shown that causatives based on "ingestive" verbs like 'eat' or 'drink' behave differently from causatives formed from other semantic types of bases, in particular in that they allow the expression of both participants of the caused event. The non-ingestive transitive verbs derive so called "curative" causatives which are peculiar in that they never allow regular overt expression of the agent of the caused situation and are therefore not valency-increasing in the strict sense of the term. Such causatives are also shown to undergo meaning shifts rendering them partly synonymous with their base verbs, the original causative semantics being lost.

Baltu filoloģija, 2019

Permissive and factitive causative constructions are analyzed based on a corpus of 17th century Old Latvian texts. I demonstrate that the construction with the verb likt still has permissive and factitive functions similar to the 16th century use but different from the modern use, where only the factitive function of likt remains. I suggest that the factitive use of likt possibly developed under direct influence of (or supported by) the German lassen construction. Permissive constructions with dot, laist, ļaut, and (at-)vēlēt are also discussed and of those, the latter two are not found in the 16th century corpus and (at-)vēlēt is no longer used as permissive in modern Latvian. In factitive constructions, the verb (pie-)spiest is also sometimes used, but constructions with likt are much more frequent. The marking of permittee and causee varies between dative and accusative in some constructions; I argue that the dative should be seen as original in dot constructions and most likely original in likt constructions, and that the use of the accusative instead of the dative may reflect the influence of German constructions with lassen + ACC. I also discuss reflexive constructions, which usually occur with likt and frequently contain two affixal reflexive markers. In these constructions, the permittee can be marked by a PP with no, which is a copy of a corresponding German lassen construction containing a PP with von.

I discuss 4 Estonian periphrastic causative constructions based on laskma, andma, panema, and sundima with respect to semantic shift from non-causative to causative use. These constructions have parallels in Baltic, and I suggest that laskma belongs to the largest area of development, 'release' > 'let', attested in many Finno-Ugric and Indo-European languages, notably, in Germanic, Baltic, and to some extent, Slavic. The verb andma, which evolved as 'give' > 'let' (> 'be possible'), belongs to a smaller area of similar changes that occurred in Finnic, Baltic, and Slavic, while panema as 'put' > 'make' belongs to the smallest area (some Finnic and some Baltic languages). The verb sundima, as a Slavic loan, has parallel borrowings in a number of Finnic and Baltic languages, but only in Estonian has the causative use of this predicate developed.

2014

This thesis presents a description and analysis of non-canonical case-marking of core arguments in Lithuanian. It consists of an introduction and six articles, providing historical and/or contrastive perspective to this issue. More specifically, using data from Lithuanian dialects, Old Lithuanian and other languages such as Icelandic, Latin and Finnic for comparison, the thesis examines the development and current state of non-canonical case-marking of core arguments in Lithuanian The present work draws on empirical findings and theoretical considerations to investigate non-canonical case-marking, language variation and historical linguistics.Special attention is paid to the variation in the case-marking of body parts in pain verb constructions, where an accusative-marked body part is used in Standard Lithuanian, and alongside, a nominative-marked body part in Lithuanian dialects. A common objective of the first three articles is to clarify and to seek a better understanding for the...

2017

[Conclusions] Latvian periphrastic causative constructions in 16th c. texts differ from their modern use in three main respects: (1) likt is used in permissive contexts (notably with negation), (2) laist is a default permissive predicate, and (3) ļaut is unattested. The use of dot ‘let’ and spiest ‘make’ is marginal, which parallels the current situation in Latvian. Both dot ‘let’ and spiest ‘make’ seem to be rather closely tied to the (possible) sources of the translations. As for causee/permittee marking, there is a fluctuation between dative and accusative, but it should be noted that although the majority of pronominals can be formally classified as datives, they are also used as accusatives. In some cases of reflexive constructions, actual causees/permittees were marked by PPs with no, which seems to reflect the German pattern of PPs with von. However, only some of these examples had corresponding German constructions, meaning that either other sources were used, or the translator was already accustomed to this construction. The locus of affixation of the morphological reflexive marker in constructions with likt fluctuates, but the preferred place seems to be the matrix verb. Related to the permissive use of laist are the 1st person plural hortative and 3rd person optative/hortative constructions. The 1st person plural hortative is most likely a direct copy of the German lass(e)t uns construction, while the 3rd person constructions seem to be at least a partly independent development of Latvian. Rare 3rd person hortatives/optatives with infinitives, instead of with indicatives, may show an intermediate stage of development (cf. Holvoet 2001: 63): the original permittee was already marked by the nominative, but the infinitive was still kept and then subsequently replaced by the present indicative. Constructions with laid + present indicative (= modern use) are attested in only one source (UP1587).

BULLETIN OF THE GEORGIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019

In the article, the types of causative constructions in Georgian are discussed with respect to semantic roles, syntactic functions, and morphological marking. The three types of causaitve: lexical, analytic, and morphological are mentioned, but within the scope of the article, all the analyses are focused on and the restrictive rules are established according to the latter. The Georgian Causative are checked according to the hierarchy of grammatical relations by Comrie and the generalisation of case marking by Baker. Theoretically possible and actually attested combinations of basic and syntactically derived constructions are calculated with respect to valency and transitivity. At the end of the paper the restrictive rules (according to Baker) and relationship with the Comrian ideas are established. The schemes are shown according to the relationship and correpsondences of semantic roles and syntactic functions (taking into account both basic and derived constructions). The results are useful for the linguistic typology.