Lithuanian reflexive-based impersonals with accusative objects

Computational linguistics and intellectual technologies, 12 (19), p. 723-737. , 2013

The paper argues that transitive impersonals in Russian, Ukrainian and Icelandic can be accounted for in terms of Mel’čuk’s zero lexemes reanalyzed here as pronouns in the nominative case acting as agreement controllers. An alternative analysis resorting to Burzio’s Generalization stipulates defective vP for different classes of verbs licensing transitive impersonals but fails to make correct predictions. The distribution of impersonals in Russian and Ukrainian does not depend on the distinction of unaccusative vs unergative vs psych predicates. Most Russian verbs labeled ‘psych’ in the previous generative research are either semantic causatives or agentive verbs with an external argument and valency grid <Agent, Patient>.

Baltic Linguistics Vol. 4 (2013), p. 39–77.

This paper proposes a unified treatment of two important types of morphosemantic correlations involving Lithuanian verbs forming their present stem with nasal infix or suffix st: the causative/inchoative correlation of the type kilti ‘rise’ (intransitive) vs. kelti ‘raise’ (transitive) and the purely aspectual (actional) correlation of the type verkti ‘weep’ (atelic process) vs. pravirkti ‘start weeping’ (telic achievement), involving mostly intransitive verbs differing as process/state vs. event and not affecting their argument structure. It is argued that the latter correlation, despite having been largely neglected in the literature, is even more widespread in Lithuanian than the former. It is argued that the aspectual correlation has un-dergone extension in the more recent history of Lithuanian, and a diachronic scenario is out-lined accounting for the semantic and morphological links between the older transitivity alter-nation and the newer actional alternation.

Baltic Linguistics, 2020

This paper explores referential features of deleted actors in impersonal passive and impersonal constructions in three languages: Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian. Though cross-linguistically passive or impersonal verb forms of intransitive verbs are generally associated with indefinite human agency, our study shows that this correlation is not absolute: in the investigated languages passives and impersonals of intransitives, apart from generic and indefinite actors, may also imply contextually given, definite actors, and for some constructions, e.g. Estonian impersonals with the auxiliary saama 'get', this is actually their main use. Data for our study comes from large comparable corpora of web resources. In a small quantitative study we determine the factors that condition a personal use of an impersonal verb form in the three languages. The most important factors are verbal lexeme (certain lexemes show a greater preference for certain types of covert actors), as well as construction type: of two formally distinct impersonal (passive) constructions, one is preferred in non-impersonal functions where the covert actor is a contextually given person. The topic of this paper is constructions with a passive participle as predicate where the actor, though syntactically deleted, has a referent known to speaker and addressee. The investigated constructions are the Subjectless  We wish to thank our two anonymous reviewers as well as Axel Holvoet, Peter Arkadiev and Wayles Browne for their critical reading and many valuable comments.

Referential and pragmatic-discourse properties of Lithuanian impersonals: 2SG-IMP, 3-IMP and ma/ta-IMP. Kalbotyra 71, 32-57, 2019

In this paper I describe the semantics, pragmatics and the discourse functions of three Lithuanian agent-defocusing constructions, featuring the non-referential use of second person singular/third person verbal forms and the non-agreeing participial forms in ma/ta. These three constructions can all be defined as impersonal, in the broader sense of the word, as the agent (or the main participant, whatever its semantic role may be) is constructed as non-referential: I label them 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp. My corpus consists of original Lithuanian texts (a short story and entries on an Internet forum) and of the Lithuanian translations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella Le Petit Prince and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. My analysis shows that 2sg-imp are preferably used to express generic agents (anyone) and 3-imp are preferably used to express referential indefinite agents (someone), while ma/ta-imp are referentially flexible. 2sg-imp are pragmatically marked in that they are used to express empathy between the speaker and the pool of potential referents; they are mostly used in specific discourse types, such as opinion statements and life drama situations. 3-imp are preferred in situations where the indefiniteness of the agent is relevant to the development of the narrative; ma/ta-imp are instead preferred when the agent is irrelevant, and the focus is on the event itself. The behavior of Lithuanian 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp is consistent with the one already described for similar constructions in other European languages.

This paper investigates the periphrastic causative constructions of Lithuanian and Latvian on the basis of corpus data. It aims at compiling a preliminary list of basic and marginal verbs used in these constructions and describes the argument marking and the clause types used to express the caused events. On the basis of corpus data, the free forms employed in these constructions are ranked according to the frequency of their causative vs. non-causative use. It is shown that the main factitive construction is based on (pri-)versti in Lithuanian and likt in Latvian, while the most frequent model for the permissive construction is based on leisti in Lithuanian and ļaut in Latvian. The causees of the factitive constructions are marked by the accusative (with the most notable exception of Latvian likt), while the permissive constructions strongly prefer the dative. The caused events are expressed by infinitival or that-clauses and some reflexive causatives select participial complements.

This paper discusses the various methodological and theoretical prerequisites necessary to cope with a seemingly quite simple task. This task consists in establishing the number and types of verb pairs in Lithuanian and Polish which are morphologically related by the presence vs. absence of the reflexive marker and which, from a semantic point of view, relate to each other like converses (= RM-converses). We are faced with the question of whether RM-converses can really be considered a class in a taxonomy of RM-derivatives, sufficiently distinct, primarily, from anticausatives. After delimiting (RM-)converses from symmetrical and reciprocal predicates as well as from the grammatical passive, it turns out that any sensible proposal for a differentiation between RM-converses and anticausatives hinges on the status of the obliquely marked constituent: if it is treated as an argument of the RM-derivative, it has to be counted as a converse to the non-RM-verb since numerical valence is retained; if the oblique constituent counts as an adjunct, the RM-derivatives should be considered an anticausative. The question thus boils down to "taking cuts" on an argument -adjunct cline. Since no existing theoretical account of the morphology-semantics interface provides clear-cut criteria for making decisions that can be generalized, criteria are detailed on a language-specific basis and applied to Lithuanian and Polish two-place RM-converses, for which lexical groups are established. Contrasts between both languages are highlighted on the basis of an in-depth analysis. With all methodological caveats in mind, one of the results of an investigation thus conducted consists in a commented list of RM-converses which, for Lithuanian, comprises three times as many items as were established in earlier investigations of RM-verbs. Apart from this, and the methodological pitfalls brought to light, the article discusses various specific effects relevant for a lexical typology of minor classes of RM-verbs.

Kalbotyra, 1977

The object of this paper are the linguistic means used in Lithuanian to express predicative Posses-sion. The possessive constructions are individuated and described, as along with the semantic con-straints that favour or disfavour their use. It is claimed that the evidence provided in this paper con-firms what ČINČLEJ (1990) stated: Lithuanian should be considered as occupying a transitional posi-tion between the have- and the be- languages, contra ISAČENKO (1974), who considered it as a pure have-language. The role that language contact may have played in determining the Lithuanian way of expressing Possession is also considered.

Defective ParadigmsMissing Forms and What They Tell Us, 2010