On the typological peculiarities of Lithuanian verbal morphosyntax.

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.

The paper deals with the doubling in the adjective inflection of Baltic and Slavic due to emergence of the category of definiteness. The category of definiteness encoded exclusively by a special set of adjectival inflections is a typologically uncommon feature. The particular patterns of encoding definiteness in Baltic and Slavic by case-forms of a cliticised relative pronoun are virtually identical. At the same time, clear differences between Baltic and Slavic preclude a reconstruction of inflectionally encoded definiteness for the common prehistory of the languages. Finally, a special definite inflection of adjectives is known from a further Indo-European branch of Central Europe, i.e. Germanic, where the definiteness is encoded in an entirely different way. The paper shows, that the inflectional category of definiteness in Baltic and Slavic is best explained as having arisen by grammaticalisation due to contact with ancient Germanic dialects.

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.

In this article, the following types of morphological adaptation of borrowed adjectives in Lithuanian are identified: (1) zero adaptation, (2) assignment to inflection class (IC), (3) addition of derivational suffix, (4) substitution of derivational suffix, (5) truncation of derivational suffix. Zero adaptation is very rare in internationalisms, but appears quite frequently in slang borrowings. Assignment to ICs is noted in internationalisms and slang borrowings with nearly complementary distribution of ICs in-us and-as. Addition of derivational suffixes is rare, but available in non-standard use and also possible, but difficult to prove, in internationalisms. Substitution of derivational suffixes is the main strategy for adaptation of internationalisms, the central role being played by the relational suffix-in-is. Truncation of derivational suffixes is very rare and is noted only in internationalisms where affixes of Latin origin can be occasionally deleted.

This paper deals with the three stems traditionally postulated in the description of Lithuanian verbal inflection, viz. the Present stem, the Past stem and the Infinitive stem. These stems play major role in the subgrouping of verbs into inflectional classes. The status of each of the stems as ‘morphomic’ or ‘inflectional’ is assessed in the light of the data from both inflectional and derivational morphology. It is argued on the basis of intricate prosodic and morphophonological data that the Infinitive stem is indeed necessary for an adequate description of the Lithuanian verbal system, and also that a separate Past Passive Participle stem relevant for deverbal derivation can also be postulated.

Peter Ackema, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Eulàlia Bonet & Antonio Fábregas (eds),The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology. , 2023

This is a survey of the domain of morphological borrowing complemented with a case-study of contact-induced phenomena in the domain of verbal prefixes in Baltic, Slavic and neighboring languages. Section 2 presents a concise overview of the main divisions and analytical problems of morphological borrowing, focusing on the distinction between matter borrowing and pattern borrowing, on the one hand, and on the borrowing of different types of morphology (e.g. derivation vs. inflection, affixes vs. processes etc.). Section 3 further illustrates these issues on the data of the borrowing phenomena involving verbal prefixes in Baltic and Slavic, such as borrowing of individual prefixes from Slavic into Baltic dialects and of whole systems of prefixes from Slavic into Romani and Istro-Romanian and from Baltic into Livonian, or cases of pattern replication involving verbal prefixes in Lithuanian, Yiddish and Romani. Borrowability of the Slavic and Baltic verbal aspect expressed by means of prefixation is also discussed, and it is shown that the aspectual values of borrowed prefixes are never exact copies of their counterparts in the source languages.

International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 1987

In this study a general paradigm of verbal inflection is sought, which includes both the vertical dimension of inflection (the endings proper) and also the complex horizontal dimension (the patterns of stem-types). Particular attention is paid to the definition of the flecteme and its components. The set of endings proper is shown to be stable within the system, whereas the other inflectional component (the various stem segments) is shown to be quite complex.

Studies About Languages, 2019

The aim of this research is to identify the main structural patterns of affixes of Lithuanian inflective words, their productivity and frequency. We present a survey of the structural diversity and productivity of these morphemes rendered in The Dictionary of Modern Lithuanian and in The Grammar of Modern Lithuanian. The frequency data was collected from The Database of the Morphemics of the Lithuanian Language. The morpheme analysis has revealed the following tendencies: 1) while prefixes are always monosyllabic, suffixes and flexions can vary from non-syllabic to trisyllabic, 2) within these morphemes, consonant clusters are not frequent. Prefixes in Lithuanian can have C0-2VC0-2 structure. The most productive and frequent pattern is C1V. Suffixes have structures C1-2, C0-2V(W)C0-3 and C0-1VC1-2VC0-2. The most productive are VC1 of nominal words and C1, VC0-1 verbal suffixes. In usage, VC1 suffixes of nominal words and V, C1 as well as VC1 verb patterns dominate. Flexions can have...

Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje, 2016

The Slavic i-verbs fall into two categories. On the one hand, verbs with an infinitive in -ěti represent earlier perfects, statives, optatives, duratives, and athematic i-presents, corresponding to Lithuanian verbs in -ėti with an i-present. These verbs regularly belong to accent class (c) in Slavic, reflecting original accentual mobility. On the other hand, verbs with an infinitive in -iti represent original causatives, iteratives and denominatives and correspond to Lithuanian causatives and iteratives in -yti, present -o, and -inti, present -ina. As a rule, the Slavic causatives and iteratives belong to accent classes (a) or (b) and the denominatives to the accent class of the noun from which they are derived.The Slavic duratives and iteratives correspond to the Lithuanian iand o-presents, respectively, whereas the denominatives in -iti, -ěti, -ati and -ovati correspond to the Lith. derived thematic ja-presents. The derivation of the o-presents from a paradigm 3rd sg. *stastāti, 3...