Argument Realization in Baltic
Argument Realization in Baltic

Author: Axel Holvoet

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-01-21

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 9027267537

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The third volume in the VARGReB series explores different aspects of varying argument realization in Baltic. It presents original studies on differential marking of both core and non-core verbal arguments, on argument structures of nouns and the encoding of nominal arguments, as well as on constructions reflecting the expansion of argument structure through the addition of causative, resultative or applicative predications. The discussion of phenomena of argument realization and marking often touches on fundamental problems of syntax and the syntax-semantics interface, such as the putative locality of case assignment, event-structural factors determining case marking, the inheritance of argument structure across phrase types, or the status of arguments and adjuncts. The contributions to this volume use different approaches and frameworks to analyze a wealth of authentic data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.

Voice and Argument Structure in Baltic
Voice and Argument Structure in Baltic

Author: Axel Holvoet

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-08-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9027267952

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The second volume in the VARGReB series deals with voice in the wider sense, encompassing both alternations that preserve semantic valency, with passives as the most typical instance, and valency-changing devices such as the causative. Regarding the former, special attention is given to event-structural conditions on passivization, non-canonical passives, and the relation between passives and (active) impersonals. Papers dealing with causatives focus on valency patterns and argument marking in canonical as well as extended uses of causative morphology. Other articles consider converse constructions and the argument structure of middles, which seem to hold a position between voice in the narrow sense and valency-changing operations. An introductory article provides background information on the repertoire of voice alternations in Baltic from a cross-linguistic perspective. Representing different approaches and methods, the contributions to this volume offer fine-grained analyses of data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.

Grammatical Relations and their Non-Canonical Encoding in Baltic
Grammatical Relations and their Non-Canonical Encoding in Baltic

Author: Axel Holvoet

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-05-15

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 9027270392

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This is the first of three volumes dealing with clausal architecture, grammatical relations, case-marking and the syntax–semantics interface in Baltic. It focuses on the grammatical relations of subject and object and the viability of these notions in languages like Lithuanian and Latvian, which have a rich case morphology and show many deviations from the canonical nominative-accusative pattern of case-marking. The issues examined include differential object marking, subjecthood in specificational copular constructions, ‘swarm’-type alternations and what they tell us about grammatical relations, special types of subject and object marking in non-finite clauses, and non-canonical grammatical relations induced by modal predicates. One study provides a comparative outlook towards Icelandic, another language noted for its complex marking of grammatical relations. The articles in the volume represent various theoretical frameworks.

The Middle Voice in Baltic
The Middle Voice in Baltic

Author: Axel Holvoet

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9027261083

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The fifth volume in the VARGReB series is a monograph presenting a collection of studies on middle-voice grams in Baltic, that is, on a widely ramified family of constructions with different syntactic and semantic properties but sharing a morphological marker of reflexive origin. Though the emphasis is on Baltic, ample attention is given to other languages as well, especially to Slavonic. The book offers many new insights into questions of syntactic and semantic interpretation, correct demarcation and diachronic explanation of middle-voice grams. The relationship between reflexive and middle, the workings of metonymy, changes in syntactic structure and lexical input as factors determining diachronic shifts within the middle-voice domain and transitions from one middle-voice gram to another – these are among the topics discussed in the book, which, beyond its relevance to Baltic and Slavonic scholarship, is also a contribution to the typology of the middle voice.

Copular Constructions in Lithuanian
Copular Constructions in Lithuanian

Author: Rolandas Mikulskas

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-06-09

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9027267421

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The fourth volume in the VARGReB series presents an in-depth investigation of Lithuanian copular constructions from the viewpoint of Cognitive Grammar. Apart from the fundamental problems of the ontology and taxonomy of copular sentences, the author also discusses a number of more specific questions on which the Lithuanian data, contrasted with those of English and other languages hitherto dealt with in the literature, can shed an interesting light, such as the nature and distinctive features of specificationals, the problem of subjecthood in this subtype of copular constructions, the aspectual semantics of copular sentences, etc. The attention given to the grammatical context of copular constructions and the multifarious relationships linking them to other construction types enhances the book’s relevance to the field of Lithuanian studies, whereas the dialogue and confrontation between the Cognitive perspective adopted by the author and the more formal approaches hitherto applied to the problem of copular sentences will add to its interest for the general reader.

Diachrony of differential argument marking
Diachrony of differential argument marking

Author: Ilja A. Seržant

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 3961100853

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While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.

Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony
Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony

Author: Sonia Cristofaro

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-07-15

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 9027264457

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Typological hierarchies are widely perceived as one of the most important results of research on language universals and linguistic diversity. Explanations for typological hierarchies, however, are usually based on the synchronic properties of the patterns described by individual hierarchies, not the actual diachronic processes that give rise to these patterns cross-linguistically. This book aims to explore in what ways the investigation of such processes can further our understanding of typological hierarchies. To this end, diachronic evidence about the origins of several phenomena described by typological hierarchies is discussed for several languages by a number of leading scholars in typology, historical linguistics, and language documentation. This evidence suggests a rethinking of possible explanations for typological hierarchies, as well as the very notion of typological universals in general. For this reason, the book will be of interest not only to the broad typological community, but also historical linguists, cognitive linguists, and psycholinguists.

Epistemic Modalities and Evidentiality in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
Epistemic Modalities and Evidentiality in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Author: Zlatka Guentchéva

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-04-09

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 3110569884

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This volume explores phenomena which come under the heading of epistemic modalities and evidentiality in more or less well-known languages (Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Hungarian, Tibetan, Lakandon and Yucatec Maya, Arwak-Chibchan Kogi and Ika). It reveals cross-linguistic variations in the structuring of these vast fields of enquiry and clearly demonstrates the relevance and interplay of multiple factors involved in the analysis of these two conceptual domains. Although the contributions present diverging descriptive traditions, they are nonetheless within the broad domain of functional-typological linguistics and give access to distinct yet comparable approaches. They all converge around a number of key issues: modal verbs; the relationship between epistemic modality and evidentiality; the relationship of modal notions with some tense and aspect notions; the notions of (inter)subjectivity, commitment and (dis)engagement; the prosodic variation of modal adverbs, the diachronic connections between negation and evidential markers, the connection with mirativity. The volume is of interest to linguists and advanced graduate students working in general and theoretical linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, cognition, and typology.

Contributions to Morphology and Syntax
Contributions to Morphology and Syntax

Author: Stephan Kessler

Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH

Published: 2015-11-02

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 383253752X

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These conference proceedings present fourteen contributions to the Baltic languages, i.e. Latvian and Lithuanian. Their temporal horizon is both modern and historical: the present-day matters of word formation as well as mistaking agreements are complemented by synchronic investigations of the syntactic usage of cases, conjunctions and verb categories; nevertheless, word origins, the development of inflections, and the processes of depalatalisation have been researched by a diachronic approach.