Obliqueness, quasi-subjects and transitivity in Baltic and Slavonic

Holvoet, Axel

doi:10.1075/slcs.140.12hol

Cited by 31 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…If we recognize the debitive mood as part of the morphological paradigm of the verb form, then, syntactically, sentences in the indicative mood and the debitive mood belong to one and the same sentence pattern. In the oblique forms of this syntactic paradigm, all the arguments maintain their original functions (for discussion of differential or non-canonical subject marking in Latvian see Fennells 1995;Holvoet 2013;Holvoet & Grzybowska 2014;Holvoet & Nau 2014a;Seržant 2013).…”

Section: Semantic Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latvian Grammar

Kalnača¹,

Lokmane²

2021

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“Latvian Grammar” was written to make information about the Latvian language and its grammatical system more easily available not only within Latvia, but also beyond its borders. A modern grammar of Latvian written in English is as important for native speakers of Latvian as for those who have learned Latvian as a second language and also is of great value for anyone interested in the culture and history of Latvia or the Latvian language itself. The need for a reference grammar of Latvian written in English is especially important right now due to the existence of a large Latvian diaspora community abroad, particularly in English-speaking countries where children and young people are educated in the language of their home countries rather than in Latvian. A Latvian grammar written in English will also be useful for those who are learning Latvian as a foreign language and wish to learn more about its grammatical system and unique features. Likewise, “Latvian grammar” will be a useful reference and source for examples for teachers of Latvian – both those who teach it to speakers as a school or university subject and those who teach it as a foreign language. There is also considerable demand among linguists abroad for a systematic and dependable description of Latvian written by native speakers of Latvian. Latvian is a rather unique combination of ancient as well as relatively new features, which are of interest to researchers abroad and are important for the typological, cognitive, pragmatic, functional, and contrastive analysis of language.

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Section: Semantic Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latvian Grammar

Kalnača¹,

Lokmane²

2021

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“…The action expressed by the participle always has an agent therefore the participle linking regularities (in addition to other tests, for instance, the reflexive pronoun test) are often used in determining the grammatical subject, especially in the case of the non-canonical subjects (among others, Svenonius 2001;Sigurðsson 2004;Holvoet 2013). https://doi.org/10.22364/vnf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic and pragmatic functions of the Latvian indeclinable participle in -ot(ies)

Kalnača¹,

Lokmane²

2018

VNF

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Although the semantic, syntactic and especially pragmatic functions of the participles constitute a significant aspect of the sentence structure and also play a role in the area of stylistics, in Latvian linguistics, they have not yet suffieciently explored. Traditional Latvian grammars provide descriptions of the tense, aspect and voice meanings of the participles, while their pragmatic aspects largely remain unexplored. This study attempts to describe and classify syntactic constructions that involve the Latvian indeclinable participle in -ot(ies). The description of such constructions enables one to see whether the participle in -ot(ies) can be used in subjecthood tests to determine the subject of the sentence, especially in the cases of the non-canonical subject (e.g. the dative).With regard to pragmatics, it is important to understand why there is an increase in the use of the constructions involving the participle in -ot(ies) in Modern Latvian in various texts types and styles. The participle in -ot(ies) is sometimes used against the principles of efficient langauge use because it renders the link between the action and its subject unclear and thereby hinders the perception of the content of the sentence. The possible reasons are clumsy translations from other languages (especially in the mass media and various applied texts), also the linguistic skills of the native speakers concerned, for instance, an insufficient mastery or careless use of syntactic constructions.

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“…While the reciprocal pronoun in the debitive in (40) clearly favors dat-nom, the same reciprocal pronoun favors nom-dat with the lexical verb 'to like'. There is independent evidence that that the lexical dat-nom verbs do not provide good evidence for their dat argument being the subject and their nom argument being the object (Holvoet 2009(Holvoet , 2013Seržant 2013b). I interpret this discrepancy between the lexical dat-nom and the "grammatical/derivational" debitive dat-nom as evidence for the differences in the assignment of syntactic roles (cf.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Now, how should the relation between subjecthood and the nominative case be coherently described for Baltic? In recent research it has been argued that, in Baltic, in contrast to, for example, Icelandic, only nominative arguments behave syntactically as subjects for the simple reason that only these arguments pass unequivocal syntactic subjecthood tests for this language (Holvoet 2013, see also Seržant 2013b). Tests as the following ones are available: the respective NP i. is obligatorily replaced with zero (PRO) in infinitival embedded clauses on referential identity with the subject of the matrix verb; ii.…”

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confidence: 99%

The nominative case in Baltic in a typological perspective

Seržant¹

2016

Argument Realization in Baltic

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The paper is a semasiological study of the nominative case in Baltic languages, including morphological and primarily syntactic and semantic-pragmatic aspects. Morphologically, the Baltic nominative case is marked in almost all declensions and numbers by dedicated affixes. Syntactically, the nominative marking is a necessary but not sufficient condition to claim subjecthood; in fact, different nominative NP types correlate with subjecthood to different degrees in Baltic. Except for locutor (i.e. first and second person) pronouns, only the combination of the nominative marking with verbal agreement justifies analyzing an NP as a subject. In addition to subjects, the nominative case also codes "direct" nominative objects and nominative time adverbials. Pragmatically, (overt) nominative NPs are predominantly used in the subject position to signal emphasis (e.g. in terms of contrastive topic or topic shift, focus/new information), i.e. to signal that the subject referent is unexpected on the background of the set of the discursively salient alternative referents. With time adverbials, the nominative case encodes emphasis on the time value referred to by the adverbial against the set of contextually potential alternatives. Semantically, the correlation of the nominative case with agenthood and/or volitionality/control parallels emphasis in that agenthood can be viewed as prominence on the level of semantic roles whereas emphasis as prominence in terms of pragmatics.

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Obliqueness, quasi-subjects and transitivity in Baltic and Slavonic

Cited by 31 publications

References 0 publications

Latvian Grammar

Latvian Grammar

Syntactic and pragmatic functions of the Latvian indeclinable participle in -ot(ies)

The nominative case in Baltic in a typological perspective

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