Asian languages reveal a continuum from quasi-disyllables to highly eroded monosyllables. These variegated states are now understood to be different stages along a common evolutionary path. An overview is proposed, beginning with the earliest stages of monosyllabicization, before the generalization of a strictly monosyllabic phonological structure. The well-documented processes of consonantal depletion which lead to the development of phonation-type registers and tones are presented within a general model. Lastly, phonological evolutions observed at advanced stages of segmental depletion are discussed. The concluding note concerns the aftermath of segmental depletion: the recreation of polysyllables.

No abstract

This paper proposes guidelines for interlinear morpheme glossing of modern Latvian and Lithuanian. The general principles follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules, a widely accepted standard in contemporary linguistics. The authors show how these rules may be adapted to the specifics of Baltic morphology. Details of nominal and verbal morphology of Latvian and Lithuanian are discussed and illustrated with examples of adequate glossing. Wherever possible, the same principles are proposed for both Latvian and Lithuanian, which will facilitate a comparison of these languages. However, different solutions are proposed in some cases where the two languages differ significantly and different interpretations are possible, and those are discussed in particular detail.

No abstract

This paper investigates the use of future tense in Latvian and Lithuanian in narratives that are located in the past. The data come from corpora of the contemporary languages as well as from folktales documented at the end of the th century. While the future is rarely used to tell a story, it does appear in certainfunctions in clauses that meet all or a part of the criteria for narrative clauses. We distinguish three groups of uses, with increasing degrees of narrativity: (a) imagined and evoked scenarios, including evoking habitual actions in the past; (b) a cluster of meanings around intention, imminence, and inception; (c) functions of text organization and grounding. Purely textual functions are only found in the folktales. Furthermore, switches to future tense in Baltic folktales show similar characteristics as switches from past to present tense in Romance languages.