On binding, lexical and superlexical prefixes, andsiin the Baltic verb

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with a historical puzzle: the changing position of the markersiin the extant Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian.Siappears before the root in prefixed verbs and verb-finally in prefixless verbs in Lithuanian and dialectal Latvian, as opposed to a consistently verb-final position in standard Latvian and in Slavic languages, specifically Russian. This ordering is examined within a larger picture of morpheme linearization – focusing primarily on Lithuanian, but also bringing in Latvian and Latgalian data – to account for the Baltic paradigm. Historically a pronoun,siis argued to have incorporated into the verbal structure, and to maintain nowadays a binding relation with the subject of the sentence. The placement ofsiwithin the verb is shown to depend on two factors: the type of the antecedent and the morphosyntactic composition of the verb. The findings presented here also provide new evidence against the Lexicalist Hypothesis.

Gramatika un vārddarināšana

“…Having argued for the applicability of Rizzi's analysis to Baltic languages, we formally account for the placement and interplay of the Latvian grammatical prefixes, viz., the incompatibility of jā-and nein Standard Latvian as well as marginal cases where both prefixes are encountered (e.g., Ivulāne 2015). The discussion is placed with reference to Lithuanian, which manifests a similar, yet significantly different relationship between the permissive and restrictive meanings of te-and the negative ne- (Korostenskiene 2017).…”

Lithuanian reflexive-based impersonals with accusative objects

“…Holvoet (2020) uses the term 'middle voice' as a cover term for the grammatical uses of reflexives. There are different types and subtypes of middles in Lithuanian: anticausative, deobjective, facilitative, etc.9Haspelmath (2011) suggests that the Lithuanian -si-could be considered as a clitic Korostenskiene (2017). arrives at the same conclusion on the basis of a detailed analysis within the…”