The semantic effects of the Subject Genitive of Negation in Lithuanian

Abstract

The paper is aimed at investigating the semantic and pragmatic effects of the alternations between the Nominative and the Genitive cases in intransitive negated sentences in Lithuanian. Particular attention is paid to the uses of the Subject Genitive of Negation in constructions with verbs of perception. The use of Subject ɢᴇɴ.ɴᴇɢ in Lithuanian depends on the semantics of the predi-cate verb, on the perspective structure of the sentence, and on whether the sentence is existential or locative. In terms of meaning, the subjects marked Nominative are committed to exist, whereas the subjects marked Genitive carry no such commitment. In fact, in our proposal the use of Genitive case in negated intransitive sentences implicates a lack of existential commitment or, depending on the available contextual information, the non-existence of a subject referent in the location in question or in the world itself. These implicatures are cancellable and calculable, and display the properties of gen-eralised conversational implicatures of quantity. A proposal for mapping the scale of existential commitment onto the sentence types—locative sentences, conventional existential sentences and sentences of localised existence—is also laid out.

The dual face of structural object case: on Lithuanian genitive of negation

“…Only (94), with the argument in the genitive case, but not (93), with nominative case, can have the reading where the girl is not seen because she is not visible, as she has never been a part of the picture (see Aleksandravičiūtė 2013 for discussion). This pattern is expected, as genitive case is not associated with the 'existential commitment' (Aleksandravičiūtė 2013): there is no evidence for the girl's presence in the assumed location. Nevertheless, not only nominative in ( 93), but also genitive in (94) facilitate the reading where the thing, 'girl', is not seen in the picture because, for example, her classmate was standing in front of her.…”

“…(b) Student-ų ne-buv-o koncert-e. student(M)-GEN.PL NEG-be-PST.3 concert(M)-LOC.SG 'There were no students in the concert.' (Aleksandravičiūtė 2013: 21) As suggested by Holvoet (2005: 144) and Aleksandravičiūtė (2013), we can use Partee & Borschev (2004)'s system to account for the contrast found in (89a) and (89b). According to Aleksandravičiūtė (2013), the subject/thing is the Perspectival Center in (89a).…”

“…(Aleksandravičiūtė 2013: 21) As suggested by Holvoet (2005: 144) and Aleksandravičiūtė (2013), we can use Partee & Borschev (2004)'s system to account for the contrast found in (89a) and (89b). According to Aleksandravičiūtė (2013), the subject/thing is the Perspectival Center in (89a). The existence of the subject 'students' is presupposed, making the example in (89a) parallel to the Russian NDS in (87a).…”

“…In both languages, the thing, functioning as a Perspectival Center, is marked with nominative. Aleksandravičiūtė (2013) points out that 'students' is marked with the genitive case when location is the Perspectival Center, as in (89b). The same case marking in a similar semantic context is found in Russian, as evidenced by the NES in (87b).…”

“…Nominative is grammatical when negation is present, as in (89a). Surprisingly, genitive can also be used, as in (89b), resulting in a different reading (Ambrazas et al 1997, Holvoet 2005, Aleksandravičiūtė 2013). 40 [40] In rare cases, copular constructions with an adjectival predicate also permit a nominativegenitive alternation with negation, as in (i) (Ambrazas et al 1997: 668).…”