Baltic Languages Research Articles

Teoretyczne badania konfrontatywne

Theoretical contrastive studiesThe contrastive studies criticism in the 60s – 70s of the 20th century was the only basis for quite a few researchers to formulate their opinion on the studies. Although the criticism is becoming out-of date, it has not lost its inertia to disapprovingly dispose to and discourage from contrastive studies. It should be emphasized that the contrastive studies have taken quite a different course since then. The key charge of the lack of a solid basis for the combination of the languages is no longer in effect. The contrastive studies guidelines formed from scratch by the Semantics Research team of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences are evidence for it, successfully finding their application in previously published multi-volume monographs (Koseska, Penčev 1988-2009, Korytkowska, Koseska, Roszko 2007), a number of works of the authorship of S. Karolak, M. Korytkowska, V. Koseska, V. Maldjieva, D. Roszko, R. Roszko and others (compare the bibliography in Korytkowska, Koseska, Roszko 2007), as well as in the Polish-Lithuanian Contrastive Grammar in preparation by D. Roszko, R. Roszko. The fundamental principle of the contrastive studies is orienting the studies from the semantic ground (the interlanguage) to the formal ground. Using the interlanguage as a semantic tertium comparationis creates a solid and explicit basis for the combination of the languages. The bases for theoretical contrastive studies have come into existence at the Institute of Slavic Studies. Therefore, the guidelines for them were applied for the contrast of Slavonic languages (mainly Polish and Bulgarian). Afterwards, the Lithuanian language, belonging to the Baltic languages, was included among the languages being contrasted. It is noticeable that the studies itself and the published works based on the criteria of theoretical contrastive studies refer to less popular and poorly spread languages, that is Polish, Bulgarian and Lithuanian. Moreover, for quite a time the majority of these works were published mainly in Polish and Bulgarian. Despite a few decades of the existence of the new linguistic contrastive method, the above-mentioned facts caused that the method isn’t well-known. The idea of this article is to make the researchers get interested in the guidelines for theoretical contrastive studies and the results of some of the linguistic contrasts carried out until now.

Фоно-типологические расстояния между балтийскими и славянскими языками

Phono-typological distances between Baltic and Slavonic languagesThe application of “Chi-square” criterion allows us to measure the distances between languages objectively. The phono-typological distance between Baltic and Slavonic languages was measured. The phono-typological distance between Lithuanian and Latvian languages is much greater than between Lithuanian and Old Russian. The sound picture of Lithuanian is more similar to modern Russian (6,07) than to Latvian. In its turn, Latvian’s sound picture is more similar to Old Russian (2,47) than Lithuanian. Latvian is more similar to modern Russian (3,65) than Lithuanian by its sound picture. The closeness of Baltic and Slavonic languages may be explained by the former language unity and by intensive language contacts.

Atlas of the Baltic languages: plant names of Slavonic origin

Atlas of the Baltic Languages: Plant Names of Slavonic OriginThe article investigates Slavonic-derived plant names in dialects of the two surviving Baltic languages – Latvian and Lithuanian. Historically, these Slavonisms were originally adopted by small-scale regional dialects, which are now disappearing. In 2009, a pilot study for the Atlas of the Baltic Languages was published. It comprised 12 geo-linguistic maps with Latvian, Lithuanian and English commentaries. 2012 saw the publication, in CD format, of the Atlas’s first volume: Lexis 1: Flora. The material analysed concerns names for: (1) wild plants, e.g., cornflower, nettle, waybread, milfoil, dandelion, plantain; (2) cultivated plants, e.g., onion, potatoe, garlic, cucumber, Swedish turnip, [winter] wheat; (3) trees (juniper, hazel-tree, pear-tree, plum-tree, cherry-tree, etc.) and words related to a tree (top of the tree, cone, etc.).Borrowed plant names can generally be grouped as follows: 1. Common borrowings located in a wide area in Lithuania and used all over Eastern part of Latvia – the region of Latgale. These usually denote fruits and vegetables, e.g. the potatoe (Solanum tuberosum) – Latv. buļve and its variants, buļba and variants, uļbiks / Lith. bulvė and variants, bulbė and variants; or garlic – casnags, casnāgs and variants / Lith. česnākas, šešnākas and variants. 2. Common borrowings located in wide area in Lithuania and used in some subdialects in Latgale, e.g. Lith. vosilka / Lat. Vasilka ‘cornflower (Centaurea cyanus)’; Lith. kriváunykas and variants / Lat. kravavņiks and variants ‘yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.)’. 3. Slavonisms whose origin differs in Latvian and in Lithuanian, e.g. Lat. klevers (< Russ. клевер, Bel. dialectal клéвер, клевiр / Lith. kaniušina < Bel. канюшына, Pol. koniczyna for ‘clover (Trifolium)’.The Atlas of the Baltic Languages, reflecting the language contacts, could be an important source for further investigation not only in Baltistics but also in Slavistics and Indo-European comparative linguistics.Атлас балтийских языков: названия растений славянского происхожденияВ статье рассматриваются названия растений славянского происхождения в диалектах единственнo живых балтийских языков – латышского и литовского. Исторически эти славянизмы были заимствованы региональными территориальными диалектами, которые в настоящее время исчезают. В 2009 г. был опубликован пилотный проект Атласа балтийских языков, включающий 12 геолингвистических карт с комментариями на латышском, литовском и английском языках. В 2012 г. первый том атласа: Атлас балтийских языков. Лексика I: Флора – был опубликован в формате CD. Связанную с растительним миром лексику представляют названия, обозначающие: 1) дикорастущие растения – например, василек, крапиву, подорожник, тысячелистник, одуванчик, 2) культурные растения – например, лук, картофель, репу, (зимнюю) пшеницу, и 3) деревья (можжевельник, орешник, грушу и др.), а также части деревьев (макушку дерева, шишку). В качестве основных групп заимствованных названий растений можно выделить: 1. Общие заимствования, которые встречаются в широком ареале в Литве и во всей восточной части Латвии – в Латгалии. Обычно это названия овощей и фруктов, например, картофеля (Solanum tuberosum) – лат. buļve и вар., buļba и вар., uļbiks / лит. bulve и вар., bulbe и вар., чеснока: лат. casnags, casnāgs и вар./ лит. česnākas, šešnākas и вар. 2. Общие заимствования, которые встречаются в широком ареале в Литве и в некоторых говорах Латгалии, например, лит. vosilka / лат. vasilka ‘вaсилёк (Centaurea cyanus)’, лит. kriváunykas и вар. / лат. kravavņiks и вар. ‘тысячелистник (Achillea millefolium L.)’. 3. Славянизмы несовпадающего проиcхождения в латышском и литовском языках, например, лат. klevers (< рус. kлевер, бел. диал. клéвер, клевiр) / лит. kaniušina < бел. kанюшына, поль. koniczyna ‘клевер (Trifolium)’. Атлас балтийских языков отражает языковые контакты и служит важным источником для дальнейших исследований не только в балтистике, но также в славистикe и индоевропейском сравнительном языкознании.

Dini, Pietro, U. ALILETOESCVR: linguistica baltica delle origini (review)

Slavonic and East European Review, 93, 2, 2015 Reviews Dini, Pietro, U. ALILETOESCVR: linguistica baltica delle origini. Books & Company,Livorno,2010.844pp.Illustrations.Figures.Notes.Bibliography. €50.00 (paperback). Thebookunderreviewisanastoundingaccomplishmentinthefieldoflinguistic historiography, not only of Baltic but also Slavic languages. Chronologically, Dini’s compendium covers the sixteenth century when the first texts in Baltic languages came to light and the foundations of future Baltic linguistics were laid out by such prominent Renaissance figures as Jan Długosz, Maciej z Miechowa (Miechovita) and Michalo Lituanus (p. 22). The book comprises eleven chapters, including an epilogue, followed by a list of primary sources and an extensive bibliography. The chapters deal, among other topics, with the Slavic and ‘Quadruple’ theories of the origins of Baltic peoples and their languages (pp. 50–146, 237–80), descriptions of Samogitia (pp. 281–340), descriptions of Prussia and theories about Prussian (pp. 339–45), the diversity of Livonian languages (pp. 447–524), the Latin theory (pp. 525–68), the Illyrian theory (pp. 569–618), descriptions of Sambia and denominations of amber (pp. 619–50), and the Hebrew theory (pp. 651–96). The title of the volume is a puzzle that is explained in chapter five which is devoted to the languages of historical Livonia (today’s Estonia and Latvia). The acronym ALILETOESCVR is excerpted from Leonhard Thurneysser’s Onomasticon(1583)andrepresentsacontractionofthenamesoffourofLivonia’s languages: Liuisch (Livonian), Letisch (Latvian), Oes[t]nisch (Estonian) and Curisch (Curonian) (p. 482). By contrast, Laurentius Müller (1585) distinguished only Estonian, Livonian and Curonian (pp. 485–86). The history of Baltic linguistic ideas in Dini’s magnum opus opens with an exposition of the earliest, Slavic theory (p. 49). This theory goes back to Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II, who in his treatise De Europa (1458) identified a language used in the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian as Slavic (sermo Sclavonicus) which was divided into several ‘sects’ (in varias divisa sectas) (pp. 50–52). Among Piccolomini’s followers, Dini analysed the works of Giacomo Foresti(1506,1513),HartmannSchedel(1493,1497),GeorgAlt(1493)andJohannes Cochlaeus (1512). Most interesting is a subchapter that examines ‘reactions’ against the Slavic theory (pp. 104–22). The most compelling counterarguments were adduced by the Polish philosopher and scientist Jan ze Stobnicy in his treatise De Europa (1512). He argued that the local Slavs (Ruteni) used a language which was comprehensible to other Slavic peoples but not to the Lithuanians (Lituani) who spoke a different language; additionally, the Ruthenians had adopted the Greek Church while the Lithuanians had remained pagans until Jagailo (p. 107). Contrary to Piccolomini, who assumed that Slavic was used in the whole of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Stobnica emphasized that this REVIEWS 339 language, whose letters were different from the Latin, Greek and Hebraic, was primarily spoken by Rutheni […] gens barbara (p. 108). In his Historia Polonica (published in 1614–15), the Polish historian Jan Długosz defended the Roman origin of Lithuanians dating to the period of Pompeii and Caesar (pp. 154–55). To prove this, he made use of the language of Lithuanians and Samogitians that might have originated from a certain branch of Latin. Among the continuators of Długosz, Dini mentions Zaccaria Ferreri (1521), who connected the toponyms Lithuania with the l’Italia (pp. 164–66), Johannes Behm (1625), Marcin Cromer (1555) and the Polish historian Marcin Bielski (1551, 1554, 1564), who argued that the Lithuanian people were descendants of the Goths (pp. 187–88). A special place is devoted to Maciej Stryjkowski, the first representative of ‘Panbaltism’, who in his treatises, O Początkach (About the Beginnings, 1576– 78) and Kronika (Chronicle, 1582), defended the thesis ‘jeden naród, jedna mowa’ (one people, one language) in reference to Lithuanians, Courlanders, Latvinas, Samogitians, Jatvingians, Polovcians and Prussians, and their languages as found within the boundaries of Poland-Lithuania (pp. 208–14). Inchapterthree,whichinvestigatesthe‘Quadruple’theory,Dinidiscussesthe linguistic ideas of another Polish thinker, Maciej Miechovita. In his Tractatus de duabis Sarmatiis (1517), Miechovita introduced the concept of ‘linguagium Lithuanicum quadripartitum’, according to which the Lithuanian language encompassed Jatvingian, Samogitian, Prussian and Latvian (pp. 237–40). In fact, the Polish historian presented the Lithuanian language as uniform and quadruple at the same...

Revisiting the multifunctionality of the adverbials of ACT and FACT in a cross-linguistic perspective

The last two decades have seen a great rise of interest in the corpus-based contrastive studies on the multifunctional nature of modal adverbials and discourse markers. Most of the attention has been devoted to the multifunctionality of the “actuality and reality” (Biber et al. 1999) adverbs actually, in fact, really, indeed and truly and their meanings have been proved to be very much discourse, syntactic and social context-dependent both diachronically and synchronically (Schwenter and Traugott 2000; Aijmer 2003; Paradis 2003; Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2004; Lewis 2006; Aijmer 2007; Mortier and Degand 2009; Defour et al. 2010; Simon-Vandenbergen 2013). The description of the complex and dynamic relief of their functional and semantic-pragmatic potential has been mainly based on the translation paradigm analysis. The languages dealt with are either Germanic (English, Dutch, Swedish) or Romance (French, Spanish). The present paper aims to check how the semantic pragmatic meanings of the two English adverbials (actually and in fact) are expressed in Lithuanian, a Baltic language. With the focus on the scope of multifunctionality of the adverbials under study an attempt will be made to find out how Lithuanian translation correspondences (TCs) ‘mirror’ the English actuality adverbials, i.e. how much language-specific or resembling the English adverbials the Lithuanian TCs are in terms of form and meaning. The study will also look at the pragmatic functions Lithuanian TCs perform in academic discourse thus attempting to arrive at the description of their functional potential.

LEARNER CORPUS ANNOTATION IN LATVIA AND LITHUANIA

Learner corpora are gaining popularity in the Baltic States as well as elsewhere in the world. The aim of the article is to discuss what kinds of annotation have been used in learner corpus research in Latvia and Lithuania so far and to describe which ones of them would be most suitable for the newly created learner corpus of the second Baltic language – Esam . A lot of learner corpus research in Latvia and Lithuania is undertaken without any annotation. The most common types of annotation are the ones based on the theory of levels of language – morphological and syntactic annotation. There is little collaboration between researchers of neighbour countries, but linguists of each country collaborate closely with each other using similar annotation schemes and creating corpora that are comparable in some aspects. The learner corpus of the second Baltic language should try to fit in the picture to some extent. Part of speech annotation and simple syntactic annotation could help in that. However, things that have not yet become so popular in learner corpus research in this region could also be useful. Therefore, error annotation and lemmatization have been chosen to be included in the annotation plan of the corpus Esam as well. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.7.8

TRANSLATION OF THE FRAGMENTS OF THE POEM BY K. DONELAITIS “GADALAIKI” IN THE CONTEXT OF THE LATVIAN LITERATURE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY

The paper is dedicated to the translation of the fragments by K. F. Vatson of “Gadalaiki” (The Seasons) by K. Donelaitis in Latvian, – two opening fragments of the poem in the annual sets of 1822 and 1823 of the calendar of Kurzeme “Veca un jauna laika grāmata” (Book of an Old and a New Time), emphasizing the position of this publication in the context of the Latvian literature of the 20-ies of the 19th century. The Latvian literary theory traditionally interprets the translation by K. F. Watson emphasizing typological literary features of enlightenment that are common to this work. However, by the time when Watson’s translations were published, the ideas of the Enlightenment to a large extent had been already depleted, and in the Latvian literature influences of the early Romanticism were already noticeable. As it happens in other instances when we encounter distinguished examples of the word art, the text in “Gadalaiki” is also characterised by its timeless nature and universalism opened up possibilities to diverse interpretation and stood the test of time. “Gadalaiki” is related to the new values that were brought to the fore at the turn of the 18th and the 19th centuries into German and a little bit later also into Latvian literature by early Romanticism. In the translation of “Pavasara līgsmība” (Rejoicing of Spring) it is testified by the descriptions of revival of the nature and “non-pedagogical” childhood. Statements made against (the source text in Lithuanian; the translation in Latvian) sometimes uncritical attitude of the peasants towards “Germanism” and derogation of one’s own nationality bears resemblance to the attitude held by Johann Gottfried von Herder and later by representatives of the early Romanticism towards national identity as a phenomenon that is worthy of attention and research. It is not known whether Watson knew Lithuanian, however, we have to take into account that the bilingual Lithuanian and German edition was used for translation. Watson distinguished the familiarity of both Baltic languages – Latvian and Lithuanian, and according to him the Latvian language was just a “strongly” modified dialect of the Lithuanian language.

Węgra — dawny hydronim jaćwięski

The article deals with a Baltic etymology of the river name and place name Wegra, earlier Wągra (Northern Mazovia). It is suggested that the hydronym in question derives from Yatvingian *Wungrā and Baltic *Wingrā f. ‛winding, tortuous, crooked [river]’. Yatvingian is the only Baltic language showing the depalatalization of palatalized syllabic resonants at an early period. Three examples of such an exclusive phonological process are carefully reviewed. Two glosses exemplifying the sound change are found in the so-called Polish-Yatvingian dictionary (PYD ), also known as Zinov’s dictionary: Yatv. wulkʃ ‛wolf’ (PYD 25) < Balt. *wilkas, cf. Lithuanian vilkas, Latvian vilks, OPrus. wilkis ‛id.’; Yatv. wuld ‛to want’ (PYD 3) < Balt. *wiltēi, cf. Lith. viltis ‛to hope’, Latv. vilt ‛to cheat, swindle, delude’. The third instance, Yatv. wurszajtis ‛an aged priest offering a goat’ (cf. Lith. virsaitis ‛village-mayor, village-chief, elder in a village’, Latv. virsaitis ‛village-mayor’), is mentioned in the 16th century AD in Jan and Hieronim Malecki’s testimony on the Sudovians (i.e. Y atvingians) inhabiting the Sambia Peninsula.271-

Ad hoc Taxonomies: A Baltic Parallel to the Scandinavian Absolute Positives

The article deals with the extension of definite markers into the domain of indefinite NPs in Scandinavian and Baltic. Definite articles evolving further down the grammaticalization path typically become markers of specificity (Greenberg 1978, Himmelmann 1998), but the development of definite markers in Baltic and Scandinavian languages (formally divergent as Baltic uses definite adjectives as the principal grammatical means of marking definiteness whereas Scandinavian employs definite articles for this purpose) has taken a different direction. After a brief discussion of the different types of extension of definite markers beyond their core domain in Baltic and Scandinavian, we focus on a specific construction in Scandinavian, the so-called ‘absolute positives’. We suggest that this construction is parallelled by certain Latvian constructions with definite adjectives, the effect being, in both cases, that of evoking ad hoc taxonomies. Finally, we present some considerations on the possible origin of the constructions discussed.

Literary and cultural exchange: translation trends in the Nordic and Baltic countries

Translation practices in countries where the national language makes up a small percentage of the total languages in the world reveal an interesting literary-cultural relation between the source and target language communities. Increasingly, English has become the world language of translation, often used as both the main source and target language. Within the Nordic and Baltic countries, we find a literary field that provides a fitting environment for translations between the national languages. This paper aims to investigate the translation practices occurring between Estonia and the Nordic and Baltic countries and its correlation to the sharing of cultural solidarity. Translation practices between Estonian and the other Baltic and Nordic languages will be the primary focus of this paper, with a secondary focus on the use of English as a major language of translation. This paper presents the translation trends from 2006-2008 based on the data collected from UNESCO’s Index Translationum. Overall, this paper aims to investigate what these translation trends reveal about the current socio-cultural relations between the source and target culture.

Baltic and Finnic linguistic relations reflected in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages

The article provides insight into the reflection of Baltic and Finnic language contacts in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages. These contacts have a rather long history, and are particularly intense between the Latvian language and Finnic languages (especially Livonian and Estonian). In Lithuanian, Finnic borrowings have mostly appeared through Latvian, and fall into the dialectal Lithuanian vocabulary. The analysed material makes it possible to distinguish several areas of Finnic influences in Latvian sub-dialects. They are as follows: 1) the territory of the Livonian dialect which originated from Latvian-Livonian contact; 2) the sub-dialects along the Estonian border; 3) the sub-dialects around Gulbene and Alūksne; 4) the territory of the krieviņi (descendants of people who spoke Votic) in the Zemgale region; and 5) the sub-dialects in the Latgale region around Ludza. Geolinguistic research on language contacts may be helpful in solving certain problems of ethnic history.Kokkuvõte. Anna Stafecka: Balti ja läänemeresoome keelesuhete kajastus balti keelte geolingvistilistes uurimustes. Artikkel esitab ülevaate balti ja läänemeresoome keelesuhete kajastamisest balti keelte geolingvistilistes uurimustes. Neil kontaktidel on küllaltki pikk ajalugu ja need on eriti tugevad läti ja läänemeresoome keelte (eriti liivi ja eesti keele) vahel. Leedu keelde on läänemeresoome laenud saadud peamiselt läti keele vahendusel ja need kuuluvad leedu murdesõnavarasse. Analüüsitud materjal võimaldab eristada Läti murrakutes mitut läänemeresoome mõjupiirkonda: 1) läti-liivi kontaktide mõjul kujunenud liivipärase murde ala; 2) Eesti piiri äärsed murrakud; 3) Gulbene ja Alūksne ümbruse murrakud; 4) kreevinite (vadja keele kõnelejate järglaste) ala Zemgales ja 5) Ludza ümbruse murrakud Latgales. Keelekontaktide geolingvistiline uurimine võib kaasa aidata etnilise ajaloo küsimuste lahendamisele.Märksõnad: dialektoloogia, geolingvistika, balti-läänemeresoome keelekontaktid, murdeatlased

A note on the words in the Baltic languages for some of the most ancient European grain legume crops

Abstract The words denoting the most ancient European grain legumes, such as ‘pea’, ‘lentil’ or ‘faba bean’, in both extinct and living Baltic languages confirm that these crops were cultivated among the ancestors of the modern Lithuanians and Latvians. The words denoting ‘pea’, such as Lithuanian žirnis and Latvian zirņi, are derived from the Proto-Baltic *žir̂n-ia- and the Proto-Indo-European *g'er[a]n-, denoting grain. The Proto-Indo-European root denoting ‘lentil’, *lent-, gave the Proto-Baltic *leñšia- and the modern Lithuanian lęšis and the Latvian lēca. The linguistic evidence confirms that the Old Balts transferred both grain legume crops and their names to their Finno-Ugric neighbours.

Trilingual aligned corpus – current state and new applications

Trilingual aligned corpus – current state and new applicationsThis article describes current state of a trilingual parallel corpus consisted of texts in two Slavic (Bulgarian and Polish) and one Baltic language (Lithuanian). The corpus contains original literary texts (fiction, novels, and short stories) in one of the three languages with translations to the other two, and texts in other languages translated into Bulgarian, Polish, and Lithuanian. A part of the texts are aligned at the sentence level. The authors propose a semantic annotation of verbs appearing in these aligned texts that will facilitate contrastive studies of natural languages. A theoretical background for the proposed semantic annotation is briefly also discussed.

Syllabi of disciplines

This educational programme in form of a multiannual summer school includes activities divided into two modules: one on Scandinavian, Finnic and Baltic languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian taught in 2014), and the other one on culture, history, geography, law and economy courses related to the North. It also includes workshops both for the students and the staff with a focus on the exchange of good practices and transfer of expertise between the Romanian trainers and the Norwegian partners. The educational programme will be followed by an international conference which will approach some of the topics debated during the summer school from the perspective of scholarly research.

Towards an Areal Typology of Prefixal Perfectivization

This paper presents the results of an areal-typological study of prefixal perfectivization in Slavic, Baltic, Yiddish, Hungarian, Ossetic and Kartvelian languages based on a uniform set of morphological and functional-semantic parameters. It is shown that there are two clusters of prefixal perfectivization, i.e., Slavic and Kartvelian, while other languages display significant degrees of difference both from each other and from the two clusters. It is further argued on the basis of existing evidence that the development and distribution of the current “landscape” of preverb-based aspectual systems in the languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have been shaped by a complex interplay of genetic, typological and contact factors.

Internationalisation of higher education and nation building: resolving language policy dilemmas in Lithuania

Our paper discusses trends and challenges faced by Lithuanian Higher Education (HE) internationalisation policy processes in the context of European and global internationalisation tendencies. Using 2001–2011 EU mobility statistics and data from recent HE Lithuanian strategic programmes aimed at promoting the internationalisation of university education (for 2009–2010 and 2011–2012), we discuss implications of these developments for the country's language (education) policy and its practical implementation. The officially practiced policy approach that aims to strengthen the national language and culture (as is visible throughout the post-Soviet space) faces challenges with the development of societal multilingualism. This contrasts with Western policy practices, where common/mutual rationales and approaches seek to support multilingualism and multiculturalism. In the Baltic region, protectionist national political instruments have had to address dilemmas that have arisen in connection with Western-mediated HE internationalisation processes. This has led to the deployment of different internationalisation policy rationales that promote global and regional cooperation. New approaches focused on linking Baltic language studies centres with departments of Baltistics and Indo-European studies have worked to establish stronger bonds with structures at foreign universities. As a consequence common interests in the study, research, development and promotion of the languages in the Baltic are now more widely shared, both regionally and internationally.

Using Stem Suppletion for Semantic Reconstruction: The Case of Indo-European Modals and East Baltic Future Tense Formations

As is well known, PIE possessed several distinct sigmatic formations with modal or future-like semantics. The paper deals with two sigmatic formations which must be reconstructed for PIE and obviously possessed a similar semantic value. First: a full grade -si̯e/o-formation which is attested in Indo-Iranian, Continental Celtic and Balto-Slavonic; and second, an athematic -s-formation which is attested in Italic and in the Eastern branch of Baltic. The diverging morphology of these formations implies that they originally also differed in their semantics. The problem is that both formations are reflected as simple future tense in all daughterlanguages which preserved them. However, it seems possible to detect the original semantic difference between these formations by using the evidence of the only IE branch which preserved both formations side by side, i.e. Baltic. The paper investigates the morphology of the sigmatic future tense in dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian and shows that for the common prehistory of East Baltic dialects a secondary conflation of originally independent PIE formations—-si̯e/o-formation and -s-formation—in one single paradigm must be assumed. The particular distribution of both formations within the unified paradigm of Proto-East-Baltic makes it possible to obtain information on the lost semantic difference between them. Possible traces of the -si̯e/o-formation in the only recorded West Baltic language, Old Prussian, seem to confirm the conclusions drawn on the basis of the East Baltic evidence.

Metatony in monosyllables

There are two chronological layers of metatonical circumflex in monosyllables, viz. an early Balto-Slavic layer which is reflected e.g. in Lith. dė̃s , jõs , duõs and a recent Aukštaitian layer which is found e.g. in nom.pl. tiẽ , acc.pl. tuõs , inst.sg. tuõ . Leskien’s law was younger than the former but older than the latter. This analysis is not based on a comparison with Slavic or Indo-European but on the internal evidence of the East Baltic languages. The Baltic future represents two Indo-European paradigms, viz. an s‑ present with accentual mobility between the suffix and the ending and an s‑ aorist with fixed stress on the root and monosyllabic lengthening in the 2nd and 3rd sg. forms. Both of these formations have exact correspondences in the Old Irish subjunctive. They must have existed side by side in Proto-Baltic in view of Prussian teīks ‘make!’ beside postāsei ‘you will become’. The circumflex of Latvian sā̀ls and gùovs shows metatonical length as a result of monosyllabic lengthening. There is no evidence for a PIE phoneme *a in sā̀ls , zùoss and nãss , nor for the vowel *e in the PIE paradigm of gùovs , nor for a PIE paradigm with fixed stress in the case of gùovs , nãss and zvrs , nor for a generalization of the original nom.sg. instead of acc.sg. accentuation in sā̀ls and nãss .

Building the World's Best General Domain MT for Baltic Languages

In this paper we present our experience in building machine translation (MT) systems for the languages of the Baltic States: Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. The paper reports on the implementation, research, data, data collection methods, and evaluation of the MT. Results of the evaluation show that it is possible to collect a sufficient amount of data and train MT systems that can compete with Google in quality and even overtake it in general domain MT.

Review of:] Vyacheslav Ivanov &amp; Peter Arkadiev, eds. 2013. Studies in the Typology of Slavic, Baltic and Balkan Languages

Вячᴇᴄлᴀʙ Вᴄ. Иʙᴀнов (отв. ред.), Пᴇᴛᴘ М. Аᴘкᴀдьᴇв (сост.), Исследования по типологии славянских, балтийских и балканских языков (преимущественно в свете языковых контактов). Санкт-Петербург: Алетейя, 2013. / Vʏᴀᴄʜᴇsʟᴀv Ivᴀɴov &amp; Pᴇᴛᴇʀ Aʀᴋᴀᴅɪᴇv, eds., Studies in the Typology of Slavic, Baltic and Balkan Languages (with primary reference to language contact). St Petersburg: Aletheia, 2013. ɪsʙɴ 978-5-91419-778-7.&#x0D; The main focus of the book is on various language contact situations as well as areal interpretations of particular phenomena against a wider typological background. The idea is to provide a broader overview of each phenomenon discussed, bringing in comparisons with the neighbouring languages. Two major linguistic areas are in the focus of the book: the Balkan and Eastern Circum-Baltic areas. The book is an important contribution to these fields as well as to areal typology and the theory of language contact in general, meeting all standards for a solid scientific work.