Lithuanian Texts Research Articles

The Boundaries of the Southern Aukštaitian Dialect: the Change in the Pronunciation of Diphthongs in the Subdialect of Šalčininkai Area

In this article, from a synchronic point of view, the particularities of the change in the pronunciation of the diphthongs ie and uo are analyzed in the dialect of Šalčininkai area, which is located on the border of the Southern Aukštaitians dialect. The audio recordings of the second half of the 20th century have been analysed. They are consistent Lithuanian texts recorded by the last representatives of this dialect. The research aims to reveal the possible reasons for the change in the pronunciation of the diphthongs ie and uo, considering the fact that the Lithuanian language was and still is not the only language in this region.The research considers the sociolinguistic situation in the region, which influenced the development and change of language functioning in the analysed area. The surroundings of the entire Šalčininkai district were enslaved at different rates. In the surroundings of Butrimonys, Gudeliai, Eišiškės, Kalesninkai, and Turgeliai, the Lithuanian language remained less compact and began to disintegrate faster, so the results of the diversification of ie and uo dialects are not the same. Instead of diphthongs, the frequent pronunciation of long vowels is fixed here – accented and unaccented ie, uo is pronounced as i, u. In Vėžionis, Didžiosios Sėlos the situation is different, so here both vowels are pronounced in these diphthongs.The research revealed that the pronunciation of diphthongs ie, uo in Šalčininkai dialect varies in various positions: from ie, uo or ie, uo to completely long i, u. The tendency of representatives of the Lithuanian dialect to unify these diphthongs is observed in Lithuanian dialects that are in contact with East Slavic languages. In the case under consideration – with Polish and local Belarusian dialects. Due to the population’s longterm bilingualism and the internal development of the language, the long vowels in the Lithuanian language have become shorter, and their quality has changed. The dephonologisation of accusatives recorded in the dialect also accelerated the process of monophtogization of diphthongs. In the studied dialect of Šalčininkai, the unison of diphthongs becomes universal. Most native speakers almost systematically monophthongize stressed and unstressed ie, uo. In rare cases, both vowels in the diphthongs were pronounced only by the oldest representatives of the language.

Verbal derived stems and semantics of prefixed verbs in the earliest Lithuanian texts

This article discusses the deverbal verb derivation by the means of the prefixes in the Old Lithuanian language, basing on the corpus of about 110 primary verbs and their approximately 460 derivates attested in the Evangelijos bei epistolos (Gospels and Epistles, ViE) and the Catechism (ViC) of Baltramiejus Vilentas, with additional data from other Prussian Old Lithuanian sources up to the year 1600.
 By comparing the derived verbs with their bases occurring in the Old Lithuanian texts, the co-occurring morphological and semantical changes were found out. Attention is brought on the together co-occurring morphological and semantical changes used in deriving telic verbs from their often atelic bases, e. g. the loss of infinitive formants -ė- and -o-, as in giedoti ‘to sing’→ pragysti ‘to start to sing, to start to crow’, or the ablaut change in šaukti ‘to shout’ → prašukti ‘to cry out, to exclaim’. The change in telicity can be used to classify the derived verbs into aktionsart classes (e. g. ingressive/momentaneous, delimitative). The telic ingressive/momentaneous derivatives also have the nasal infix or -st- formant in the present tense.
 This article shows that the non-prefixed verbs with ingressive or momentaneous meaning of the type gysti occur extremely rarely in the oldest Lithuanian texts, and are better seen as later de-prefixed derivatives of the type pragysti, i.e. pragysti → gysti. Similarly, the derived type pragiedoti is rare in Old Lithuanian as the prefixation is usually accompanied by the shortening of the infinitive stems in the derivatives of this semantic class, leading to pragysti, although the type pragiedoti also occurs. This has led to the formal patterning of the derivatives and base verbs into two new models similar to that of degti → sudegti, the two new patterns showing only a simple prefixation: gysti → pragysti and giedoti → pragiedoti.

The Late Lithuanian Greimas: Intentions and Reception

The main research material consists of Algirdas Julius Greimas’s texts written during the transition period, when Lithuania was parting with Soviet rule (1989–1991), mainly his “Baltos lankos” column in Literatūra ir menas weekly periodical as well as various texts by other authors on Greimas’s texts along with memoirs, letters and obituaries. The study has two aims: 1) to find a conceptual approach for analyzing Lithuanian texts by the late Greimas, 2) to identify points of change in the semiosphere of Lithuanian culture. Greimas’s own semiotic method, namely, a structure of four Senders is used to describe his texts. The theoretical context of Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotics is a more permanent intellectual context for this study, and some of the terms are useful in more than one aspect. The readers’ attitudes towards Greimas’s texts highlight how the core and periphery change in the semiosphere: the period of cultural activity and openness and the internal cultural barriers appearing at the same time, the gradual passivation of culture and cases of sporadic creative relationships.

Syntactic and Semantic Distribution of the Ingressive Copulas pasidarė and tapo in Modern Lithuanian: A Corpus-based Analysis

Syntactic and Semantic Distribution of the Ingressive Copulas pasidarė and tapo in Modern Lithuanian: A Corpus-based Analysis

Lauku iedzīvotāju nosaukumi lietuviešu un latviešu valodā

The aim of the research is to find out what words are used in Lithuanian and Latvian to name the rural population. The study was performed by applying descriptive, comparative and quantitative methods. The novelty of the article is the presentation of the Lithuanian language material in Latvian, as well as the analysis of the Latvian language material and the comparison of the meanings and use of Lithuanian and Latvian words. The study is sociolinguistic, not normative; therefore, not only systematic but also contextual, situational synonymy is important. Dictionaries and texts of literary and common languages, synonyms, slang and jargon, the text of the current Lithuanian language (Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstynas) and the Latvian language text corpus (Latviešu valodas tekstu korpuss), are the main sources. A Lithuanian word kaimietis (‘a villager’), which has long been a neutral name for a rural resident or a person born in a village, is a synonym for both neutral and stylistically connoted words. The most common synonyms are sodietis (‘a homestead peasant’) and valstietis (‘a peasant’). In this synonym sequence, a peasant is a remote word that includes the concept “kaimo gyventojas” (‘a rural resident’) and the concept “žemdirbys” (‘an agriculturalist’), thus linking the synonym sequence of the word a villager to a word farmer in the sequence of synonyms ūkininkas (‘a farmer’), laukininkas (‘a field peasant’). Recently, the word kaimietis (‘a villager’) has acquired a second – pejorative – meaning: “sakoma apie neišsilavinusį, prasto skonio ir pan. žmogų, kuris nebūtinai kilęs iš kaimo” (‘it is said of an uneducated, a person of poor taste, and so on, a person who does not necessarily come from the countryside’). It is already recorded in the written dictionary of the common language, which indicates that the common connoted meaning in slang is codified. The word kaimietis (‘a villager’), used in a pejorative sense, appears in the order of words that have a systemic or contextual pejorative meaning, as well as in a despising way: prastuolis, prasčiokas, mužikas, runkelis. The name of the villager in Latvian – the word laucinieks (‘a villager’) – is stylistically neutral, its synonyms consist of the neutral words lauksaimnieks (‘a farmer’) and zemnieks (‘a peasant’). The word zemnieks, similarly to the valstietis (‘a peasant’) in Lithuanian, is the dominant in the order of distant synonyms zemkopis (‘an agriculturalist’) and zemesrūķis [?]. The approach to the synonym sādžinieks (‘a homestead peasant’) is ambiguous: its definition in current dictionaries associates the word either with Latgale or Russia, although according to its origin, it is considered to be a borrowing from the Lithuanian language. The word with root lauk- (from word ‘field’) lauķis [?] is used in a pejorative sense in Latvian (its shade is similar to the Lithuanian words prasčiokas (‘a hick’) and runkelis (‘a person as mindless as a beetroot’)), as well as slang word pāķis [?] and barbarisms – slavism mužiks (‘a kern’), Germanism bauris [?] (in jargon bauers). The material of Lithuanian and Latvian texts shows that in both Lithuanian and Latvian, the words of different connotations are used synonymously in different contexts.

Magpie in Lithuanian and Slavic Ethnic Culture

The article, based on a variety of ethnolinguistic material, especially folklore texts, aims to reveal the main similarities and differences in the interpretation of the image of the magpie in the ethnic culture of Lithuanians and Slavs. This bird in two traditions, in Lithuanian and in Slavonic, is treated ambivalently, more often negatively. This is due to the peculiarities of the bird’s appearance, and in particular the variegation of its plumage. This characteristic feature in the ethnic culture of many peoples is traditionally associated with evil spirits. Too talkative people, most often women, are compared with this bird. Common is the motive of the thief magpie. The name of the bird in all the languages is feminine, therefore, in both Lithuanian and Slavic mythopoetic texts, the social roles of a peasant woman are attributed to it: a daughter-in-law, a mother, a hostess, a cook, a nanny. Another common feature is the image of a magpie as a sorceress, herald of good or evil news and future events. These functions are associated with the tendency to depict witches and other mythical characters in the form of a magpie. The most striking differences in the interpretation of the magpie are the following ones: it is unusual for Lithuanians to associate the idea of procreation with it, and some Slavs (for example, the Czechs) believe that magpies bring children into the house. Lithuanians are also unaware of some features of the “working” behavior of a magpie, for example, the threshing motive. In their turn, Lithuanians attribute such crafts as shoemaking, brewing, and agriculture to magpies.

Polish-language Threads in Lithuanian Healing Conjurations (Zagovory)

Lithuanian conjurations (zagovory) constitute a unique part of Lithuanian folklore. In the collection of conjurations’ manuscripts described in the publication of Daiva Vaitkevičienė (2008), we will find records of these archaic texts in various languages, including Polish. Polish-language conjurations constitute a separate subgroup in the Balto-Slavic context. Following the chronological criterion, we are dealing with texts of pre-Christian and after-Christ origins. Due to mutual cultural influences as well as functioning of different languages within Lithuania, it is usually not possible to determine the original language of conjuration.Only in a few cases we are able to state, which version of conjuration is its translation. This is indicated primarily by the structure of the text as well as its lexical features, adaptation or transliteration.The article presents an attempt to compare Polish and Lithuanian texts, identify and analyze Polish language threads, their motives and subject matter as well as the ways in which such conjurations function.

Subject Metaphors of Stars in Lithuanian and Russian Poetic Texts

The current article, that follows the research cycle analyzing natural phenomena metaphors, examines the star metaphors identified in the works of 40 Lithuanian and 54 Russian poets (mostly 20th century). It also studies the subject metaphors which constitute from the ethnolinguistic point of view the most numerous and most interesting group of six semantic subgroups of star metaphors. The subject metaphors of stars can be both substantive and verbal. However, the article focuses on substantive metaphors. They are divided into nine groups: 1) something written, drawn or embroidered (letters, written texts, books, drawings, figures); 2) lighting devices and other lighting means; 3) clothing, fabrics, yarn, knitted or woven items; 4) small metal, shiny, rounded or sharp objects (jewelry, coins, nails, needles, weapons, etc.); 5) buildings and their parts; 6) kitchen utensils; 7) food and drinks; 8) vehicles; 9) fragments of large objects and debris. The study showed the similarity of the poetic systems of the two languages, in which the same metaphorical models are presented, as well as their differences. The largest number of subject metaphors of stars in both poetic traditions was found in the first four groups, the examples from the following three groups were less common, while the examples in which star metaphors related to vehicles were hardly found. The differences between the two poetic systems may be observed due to the differences in cultures and traditional names of stars and constellations in the languages. The article noted that the author’s poetic metaphor in both Lithuanian and Russian could correlate with folklore tradition, that is with riddles, proverbs, legends and traditional beliefs, which are often common to the two languages.

The Manifestations of Fate in Medieval Germanic Poetry and Lithuanian Folk Songs

Reflections of mythical worldview are embedded in traditional oral poetry, viz. Old Icelandic collection of poems Poetic Edda, Old English poem Beowulf, and Lithuanian folk songs. Archaic motifs and archetypal imagery are conveyed by means of poetic grammar (alliteration, kennings, epithets, etc.). Through interpretation, the hidden (symbolic) meaning of the poetic grammar is unveiled, and the connection between the two worlds, the sacred (the divine) and the profane (the human) (Eliade 1959), is exposed. To advance the analysis of poetic narrative, the methodology employed in the paper combines comparative Indo-European poetics (Watkins 1995) and oral-formulaic theory (Kiparsky 1976; Foley 1996). The paper focuses on the poetic narrative’s motifs that encode the archetypal image of the goddess(es) of fate in the Germanic and Baltic traditions. Selected passages from Old Icelandic, Old English, and Lithuanian poetic texts reveal the motif of fate in the following contexts: the establishment of the laws governing human life, the courtship and wedding narrative, the inescapable decrees of misery and death, the warrior’s fame and fate, and the connection between the goddess of fate and the cuckoo bird (in the Lithuanian tradition). The poetic grammar and poetic formulas, in particular, reveal the prototypical characteristics of the supernatural beings who rule fate – Norns, Wyrd, and Laima – and present them as an integral part of the Indo-European mythological system.

The focus particles <em>net</em> ‘even’, <em>tiktai</em> ‘only’, <em>gi </em> and <em>juk</em> in the 16th–17th century Lithuanian writings

The focus particles net ‘even’, tiktai ‘only’, gi and juk in the 16th–17th century Lithuanian writings The paper investigates the functions and usage of the focus particles net ‘even’ , tiktai ‘only’ gi and juk in the selected Old Lithuanian texts from the 16 th –17 th centuries. The aim is to find out how widely the focus meaning is evidenced in the analysed writings, whether there are traces of further semantic development from the focus to discourse meanings. Special attention is paid to the scope (or focus) of the particles: an attempt is made at discovering whether the phrases (and of what structural type) or the whole proposition of the sentence falls within the scope of the particles. Three old texts were chosen for analysis: Jonas Bretkūnas’ Postilla (1591), Mikalojus Daukša’s Postilla (1599), Konstantinas Sirvydas’ Punktai sakymų (1629–1644). The analysis revealed that the focus meaning of the particles net, tiktai and gi was quite well-attested. Gi and tiktai have a widely developed focus meaning, while net has a less developed meaning under consideration. The particle juk is exclusively associated with the discourse function of common ground or uncontroversial information, which is witnessed typologically – in the Circum-Baltic languages. The latter function is fulfilled by the particle gi as well.

Does the connotation of the word KAIMIETIS ‘countryman’ change?

The recording of the derogatory meaning of the kaimietis ‘countryman’ in the Dictionary of the General Lithuanian Language and the recently spread statement among linguists that a new negative connotation (meaning) of the word kaimietis has appeared, led to the analysis of the usage of the word. For the research of sociolinguistic and stylistic interpretation of the word, material was collected from the Fiction and Press sections of the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (CCLL). In addition, examples from dictionaries, media, works of Lithuanian fiction and other contemporary texts were collected.Since many years, in its main meaning, the word kaimietis has remained functionally stylistically and evaluatively neutral word meaning a rural resident (less often a person of rural origin). In almost one-fifth of the examined contexts of the word kaimietis, the word itself has an evaluative tone that is emphasized in one way or another; the number of contexts of positive and negative evaluation differs little. 1375 examples found in CCLL of usage of nouns kaimietis ‘countryman’, kaimietė ‘countrywoman’ in all forms in the contexts were distributed according to the content as follows: neutral (~ 83%), negative (~ 10%) and positive (~ 7%).From the modern language usage data, it is clear that it is purposeful to talk about the systematic connotation of the noun kaimietis when its meaning is not a “rural resident” (“peasant”) or “a person of rural origin”, but a certain stereotype, usually with negative uneducated and similar characteristics. The recording of the derogatory meaning of the kaimietis, kaimietė in the Dictionary of the General Lithuanian Language is a case of legitimation of the penetration of low-style means of expression into neutral-style discourse and such manifestations. The fact that the word countryman, having the derogatory meaning “ignorant, etc.”, does not necessarily apply to the countryman, does not in any way diminish the denigration of the rural man. The one-sided negative attitude towards the countryman arises from a superficial knowledge of the village, certain ideological attitudes, as well as from a person’s spiritual immaturity, urban pride; it spreads and has an effect because of the urban territories.Contexts of unfavorable evaluation are not a new phenomenon: reflections of a negative kaimietis connotation also exist in old phraseology, interwar and later texts in journalism and fiction. Negative evaluation of rurality is especially strong in slang, jargon, and low culture in general. This connotation is reinforced by the denigration of the language of the villagers. On the other hand, the public has always been characterized by solidarity with the rural man, the ability to appreciate what is good and beautiful in the village.

Constructions with the verb EITI ‘to go’ in the 16th century Lithuanian writings

This research investigates the semantics and the structure of the constructions with the verb eiti ‘to go’ extracted from the old Lithuanian written texts, dating back to the 16th century. It aims to examine the meanings and the structure of the constructions that contain the motion verb eiti ‘to go’ within their structure. There is a considerable body of research investigating various aspects of motion verbs in different languages of the world, including Lithuanian. However, no studies have so far targeted constructions with the verb eiti ‘to go’, found in the 16th century Lithuanian writings. The present study is based on the qualitative content analysis, quantitative analysis, and frame semantics methodology. The concordances of the Lithuanian texts have been filtered out from the Database of Old Writings digitalised by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. The examples were taken from Martynas Mažvydas’ Katekizmas (MžK) and Forma krikštymo (MžF), Jonas Bretkūnas’ Biblija (BB), Giesmės Duchaunos (BG), Kancionalas (BKa) and Kolektos (BKo), Mikalojus Daukša’s Katekizmas (DK) and Postilė (DP).The frames of Motion, State, Law, Eternity, Service, Opposition, Law, etc., evoked by the selected constructions, were examined using the frame semantics (FrameNet Project). The research has shown that the current constructions with the motion verb eiti ‘to go’ can form the core of the mentioned frames. The observation that has emerged from this analysis is that some meanings of the analysed constructions are conserved in the current Lithuanian language while others have already disappeared. This work could be useful for historical linguists.

Pedagogic Corpus of Lithuanian: A New Resource for Learning and Teaching Lithuanian as a Foreign Language

Summary The paper aims to present the first pedagogic corpus of Lithuanian i.e. monolingual specialized corpus, prepared for learning and teaching Lithuanian in a foreign language classroom. The corpus has been collected as a result of the project “Lithuanian Academic Scheme for International Cooperation in Baltic Studies”. It is motivated by the need to have a more appropriate resource which could be representative, authentic and relevant enough concerning the process of learning and teaching Lithuanian as it is known that language represented in other existing corpora of Lithuanian (e.g. Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian, 140 m tokens) is too complex to use for learning activities. The pedagogic corpus includes authentic Lithuanian texts, selected using such criteria as a learner-relevant communicative function and genre. Spoken language as well as written language are represented in the corpus. The size of the corpus is 669.000 tokens: 111.000 tokens from texts and spoken language for A1–A2 levels, 558.000 tokens from texts and spoken language for B1–B2 levels (according to the CEFR – Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). In this paper, we aim to discuss in detail the written subpart of the corpus (containing 620.000 tokens) which includes levelled texts from coursebooks and unlevelled texts from other sources. The level-appropriate labels were assigned automatically to the texts from other sources and this text classification procedure is presented in the paper. The texts from coursebooks and other sources could be classified into 29 text types (dialogs, narratives, information, etc.) and 4 groups according to the communicative aims: informational texts, educational texts, advertising and fiction. Informational texts comprise the biggest part of the corpus; three mostly represented text types differ in coursebook texts and other sources: the most common coursebook texts are informational, narratives, and dialogs (appr. 78% of all coursebook texts). Texts from other sources are represented with richer diversity – appr. 73% of all texts from this subpart can be classified into 5 text types: subtitles, informational texts, educational texts, fiction, and advisory texts. The future work making pedagogic corpus available for learners and its possible application are presented in the closing remarks.

Discourse markers in Lithuanian: semantic change and functional diversity

The study presents the results of a synchronic and diachronic corpus-based analysis of discourse markers in Lithuanian. The paper aims to analyse patterns of usage and functional diversity of the most frequent discourse markers in contemporary spoken Lithuanian as well as to determine what kind of structural and functional changes occur in the diachronic process of discourse marker formation and what kind of factors foster the emergence of discourse markers. Three major structural groups of the markers were subject to the analysis: (a) particles, (b) adverbs and pronouns, (c) different verbal and nominal forms and their constructions.The data have been drawn from the corpora representing contemporary spoken Lithuanian and from Old Lithuanian texts (the 16th-17th centuries). The corpora of contemporary spoken Lithuanian exhibit a variety of different communication settings: they represent casual interactions between interlocutors who know each other very well, e. g. family members and close friends, or include more formal instances of speech production, e. g. interviews, TV and radio shows. The three corpora used for the synchronic analysis were the following: the sub-corpus of spontaneous private speech of the Spoken Corpus of the Lithuanian Language, compiled at Vytautas Magnus University, the online database of interviews Vilnius Speaking (only the interviews with native speakers of Lithuanian were included) and the Radio and TV Corpus (namely, the period of 1993–2011 was taken into account), compiled by the Department of Sociolinguistics, Institute of the Lithuanian Language. The analysis of the discourse markers in old Lithuanian was mainly based on the 16th-17th century texts, namely Postilė by Jonas Bretkūnas (1591), Postilė by Mikalojus Daukša (1599) and Punktai sakymų by Konstantinas Sirvydas (1629; 1644).In contemporary spoken Lithuanian the discourse markers under analysis have revealed a wide range of textual and interpersonal functions. The textual functions include signaling a conclusion, generalization (i.e. tai ‘so’, vat ‘there, here, so’, reiškia ‘it means’, (vienu) žodžiu) ‘in short’), elaboration, reformulation, word-search (i.e. na ‘well’, nu ‘well’, šita ‘this, so’, tenai(s) ‘there’, ta prasme ‘I mean’), the start of a new topic (i.e. tai ‘so’, na ‘well’, nu ‘well’, va ‘there, here’, žinok ‘you know’), filling a gap in conversation (i.e. šita ‘this, so’, na ‘well’, nu ‘well’) and creating the coherent and smooth flow of discourse (i.e. reiškia ‘it means’, kaip sakant ‘so to say’). The interpersonal functions show reference to shared knowledge and are realized by the markers čia ‘here’, gerai ‘ok’, žinok ‘you know’, ar ne/ane ‘yes or no’, which seek to establish a relationship with the addressee. The speaker may show agreement with the addressee, mitigate his/her statement or avoid providing a straightforward answer. The present study has also revealed a wide range of combinations of discourse markers, such as tai va ‘so here’, tai tada ‘so then’, tada dabar ‘now then’, o tai gerai ‘but so ok’, dabar žiūrėkite ‘now look’, dabar sakyk ‘now say’ expressing textual and interpersonal functions. Functional diversity of the discourse markers may result from their primary lexical or grammatical meaning, position in a sentence, speech act type, co-occurrence with other discourse markers and type of spoken discourse.The study of the 16th-17th century Lithuanian texts shows that common discourse markers in contemporary spoken Lithuanian are most frequently traced back to adverbs (na ‘well’, nu ‘well’, čia ‘here’, ten(ai) ‘there’, dabar ‘now’) and less frequently to pronouns (tai ‘this’). The adverbs examined in the old Lithuanian texts marked textual deixis and, as a result, they may also have acquired metalinguistic or textual functions. The adverbs čia ‘here’ and dabar ‘now’ were used as emphatic particles denoting the author’s subjective stance. Participial constructions containing verbs of speaking (trumpai sakant ‘shortly saying’, prastai kalbant ‘simply speaking’, etc.) were employed as textual markers, i.e. reformulating or paraphrasing the author’s thoughts. The data provide evidence that discourse markers in Lithuanian may have developed from adverbial phrases and complement clauses illustrating the two universal paths of semantic development (cf. Brinton 2017, 285-289). However, the 16th-17th century Lithuanian texts do not contain discourse markers of imperatival origin, such as žinok ‘know’, žiūrėk ‘look’, palauk ‘wait’, eik tu ‘come on’ or discourse markers deriving from the second-person singular or plural forms supranti ‘understand’ (SG), suprantat(e) ‘understand’ (PL) or the third-person form reiškia ‘it means’, as in the old texts these markers had their primary lexical meaning and may have developed discourse functions only in later stages. The particles gi and juk displayed intersubjective functions, as they were employed in contexts of shared knowledge.

<span>Periphrastic causative constructions in 16th–17th c. Lithuanian</span>

This study analyzes periphrastic permissive and factitive causative constructions in a corpus of 16 th and 17 th century Old Lithuanian texts. In contrast to modern use, permissive constructions with duoti play a central role in many texts, while those with leisti are only more frequent in some sources and appear to have spread from the east to the west. Due to the influence of bifunctional German lassen constructions, duoti is used not only in permissive constructions, but also in factitive constructions, especially in Prussian Lithuanian. The permittees in duoti and leisti constructions are usually marked as dative, although the accusative is also attested due to the influence of German lassen + acc constructions; however, in the case of leisti , the accusative may sometimes be interpreted as archaic, marking the direct object of the source construction leisti ‘release’ + acc . In addition to permissive constructions with duoti and leisti , this paper also discusses rare cases of the archaic verb (pa-)velti and the borrowed Slavic permissives pa-velyti and pa-/pri-zvalyti . The majority of reflexive permissive constructions are based on duoti and contain a reflexive affixal marker on the matrix predicate, but constructions with an additional marker on the subordinate infinitive are also well-attested. In general, factitive constructions are less frequent than permissive ones and, just as in Modern Lithuanian, the most common factitive is (pri-)versti , but borrowed Slavic (pri-)sylyti is also attested in some sources.

Spatial Deictics and Translational Implicitation: Evidence from a Corpus-based Analysis of English and Lithuanian Fictional Discourse

Based on the typology of universal uses of demonstratives and presumption of translational explicitation, this paper compares and contrasts demonstratives from a semantic and pragmatic perspective. It aims to identify the translation correspondences of the English demonstratives in Lithuanian and contrast their usage in a comparable corpus to determine the cross-linguistic differences resulting from unequal distribution of lexical correspondences in both languages. This paper analyses a self-compiled parallel corpus and comparable corpus extracted from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language to examine the translation effects at the discourse pragmatic level in the rendition of spatial deixis. The translation correspondences highlight the key role of optional implicitation caused by the availability of contextual variants in the textual uses of demonstratives in Lithuanian. The translation results also reveal that the Lithuanian three-way system of demonstratives shows signs of reduction to a two-way system, as there is an analogous distribution between the English distal demonstrative and the neutral (medial) demonstrative in Lithuanian. A comparison of original texts points to important cross-linguistic differences determined by discourse-related factors, such as higher frequencies of demonstratives in the anaphoric and recognitional functions in Lithuanian texts, which is largely determined by the unmarked status of the neutral (medial) demonstrative. While its article-like status is gaining increasing attention in the literature, the present results indicate that the (neutral) medial demonstrative is an optional indicator of identification that occurs as a stylistic and text-building preference and contributes to greater textual pragmatic explicitness of Lithuanian fiction texts.

Metaphors of winter natural phenomena in Lithuanian and Russian poetic texts

The present article is devoted to metaphors of winter natural phenomena, that is frost, ice and hoarfrost, in Lithuanian and Russian poetic texts that mainly come from the 20th century. The metaphors have been identified on the basis of poetry collections, anthologies, children's poetry and the Russian language corpus (363 metaphors in total from 53 Russian and 44 Lithuanian poets’ works). The researchers rely on previous experience in the analysis of metaphors of natural phenomena. Thus, the article considers five groups of metaphors: 1) a natural phenomenon is a living creature or a part of it; 2) frost, ice and hoarfrost are objects (phenomena) of inanimate nature; 3) a winter phenomenon is an object from the social sphere; 4) frost, ice and hoarfrost are abstract objects; 5) some other metaphors. The comparison of the metaphors in two poetic languages has shown both significant similarities and striking differences. The similarity consists in the fact that subject metaphors are most often utilized in poetic texts, as well as anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and biomorphic metaphors. The differences are explained by the lack of metaphors in one of the systems that are presented in the other one, for instance, in Lithuanian poetry there are no metaphors of ‘frost’ as smoke and ‘ice’ as mica, while Russian poets do not use metaphors, such as ‘a winter phenomenon of nature’ is a means for lighting, or ‘icicles’ are a clock that is characteristic of Lithuanian poetry. In Russian poetry, there is a branching group where ‘a winter phenomenon’ is metal, a precious stone, and in Lithuanian poetry there is a group of ‘frost (ice, hoarfrost)’ that is a sharp cutting object. The differences between the two poetic systems are also associated with connotations: in Russian poetry, unlike Lithuanian, metaphors of winter natural phenomena quite often have positive connotations. At the end of the article, a scheme is presented that reflects the results of the analysis.

Referential and pragmatic-discourse properties of Lithuanian reference impersonals: 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp

In this paper I describe the semantics, pragmatics and the discourse functions of three Lithuanian agent-defocusing constructions, featuring the non-referential use of second person singular/third person verbal forms and the non-agreeing participial forms in ma/ta. These three constructions can all be defined as impersonal, in the broader sense of the word, as the agent (or the main participant, whatever its semantic role may be) is constructed as non-referential: I label them 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp. My corpus consists of original Lithuanian texts (a short story and entries on an Internet forum) and of the Lithuanian translations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella Le Petit Prince and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. My analysis shows that 2sg-imp are preferably used to express generic agents (anyone) and 3-imp are preferably used to express referential indefinite agents (someone). while ma/ta-imp are referentially flexible. 2sg-imp are pragmatically marked in that they are used to express empathy between the speaker and the pool of potential referents; they are mostly used in specific discourse types, such as opinion statements and life drama situations. 3-imp are preferred in situations where the indefiniteness of the agent is relevant to the development of the narrative; ma/ta-imp are instead preferred when the agent is irrelevant, and the focus is on the event itself. The behavior of Lithuanian 2sg-imp, 3-imp and ma/ta-imp is consistent with the one already described for similar constructions in other European languages.

The Journey of Turk Sindbad: Question of Determination the Source of Lithuanian Tatar Texts Written in Slavic Using Arabic Characters

This article talks about the problem of determining the source of Lithuanian Tatar manuscripts written in Slavic using Arabic characters. Among the sources used by manuscript writers, there should be a clear distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim sources. Surah (chapter) of the Quran, separate Aja (verse), Hadiths, texts about the life of the prophets from different books and prayers were one of the main sources of Arabic insertions. Tora, The Bible, and the Psalms of David are the most popular non-Muslim sources.The goal of our research is to determine the source of The Journey of Turk Sindbad text from the Poltorzicki manuscript (1830). In this article is presented a thorough description of the text. The researcher tells general assumptions regarding the used source, describes the phonetic, lexical, grammatical, graphic, and orthographic peculiarities of the text.

Syntactic Aspects of Lithuanian-Spanish Translation of Fiction and Scientific Texts

Summary Translators, linguists and translation researchers often have to deal with subtle and sometimes complex syntactical aspects involved in translation. Properly conveying the structure and rhythm of a sentence or text in another language is a difficult task that requires a good understanding of syntactical aspects of both the source and the target language. The morphology of Lithuanian verbs and nouns, and specially its system of declensions and cases, without any doubt facilitates a relatively flexible word order. Many linguists also agree that word order in the Spanish sentence is also freer than in French, English or other modern languages. It has often been said that Spanish has the most flexible word order of all Romance languages. However, Spanish word order is by no means as free as in Lithuanian. A comparative study of Lithuanian texts and their translation into Spanish allows a better understanding of the syntactical differences between both languages. This article examines a case of syntactical inversion in Lithuanian: the displacement of the direct object and its location at the beginning of the sentence, and the translation of such sentences into Spanish. In Spanish the direct object usually follows the verb, except in the cases when that function is carried out by pronouns. In order to displace a direct object to the beginning of the sentence, Spanish syntactical structures should be used. In this article two stylistically different Lithuanian texts will be compared with their Spanish translation so as to identify the linguistic means used in each case. A comparative analysis of different types of texts is useful to reveal the Spanish syntactical structures chosen by the translators as well as certain tendencies in each specific context.