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Infinitive in Lithuanian as a second languageOne of the most apparent features characteristic of learners who speak Lithuanian as a second language is their overuse of infinitive forms where such forms should not be used in Lithuanian. The analysis of the general sequence of acquisition of the Lithuanian verb system shows that the infinitive was used nearly evenly through the whole acquisition process, i. e. learners who had just started to speak Lithuanian used about the same amount of infinitive forms as the more advanced speakers. This paper analyses in detail the use of the infinitive form by the learners at different levels of acquisition, what functions and in what contexts the infinitive form performs, as well as any changes in the development. The analysis makes it evident that despite the quantitative similarity of the use of the infinitive forms in different varieties of acquisition, the use changes fundamentally in quality. Moreover, it becomes clear that even the speakers of the basic variety, who often use the infinitive as the base form of the verb and therefore also as a predicate instead of a finite form, never use the infinitive of the modal verbs in this fashion and their utterances in which the infinitive is used according to the target Lithuanian language system employ the construction of modal verbs + infinitive. The paper also analyses what other constructions with the infinitive are used, when and in what way they start being used in the post-basic variety of acquisition.

Opportunities for International Phonetic Alphabet application to the sounds of Lithuanian dialectsThe paper discusses the issues of transcription of Lithuanian dialects. It compares the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) with the characters of the currently popular font Palemonas.From the 20th to the 21st century, almost for a whole century, there has been a tradition in Lithuania to mark texts of Lithuanian dialects using the so-called Copenhagen transcription that was adapted by Georg Gerullis. The established Lithuanian transcription system largely differs from those applied in other languages, even from the closest neighbours Latvians. Therefore, researchers are often confronted with the problems of comparing the research results of several languages. In the 21st century the issues of different transcriptions became more relevant after quantitative measurements of language variance became popular. They are usually made by computer programs which require identical data.The discussion paper analyses the opportunities for IPA application to the sounds of Lithuanian dialects, discusses the marking correspondences of vowels, consonants, some phonetic features and prosodic units in the font Palemonas and IPA, and provides examples of words from various Lithuanian subdialects transcribed by applying both systems.

The present article introduces a list of glosses to a collection of Lithuanian protestant spiritual hymns, compelled by Gottfried Ostermeyer, one of the prominent intellectuals and promoter of the Lithuanian culture and language of the 18th century in Lithuania Minor. The glossary was intended to facilitate the understanding of certain older or less known expressions, as Ostermeyer put it ‘obsoleta und minus cognita’, and due to political disputes among the intellectual community in East Prussian Lithuania Minor at the time of their publication fell into oblivion. The paper discuses a more or less random selection of twenty entries from the glossary, focusing on their dialectal features, semantic and morphological divergence from existing derivatives of the same root, and pays special attention to the derivational history and cross-IE cognates.Judging by the material studied in the paper the Lithuanian spoken idiom of the 17th-18th c. appears to be very vivid in onomasiology, creative in the usage of morphological means and still in possession of certain roots already gone in the dictionaries of the late 19th century and scarcely perceivable in the modern paramount linguistic database of LKŽ.

The aim of the current paper is to analyze Latvian reflexive verbs from the point of view of their polyfunctionality and distributon.The polysemy of the reflexive verbs is not usually disucussed in the connection with its distribution pattern in the sentence either. This can be partly explianed by the fact that the reflexive verb can have some non-standard language meanings, which following the established practice of the traditional grammars and sometimes even dictionaries, were not depicted in the language system description either. So the current paper is an attempt to analyze the polyfunctionality of reflexive verbs in connection with their semantic and syntactic functions, without judging the language use from the normative point of view.The classification of Latvian reflexive verbs is based on the relationship between semantic roles and syntactic structure according to the principles devised by Palmer (1994) and Saeed (1997).One and the same reflexive verb may have different lexical meanings with a different distribution for each of the meanings. One and the same verb can belong to different subclasses of the subject and object (or impersonal) verbs.Some reflexive verbs have evaluative or aspectual (iterative) meanings. The evaluative meanings usually are manifested by a positive or negative assessment of the event (the context can be enhanced by the adverbs good or bad) and the consequences while the aspectual meaning is manifested by the intensity of the action, that is – iterativity.The study confirms the assumption that reflexive verbs are independent lexemes as opposed to non-reflexive verb forms. Each reflexive verb has its distinct semantic system and distribution which is different from polysemy of non-reflexive verbs and their distribution. The system of reflexive verbs in Latvian is open where new meanings and even new reflexive verbs arise particularly in colloquial use.

It is often assumed that PIE ablaut, used as a sub-morpheme accompanying other morphemes, tends to recede over time in the history of the individual Indo-European languages. On the other hand, it has been argued by some scholars that ablaut is often productive enough to expand over categories that did not have it originally. Both positions were advocated in the literature, the former by Mańczak (1958), the latter by Kuryłowicz (1947). In this paper, dedicated to Prof. Wojciech Smoczyński, this debate is discussed and illustrated by Baltic examples

“Van Wijk’s law” is currently defined by its advocates as a lengthening of short or shortened medial and final vowels due to an assimilation of the postconsonantal *j to them. In the present paper I am trying to demonstrate that this assumption is at variance with the relative chronology of Slavic, according to which the loss of yod after liquids and nasals must be dated before the rise of new timbre distinctions and before the shortening of final long vowels.

This paper shows the results of the research of the dialect of Preševo, a small town in the south of Serbia. Since social and urban dialectology and socio-linguistic methods of research in Serbian linguistics are new, a theoretical consideration is given first. Then the methods used in processing the material from the dialect of Preševo are explained. The implication scales and diagram which show the level of representation of dialectological features in relation to the standard features are shown too. The conclusion is that the dialect in this city has the features of the standard Serbian language and it is exactly how it is distinguished from the dialect of the villages.

This paper discusses morphological adaptation of borrowed adjectives in modern Lithuanian. Five types of adaptation are identified: zero adaptation, assignment to inflection class (IC), addition of the derivational suffix, substitution of the derivational suffix, and truncation of the derivational suffix. It is shown that the selection of ICs for borrowings is determined by the register (standard vs. non-standard) and the source language (English vs. non-English), while the choice of adaptational suffixes is determined by their derivational productivity and semantic interpretation of the use of the borrowing.

Slovak is not generally thought of as a rich and informative source for the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system. In addition to the well-known fact that Slovak, unlike Czech, exhibits no traces of the Proto-Slavic acute, this view is also due to at least two peculiarities of its development: 1. quantity is often neutralised by many later phonological processes, such as the Rhythmic Law and the shortening of front diphthongs after j; 2. Slovak is more prone to analogical levelling and generalisation than any other West Slavic language, affecting, among other things, the development of quantity, whether through the generalisation of length in a particular grammatical category (such as in the genitive plural) or through analogical intrusion of quantitative patterns in derivation. Nevertheless, Slovak does offer some valuable data for the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system, such as consistent length in the nominative singular of short root vowel nouns belonging to the b accentual paradigm (bôb, kôl, stôl...). Still more valuable data is contained in the rich Slovak dialectal material, which is neither sufficiently well-known nor sufficiently accessible to international scholarship. This paper offers guidelines for researching quantity in the Slovak dialectal material, as well as shows how the Slovak dialectal material can contribute to the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic accentual system.

This paper addresses the relationship of the Lith. nom. pl. endings ‑ai (‑aĩ) and ‑i, ‑ie (‑ì, ‑ìe) to each other and to their common source, the PIE pronominal nom. pl. in *‑oi. It is argued that the Proto-BSl. preform was *‑ai, with acuteness analogically taken from the corresponding nominal ending *‑ōs. Proto-BSl. *‑ai, which developed regularly to ‑i in Slavic and to ‑ai in Old Prussian, had two reflexes in Lithuanian. The phonologically regular treatment is seen in the pronominal and adjectival ending ‑i(e), which developed from *‑ai to *‑ẹ̄ via the presumed intermediate stage *‑ɛi. The nominal ending ‑ai is a morphological treatment of the same sequence, with a) *‑ɛi remade to *‑ai under the influence of paradigmatically related forms in *‑a‑, and b) acuteness subsequently lost in a final syllable. The second step runs counter to standard opinion, which holds that underlying acute diphthongs in final syllables trigger Saussure’s Law and retain their acuteness in Žemaitian, as in the ā‑present forms 1 sg. sakaũ, 2 sg. sakaĩ (Žem. sakâu, sakā̂). It is maintained here, however, that the verbal endings that appear as ‑aũ and ‑aĩ in standard Lithuanian are not historically diphthongs at all, but contracted sequences that arose after the “de-acuting” of the inherited nom. pl. in *‑ai to ‑ai and before Saussure’s Law. A byproduct of this explanation is that other descriptively non-acute diphthongs in final syllables, notably the dat. sg. in ‑ui (*‑ōi) and the instr. pl. in ‑ais (*‑ōis), can also be assumed to have been originally acute, as their etymologies require.

Straipsnyje analizuojama lietuvių kalbos dūrinių su neoklasikiniais dėmenimis struktūra ir jų integracija į lietuvių kalbos žodžių darybos sistemą. Taip pat aptariamas morfologinis neoklasikinių dėmenų statusas. Tyrimas atskleidžia, kad dūriniai su pirmuoju neoklasikiniu ir antruoju indigeniu dėmeniu arba pirmuoju indigeniu ir antruoju neoklasikiniu dėmeniu, išskyrus hibridinius dūrinius su pirmuoju sietiniu kamienu, darybos požiūriu nesiskiria nuo savakilmių dūrinių. Hibridiniai dūriniai, kurių pirmasis dėmuo yra sietinis, pasižymi silpna integracija į lietuvių kalbos sistemą. Pagal sandų tarpusavio santykį dauguma tiriamųjų kaip ir savakilmių dūrinių yra determinatyviniai, o kopuliatyvinių pasitaiko tik vienas kitas. The article focuses on the structure of Lithuanian compounds with neoclassical constituents and their integration into the native word formation system. The paper also discusses the morphological status of the constituent parts of neoclassical compounds. Two types of hybrid neoclassical formations can be singled out in Lithuanian from the point of view of their morphonological accommodation and integration into the word formation system: (1) compounds with the first indigenous or neoclassical stem or the first neoclassical and second indigenous stem and (2) compounds with the first bound stem. The patterns of neoclassical hybrid compounds that belong to the first type conform to the patterns of native compounds in the recipient language (cf. betòn-maiš-ė ‘concrete-mixer’ and pùs-metal-is see, examples 2a-6a), meanwhile neoclassical hybrid formations that belong to the second type show, as a rule, no morphonological accommodation and weak integration into the Lithuanian word formation system. In the morphological system such words function as if no neoclassical stem existed (cf. hidro-elektrìn-ė ‘hydrostation’ and elektrìn-ė ‘power-station’). However, in native word formation system, a new tendency to accommodate and integrate words with the first neoclassical bound stem can be observed (cf. turb-ó-grąžt-is ‘drill’ and turbo- ‘turbo’, grą̃žtas ‘drill’).The majority of analysed Lithuanian compounds with neoclassical constituents as compounds in general are determinative, namely they are characterized by a subordinate relation in which the first constituent modifies the second one which functions morphosyntactically and semantically as the head of the construction (e.g. pùs-metal-is ‘semi-metal’). Moreover, there are also some copulative compounds that encompass a coordinative relation between the native and indigenous constituent (e.g. atòm-laiv-is ‘tanker’).

In the present article, a comparative study of the spectral characteristics and distinctive qualitative features of monophthongs of the contemporary Baltic Standard languages pronounced in isolation is described. On the one hand vowels pronounced in isolation do not represent a pronunciation in everyday speech, while on the other hand their production is probably the closest to the acoustic and auditory monophthong targets determined by our mental prototypes. This type of production represents natural hyper-articulation and differs from production of the cardinal vowels.Lithuanian and Latvian monophthongs have been studied and compared using the same methods and equipment that permit a reliable comparison of phonetic inventories (quality similarities and differences) of both languages.For this paper recordings of six native Lithuanian and six native Latvian male informants (having faultless articulation) were used (1944 items were selected and analyzed in total). All informants are speakers of standard language. In this study the standard language is considered as a standardized language (generally the most formal version of the language) used for the needs of public life and culture.Reviewing interrelations between vowels of a single language (Lithuanian or Latvian), the mean data acquired in this study is compared with the data of some previous studies. To compare the general tendencies of the relations between Lithuanian and corresponding Latvian long and short monophthongs pronounced in isolation more precisely, the following acoustic parameters (numeric values) were calculated: acuteness (graveness), flatness, compactness, and tenseness.The results of the present study confirm the general tendency that qualitative characteristics of the Lithuanian long and corresponding short vowels differ to a great extent. However the quality of Latvian monophthongs produced in isolation varies very little and statistical analysis of the spectral characteristics shows contradictory results. A comparison of spectral characteristics and registered acoustic parameters (their calculated mean values) proves that the long and especially corresponding short Lithuanian and Latvian vowels vary, though in general vowel interrelations in both language systems are similar; also the mean data acquired in this study for Lithuanian and Latvian speakers show similar tendencies which in general correspond to those acquired in other studies, and vowel classifications follow the same pattern.

In the present article, a comparative study of the spectral characteristics and distinctive qualitative features of monophthongs of the contemporary Baltic Standard languages pronounced in isolation is described. On the one hand vowels pronounced in isolation do not represent a pronunciation in everyday speech, while on the other hand their production is probably the closest to the acoustic and auditory monophthong targets determined by our mental prototypes. This type of production represents natural hyper-articulation and differs from production of the cardinal vowels. Lithuanian and Latvian monophthongs have been studied and compared using the same methods and equipment that permit a reliable comparison of phonetic inventories (quality similarities and differences) of both languages. For this paper recordings of six native Lithuanian and six native Latvian male informants (having faultless articulation) were used (1944 items were selected and analyzed in total). All informants are speakers of standard language. In this study the standard language is considered as a standardized language (generally the most formal version of the language) used for the needs of public life and culture. Reviewing interrelations between vowels of a single language (Lithuanian or Latvian), the mean data acquired in this study is compared with the data of some previous studies. To compare the general tendencies of the relations between Lithuanian and corresponding Latvian long and short monophthongs pronounced in isolation more precisely, the following acoustic parameters (numeric values) were calculated: acuteness (graveness), flatness, compactness, and tenseness. The results of the present study confirm the general tendency that qualitative characteristics of the Lithuanian long and corresponding short vowels differ to a great extent. However the quality of Latvian monophthongs produced in isolation varies very little and statistical analysis of the spectral characteristics shows contradictory results. A comparison of spectral characteristics and registered acoustic parameters (their calculated mean values) proves that the long and especially corresponding short Lithuanian and Latvian vowels vary, though in general vowel interrelations in both language systems are similar; also the mean data acquired in this study for Lithuanian and Latvian speakers show similar tendencies which in general correspond to those acquired in other studies, and vowel classifications follow the same pattern.

In the Low Lithuanian dialects reflexive half-participles and verbal nouns are indeclinable and display a unique ending -damos, resp. -imos. The aim of this paper is to explain the invariability of these forms, which represents a striking feature of Low Lithuanian. It is proposed that invariability in the verbal nouns in -imos derives from their neuter origin, whereas in the half-participles in -damos it results from complex processes of phonological merging. In both cases, the preservation of invariability is due to the overall difficulty of building reflexive nominal forms of the verbs.