Abstract
In this paper we examine transitivity pairs in the two modern Baltic languages Lithuanian and Latvian and compare them to neighbouring Finnic (Finnish, Estonian) and Slavic (Russian, Polish) languages. In Slavic the main strategy is to derive the intransitive (noncausal) verb from the transitive (causal) verb, while in Finnic we find a high number of derived causatives. Baltic uses both techniques, and in addition, there is a higher number of pairs where either both verbs are marked, or two etymologically related verbs are underived from a synchronic point of view. Differences and similarities across the six languages are investigated, using a list of 20 notions divided into five groups. Special attention is paid to animacy and to the distinction between inchoative and durative noncausal verbs.
References
Anyanwu, Ogbonna. 2012. Ibibio causative and anti-causative verb alternations. English Linguistics Research 1(2). 25-32.
Arkadiev, Peter & Pakerys, Jurgis. 2015. Lithuanian morphological causatives: a corpus-based study. In Holvoet, Axel & Nau, Nicole (eds.), Voice and argument structure in Baltic, 39-97. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Boryś, Wiesław. 2005. Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego [Etymological dictionary of Polish]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Comrie, Bernard. 2005. La typologie des langues ouraliennes en comparaison avec les langues voisines. In Fernandez-Vest, Marie Madeleine Jocelyne (ed.), Les langues ouraliennes aujord’hui: Approche linguistique et cognitive, 75-85. Paris: Champion.
Croft, William. 1990. Possible verbs and event structure. In Tsohatzidis, Savas L. (ed.), Meanings and prototypes: Studies on linguistic categorization, 48-73. London: Routledge.
DLKG 1994 = Ambrazas, Vytautas (ed.). 1994. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika [Grammar of modern Lithuanian]. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla.
DLKT - Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstynas [Corpus of modern Lithuanian], available online: http://tekstynas.vdu.lt.
EE-LV dict. = Ernštreits, Valts (ed.). 2015. Igauņu-latviešu vārdnīca = Eesti-läti sõnaraamat [Estonian-Latvian dictionary]. Rīga, Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, available online: http://www.eki.ee/dict/et-lv/.
EE-RU dict. = Liiv, Maimu & Melts, Nelli & Romet, Anne (eds.). 1997-2009. Eesti-vene sõnaraamat = Ėstonsko-russkij slovar’ [Estonian-Russian dictionary]. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, available online, http://portaal.eki.ee/dict/evs/.
EKG 1995 = Erelt, Mati & Erelt, Tiiu & Saari, Henn & Viks, Ülle (eds.). 1995. Eesti keele grammatika 1: Morfoloogia. Sõnamoodustus [Estonian grammar 1: Morphology. Word-formation]. Tallinn: Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia Eesti Keele Instituut.
EKS = Silvi Vare. 2012. Eesti keele sõnapered [Estonian Word Families]. Eesti Keele Instituut, available online: http://www.eki.ee/dict/sp/.
EN-EE dict. = Hein, Indrek (ed.). English-Estonian MT dictionary. Eesti Keele Instituut, available online: http://portaal.eki.ee/dict/ies/.
Endzelīns, Jānis. 1951. Latviešu valodas gramatika [Grammar of Latvian]. Rīga: Latvijas Valsts izdevniecība.
Grünthal, Riho & Nichols, Johanna. 2016. Transitivizing-detransitivizing typology and language family history. Lingua Posnaniensis 58(2). 11-31.
Hakulinen, Auli & Vilkuna, Maria & Korhonen, Riitta & Koivisto, Vesa & Heinonen, Tarja Riitta & Alho, Irja. 2004. Iso suomen kielioppi [Comprehensive grammar of Finnish]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Hakulinen, Lauri. 2000. Suomen kielen rakenne ja kehitys [The structure and development of the Finnish language]. 5., muuttamaton painos. Helsinki: Helsingin Yliopiston Suomen kielen laitos.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1987. Transitivity alternations of the anticausative type. (Arbeitspapiere, N. F., Nr. 4). Cologne: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität zu Köln.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. More on the typology of inchoative / causative verb alternations. In Comrie, Bernard & Polinsky, Maria (eds.), Causatives and transitivity (Studies in Language Companion Series 23), 87-120. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale. Lingua Posnaniensis 58(2). 33-63.
Haspelmath, Martin & Calude, Andreea & Spagnol, Michael & Narrog, Heiko & Bamyacı, Elif. 2014. Coding causal-noncausal verb alternations: a form-frequency correspondence explanation. Journal of Linguistics 50(3). 587-625.
Jacobsen, Wesley M. 1985, Morphosyntactic transitivity and semantic markedness. Chicago Linguistic Society 21. 89-104 [reference based on Haspelmath 1993: 103].
Kasik, Reet. 1997. Typology of Estonian and Finnish word-formation: The verb. In Erelt, Mati (ed.), Estonian: Typological Studies 2, 42-73. Tartu: Tartu Ülikool.
Kasik, Reet. 2001. Analytic causatives in Estonian. In Erelt, Mati (ed.), Estonian: Typological studies 5, 77-122. Tartu: Tartu Ülikool.
Kasik, Reet. 2015. Sõnamoodustus [Word-formation] (Eesti keele varamu 1). Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus.
Kehayov, Petar & Vihman, Virve. 2014. The lure of lability: A synchronic and diachronic investigation of the labile pattern in Estonian, Linguistics 52(4), 1061-1105.
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice (Typological studies in language 23). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kerge, Krista. 2016. Estonian. In Müller, Peter O. & Ohnheiser, Ingeborg & Olsen, Susan & Rainer, Franz (eds.), Word-formation: An international handbook of the languages of Europe 5, 3228-3259. Berlin-New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Laakso, Johanna. 2007. Transitivität und Intransitivität in der Wortbildung: Estnisch und Deutsch. In Fix, Hans (ed.), Beiträge zur Morphologie. Germanisch, Baltisch, Ostseefinnisch, 433-447. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.
LG 1997 = Ambrazas, Vytautas (ed.). 1997. Lithuanian Grammar. Vilnius: Baltos lankos.
Lindström, Liina. 2013. Between Finnic and Indo-European: Variation and change in the Estonian experiencer- object construction. In Seržant, Ilja A. & Kulikov, Leonid (eds.), The diachronic typology of non-canonical subjects, 141-164. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
LKG 1971 = Kazys Ulvydas (ed.). 1971. Lietuvių kalbos gramatika 2: Morfologija [Grammar of Lithuanian 2: Morphology]. Vilnius: Mintis.
LLVV 1975 - Latviešu literārās valodas vārdnīca 3 [Dictionary of standard Latvian 3]. Rīga: Zinātne.
LVG 2013 = Nītiņa, Daina & Grigorjevs, Juris (eds.). Latviešu valodas gramatika [Grammar of Latvian]. Riga: LU Latviešu valodas institūts.
LVK 2013 = Balanced corpus of modern Latvian, 4.5 million word-forms; available online through www.korpuss.lv.
MLLVG 1959 = Bergmane, Anna et al. (eds.). 1959. Mūsdienu latviešu literārās valodas grammatika 1: Fonētika un morfoloģija [Grammar of contemporary Latvian 1: Phonetics and morphology]. Rīga: Latvijas PSR Zinātņu akadēmijas izdevniecība.
Nau, Nicole. 2015. Morphological causatives in contemporary Latvian. In Holvoet, Axel & Nau, Nicole (eds.), Voice and argument structure in Baltic, 99-146. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Nedjalkov, Vladimir. P. 1969. Nekotorye verojatnostnye universalii v glagol’nom slovoobrazovanii. In Vardul’, Igor’ F. (ed.), Jazykovye universalii i lingvističeskaja tipologija, 106-114. Moskva: Nauka.
Nedyalkov, Vladimir P. & Silnitsky, Georgij G. 1973. The typology of morphological and lexical causatives. In Kiefer, Ferenc (ed.), Trends in Soviet theoretical linguistics, 1-32. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Nichols, Johanna. 1982. Ingush transitivization and detransitivization, Berkeley Linguistics Society 8, 445-462.
Nichols, Johanna. 1993. Transitive and causative in the Slavic lexicon: Evidence from Russian. In Comrie, Bernard & Polinsky, Maria (eds.), Causatives and transitivity (Studies in Language Companion Series 23), 69-86, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Nichols, Johanna. 2016. Lexical Valence Typology project: Instructions for elicitation of causative-noncausative verb pairs, available online: https://www.academia.edu/28861776/Causative_alternation_wordlist.
Nichols, Johanna & Peterson, David A. & Barnes, Jonathan. 2004. Transitivizing and detransitivizing languages. Linguistic Typology 8. 149-211.
NKJP - Narodowe Korpus Języka Polskiego [Polish National Corpus], available online: http://nkjp.pl/.
Smoczyński, Wojciech. 2007. Słownik etymologiczny języka litewskiego [Etymological dictionary of Lithuanian]. Vilnius: Vilniaus universitetas.
Soida, Emilija. 2009. Vārddarināšana [Word-formation]. Riga: LU Akadēmiskais apgāds.
Stang, Christian S. 1942. Das slavische und baltische Verbum. Oslo: Dybwad.
Stang, Christian S. 1966. Vergleichende Grammatik der baltischen Sprachen. Oslo-Bergen-Tromsø: Universitetsvorlaget.
Tauli, Valter. 1973. Standard Estonian Grammar 1: Phonology, morphology, word-formation (Studia Uralica et Altaica Upsaliensia 8). Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. timeklis-1.0 - Corpus of Latvian, compiled from Internet resources, ca. 97 million word-forms, available through www.korpuss.lv.
Vaillant, André. 1966. Grammaire comparée des langues slaves 3: Le verbe, Paris: Klincksieck.
Veselinova, Ljuba. 2006. Suppletion in verb paradigms, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Veselinova, Ljuba N. 2017. Suppletion. In Aronoff, Mark (ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia in linguistics. Online edition. Retrieved 13 Nov. 2017 from http://linguistics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-50.
Vihman, Virve-Anneli. 2002. Middle voice in Estonian. Transactions of the Philological Society 100. 131-160.
Viitso, Rein. 2007. Phonology, morphology and word-formation. In Erelt, Mati (ed.), Estonian language, 9-92, Tallinn: Estonian Academy Publishers.
Villanueva Svensson, Miguel. 2011. Anticausative-inchoative verbs in the northern Indo-European Languages. Historische Sprachforschung 124. 33-58.
WATP 2014 = The world atlas of transitivity pairs. 2014. Tokyo: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, available online: http://watp.ninjal.ac.jp/en/.
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Nicole Nau, Jurgis Pakerys
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.