“Particles and Connectives in Baltic”

173recenzijos / reviews götZ keydana georg-august-universität göttingen fields of research: phonological reconstruction: reconstruction of phonological grammars (accentology, syllabification), phonetic grounding of diachronic phonological processes; historical syntax, argument structure and case, subordination (mainly Vedic sanskrit). ParticLes and connectiVes in baLtic acta salensia 2. ed. by nicole nau, norbert ostrowski. Vilnius: Vilniaus universitetas, asociacija „academia salensis“, 2010, 221 p. isbn 978-609-95126-1-7 the book under review is a collection of six original papers. it includes an extensive introduction, a subject index and a word index. the topics in this book range from diachronic to synchronic studies in the syntax, the semantics, and the function of particles and connectives in Lithuanian and Latvian. all contributions are written in english, and the examples are carefully glossed. therefore, the book is not only accessible to students of the baltic languages, but to every linguist interested in the field. in their “introduction” nicole nau and norbert ostrowski give a short historical overview of the study of particles and connectives in the baltic languages. the authors then discuss terminological issues and recent contributions to the theory of the word classes studied here. the third part of the introduction is devoted to short examples highlighting the development of the baltic particles and connectives along typical paths of grammaticalization. the introduction closes with short summaries of the papers published in the book at hand. the paper by joanna chojnicka “as if one were not enough: on the multiple functions of Latvian it kā ‘as if, as though’” is a corpus-based study of the functions of it kā in contemporary Latvian. chojnicka starts out by describing her corpus ( www.korpuss.lv ), from which she extracted 216 sentences containing it kā . She then gives a survey of the treatment of it kā in Latvian dictionaries and develops formal criteria for distinguishing conjunctions from particles, mostly based on work by grochowski (1986). this is followed by a detailed corpus analysis of it kā in its use as a conjunction and as a particle. in her corpus, the conjunction it kā typi- 174 götZ keydana acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXIV–LXV cally introduces subordinate sentences with finite verbs in the subjunctive, and negated sentences with it kā always contain the verb nebūtu . It kā-clauses are used to introduce either what chojnicka calls hypothetical comparisons or inferred reasons. hypothetical comparisons are used to “describe [...] a situation which […] could evoke the same or at least a similar kind of feeling in most people” (49). inferred reason, on the other hand, is used when “the speaker makes a guess or believes he/she knows the reason [for the event denoted by the main clause – G. K.] but is not certain of it […]” (52). combined with a participial phrase, the particle it kā has the same functions. when used in finite sentences, however, it typically functions as a hedge, be it by marking evidentiality, hypothetical comparisons, or reported speech. chojnicka’s paper is a valuable contribution to the study of Latvian it kā, but it suffers from some minor problems. one that she herself acknowledges is the small number of tokens her study is based on. to give an example, the reviewer found the restriction to nebūtu in negative subordinates with it kā remarkable. however, since the whole sample set is very small and chojnicka does not provide the number of attestations for this sentence type, the information remains anecdotal. the small sample set also prevents chojnicka from distinguishing the subordinator it kā from the complementizer, an important distinction made by holvoet in his contribution. in addition, the argumentation sometimes lacks coherence. as can be seen from the quotes given above, the author does not define her central concepts “hypothetical comparison” and “inferred reason” properly. her chapters on sentence types are quite imbalanced because she constantly mixes syntax, semantics, and function. as a final remark, the reviewer would like to add that the use of it kā as a “marker of speech disfluency” (61) is similar to that of like in american english. the contribution by axel holvoet is “notes on complementisers in baltic”. holvoet introduces two categorial distinctions between complementizers. the first is the distinction between truth-valued and non-truth-valued ones. truth-valued complementizers are those typically used with verba dicendi, non-truth-valued ones those used in volitional contexts. the second distinction is that between realis and irrealis complementizers. although these distinctions often overlap, holvoet shows that they are orthogonal in principle. he illustrates this point with the Latvian complementizer lai, which is non-truth-valued. still, it typically selects realis verb forms, and irrealis with lai is only used to denote a lesser “degree of confidence of the speaker/subject” (75). however, the distinction between irrealis and realis complementizers is also attested in baltic. holvoet gives the example of old Lithuanian jog (realis) and kad (irrealis). irrealis complementizers may incorporate irrealis markers, as is shown by old Lithuanian jeib and Latgalian kab. another important Particles and connectives in baltic 175recenzijos / reviews distinction between complementizers relates to control and what holvoet following Lichtenberk (1995) calls “apprehensional-epistemic modality.” (86). in Latvian, apprehension and a low degree of control are typically denoted by ka ne, while a high degree of control is expressed by lai ne. holvoet then goes on to discuss truthqualifying complementizers; examples are Lithuanian esą and Latvian it kā . the latter, when used as a subordinator, is counterfactual. however, used as a complementizer, it is truth-qualifying. holvoet closes his survey with some general observations on complementizers, claiming that they often redundantly encode modality. this redundancy may lead to different developments. in Lithuanian, the redundant irrealis complementizers were lost. in Latvian, on the other hand, redundancy led to new developments, as complementizers originally denoting irrealis are now used to mark what noonan (2007) calls pretence predicates. the contribution of holvoet is highly informative and inspiring. his differentiation between various aspects of modality results in a fine-grained analysis of the function of complementizers in baltic. however, the contribution would have profited from a more rigorous descriptive apparatus. the terminology used often remains undefined. this is especially evident with “control”, a word used in a variety of meanings in linguistics. sometimes, the terms used are rather misleading. albeit intuitively comprehensible, the labels truth-valued and non-truth-valued are inappropriate. in intensional semantics both types are truth-valued, the difference lying in the worlds relative to which truth is evaluated. in her paper “contradiction, contrast, and cause: on the functions of the Latvian particle neba in internet discussions”, nicole nau looks into the use of this particle in the genre of internet forums, discussion groups and chats. for her investigation, she collected 198 tokens of neba introducing a clause. she identifies four functions in her data set: the particle is used to mark contradiction, causality (in negated contexts only), contrast, and finally cause combined with contrast. nau argues convincingly that the invariant meaning of neba in its different functions is negation, and that the additional semantic values are always due to implicatures. the causal reading, for example, is established on the speech-act domain (as opposed to real-world causality) and is simply due to the gricean maxim of relevance. this argument is strengthened further by the observation that in some cases neba is actually combined with the clausal connective jo. in the second part of her paper, nau deals with the syntax and the categorial status of neba. based on its distribution, she concludes that syntactically it is not a conjunction, although functionally it comes close to being one. thus, it is restricted to the first position in a clause and is always clause connecting. finally, nau tackles the question of the rather surprising frequency of neba on the internet. outside the net, neba is mostly restricted to folksongs. however, as nau points out, the particle is a perfect 176 götZ keydana acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXIV–LXV tool for “compensat[ing] for the lack of prosody in written texts” (130), which makes it popular in netspeak with its strong ties to spoken language. nau’s contribution is very well argued and thought-provoking. she records the acquisition of her data carefully and argues in a very lucid and rigorous manner. the paper is a showcase example of an informative corpus study backed by wellbalanced theoretical reasoning. norbert ostrowski’s contribution deals with “Latvian jeb ‘or’ – from conditional to disjunctive conjunction”. in the first part of his paper, ostrowski traces the development of jeb from a conjunction introducing conditionals to one marking concessive conditionals and finally simple concessives. such development is well attested in other languages such as english (cf. though) and has been described by könig (1985). ostrowski shows that just like in english, the conditional changes to a concessive interpretation when the “protasis contains an expression marking a suitable extreme value on some scale for some propositional schema” (141, quoted from könig (1985: 238)). in other words, an original side meaning turned into the denotation of the conjunction. ostrowski then goes on to explain the disjunctive use of jeb on the basis of its concessive meaning, again following könig (1985). however, according to ostrowski, jeb deviates from the path described by könig and turns into a causal conjunction (in the form of jeb u) in some old Latvian attestations. in the last part of the paper, ostrowski proposes an etymology for jeb. he assumes that the word is composed of ja ‘if’ plus *be < *bijā (preterite). he proposes a regressive assimilation to account for the e in jeb and a development from *bijā to *be, which is not accounted for by sound laws. the paper by ostrowski is well argued. still, minor problems should be mentioned. thus, it remains unclear to the reviewer why ostrowski explains the development from conditional to concessive with Polish examples (139). as regards the conclusions of the paper, it seems difficult to accept the development of concessive jeb u into a causal conjunction. ostrowski gives only one example for the causal function, which, however, is not necessarily convincing, as a conditional reading cannot be excluded in the given sentence. to really strengthen the case for causal jeb u, ostrowski would have to offer tests for different readings that go beyond mere intuition. another problem concerns the etymology of jeb. intuitively, a connection with ja and a form like *bijā seems obvious. however, the proposed regressive assimilation is totally ad hoc, as is the claimed development of the preterite. daniel Petit’s contribution “on presentative particles in the baltic languages” gives an overview of this class of particles in Lithuanian and Latvian. Presentative particles are defined by the author as “special forms the function of which is to draw attention to a given reality with a strong deictic focalization” (151). as Pet- Particles and connectives in baltic 177recenzijos / reviews it shows, Lithuanian has a plethora of presentative particles (e.g. anskat, šiskat, te), whereas Latvian only has four (luk, rau, re, še). typologically, presentative particles are typically sentence-initial, not negatable, and they can be used predicatively. the author illustrates each of these features with Lithuanian and Latvian data. of special interest is the feature “predicativity”, as, according to the author, two types of government can be distinguished: some particles govern the nominative (Lith. štai, Latv. še), others the accusative (Lith. še, te). the latter are sometimes reanalyzed as verbs (šekit, tekit in Lithuanian dialects). however, the same particles may also introduce independent clauses. historically, most baltic presentative particles are transparent. they go back to imperatives (Lith. žiur), pronouns (štai), and local adverbs (še probably from an instrumental in Pie *-eh1). the paper by Petit is a welcome “first glimpse” of presentative particles in the baltic languages. a minor comment concerns the fact that the author claims that some of these particles “govern a nominative” (159). as they seem to pattern syntactically with local particles like Lithuanian čia (160), it seems best to treat them as small clause predicates unable to assign (or govern) case. the last contribution to the book under review is björn wiemer’s “on the lexicographic treatment of Lith. esą (from a background of other particles in Lithuanian and elsewhere)” [sic!]. in this paper, the author addresses the question of how many lexical entries should be assumed for Lithuanian esą. in accordance with the lexicographic tradition, wiemer distinguishes the participle esą from the function word. the latter is used as a particle with a reportive function and as a complementizer (typically) restricted to complements of verba dicendi. the author acknowledges the observation made by holvoet in his contribution to the book at hand that the complementizer can be used with verbs of propositional attitude. still, he restricts his study to the more frequent use with illocutive verbs. wiemer argues that esą is heterosemic, a term borrowed from Lichtenberk (1991). heterosemy, in the words of wiemer, “captures meaning relations of a unit that traverse across […] categorial boundaries” (179–180). being a complementizer and a particle, esą obviously meets this criterion. wiemer then goes on to compare esą with reportive markers in Latvian, Polish, and russian. finally, he turns his attention to the lexical entries. as the particle differs in syntax and (probably) semantics from the complementizer, wiemer opts to assume two different lexical entries. these are proposed in a style reminiscent of natural semantics Metalanguage. the contribution by wiemer leaves the reviewer puzzled. heterosemy may be an adequate label for the structural relations between esą as a particle and esą as a complementizer. however, the whole theoretical reasoning about fine-grained categorial differences in the relations between lexemes seems rather fruitless, as wiemer’s decision to set up two distinct lexical entries is entirely based on distri- 178 götZ keydana acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXIV–LXV bution (cf. p. 204). in addition, the lengthy discussion of Latvian and especially Polish and russian data is rather pointless, as it does not contribute to the main hypothesis. there are also more fundamental problems. the most important one is the aim of this contribution, for as long as the lexicon is not conceived as part of a generative device (and this is obviously not what wiemer has in mind), the whole enterprise of deciding how many lexical entries to propose boils down to mere structuralist taxonomy. this is even more true since the lexical entries proposed by wiemer are ultimately inadequate. one reason for this inadequacy is the fact that wiemer admits that “the question [of the exact meaning of the complementizer, g.k.] requires more research” (205). the lexical entry for the complementizer is therefore necessarily defective. worse still, the syntactic and semantic descriptions given in the entries are far to imprecise to work with. the syntax of the complementizer, for example, is described as “X1_ [esą[X2]]” (206). in a footnote, X2 is said to be “a clause that is subordinate to the clause X1” (207). however, “clause” remains undefined and may refer to finite and infinite structures alike. even worse, if X1 is to be taken as a clause, the structural description misses the important points that (1) esą is a complementizer and (2) it is licensed by the subcategorization frame of the embedding verb. the syntactic description of the particle (204) is equally inadequate. the semantics given are imprecise throughout. taking again the entry for the complementizer as an example, we read inter alia “(b) i say P, with P being housed by X2” (206). P obviously refers to a proposition, which is a semantic entity. X2, however, is a syntactic constituent. besides, “being housed” is a metaphor at best, but certainly no terminus technicus in any linguistic framework. Moreover, as there are no Ps and Xs in the sentence (a) of the definition, the connection between parts (a) and (b) remains obscure. however, even if the semantics given by wiemer were more precise, they would still suffer from a severe shortcoming typical for nsM-semantics, i.e. they are not compositional. this is especially problematic in the case of functional words like esą. the last point, which comes up when comparing the entries given for the particle and the complementizer, regards the fact that they could easily be conflated into a single entry if the author allowed for underspecification in the lexicon. references grochowski Maciej 1986: Polskie partykuły (składnia, semantyka, leksykografia) . wrocław: ossolineum. kö nig ekk ehard 1985: on the history of concessive connectives in english. diachronic and synchronic evidence. – Lingua 66, 1–19. Particles and connectives in baltic 179recenzijos / reviews Li chten berk fr antiš ek 1991: semantic change and heterosemy in grammaticalization. – Language 67, 475–509. Li chte nberk fra nti ek 1995: apprehensional epistemics – Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. by joan bybee, suzanne fleischman. amsterdam: john benjamins Publishing company, 293–327. no onan Michael 2007: complementation. – Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. ii. complex constructions. 2nd ed., ed. by timothy shopen. cambridge: cambridge university Press, 52–150. Įteikta 2011 m. spalio 19 d. götZ keydana Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Käte–Hamburger–Weg 3, D–37073 Göttingen, Deutschland [email protected]