Mažmožis

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA XLVIII (2003), 177–184 REMARKS Remarks TRIFLE The adjectives žiaudrus, žiudrus in the Samogitian dialect attracted the attention of Steven Young, a specialist in Baltic studies at the University of Baltimore, in his very interesting article “Lithuanian žiaurūs: žiudrus” (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 47, 109–115). The sentences taken from DŪNŽ, pp. 453, 458, seem to call for a few remarks: pākaulinēs lābā žōdrōs ā.udeklas; vi.kšrēs žōdrōs / pjā.usta lįžuvē gįvuol’ūn. The žōdrōs in the second sentence should be transposed not as žudrūs, but as žiudrūs: vikšris žiudrūs pjāusto liežuvį gyvōliuon (dative singular; nominative gįvuolis | gį’vuolis; here, in the old traditional South Samogitian Varniai dialect, a non-etymological n was added after the dative singular ending -u > -uo). It is not žudrūs, but my obvious proofreading error must have misled the author, although the entry is žiudrus, i.e. all the sentences are defined by the word žiudrus (the text collection, which lasted six years (1969–1975), was greatly prolonged by bans, complaints, etc.). In spoken language, this adjective is now becoming forgotten and is used mostly by older rural people; its roots are žiaud-, žiud-, so the form is only žiudrūs, whereas scholars from faraway places who lack this dialect vocabulary may sometimes waver and begin citing a nonexistent word, *žudrus. Vytautas Vitkauskas Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, 2055 Vilnius, Lietuva Received 2003 05 05 ON THE SO-CALLED ZERO COPULA This text is primarily intended to discuss sentences such as: My brother is disabled; A persistent cough is a symptom of a serious illness, and so on. In the Grammar of Contemporary Lithuanian (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1994), they are considered nominal sentences corresponding to a three-member model, because The weather is nice is considered to have a zero copula (p. 612). Before entering into polemics on this narrow question, I will begin by mentioning two propositions without which the polemic is meaningless and which I will strive to adhere to strictly. The first proposition: Nothing has properties. I also put it another way, jokingly: Nothing grows hair. It seems that the proposition’s formulation belongs to Immanuel Kant, but I do not remember this well, and since I do not support the truth of propositions by appealing to authority, it is enough for me that I consider it true. Logic does not operate directly with the word nothing, but its theory of classes accepts a zero, or empty, class (I draw attention to the fact that it is called zero after the sign used to denote it, while empty is after that