LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XXXVIII (1997)

Vytautas AMBRAZAS

THE ORIGIN OF THE LITHUANIAN COMPLEMENT NOMINATIVE WITH THE INFINITIVE

0.1. Archaeological and comparative-linguistic research has shown that around the 6th century AD, the East Baltic tribes moved northward from the right bank of the Daugava and began settling in the territory of present-day Northern and Central Latvia. The dialects of the western Finnic peoples who had lived there since ancient times were gradually assimilated, and their substrate played a decisive role in the breakup of Proto-East Baltic and the formation of the Latvian language.

At almost the same time, the great Slavic expansion to the north and west also began. By the 8th–9th centuries, East Slavic tribes had spread across the area of present-day northern Russia as far as Novgorod and beyond, assimilating the western Finnic peoples living there.

These processes must have given rise to extensive zones of intense linguistic contact, interference, and substrate and superstrate in the northern part of the East Baltic and East Slavic dialect areas. To this day, these dialects share a whole series of common phonetic, lexical, and grammatical features.

One syntactic isogloss common to this area is the so-called complement nominative in constructions with infinitives and participles, and in some cases with other verb forms.

The term complement nominative (or nominative¹) is applied to impersonal constructions in which an infinitive or another form of a transitive verb is associated with a nominative that has the same function as the complement accusative in corresponding personal sentences:

Lith. reikia šienas pjaut (cf. turiu šieną pjaut); ‘hay must be mown’ (cf. ‘I have to mow the hay’);

Latv. zirgs Vajadzēs mazgāt ‘the horse will have to be washed’;

North Russ. nado trava kosit ‘the grass needs to be mown’;

Finn. täytyy kirjoittaa kirje ‘a letter needs to be written.’

Tokio tipo konstrukcijos būdingos įvairioms finų kalboms (Collinder 1957: 217, 300, 323, 427; Timberlake 1974: 210–215). Tačiau indoeuropiečių kalbose nominatyvas eina bendraties papildiniu tik jau minėtame šiaurės vakarų areale: šiaurinėse rusų kalbos tarmėse bei jų ypatybes atspindinčiuose XII–XVIII a. raštuose, įvairiose latvių kalbos tarmėse, o lietuvių kalboje – rytų bei pietų aukštai-

¹ The Lithuanian nominative, accusative and similar terms are used below to denote cases in Lithuanian and Latvian, while the international terms nominative, accusative, etc., are used when referring to other languages with case systems that differ to a greater or lesser extent.

93

in the dialects and in part of the Western Aukštaitian dialect area (according to the data in the archive of the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language—south of the approximate line Jonava–Čekiškė–Šakiai–Sintautai).

The origin of the construction in East Baltic and Slavic languages has been explained in various ways in many studies. Two main approaches can be distinguished among these explanations.

0.2. Representatives of the first approach consider the nominative-plus-infinitive construction to have been inherited from Proto-Indo-European. It is assumed that the nominative originally functioned as the subject, while the infinitive is a fossilized dative of a verbal noun expressing purpose. Parallels to such subject constructions with a dative of purpose are found in the ancient monuments of other related languages. In Baltic studies, this approach is most prominently represented by Jablonskis (1935: 29–33; 1957: 458–459) and Endzelīnas (1951: § 392); in Slavic studies, by Potebnja (1958: 405–407), Borkovskis (1949: 347–350), Stepanovas (1984), and others. Kiparsky (1960, 1969) explained the construction’s survival specifically on the northern periphery of the Indo-European language area as the result of the conservative influence of the Finno-Ugric languages, which helped the nominative survive in the inherited construction; Jacobsson (1964) endorsed this view.

Antrosios krypties svarbiausias atstovas yra Timberlake’as (1974), paskyręs šiam klausimui specialią monografiją. Jis priėjo išvadą, kad rytų baltų ir šiaurės rusų kalbų nominatyvas konstrukcijose su bendratimi bei padalyviais visais atvejais turi papildinio funkciją, savo vartosena skiriasi nuo kitų indoeuropiečių kalbų ir sutampa su vakarų finų kalbų atitikmenimis, tad laikytinas „sintaksiniu skoliniu iš kurios nors vakarų finų kalbos“ (1974: 220). Finų kalbų įtaką papildinio nominatyvo vartojimui rusų kalboje yra konstatavę ir kiti tyrinėtojai (plg. Veenker 1967: 158).

The views mentioned above are generally regarded as opposed to and in conflict with one another (cf. Timberlake 1974: 153–154, 220–224; Dunn 1982: 505, 526). In both cases, the nominative-plus-infinitive is treated as a construction with a fixed structure, in which the nominative expressing the semantic object of the infinitive functions either as the subject (in the first case) or as the object (in the second case)¹. However, data from Lithuanian and Latvian dialects show that the function of the nominative cannot be explained uniformly in all its combinations with the infinitive.

Bendraties vartosenos tyrimo rezultatai, autoriaus jau paskelbti anksčiau (1987, 1995), patvirtina požiūrį į bendraties kilmę iš paskirties reikšmę turėjusio veiksmažodinių abstraktų datyvo ir leidžia konstatuoti pirminę veiksnio funkciją kai kuriose vardininko konstrukcijose su bendratimi. Antra vertus, su bendratimi siejamas vardininkas dabar daugeliu atvejų neabejotinai eina papildiniu. Taigi matome vardininko funkcijos kitimą. Čia ir norėtume atkreipti dėmesį į vardininko su dalyviu vidinės struktūros pertvarkymo padarinius.

¹Cf. the following claims, for instance: “In such sentences (i.e., with the nominative and infinitive, V.A.), the nominative always remains the subject” (Jablonskis 1935: 32); on the other hand: “The comparable use of the nominative in Lith. and Latv. dialects is an instance of the nominative object; it undeniably does not represent the grammatical subject” (Timberlake 1974: 220).

94

Having examined Latvian nominative constructions with the debitive, Holvoet identified in them “a transition from the original subject nominative to the object nominative, as found in the Finnic languages” (1993: 160). We observe a similar process in Lithuanian nominative constructions with the infinitive. Different diachronic layers of different ages can be discerned in them.

1.1. The archaic layer is represented by constructions in which the nominative has retained its subject function, while the infinitive retains the meaning of purpose characteristic of the dative of verbal abstracts¹. Such constructions are attested in the following types of nominative-plus-infinitive constructions:

(1) with verbs expressing a state likti, pa(si)likti, tekti, kliūti, pasiitaikyti, rūpėti, tikti and the like, e.g.:

We had potatoes left / had to eat potatoes;

(2) with the verb būti ‘to be’ (the present-tense form is most often zero), e.g.:

a) And that stick is there to lean on;

b) The whole lake was already visible (with an infinitive of a perception verb);

c) I alone had all the work to do (necessity meaning);

(3) with adjectival forms functioning as the nominal part of the predicate:

a) agreeing: Vodka is nasty for me to drink;

b) neuter (non-agreeing): Sacks of potatoes are difficult to carry.

1.2. In constructions of types (1) and (2), which have preserved their original structure, the nominative’s subject function is clearly indicated by agreement with the predicate, which has a compound (periphrastic) or indirect-mood form; cf.: Jam likęs/rūpėjęs laukas arti; Šunų lojimas dar buvęs girdėti (cf. Troba besanti matytis, see Sirtautas 1971: 74); Man vienai buvęs tas paršas šerti.

It should be noted that constructions of types (1) and (2) are used not only in the eastern and southern Aukštaitian dialects, but also in those Samogitian and western Aukštaitian varieties where the infinitive governs only the accusative complement in impersonal sentences. In sentences of type (3b) with neuter adjectives, agreement is impossible because Lithuanian no longer has neuter-gender nouns. Their syntactic relations to other constructions allow us to infer that some of these constructions originally had a subject function. First, in some eastern Aukštaitian dialects neuter forms are used alongside agreeing masculine and feminine forms, e.g.: Medus valgyt gardu/gardus; Nespartūs/nespartu miežiai pjaut (Molėtai). Second, neuter forms are linked to a subject in the nominative in the same way as agreeing adjective forms in corresponding sentences that do not contain an infinitive expressing purpose or intention, cf.: Medus gardu/gardus; Gyvatė bjauru/bjauri; Svečias miela/mielas. Such constructions with neuter adjectives, used in the same eastern Aukštaitian varieties as those with an integrated infinitive,

¹ The dative of verbal abstracts is generally considered one of the most important means of expressing purpose and intention used in ancient Indo-European languages; see Jeffers, Pepicello 1980.

95

are inherited from remote antiquity, have parallels in ancient monuments of various related languages, and the neuter adjectives themselves have preserved pure stem forms (see aut. 1979: 200–202; 1990: 201–202 with references).

Similarly, in some sentences of type (2c) expressing necessity, the infinitive of purpose (or, respectively, the dative of the verbal abstract) has presumably become attached to an archaic possessive construction (man yra namai + statyti), which was eventually displaced in Lithuanian by expressions with the verb turėti, which later also acquired a meaning of necessity.

2.1. Alongside remnants of the old nominative function, the effects of the reorganization (reanalysis) of syntactic relations are clearly visible in Lithuanian and Latvian. In many constructions whose external form corresponds to the types mentioned above, the infinitive is already closely linked to the finite verb form and has lost its original purposive meaning, while the nominative is directly dependent on the infinitive. Such sentences are now understood as impersonal, and many Lithuanian and Latvian dialects use the accusative instead of the nominative in them—the typical case of a direct object.

In Lithuanian, the nominative has best preserved its subject function in constructions of types (2a), (2b), and (3a). The accusative complement is generally not used in them. The subject function is also fairly regular in constructions of type (2c), characteristic of Samogitian and some western Aukštaitian varieties. Perhaps for this reason Jablonskis (1935: 32; 1957: 560–564) tended to generalize the subject function to all instances of the nominative used with an infinitive.

On the other hand, most type 1 constructions in Lithuanian and Latvian have already been reanalyzed, and the nominative in them is understood as a complement of the infinitive; omitting it would substantially change the meaning of the sentence, e.g.: Man teko matyt tie žalčiai Skp (cf. Man teko žalčiai); Tėvui beliko pirkt tas sodas Dr (cf. Tėvui beliko sodas), and so on.

Reanalysis of constructions of type (3b) was especially favored by the generalized-state meaning characteristic of neuter adjective forms. In eastern and southern Aukštaitian sentences with neuter forms, the nominative very often functions as an infinitive-governed complement and is essential to the sentence structure; cf.: Smagu rašyt pupos (Marcinkonys), but *Smagu, pupos. In constructions of this type, adverbs denoting a state (or forms close to them) also became established alongside neuter adjectives, cf.: Gana/Anksti/Metas pupos rašyt. Some neuter adjectives and state-denoting adverbs, in turn, gave rise to new paradigms of impersonal verbs: gailėti (from gaila), ganėti (from ganà), reikėti (from reikia ar reikė), see Fraenkel 1925: 37–38; aut. 1995: 87–88). The combinations of the verb reikėti with an infinitive became especially productive¹. In eastern and southern Aukštaitian dialects, the nominative used with them has such a

¹ The verb reikėti, most often used with an infinitive, has become one of the most widely used verbs in the standard language (ranked fourth among all verbs in journalistic writing; see Žilinskienė 1990: 10).

96

the same object function as the accusative in the Western Aukštaitian or Samogitian dialects, cf. one must chop firewood/firewoods.

2.2. Thus, the nominative expressing the semantic object of the infinitival action is found not only in relic-type constructions, in which its original subject function can still be discerned, but is also widely used in many impersonal sentences, where it has never been a subject. In the eastern, southern, and some western Aukštaitian dialects, as the tendency to express the infinitival object of an impersonal sentence in the nominative became established, the nominative form also spread to corresponding impersonal expressions with past active participles. Transitive past active participles with an object in the nominative are most commonly associated with the following cases:

(1) constructions with interrogative (relative) adverbs where, how and the pronoun what, e.g.: Where has the horse been put here now? (Utena); But where did these wheels come from? (Kupiškis); We wonder how these little wheels came to be here (Zarasai); What have I done here? (Mažeikiai);

(2) expressions conveying a wish with the particle ka(d), e.g.: If only she had found a good old woman somewhere (Utena); If only I had knitted myself a sweater like that (Miežiškiai);

(3) sentences with a similar meaning and the state adverb well, e.g.: It would be good to have hired a strong worker (Kupiškis).

These constructions are attested in dialects where the object nominative with the infinitive is regularly used, but they are less frequent than the corresponding infinitival constructions. Even less frequently, the object nominative depends on present active participles functioning as adverbials in impersonal expressions. In the card index of the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language, it is recorded only in some localities within the area where the nominative occurs with the infinitive, e.g.: Every job requires learning while working (Utena); When felling an old tree, there would be a shortage of chips (Rokiškis); When keeping just one pig, it is better to save it from autumn (Miežiškiai).

3.1. The data discussed are consistent with Timberlake’s (1974: 152) conclusion: “Lithuanian and Latvian dialects have an object nominative rule: an actant that would otherwise be expressed by the accusative is systematically expressed by the nominative in an impersonal environment when a subject nominative is impossible.” This rule may have become established in infinitival constructions after the (t)i-stem dative became detached from the paradigm of verbal abstracts, fossilized, and became a non-finite verb form that began to govern the case of the direct object. Only then did conditions arise for restructuring syntactic relations in many old-type nominative-with-infinitive constructions.

Nevertheless, internal conditions alone do not answer the question of why, in constructions reanalyzed as impersonal, the nominative was not replaced by the accusative, but instead itself acquired the function of the object and subsequently spread across a large part of the East Baltic dialect area. The object nominative has no clear equivalents in other Indo-European languages,

97

except in the northeastern East Slavic dialects¹. By contrast, in the West Finnic languages it has long been used widely and intensively. In these circumstances, the West Finnic influence posited by Timberlake best explains the spread of the object nominative in the East Baltic dialects.

The influence of the West Finnic substrate on the nominative with infinitive was probably not merely conservative, helping to preserve the nominative form, as Kiparsky (1960, 1969) believed and as the author of these lines had earlier agreed (1987: 215). It helped shape, on the basis of the old-type nominative-with-infinitive construction, constructions with a new internal structure.

Since in the West Finnic languages the object nominative is used only in impersonal contexts, it could have influenced the East Baltic languages only once the infinitive had already become a separate non-finite verb form and the nominative constructions with it had been reanalyzed, or partly reanalyzed, as impersonal. In the Baltic languages, the infinitive diverged from the paradigm of verbal abstracts apparently only after the breakup of Proto-Baltic. Its comparatively late origin is indicated by the differences between infinitive forms in Lithuanian-Latvian and Prussian (author 1995: 75), as well as by the semantic and functional links with the purposive dative that have been well preserved to this day in Lithuanian and Latvian and are clearly felt in old-type nominative-with-infinitive constructions, too. Thus, it seems unlikely that impersonal constructions with the object nominative arose during prehistoric Baltic–Finnic contact, attested by hydronymy and early lexical borrowings. It is even more difficult to regard the object nominative with infinitive as a still earlier remnant, inherited from an ergative or “active” sentence structure (cf. Larin 1963; Pal-maitis 1977: 116–119).

In view of the circumstances noted above, it is most likely that the object nominative became established in the East Baltic dialects during the second period of intensive Baltic–Finnic contact, which began in the sixth century AD. At that time, the East Baltic dialects still formed a fairly coherent area receptive to innovation. Accordingly, the object nominative, first established in northern Baltic dialects influenced by the Finnic substrate, could have spread farther south through the territory of present-day Latvia and reached the eastern and southern Lithuanian dialects. There it became established on the basis of reanalyzed old-type nominative-with-infinitive constructions. However, this process scarcely affected Samogitian and a large part of the Western Aukštaitian dialects, where the nominative in constructions with the infinitive has to this day well retained its original subject function, while in impersonal utterances the infinitives of transitive verbs govern the accusative fairly regularly.

3.2. Slavic expansion into the areas inhabited by West Finns between Pskov and Novgorod created similar conditions for the spread of the object nominative in the northern East Sla-

¹ Traces of the object nominative with infinitive have also been observed in southern Russian dialects and in texts written on their basis, and in some places in the Belarusian and Ukrainian areas as well; there, however, the construction has specific features, and it is still debated whether it arose under the influence of northern Russian dialects; see Kuz’mina, Nemčenko 1964; Staniševa 1966; Dunn 1982 with references.

98

vic dialects. In Old Russian writings of the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries bearing features of those dialects, the object nominative with infinitive is used in impersonal contexts and is considered to have arisen (Timberlake 1974: 198) or to have been preserved (Kiparsky 1960; 1969) under the influence of the West Finnic substrate.

Although the Old Russian construction has been extensively studied by many authors¹, examples in which a nominative accompanying an infinitive has an unequivocal subject function are found in earlier studies only with agreeing adjective forms (e.g., voda Jordana sladka pit ‘the water of the Jordan is sweet to drink’, see Sprinčak 1960: 179) and with the infinitive of a verb of perception + the verb byti ‘to be’, e.g.: bě v to vremja viděti... pečalb горькая Mosk. Letop. 290 ‘at that time it was possible to see... sorrow bitter’ (Sabenina 1978: 404; see also author 1995: 90–91); these correspond to examples of the old Lithuanian dialect types (2b) and (3a) (cf. 1.1–2). In present-day northern Russian dialects, constructions with the object nominative have changed considerably as a result of case syncretism, the morphologization of the animate–inanimate gender opposition, and other specific processes in the development of Russian (see Timberlake 1974: 104–116; Žuravlev 1984). Thus, researchers of Slavic languages reconstruct the original subject function of the nominative accompanying an infinitive chiefly on the basis of comparative analysis. The old-type nominative-with-infinitive constructions preserved in Lithuanian dialects are especially significant for this purpose: they may be regarded as evidence that the object nominative in Slavic languages, too, had the same syntactic basis.

3.3. Thus, the traditional term “nominative with infinitive” in fact denotes constructions with different internal structures: (1) a subject nominative with an infinitive of Indo-European origin, which developed from the dative of a verbal noun and more or less retained its old purposive meaning, and (2) an infinitival phrase with a governed object nominative, which most likely acquired this function under the influence of West Finnic dialects after the reanalysis of the first type of construction. The first-type constructions may be regarded as shared Lithuanian and Latvian syntactic archaisms. Impersonal constructions with an object nominative governed by an infinitive are of later origin, but they too are now being displaced from use by phrases of corresponding meaning with the accusative. Their relic character is especially pronounced in Latvian dialects.

Unlike in Lithuanian, where the object nominative continues to be used fairly consistently across a defined area of eastern and southern dialects, in Latvian dialects its centers are scattered as islands across various dialects and separated from one another by local varieties in which the infinitive governs only the accusative (see author 1995: 96–98). The object nominative has been better preserved only in phrases with the debitive (cf. Rudzīte 1964: 138, 240, 372). This shows that West Finnic influence on the nominative with infinitive ended long ago, after which this construction followed a distinctive and divergent course of development in the East Baltic dialects.

¹For a review of the literature, see Larin 1963; Kiparsky 1960, 1969; Timberlake 1974; Dunn 1982.

99

...ly. Particularly interesting is the fact that the object nominative has declined most in Latvian dialects, where it must once have had its center of diffusion, but has survived better in the peripheral area—in the eastern and southern parts of the Lithuanian language area. This can be explained by the different place occupied by the construction in the syntactic systems of Lithuanian and Latvian dialects.

3.4. In the eastern and southern Aukštaitian dialects of Lithuanian, the expression of the semantic object by the nominative is not restricted to utterances with an infinitive. To this day, they preserve archaic constructions with nominative-marked neuter passive participles, in which the nominative denotes the patient (semantic object) of the action, e.g.: the forest is being/has been cut; the hay is being/has been hauled; the cows are being/have been grazed, and so on (for more on these, see the author 1979: 213–218; 1990: 197–214, with references). Since these constructions belong to the passive paradigm, the nominative in them is considered the subject, but its semantic function is the same as in phrases with an infinitive, cf.: Here the forest is cut and The forest needs to be cut; The hay has already been hauled and Tomorrow we’ll haul the hay. The distribution of such nominative phrases with neuter passive participles and with an infinitive in the eastern Aukštaitian dialect almost entirely coincides. Moreover, nominative constructions with neuter passive participles, like those with an infinitive, also tend to be reanalyzed as impersonal, and the accusative object governed by the participle sometimes begins to encroach on the nominative’s place: honey is being collected; a letter is being written.

In these same Lithuanian dialects, the subject nominative is widely used with neuter adjectives functioning as predicates: the guest is welcome; the curds are tasty, and so on. With the addition of an infinitive, a nominative-with-infinitive construction of the old type (3b) is formed: the guest is welcome to receive; the curds are tasty to eat (cf. 1.2.).

The aforementioned models with neuter passive participles and adjectives provide a natural support for the object nominative in the eastern and southern Lithuanian dialects. In Latvian dialects, the nominative with an infinitive no longer has this support, because neuter adjectives and participles disappeared from them long ago. Here, adverbs are associated with the infinitive instead of neuter adjectives (grūti ‘with difficulty’, viegli ‘easily’, etc.), forming constructions that are already clearly impersonal, cf.: aka nav viegli rakt ‘the well is not easy (lit. not easily) to dig’. Thus, the Latvian nominative with an infinitive is more remote from personal constructions. When intensive contacts with the western Finns ceased, it was more readily replaced by the usual direct-object case—the accusative.

In general, constructions with an infinitive and neuter forms of passive participles, containing an object (or patient, content) in the nominative, may share a common origin. Their mutual relations and their connection with similar participle usage in the western Finnic languages still warrant separate investigation.

Conclusions

1. Lithuanian dialects distinguish two diachronic layers of the nominative-with-infinitive construc-

100

tions. The oldest layer is found in sentences with a subject nominative and an infinitive that retains its original purposive meaning, characteristic of the dative of verbal abstracts. The second, more recent layer consists of constructions with an object nominative governed by the infinitive.

2. Constructions with an object nominative may have developed after the infinitive split off from the paradigm of verbal abstracts, became a separate verb form, and some constructions of the old type were reanalyzed as impersonal. In impersonal constructions, the nominative took hold as an object, most likely under the influence of western Finnic dialects.

3. The diachronic stratification of the nominative with an infinitive makes it possible to reconcile two main hypotheses about the construction’s origin, hitherto regarded as contradictory. The first (Jablonskis–Endzelīns–Kiparsky) applies to the oldest layer of these constructions and describes their original Indo-European structure. The second (Timberlake’s) applies to a later period in their development and explains how the atypical object function of the nominative became established in reanalyzed impersonal constructions with an infinitive.

4. The object nominative with an infinitive (like the indirect mood) may be considered one of those East Baltic grammatical structures that have an Indo-European basis but acquired their present internal structure under the influence of intensive contacts with western Finnic languages in the second half of the past millennium.

LITERATŪRA

Ambrazas V. 1977: Netiesioginės nuosakos paplitimas ir kilmės problema. – Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 17, 7–54.

Ambrazas V. 1979. Lietuvių kalbos dalyvių istorinė sintaksė, Vilnius.

Ambrazas V. 1987. Die indogermanische Grundlage des Dativus und Nominativus cum Infinitivo im Baltischen. – Indogermanische Forschungen 92, 203–219.

Ambrazas V. 1990. Sravnitelnyj sintaksis pričastij baltijskix jazykov / Vergleichende Syntax der baltischen Partizipien, Vilnius.

Ambrazas V. 1995. Lietuvių kalbos bendraties konstrukcijų raida. – Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 33, 74–109.

Borkovskij V. 1949: Sintaksis drevnerusskij gramot. Prostoe predloženije, Lvov.

Collinder B. 1957: Survey of the Uralic Languages, Uppsala.

Dunn J. A. 1982: The Nominative and Infinitive Construction in the Slavonic Languages. – Slavonic and East European Review 60(4), 500–527.

Endzelīns J. 1951: Latviešu valodas gramatika, Rīga.

Frankel E. 1925: Zur baltoslavischen Grammatik. – Zeitschrift für die vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen 53(1), 36–65.

Holvoet A. 1993: On the Nominative Object in Latvian, with particular reference to the debitive. – Linguistica Baltica 2, 151–156.

Jablonskis J. 1935: Jablonskio raštai 4, red. J. Balčikonis, Kaunas.

Jablonskis J. 1957: Rinktiniai raštai 1, sud. J. Palionis, Vilnius.

Jacobsson G. 1964: Zur Frage vom Nominativ als Kasus des direkten Objekts im Slavischen. – Lingua viget, commentationes slavicae in honorem V. Kiparsky, Helsinki.

Jeffers R., Pepicello W. J. 1980: The Expression of Purpose in Indo-European. –

101

Indogermanische Forschungen 84, 1–16.

K i p a r s k y V. 1960: Über das Nominativobjekt des Infinitivs. – Zeitschrift für slaviche Philologie 28, 333–342.

K i p a r s k y V. 1969: Das Nominativobjekt des Infinitivs im Slavischen, Baltischen und Ostsee-finnischen. – Baltistica 5(2), 141–148.

K u z'm i n a I. B., N e m č e n k o E. V. 1964: K voprosu o konstrukcijax s formoj imenitel’nogo padeža imen pri perexodnyx glagolax i pri predikativnyx narečijax v russkix govorax. – Voprosy dialektologii vostočno-slavjanskix jazykov, Moskva, 151–175.

L a r i n B. A. 1963: Ob odnoj slavjano-balto-finskoj izoglosse. – Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 6, 83–107.

P a l m a i t i s L. 1977: Dėl baltų kalbų nenominatyvinės praeities. – Baltistica 2 priedas, 114–123.

P o t e b n j a A. A. 1958: Iz zapisok po russkoj grammatike 1–2, Moskva.

R u d z ī t e M. 1964: Latviešu dialektoloģija, Rīga.

S a b e n i n a A. M. 1978: Konstrukcija s imenitel’nym padežom prjamogo ob’ekta. – Istoričeskaja grammatika russkogo jazyka. Sintaksis. Prostoe predloženie, red. V. I. Borkovskij, Moskva, 403–416.

S i r t a u t a s V. 1971: Konstrukcijų buvo matyti, girdėti struktūra. – Kalbotyra 22(1), 71–79.

S p r i n č a k J. A. 1960: Očerk russkogo istoričeskogo sintaksisa. Prostoe predloženie, Kiev.

S t a n i š e v a D. S. 1966: Konstrukcija tipa zemlja paxat’ v sisteme sintaksičeskix sredstv vostočnoslavjanskix jazykov. – Slavia 35, 1–16.

S t e p a n o v J. S. 1984: Oborot zemlja paxat’ i ego indoevropejskie paralleli. – Izvestija AN SSSR, ser. lit. i jaz. 62(2), 128–143.

T i m b e r l a k e A. 1974: The Nominative Object in Slavic, Baltic and West Finnic. Slavistische Beiträge 82, München.

V e e n k e r W. 1967: Die Frage des finnugrischen Substrats in der russischen Sprache, Bloomington.

Ž i l i n s k i e n ė V. 1990: Lietuvių kalbos dažninis žodynas, Vilnius.

Ž u r a v l e v V. K. 1984: Nominativus cum infinitivo s točki zrenija morfologičeskoj nejtralizacii. – Baltistica 20(2), 119–125.

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE NOMINATIVE OBJECT IN LITHUANIAN

Summary

Two diachronical layers in the structure of the nominative with the infinitive constructions are being discerned. The relics of the oldest layers are found in sentences with the nominative subject and the infinitive preserving the meaning of purpose characteristic of action nominals in the dative case form. The subject function of the nominative in the constructions with the verbs likti ‘remain’, būti ‘be’ (especially with the infinitive of the perception verb) is proved by agreement with the predicate in the compound and modus relativus forms.

The second, more recent layer is represented by impersonal constructions with the nominative object governed by the infinitive. Such constructions were formed in consequence of the reanalysis of the constructions of the first type as impersonal ones. The nominative turned into the grammatical object of the infinitive and spread in its new function under the influence of the West Finnic nominative object rule. The impact of West Finnic most likely was conditioned by the expansion of East Baltic dialects over the West Finnic substratum area in 6–7th centuries AD.

Taking into consideration the diachronical strata of the nominative with the infinitive the traditional hypothesis about its Indo-European origin (suggested by Potebnja, Jablonskis, En-

102

dzelīns, Kiparsky et. al.) and Timberlake’s hypothesis about the borrowing the nominative object rule from West Finnic may be regarded as complementary ones. The nominative object can be put in line with the relative mood (modus relativus) and some other syntactic phenomena based on the native structure of the East Baltic languages and affected by the external influence in the course of their development.

103