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Straipsnyje aptariama modelio negyvas subjektas + aktyvų veiksmą reiškiantis veiksmažodis realiza­cija lingvistiniuose straipsniuose anglų kalba. Nustatomas bendras modelio dažnumas bei dažniausiai pasikartojantys veiksmažodžiai bei subjektai, atskleidžiama jų reikšmė ir funkcijos. Rezultatai lygina­mi su lingvisto Master’io (2001) straipsnyje aprašomais tyrimo, grindžiamo moksliniais straipsniais tiksliųjų mokslų tematika, rezultatais. Abiejų tyrimų metu nustatyta, kad tiriamas modelis vyrauja aiškinamojo tipo kontekstuose.Kvantitatyvinis aspektas papildomas interpretaciniu, pasitelkiant konceptualiosios metaforos teo­riją. Nustatytos šios dažniausiai pasitaikančios metaforos: tyrimas yra žmogus, tyrimas yra kelionė, tyrimas yra statinys, tyrimas yra ekonominė veikla bei tyrimas yra paslapties atskleidimas. Pirmoji metafora iš dalies sutampa su metonimijomis.Šio tyrimo rezultatai galėtų pasitarnauti diskurso analizės tyrimams bei dėstant akademinį rašymą negimtakalbiams.

Šiame straipsnyje, remiantis pavyzdžiais, surinktais iš Anglų filologijos katedros studentų bakalaurinių ir magistrinių darbų, analizuojami tų darbų pavadinimai bei mokslinio darbo plano rašymo būdai. Pavadinimai nagrinėjami keliais aspektais – visų pirma, aptariama jų funkcijos, 153tiriama jų sintaksinės ir struktūrinės ypatybės. Be to, nemaža dėmesio skiriama sąšvelnių (hedging) ir intertekstualumo naudojimui mokslinių darbų pavadinimuose, t.p. paminimi nauji efektingi būdai kurti pavadinimus. Kita straipsnio dalis skirta aptarti problemoms, kylančioms rašant mokslinio dar­bo planą. Išskiriami dviejų tipų sunkumai – susiję su darbo turiniu, kai planas yra per daug bendras ir neatspindi darbo turinio, ir sunkumai, susiję su plano forma – kai nesilaikoma tos pačios sintaksinės formos. Išvadose teigiama, jog šios dvi įvadinės mokslinio darbo dalys, nors iš pirmo žvilgsnio ir galinčios atrodyti nelabai svarbios, iš tiesų atlieka rimtą informacinę bei reklaminę funkciją, todėl siūlant akademinio rašymo kursą, joms reikėtų skirti nemaža dėmesio.

The present paper discusses the ‘inanimate subject + active verb’ pattern in research papers in applied linguistics attempting to identify major differences between linguistic discourse as a discourse of human sciences and hard sciences (as represented in Master 2001) and account for the usage and meaning of the pattern under investigation in the framework of the CTM. The quantitative aspect of the investigation includes the overall frequency count of the pattern in the corpus and their distribution per 1000 words as well as the count of inanimate subjects and active verbs according to frequency, their semantic properties and functions. There is a comparative dimension involved in the investigation: the results of the present investigation into linguistic discourse roughly representing human sciences is compared to Master’s investigation into ‘hard’ sciences (2001). The tendency to use the pattern in the explanatory environment has been confirmed. The qualitative aspect of the analysis involves the interpretation of the results in the framework of conceptual theory of metaphor (CTM). The interpretation of the results in the framework of the CTM has yielded several major metaphorical extensions: research as a person, research as a journey, research as construction/building, research as economic activity, research as (uncovering) a secret. The personification type of metaphor (research as a person) seems to overlap with what is usually interpreted as metonymy. This research has some implications for teaching academic English to non-native speakers of English, especially speakers of languages which do not have any such patterns.

Currently the research paper (RP) is the central genre of many (perhaps all) disciplines at university level. Writing a research paper is no easy undertaking for L1 students and it goes without saying that it is one of the most demanding and time-consuming assignments for EFL students. Recent years have seen increased attention being given to RP writing, however, the focus is typically on what is called the body of the RP. For example, in his Genre Analysis Swales presents his famous IMRD pattern of an RP (1998, 133-7) and the CARS model of the introduction (ibid., 222-4) but the preliminaries (except abstracts) are not included there (by preliminaries I mean titles, abstracts, acknowledgements, and outlines). True, he did investigate titles in an appendix of the book, but not acknowledgements or outlines. Typically prelims receive scant attention during practical RP writing courses as well since many teachers consider investigation into their properties merely a waste of valuable time. The purpose of this article is to discover to what extent EFL students are familiar with different patterns of composing prelims and what problems they encounter. On the basis of the findings I expect to demonstrate that the preliminary sections of an RP (which are sometimes referred to as minor genres or subgenres) deserve attention and require considerable rhetorical expertise since there is more to them than meets the eye. The corpus of the investigation is drawn from the texts of BA and MA theses composed by students of the English Philology Department, Vilnius University, in the year 2003-2006 and consists of 136 titles. To illustrate new developments in the area of composing RP titles texts of expert writers were used (examples (9), (10), (15), (16), (17), (18), (19)). Due to the limited scope of the article the analysis will concern only titles and outlines. First I will investigate titles with a special focus on the following points: importance of RP titles; functions of RP titles; their syntactic and structural properties; language points; emerging trends and fashions in the area; frequency of occurence of specific title patterns in students’ texts. The next section will be devoted to problems concerning effective outlining including the rules to observe with reference to content and the rules to observe with reference to structure. Why are RP titles important? Even though they consist, at best, of two or three lines, they play a significant role in the reception of the text, since the audience bases their decisions whether to read further basically on the title, outline, and the abstract. According to Swales, ‘it comes as little surprise that composing the few words of a title can take up inordinate amount of time, discussion, and mental effort’ (1998, 223).

The present paper sets out to examine the efficiency of the Task Dependency Principle (TDP) in teaching research paper writing for BA students in English Philology. So far the TDP has been used in teaching practical language skills to non-native speakers. It consists in giving students tasks which are based on previously accomplished tasks. The TDP has turned out to be very effective in teaching research paper writing skills as well. Implemented throughout one full semester of the research-in-progress seminar, coupled with the peer review and fostered by the focus on individually selected linguistic topics, the TDP has contributed to increasing the motivation of students and shifting from teacherto student-centred teaching/learning.

Based on the analysis of the texts collected in the 1930s in Latvia and Estonia, this paper provides a description of the semantics of the verbal modifiers, i.e., prefixes (preverbs) and particles, in Latvian Romani. The system of verbal modifiers in Latvian Romani is an innovation evolved under Slavic and Baltic influence. Most preverbs are instances of MAT-borrowing from Slavic and Baltic, whereas verb particles are a PATborrowing, modelled after the Latvian system. The paper argues that even preverbs of Slavic origin often copy the semantics and derivational patterns of Latvian prefixed verbs. It is also shown that, differently from Latvian, in Romani both preverbs and verb particles can affect the verb’s argument structure (e.g., by making it transitive) and change its aspectual value (e.g., by making it perfective). Finally, the distribution of verbal modifiers in Latvian Romani (the development of verb particles as opposed to other closely related Northeastern Romani dialects which only have prefixes, and higher frequency of verb particles in Estonia than in Latvia) confirms the areal cline in the spread of verb particles.

This paper addresses the issue of polysemy, and more precisely of multiple meanings in the case of the words francophonie/francophone from the perspective of argumentative semantics. The aim of the paper is to examine the mechanisms that account for the multiple meanings of francophonie/francophone, i.e. the semantic and discursive mechanisms involved in the (re)construction of lexical meaning as the words occur in discourse. The data analysed in this paper consists of a set of discourse fragments about francophone identity, discourses that vary according to the speaker, the geographical location and the media support. The study is carried out within the framework of the SAP theory (Semantics of Argumentative Possibilities), following a procedure based on a pre-built reference meaning – i.e. a description of the argumentative potential of the lexeme – that will be used when analysing the discursive occurrences. First, the paper briefly presents the SAP theory and the pre-built reference meaning of the lexemes francophonie/francophone (described in terms of core-elements, stereotypes and argumentative possibilities). It then illustrates several discursive mechanisms of meaning construction. The analysis highlights a series of meaning construction mechanisms: transgressive activation of the argumentative potential, reconfiguration by scission of the core-elements or by deletion of one of the elements, modality addition, transgressive reconstruction of the core meaning, and finally core circularity. Thus, the paper indicates, from the perspective of argumentative semantics, that the multiple meanings of the words francophonie/francophone, i.e. the various semantic configurations attached to these words, can be seen as reconfigurations of a single lexical meaning.

In the recent decades the interpersonal nature of written academic communication has been widely studied in various linguistic/cultural contexts, including Lithuanian. To gain new insights into how knowledge is negotiated interpersonally in Lithuanian scientific texts, the present paper explores the distribution and use of interactive and interactional features of metadiscourse in Lithuanian research articles in a single discipline, i.e., linguistics. For the classification of metadiscourse resources, the study employs the interpersonal model of metadiscourse (Hyland 2005a). Based on the analysis of 30 Lithuanian research articles in the field of linguistics, this exploratory investigation reveals rhetorical strategies utilized by professional authors to construct a coherent text and engage their audiences in the chosen disciplinary domain. The dominance of interactive metadiscourse features over interactional ones in the corpus examined shows that Lithuanian authors of research articles in linguistics are generally more concerned with organizing discourse and guiding readers through the text than with expressing attitudes and commitment to their arguments. The most common interactive resources are transitions and evidentials, and the most frequent interactional devices include boosters, engagement markers, and hedges. The analysis offers a number of methodological steps necessary for applying the interpersonal model of metadiscourse to Lithuanian data, and complements numerous investigations into Lithuanian academic discourse by illustrating and discussing the writer-reader interaction in linguistics in a larger corpus.

The comparison of light verb constructions with the verbs make and do has not received much attention. The present paper is an attempt to contribute to the study of these constructions. It aims to analyze the light verbs make and do in combination with the same deverbal nouns to identify similarities and differences between the two light verbs and examine the contribution of the light verbs and deverbal nouns to the light verb construction in terms of semantic and syntactic features. The research is corpus-based, and the data for analysis are collected from the British National Corpus (BNC). The semantic description deals with characteristics such as generality, polysemy and aspectual meaning, and the syntactic description focuses on complementation. The analysis of findings demonstrates that, despite some similarities, almost all constructions with the two light verbs show either meaning or/and complementation differences. The study also reveals that both light verbs and deverbal nouns have an impact on the semantics and syntax of the construction. Light verbs may affect light verb constructions semantically in terms of generality and polysemy, and the aspectual meaning of constructions depends on both light verbs and deverbal nouns. Likewise, both light verbs and deverbal nouns have an influence on complementation, but in their own way: light verbs on the selection of complements and deverbal nouns on complementation patterns.

This paper aims to reveal differences between the competing accusative and locative forms of Lithuanian temporal expressions denoting parts of the day (rytas ‘morning’, diena ‘day’, vakaras ‘evening’, naktis ‘night’). Since the accusative of time expresses a wider semantic spectrum, it was first necessary, using a prototypical approach, to define exactly what the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the competing pairs are (i.e., prototypical verbal modifiers expressing location of an action/ state in time). Then, analysing the DLKT corpus data confirmed that the competition between the accusative and locative forms is present using the word vakaras ‘evening’ and rytas ‘morning’. This study reveals that the choice of case depends on the interaction of the given word with the (non)presence of an attribute and on the concrete type of attribute as well. It was confirmed that the accusatives of all the studied words predominate over the locatives, but the strength of the dominance varies. This may be caused by the different degree of adverbialization of the locative forms and by the different semantic implications embodied in the lexemes themselves, which is related to how successfully the locative resists the expansion of the accusative.

The concept of the null article in English was originally developed as a means of explaining the apparent paradox that singular nouns with the same surface form, namely the non-presence of a grammatical article, are used in quite different communicative situations. Null has been described as the most definite form in the English article system, standing in direct contrast to zero at the opposite end of a scale. Yet, while this may applicable in the case of predicates nouns denoting unique roles, certain institutions where the referent is pragmatically unique, or coordinate structures with a preceding referent, there is persuasive evidence to suggest a considerable number of other null structures do not fit such a description but, on the contrary, share common characteristics with the weak form of the definite article or occupy more of a neutral position which would permit insertion of either one of the surface articles. On this basis, a proposal is advanced to acknowledge two forms of the null article, strong and weak, according to context. Rather than a corpus-based statistical approach, this paper draws upon a smaller selection of contemporary, non-fictional texts from a variety of semantic fields to illustrate the points being made.

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.

[full article and abstract in English] This paper describes The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language and its possible applications for modern studies on the first language acquisition. First of all, the procedure of data collection for the Corpus is discussed. Furthermore, the main methodological principles of longitudinal and experimental data compilation and transciption are decribed. Finally, different studies in developmental psycholinguistics which have been carried out so far and which demonstrate possible ways of the application of the Corpus data for different scientific purposes are introduced. The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language developed at Vytautas Magnus University comprises typical and atypical, longitudinal and experimental data of the Lithuanian language development. The Corpus was compiled using different methodological approaches, such as natural observation and semi-experiment. The longitudinal data (conversations between the target children and their caretakers) compiled according to the requirement of natural observation includes transcribed and morphologically annotated speech of two typically-developing children, one late talker, one early talker, one child from a low SES family, and a pair of twins. The data was collected during the period of 1993–2017 and and it can be divided into three cohorts. The semi-experimentaldata (~ 124 hours) comes from numerous studies in narratives and spontaneous dialogues elicited from typically-developing and language-impaired monolingual and bilingual (pre-) school age children. From the very beginning of data collection for the The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language, studies in the develomental changes of typical child language have been carried out. Over the past decade, these studies have been supplemented by statistical analysis of elicited semi-experimental data; the majority of these studies deal with typical vs. atypical (delayed or impaired) language acquisition and with differences between acquision of Lithuanian in a monolingual vs. bi-/polylingual settings. The paper provides an overview of data of The Corpus of Lithuanian Children’s Language, which have been collected from 1993 but still needed to be structurized according to the employed methodology of data compilation and possible applications for different scientific purposes.

In the recent decade the realisations of evidentiality and epistemic modality in European languages have received a great scholarly interest and resulted in important investigations concerning the relation between evidentiality and epistemic modality, their means of expression and meaning extensions in various types of discourse. The present paper deals with the adverbials akivaizdžiai ‘evidently’, aiškiai ‘clearly’, ryškiai ‘visibly, clearly’, matyt ‘apparently, evidently’ and regis ‘seemingly’, which derive from the source domain of perception, and the epistemic necessity adverbials tikriausiai/veikiausiai/greičiausiai ‘most probably’, būtinai ‘necessarily’ and neabejotinai ‘undoubtedly’. The aim of the paper is to explore the morphosyntactic properties of the adverbials when they are used as evidential or epistemic markers and compare the distribution of their evidential and epistemic functions in Lithuanian fiction, news and academic discourse. The data have been drawn from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, the Corpus of Academic Lithuanian and the bidirectional translation corpus ParaCorpEN→LT→EN (Šolienė 2012, 2015). The quantitative findings reveal distributional differences of the adverbials under study across different types of discourse. Functional variation of the evidential perception-based adverbials is determined to a great extent by the degree of epistemic commitment, evidenced not only by intra-linguistic but also cross-linguistic data. The non-perception based adverbials tikriausiai/veikiausiai/greičiausiai ‘most probably’, būtinai ‘necessarily’ and neabejotinai ‘undoubtedly’ are the primary adverbial markers of epistemic necessity in Lithuanian, though some of them may have evidential meaning extensions. A parallel and comparable corpus-based analysis has once again proved to be a very efficient tool for diagnosing language-specific features and describing an inventory used to code language-specific evidential and epistemic meanings.

The aim of this paper is to investigate ‘I promise’ and its counterpart in (Peninsular) Spanish prometo. After briefly revisiting the theoretical debate on performativity and performative verbs, the paper adopts a corpus-based approach to quantify the main uses of ‘I promise’ in both languages. This contrastive analysis has an ultimate didactic purpose, since these verbs can raise problems of understanding and use for Spanish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL henceforth) and of translation studies. In order to carry out this analysis, the British National Corpus and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual were used, manually fine-graining the initial automatic search. To make both datasets comparable, only the oral and the fiction sections were considered since they are both shared by the two corpora. Interestingly, during the analysis there has also emerged an unexpected result which seems to be pointing out to the beginning of a linguistic change in Spanish. Thus, it can be observed that there is an emergent use in Spanish of the verb amenazar (‘to threaten’), sometimes with the action function of “promising”. This emergent use seems to be especially frequent in computer-mediated communication (e.g. blogs, forums, etc.) but it is still extremely rare in English.

This paper deals with the expression of evaluation in German and Lithuanian court judgments in civil cases. The purpose is to analyze lexical and grammatical devices, used by the court – the source of evaluation in this text type – in its judgments to express its opinion towards certain objects of evaluation. The analyzed corpus consists of 10 randomly selected court judgments in German (44 522 words in total) and 10 in Lithuanian (38 347 words in total). The actual scope of the paper is a particular part of the judgments, namely, the grounds, in which the court examines the suit, pleadings of the parties, certain issues, facts and circumstances relevant for the decision etc. and gives its reasons for the decision. The respective parts of court decisions make up a subcorpus of 29 274 words in German and 18 693 words in Lithuanian. The main focus of the research are the aspects of evaluation, i. e. particular attributes of the objects evaluated. It has been found that in the analyzed court judgments the objects are evaluated in terms of success, merits, admissibility, veracity, reasonableness, persuasiveness, suitability, extent, probability etc. The research shows that lexical devices used in the court judgments in both languages to express the evaluation are typically formed on the same basis, e. g. tikėtina ‘(it is) probable’ and tikimybė ‘probability’, abejoti ‘to doubt’ and abejonės ‘doubts’, unangemessen ‘unreasonable’ and Unangemessenheit ‘unreasonableness’; zweifelhaft ‘dubious’, zweifelsfrei ‘free of doubt’ and Zweifel ‘doubt’. In comparison to the German court judgments analyzed, Lithuanian court judgments contain an wider diversity of specific lexical constructions containing verba dicendi and verba putandi, in which the evaluating subject is encoded explicitly. The constructions found include the following: teismas sprendžia, kad/jog ‘the court rules that’, teismas laiko, kad ‘the court assumes that’, teismas vertina, kad ‘the court assesses that’, teismas daro išvadą, kad ‘the court concludes that’, teismo vertinimu ‘upon the court’s assessment’ etc., whereas only the verb überzeugen ‘to convince’ and one construction with the derivate of the latter: zur Überzeugung des Gerichts ‘the court is convinced’ are found in the German judgments analyzed). Furthermore, it has been noted that in this text type, lexical devices are also used to indicate that the particular issue is not relevant in this lawsuit and is not going to be evaluated. In addition, the paper examines optional elements of the evaluative construction: motivations, intensifiers and de-intensifiers. The evaluation is enhanced both lexically and by combining two and more lexemes, whereas the signals of de-intensification vary in the analyzed judgments of both languages: in addition to grammatical means, diverse lexical modal words, such as kaum ‘hardly’, grundsätzlich ‘basically’, offenbar ‘apparently’, jedenfalls ‘at any rate’, vielmehr ‘rather’ are used in the German judgments, whereas in Lithuanian, there is mainly a participle of necessity employed in this way, and the lexical modifiers used are limited to the construction iš esmės ‘basically’.

The paper examines Lithuanian posture constructions such as stovi stačias ‘stands uprightʼ which have been briefly discussed in Holvoet (2008). However, a more exhaustive examination has not been carried out yet. The discussion is based on 1002 examples from The Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language. Some of the secondary predicates occurring in posture constructions exhibit semantic features of either resultatives or depictives, while the others cannot be clearly judged as resultatives or depictives since they show both kinds of features. The encoding of the secondary predicates also oscillates between the depictive and the resultative marking. Thus the purpose of the paper is to establish the factors which determine different semantic interpretations and different formal marking of the construction. The author follows Holvoet (2008) in assuming that the semantic structure of the constructions depends on the semantic features of the verb. It is proposed that the lexical aspect and the lexical meaning of the verb determine a resultative, a depictive or a “neutralized” (“intermediate”) interpretation of the construction. As the data show, the secondary predicate is usually encoded by an adjective (depictive-like marking), however, sometimes it is expressed by an adverb (resultative-like marking) as well. It is assumed that the choice between the adjective and the adverb is determined by the lexical features of the secondary predicate rather than of the verb. Some of the posture notions seem to be more oriented towards the participant of an event and thus opt to be expressed by an adjective, while others are more oriented towards the event and therefore are encoded by an adverb. It is hypothesized that the reason for the oscillating marking lies in the constructions with a neutralized meaning. The cases which are ambiguous between the depictive and the resultative meaning constitute a precondition for establishing the double marking. This twofold marking is then extended to the constructions which carry clearly the depictive or the resultative meaning.

Discussions sessions have not received much attention within the genre of conference presentations. In this paper, we present the theoretical framework that underlies the approach followed to analyse the multimodal expression of evaluation. Then, an example of the application of the study has been considered necessary to understand it. Corpus linguistics provided the indications to collect the corpus, annotate it and find the appropriate software to digitalise the relevant information for the study. Secondly, genre studies and conversational analysis gave the clues to establish a structure in the linguistic expressions found in the discussion sessions of paper presentations. Thirdly, systemic functional linguistics and pragmatics provided the basis for an evaluative scheme that could be applied to the academic discourse of the corpus, considering its multimodal nature. Fourthly, the tools to observe the non-verbal communication associated with evaluative language were found in multimodal discourse analysis studies. All together, the application of these variables led to an original study of discussion sessions, which deployed interesting results.

The paper offers a functional analysis of three Latvian verbs of speaking used in their indicative third person forms – saka, runā and stāsta ‘say(s), speak(s) and talk(s)’ – based on the Latvian language corpus online (www.korpuss.lv) and, additionally, on examples excerpted from Internet discourse. The article discusses semantic and syntactic similarities and differences between these words, the functions of particular constructions distinguished according to specific syntactic criteria (presence vs. absence of a subject), and the use of these verbs in combination with the Latvian verb form traditionally associated with (potential) evidential meanings, the oblique (atstāstījuma izteiksme). While the use of verbs of speaking for introducing reported speech is seen as unproblematic, the relationship between verba dicendi and evidentiality requires more attention and remains in focus throughout this study. In order to offer an in-depth overview of the nature of this relationship, the relations between reported speech and evidentiality, as well as the oblique and evidentiality, are also briefly considered. The paper concludes that the possibility of the three verbs functioning as evidential markers depends on considerations of theoretical/terminological nature (how to define evidentiality, should reported speech be considered part of it, etc.) and also, to some extent, on the way the subject is realized in verba dicendi constructions (specific human agent vs. non-specific empty subject and absent or zero subject).

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the frequency and distribution patterns as well as the spectrum of modal meanings conveyed by the Lithuanian modal verb of possibility galėti ‘can/could/may/might’ in academic Lithuanian. The study is based on Corpus Academicum Lithuanicum (www.coralit.lt), a specialized synchronic corpus of written academic Lithuanian (roughly 9 million words). In order to allow a disciplinary comparison, the paper analyses the use of this modal verb in academic texts from three science fields: the humanities, the biomedical sciences and the technological sciences. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed alongside corpus-based analysis to reveal the ways in which this modal verb of possibility is used in academic language. The first part of the paper investigates the frequency patterns of various forms of galėti ‘can/could/may/might’ in the three science fields. The second part looks at the variety of meanings this modal verb can convey in Lithuanian specialised language. The results show that there is a fairly similar distribution of this modal verb across different science fields. In terms of its semantic functional capacities, galėti ‘can/could/may/might’ is used to convey all three types of modality (epistemic, deontic and dynamic), however, the most frequent use in Lithuanian academic discourse seems to be that of dynamic modality.

Recent trends in academic discourse analysis reveal a keen scholarly interest in cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic variation in academic texts. While most of the research is still on the English language, the last few decades have seen an upsurge of interest in academic discourse produced in other languages, frequently comparing it to patterns of writing and argumentation in Anglo-American scientific texts. Numerous studies attempt to outline the universal features of academic discourse as well as to highlight the specific ones, typical only of some of the disciplines or cultural communities. Thus, features of academic discourse are often interpreted within the “big” (i. e. national) and “small” (i. e. disciplinary) culture context (cf. Atkinson 2004). The paper briefly reviews trends in current academic discourse research, mainly in the genre of the research article. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the challenges that researchers of academic discourse face while compiling specialized comparable corpora for their cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic analyses and to highlight certain methodological issues which are important in this type of analyses. As noted by many researchers in the field, the reliability of the results and a better empirical grounding primarily depend on the appropriately selected common ground of comparison. An overview of recently published research on cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary aspects of academic discourse reveals various methodological solutions to corpus design and data analysis.

This paper examines the status of the Latin demonstrative ille and the intensifier ipse, which are the sources of definite articles in modern Romance languages. My analysis is based on the text of the Itinerarium Egeriae from the end of the fourth century AD. Using the approach of cognitive linguistics, I suggest how the articloid could be defined and how it could be distinguished semantically from its source element. I argue that both ille and ipse are used as articloids in the text. However, the original demonstrative meaning of ille and the original intensifying meaning of ipse are also attested, and in certain cases; though redundant, their use can be caused by the specific stylistics of the text. Furthermore, ipse has developed an additional meaning that establishes identity through similarity, and which might have led the path to its further grammaticalization. Therefore, both ille and ipse have a spectrum of interrelated meanings that range from those attested in Classical Latin to grammatical usage as articloids. However, as definiteness markers, their usage is not extended into contexts reserved for definite articles in languages with fully grammaticalized definiteness markers and hence its use as an articloid in the Latin of the fourth century AD could have been typologically equivalent to that of the articloid in the Baltic languages.

Discussions sessions have not received much attention within the genre of conference presentations. In this paper, we present the theoretical framework that underlies the approach followed to analyse the multimodal expression of evaluation. Then, an example of the application of the study has been considered necessary to understand it. Corpus linguistics provided the indications to collect the corpus, annotate it and find the appropriate software to digitalise the relevant information for the study. Secondly, genre studies and conversational analysis gave the clues to establish a structure in the linguistic expressions found in the discussion sessions of paper presentations. Thirdly, systemic functional linguistics and pragmatics provided the basis for an evaluative scheme that could be applied to the academic discourse of the corpus, considering its multimodal nature. Fourthly, the tools to observe the non-verbal communication associated with evaluative language were found in multimodal discourse analysis studies. All together, the application of these variables led to an original study of discussion sessions, which deployed interesting results.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the necessity of distinguishing a semantic-functional class of stance adverbials in Lithuanian. Following Biber et al. (1999) and Hasselgård (2010) an attempt is made to show that alongside circumstance adverbials there are also linking adverbials and stance adverbials in Lithuanian. The means of realization of stance adverbials in Lithuanian is not only adverbs but also so called modal words (galbūt ‘maybe’, tikriausiai ‘most probably’), various particles (taigi ‘therefore’, visgi ‘still’, ‘nevertheless’), CTPs (manoma ‘it is believed’, natūralu ‘naturally’), various adverbial clauses (kaip matyti ‘as it is seen, as one can see’, kaip žinoma ‘as is known’) but also prepositional phrases (pasak X ‘according to X’). The article devotes much attention to the semantic classification of the basic types of stance adverbials, which has been illustrated by the language data collected from the Corpus of Academic Lithuanian (Corpus Academicum Lithuanicum – CorALit – http://coralit.lt). The paper also touches upon the process of adverbialization and its relationship to grammaticalization which presupposes the desemanticization and (inter)subjectivization of the linguistic expressions under analysis. Many Lithuanian verbal and adjectival CTPs like žinoma ‘it is known’, suprantama ‘it is understood’, tarkim ‘let’s say’ can develop into stance adverbials and further into discourse markers by losing any links to the original lexical meaning of the verb they have evolved from. ------ Straipsnio tikslas parodyti, kodėl reikėtų ir kodėl galima būtų skirti semantinę-funkcinę adverbialų klasę lietuvių kalboje. Pastaroji nėra tapatinama su prieveiksmiais kaip tradicine kalbos dalimi gramatikoje ar aplinkybėmis kaip tradicine sakinio dalimi sintaksėje. Be to, nėra kvestionuojamas aptariamų kalbos reiškinių statusas kalbos dalių ar sakinio dalių požiūriu. Siūloma atkreipti dėmesį į kalboje objektyviai egzistuojančią straipsnyje aptariamų raiškos priemonių aiškinimo įvairovę. Jų semantinė-funkcinė charakteristika netelpa į prieveiksmių (DLKG 1996, 422-429; Valeckienė 1998, 169-170), aplinkybių (DLKG 1996, 527-553; Valeckienė 1998, 55-66) bei modifikuojamųjų dalelyčių (Valeckienė 1998, 191) reikšmių ir tipų klasifikaciją. Šios semantinės-funkcinės klasės aptarimas remiasi autoriaus pozicijos raiškos tyrimu lietuvių mokslo kalboje1. Visi kalbos duomenys surinkti iš Lietuvių mokslo kalbos tekstyno (Corpus Academicum Lithuanicum: http://coralit.lt/). Darbe trumpai apžvelgiami akademinio diskurso ypatumai ir autoriaus pozicijos vaidmuo užmezgant ir plėtojant dialogą su skaitytoju. Epizodiškai gretinami adverbialinių autoriaus pozicijos sąvokos apimties ir jos raiškos būdų ypatumai kitose kalbose. Pateikiama autoriaus pozicijos adverbialų semantinė klasifikacija ir jų raiškos priemonių įvairovė. Labai trumpai aptariama adverbializacijos proceso esmė ir jo sąsajos su gramatikalizacija bei intersubjektyvumu.

VERBS OF PROBABILITY IN ENGLISH AND LITHUANIAN: IN SEARCH OF EQUIVALENTSSummaryThe paper looks at the qualitative and quantitative parameters of equivalence between English verbs of probability SEEM, APPEAR (LGSWE 1999: 708, 977) and their Lithuanian translation equivalents. The focus of the pilot study is on the following types of structures: English (BNC) Lithuanian (CCLL)JY0 1825 And they seemed to be old friends. CGE 887 She appeared a quick learner.Man atrodo, tebesu paauglė.Kol avižos auga, laukas atrodo žalias.The data for the translation corpus have been compiled from fiction (Rowling 2000), the British National Corpus (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/), the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language and the Parallel English-Lithuanian corpus (http://donelaitis.vdu.lt), monolingual/bilingual dictionaries and grammar books. The purpose of the analysis is to compare the syntactic and semantic potential of the given verbs in the two languages to mark stance and to express speaker’s uncertainty. The paper aims to see what alternatives/decisions are preferred by translators and how much they are influenced by the source language, which might contribute to the discussion of the notion of equivalence in translation.

LITHUANIAN GAUTI (‘GET’) AND TEKTI (‘BE GOTTEN’): ASPECTS OF GRAMMATICALIZATIONSummaryThe paper deals with the Lithuanian get-verbs gauti (‘get’) and tekti (‘be gotten’) within the framework of grammaticalization. The purpose of the paper is to analyze semantic as well as morphosyntactic properties of the verbs under the study and to disclose their tendencies towards grammaticalization. Following the point of view that the very beginning of the process of grammaticalization is in the context of a particular construction the focus of the paper is on the constructional patterns in which the verbs gauti (‘get’) and tekti (‘be gotten’) appear and on the basic types of complements of the verbs. Since frequency is considered to be an important indicator of grammaticalization, the paper looks at the quantitative distribution of basic structural types of complements used with the Lithuanian get-verbs under analysis. Besides, types of modal meanings which gauti (‘get’) and tekti (‘be gotten’) denote are analyzed as well.The Lithuanian verbs gauti (‘get’) and tekti (‘be gotten’) express an ingressive aspect of possession, i.e. onset of possession or acquisition. As lexical verbs with the meaning of acquisition the Lithuanian get-verbs are found in the constructional patterns with NP as their grammatical object. When the noun possessed denotes a concrete entity, the verbs have the meaning of concrete acquisition, and when the noun denotes an abstract entity, the verbs express an abstract acquisition. Both verbs gauti (‘get’) and tekti (‘be gotten’) more often tend to express abstract acquisition. However, there are some differences in the possibilities of expressing the lexical meaning of acquisition: only the verb gauti (‘get’) most frequently functions as the full lexical verb and the verb tekti (‘be gotten’), in contrast, functions as the modal verb.Modal meanings of the Lithuanian get-verbs are expressed by the constructions with an infinitival complement (INF). Both of the verbs gauti (‘get’) and tekti (‘be gotten’) denote non-epistemic necessity and non-epistemic possibility. However, the meaning of non-epistemic possibility seems to be very peripheral for the Lithuanian get-verbs. It is worth to notice that the modal verb tekti (‘be gotten’), besides its modal meanings, in certain contexts tend to mark aspectual meaning of perfectivity. However, the conclusion about the status of the verb tekti (‘be gotten’) as an aspectual marker requires further analysis.

ABOUT THE POSSIBLE ANCIENT CZECH-BALTIC LEXICAL CONNECTIONSSummaryThe paper deals with the ancient (up to the 13th century A. D.) Czech–Baltic lexical correspondences. The West Balts are supposed to penetrate into Moravia and the territory of the middle Danube. Probably they were the Galinds, that at the turn of the two eras moved from South Prussia, their homeland, to the South and split into two branches in the territory of Volyn. Accord­ing to the data of onomastics and toponymies, one of the branches settled near the Czech–Polish boundary, another moved to Podmoskovye. Here follows the enumeratien of the Czech lexemes touched upon in the paper and having the Baltic (and some of them also Russian) correspondences:Klábositi ‘to chat, to talk nonsense’, lebediti se ‘to be in bliss, luxuriate’, třměti ‘to reel’, baracht(a) ‘chatter, babble’, klopýtati‘to stumble, to stagger along’, hárati se‘to heat (about cow)’, harhule ‘growth on a tree, excrescence’, batoliti se ‘waddle’, šklebit ‘to light dimly’, kobrtati ‘to stumble’, drobiti ‘to feel feverish, to shiver’, rozblptati ‘to be boiled to pulp’, duznit ‘to bang one’s back’, obočí ‘eyebow’, duněti ‘to rattle’, žíně ‘a special rope for climbing to a beehive on a tree’, těpiti ‘to carry’, řije ‘period if heat of deers’.

Latvian secondary verbs based on sta-presentsSummaryIn an earlier paper (Pakerys 2007), I presented a number of Lithuanian secondary verbal formations which are based on sta-presents, cf.: vargst‑áuti ‘to live in trouble, to have difficulties’, rūkst‑ė́ti ‘to emit smoke’, linkst‑úoti ‘to bend (intr.)’ beside var̃g‑st‑a ‘lives in poverty, takes trouble’, rū̃k‑st‑a ‘emits smoke’, liñk‑st‑a ‘bends (intr.)’, etc. I suggested that these formations could support the hypothesis which claims that the Lithuanian and Latvian iterative suffix -stī- arose due to the reanalysis of formations in -ī‑t(i) originally based on present stems in -sta (cf. competing denominative hypothesis which similarly proposes the reanalysis of formations in -ī‑t(i) which were originally based on nominal stems in -st-).In this paper, I tried to answer the question if secondary verbs based on sta‑presents are an exclusively Lithuanian phenomenon, or if they can be also found in Latvian. The data presented here were excerpted from the electronic edition of “Latviešu valodas vārdnīca” by Mülenbachs and Endzelīns (http://www.ailab.lv/MEV, accessed on 2007—2009) by searching for the verbs ending in ‑stāt(ies), -stēt(ies), -stīt(ies), ‑stināt(ies), and ‑stuot(ies). The main findings can be summarized as follows.The secondary verbal formations based on sta‑presents are also possible in Latvian, but they are very rare and non-regular, just as the Lithuanian ones. These formations belong to a broader group of (non-regular) nominal and verbal derivatives based on the present stems characterized by certain formatives or root vocalism. The closest parallel for the verbal formations which include the present formative -st- can be found in some adjectives in -īgs, cf.: birst‑īgs ‘friable’, (ne)mir̃st‑îgs ‘(im)mortal’ beside bir̃‑st‑u ‘I fall (of small objects)’, (ne)mir̃‑st‑u ‘I (do not) die’, etc. (Blinkena 1984).As far as specific verbal suffixes are concerned, the number of examples and their interpretation varies. To start with, I was unable to find any formations ending in ‑stāt or ‑stuot which would be based on sta‑presents. On the other hand, it is worth noting that an independent suffix -stāt is possible in two formations, cf. je̦m̃‑stâ‑t ‘wiederholt nehmen; to take repeatedly’ beside je̦mu, jẽmu, jem̃t ‘nehmen; to take’ and žã‑stâ‑tiês ‘gähnen; to yawn’ beside Lith. žióti(s) (-ja(si)) ‘to open (one’s mouth)’. These examples possibly reflect a well-known variation of present stems in *‑ā and *‑āja, cf. Lith. mė́tyti, mė́to beside (rare) mė́toti, mė́toja, Latv. mę̃tât, mę̃tãju, OCS mětati, mětajǫ, etc. Some verbs ending in -stuot have primary counterparts with present sta-stems, but these formations are most probably just some variants alongside verbs in -stīt. So just as there is lakstuôt ‘springen; to jump’ beside lakstît ‘idem’, one finds cīkstuôtiês ‘kämpfen, ringen; to fight’ beside cīkstîtiês ‘idem’ and the primary verb cīk‑st‑uôs, cijuos, cīties ‘idem’.The development of some verbs ending in -stēt was already described by Endzelīns (1951, 761). He suggested that in a number of cases, the present stem formative -st- was reanalyzed as a part of the lexical stem and the suffix -ē‑ was introduced in the infinitive and the preterit stems, cf. drì(k)st‑êt, drì(k)st‑u, drì(k)st‑ẽju ‘dürfen, wagen, sich unterstehen; to be allowed, to dare’ alongside Lithuanian drį̃s‑ti, drį̃{s}‑sta, drį̃s‑o ‘to dare’. Therefore, these cases also illustrate the possibility to create verbs on the basis of present stems in -sta, but they have to be regarded as a certain reshaping of the same words rather than a derivation (i.e. the formation of new lexical items with certain derivational meaning beside their base words). The only possible iterative formations (not mentioned in Endzelīn’s list) are tupst‑êtiês ‘sich wiederholt hinhokken; to squat down (intr.) repeatedly’ beside tup‑st‑u(ôs) (tupju(ôs), tūpu(ôs) are also attested), tupu(ôs), tupt(iês) ‘(sich nieder)hocken; to squat down (intr.)’ and sprãkst‑êt (spārgst‑êt) ‘mit Knall bersten; to crackle, to sputter’ alongside sprâg‑st‑u, sprâgu, sprâgt ‘bersten, platzen; to burst’ (already mentioned by Leskien 1902/1903, 172).There are 5 verbs ending in -stināt which are based on sta‑presents. All of them have causative meaning, cf.: ir̃st‑inât ‘auftrennen (eine Naht); to undo (a seam) : ir̃‑st‑u, iru, ir̃t ‘sich auf‑, lostrennen, sich bröckeln; to disintegrate’; kalst‑inât ‘hungern lassen; to make starve’ : kàl{t}‑st‑u, kàltu, kàlst ‘mager werden, verkommen; to grow weaker, thinner’; pĩkst‑inât ‘zörgen, zum Zorne reisen; to make anger’ : pîk‑st‑u, pîku, pîkt ‘zornig, böse werden; to become angry’; sprāgst‑inât ‘aufplatzen machen; to make burst’ : sprâg‑st‑u, sprâgu, sprâgt ‘bersten, platzen; to burst’; pazīst‑inât ‘bekannt machen; to acquaint’ : pazĩ‑st‑u, pazinu, pazĩt ‘erkennen; to know, to be acquainted’. In all cases the present stems of the base verbs have no variants, so these examples have to be regarded as quite reliable.The interpretation of verbs ending in -stīt is rather complicated. The iterative suffix -stīt is itself quite productive, and the fact that some base verbs have present sta‑stems could be just a coincidence. However some formations have causative meaning which is not typical for the suffix -stīt. Therefore, these verbs have to be derivations in -īt based on the present stems in -sta, cf. gul̃st‑ît ‘niederlegen; to lay, to put down’ : gul‑st‑u (also guļu), gulu (also gūlu), gul̃t ‘sich lagern; lie down’; līkst‑ît ‘to sway, to rock’ : lìk‑st‑u, lìku, lìkt ‘sich biegen, krumm werden; to bend’; ìetupst‑ît ‘nachlässig hineinsetzen; to put in carelessly’ : *ìetup‑st‑u (the prefixed stem in -sta is not attested in the dictionary, but cf. tup‑st‑u beside tupju, tūpu), ìetupu, ìetupt ‘sich hineinhocken, sich herein‑, hineinsetzen; to squat into’.In conclusion, the data presented here and in Pakerys 2007 show that both Latvian and Lithuanian have some deverbative formations based on the present stems in -sta. There seem to be no reliable examples of common East Baltic formations of this type (cf. only Latvian rim̂stît‑iês2 ‘wiederholt still od. ruhig werden; to calm down (intr.)’ beside Lithuanian nu‑rìmstyti ‘to calm down (trans.)’), but the possibility to use the present stems with certain formatives as the base of derivation is clearly shared by both languages. These formations support the deverbative hypothesis of the origin of the Lithuanian and Latvian iterative suffix -stī-, but it also does not imply that the denominative hypothesis has to be rejected.

POSTPOSITIONAL LOCATIVES IN LITHUANIANSummaryThe paper argues that postpositional locatives in Lithuanian (inessive, illative, adessive, allative) are not formations of the same epoch, but rather they were formed at different times; the pro­cess of their formation must have been long and continued right up to the appearance of the first Lithuanian printed book when the case-forms fell into a decline. First came singular forms, next — plural forms. More complicated and protracted was the development of inessive and adessive case-forms.Ā- and ē-stem sg. iness. and ill. forms (e. g. šakojè, žẽmėje, šakõn, žẽmėn) are considered to be the oldest. The other sg. ill. and particularly sg. iness. forms are products of later development, as they are, as a rule, constructed in the above-mentioned pattern. The paper gives a detailed analysis of the case-forms and on the basis of the analysis it argues that the singular of all postpositional locatives had already been formed and become stable by the beginning of the period of writing -nothing of the kind can be said of the plural. Only illative and allative possessed then stable plural forms.The development of pl. iness. and adess. forms was hindered by the residual ancient Indo-European locative in -su. The centre of the author's attention, however, is the interrelationship of the case-forms and particularly the origin and development of pl. iness. and adess. case-forms.On the basis of a detailed analysis of the old writings, the author argues that the pl. iness. šakosa derives not from šakose, as is generally assumed, but it presents by itself a transformed version of the older form šakosu. The form šakose is to be derived not from the pl. acc. * šakā́s + *éп, but it should be treated as a transform of šakosu от šakosa in -e from the sg. inessive, cf. šakojè. Pl. adess. šakosumpi is not a transform of šakosempi, as is generally assumed, but the older variant of the plural adessive, a variant derived from the old locative. Its subsequent variant is šakosampi and the newest — šakosempi.The paper also examines other problems relating to the history of postpositional locatives, e. g. the specificity of the development of the adessive of personal pronouns, the transformation of enclitic postposition into stressed in iness. and ill. case-forms, the reduction of the case-forms, etc. The paper shows in passing that 16th century Lithuanians pronounced most frequently the pl. adess. šakosempi as šakosémpi (with stress on e), not as šakósempi, as is generally assumed.

On the accentual value of Lithuanian nominal suffixesSummaryThis paper presents some remarks on the definition of accentual value of Lithuanian nominal suffixes. All of these suffixes determine the accentuation of derivatives and, therefore, these morphemes can be considered as dominant. It is argued in this paper that the classification of nominal suffixes into strengthening and weakening ones should be based on the effect these suffixes make on the stems of the derivatives rather than on the stems of the base words. One should note that the weakening suffixes can be not only weak, but also strong in some cases. The description of strong suffixes should not be limited to indicating whether they are acute or non-acute. If the vocal phonemes of the suffix belong to two syllables, the place of the stress also has to be taken into account. In a number of cases the accentual properties of suffixes are conditional (i.e. when the derivatives of these suffixes are described, additional rules have to be provided or at least the irregular items have to be listed). On the other hand, one should note that the majority of suffixes are unconditional (the accentuation of their derivatives is not related to certain conditions).

CONCERNING THE LANGUAGE OF TATARĖS „PAMOKSLAI IŠMINTIES IR TEISYBĖS" (1851)SummaryEven three variants of the language of Lithuanian writing were taking shape in the 16th— 17th centuries: one in the Duchy of Prussia (based on the local West Aukštaičiai dialects) and two in the Grand Dukedom of Lithuania (based on the dialects of the middle Lithuanian plains, the district of Kėdainiai, and the town of Vilnius and its environs). Owing to the polonization of the Lithuanian gentry, the last two variants of Lithuanian writing disappeared in the 18th century. With the onset of the movement for national independence, in the second half of the 19th century Lithuanian proper followed the old tradition of writing as used by Lithuanians in East Prussia. The writing was adapt­ed to suit the needs of Lithuania and somewhat modified to bring it closer to the local dialects of the southern part of West Aukštaičiai (the dialect of „Suvalkai"). Thus came into being Modern Lithuanian. To reveal the process of its formation, one must ascertain who was the first in Lithua­nian proper to write in the Southern dialect of West Aukštaičiai. The author of the paper considers A. Tatarė (1805 —1889) to be such a man. In the paper the author gives a linguistic analysis of Tatarė's major work „Pamokslai išminties ir teisybės" and points out the difficulties the scholar met trying to create written Lithuanian on the basis of the southern dialects of West Aukštaičiai.

Lithuanian secondary verbs based on present stems in ‑staSummaryLithuanian has a number of deverbative formations which are clearly based on present stems, cf.: ded‑ẽklė ‘good layer (about hens)’ : dẽd‑a ‘lays’, dúod‑ingas ‘open‑handed, generous’, duod‑imas ‘giving’ : dúod‑a ‘gives’, verd‑ẽnė ‘spring’ : vérd‑a ‘boils’, es‑ìmas ‘being’ : es‑ù ‘I am’, ẽs‑ti ‘it is’, tek‑ìmas ‘rising (of the sun)’ : tẽk‑a ‘flows, runs; rises (the sun)’ (beside tekė́ti, ‑ė́jo and tekė́jimas), lim̃p‑alas ‘sticky material’ : li‑m̃‑p‑a ‘sticks’, skrand‑nùs ‘good flyer’ : skre‑ñ‑d‑a ‘flies’, kánk‑inti(s) ‘to give enough, to satisfy’ : (pa)ka‑ñ‑k‑a ‘suffices’, té‑n‑k‑inti ‘to satisfy’ : (už)te‑ñ‑k‑a ‘suffices’, trunk‑imas ‘delaying’ : tru‑ñ‑k‑a ‘lasts, delays’, etc. (Būga 1959, 446; Urbutis 1978, 191, 197; Ambrazas 1993, 21‑25).This paper presents examples of Lithuanian secondary verbs based on present stems in ‑sta, cf. pýkst‑auti ‘to be angry’ : pỹkst‑a ‘is angry’. These formations represent a rare (archaic?) derivational process and they can be used to support the hypothesis of the deverbative origin of suffix ‑styti (Latvian ‑stīt). The proponents of this hypothesis believe that present stems in ‑sta provided bases for some formations in ‑yti (‑o, ‑ė) which were later resegmented and gave rise to new suffix ‑styti (‑sto, ‑stė), cf.: lankst‑ýti : liñkst‑a → lank‑stýti : leñk‑ti (Ul’janov 1888, 210; Leumann 1942, 125; Vaillant 1966, 364; Smoczyński 1987, 203). On the other hand, the data presented in this paper still do not exclude the possibility of denominal origin of ‑styti (Leskien 1884, 443; Johanson 1893, 502; Endzelin 1922, 641; Skardžius 1943, 538; Stang 1942, 149; cf. Jasanoff 2003, 141).All material was excerpted from the electronic edition of “Lietuvių kalbos žodynas” (http://www.lkz.lt) and arranged according to suffixes.The class of verbs in ‑auti has 8 formations which are based on the stems in ‑sta: blė́stauti ‘to burn lightly, to be burning down’ : blė́sta ‘burns down’, nubostauti ‘to ask for something in a bothersome way’ : nubósta ‘gets bored, becomes boring’, nerimstauti ‘to be bored, to wander’ : nerìmsta ‘is not calm’, nirštauti ‘to be (slightly) angry’ : nir̃šta ‘is angry, rages’, pýkstauti ‘to be angry’ : pỹksta ‘is angry’, širstauti ‘to rage’ : šir̃sta ‘rages’, trókštauti ‘to desire’ : trókšta ‘desires’, vargstáuti ‘to live in trouble, to have difficulties’ : var̃gsta ‘lives in poverty, takes trouble’.The class in ‑enti provides 3 examples: birsténti ‘to scatter, to strew (slightly)’ : (dialectal) bìrsta ‘pours out (intr.)’ (therefore, the formation is causative), blėsténti ‘to burn slightly, to go out’ : blė́sta ‘burns down’, rūksténti ‘to emit smoke little by little’ : rū̃ksta ‘emits smoke’.The formations in ‑ėti based on the stems in ‑sta are the following: drįstė́ti, ‑ė́ja ‘to dare’ : drį̃sta ‘dares’, numirštė́ti, ‑ė́ja ‘to die (about animals)’ : numìršta ‘dies’, plū́stėti, plū́sta ‘to talk nonsense’ : plū́sta ‘talks nonsense’, rūkstė́ti, ‑ė́ja ‘to emit smoke’ : rū̃ksta ‘emits smoke’, smilkstė́ti, smil̃ksta ‘to burn without fire, to smoulder’ : smil̃ksta ‘smoulders’, spurstė́ti, spùrsta ‘to flounder’ : spùrsta ‘flounders’, várgstėti, ‑ėja ‘to live in trouble, to have difficulties’ : var̃gst‑a ‘lives in poverty, takes trouble’. It is possible that in some cases the verbs were not really derived, but rather reshaped according to the model of tekė́ti, tẽka (the inflectional stems in ‑st‑(a) became lexical), e. g. tẽk‑a : smil̃kst‑a, tek‑ė́‑ti, ‑ė́jo : x, x = smilkst‑ė́‑ti, ‑ė́‑jo. A number of similar remodelings or derivations are also based on 3 person athematic forms reinterpreted as the members of i stem paradigms, cf.: susičiáustėti, ‑i ‘to cough’ : susičiáust‑i ‘coughs’, ráustėti, ‑ėja ‘to weep’ : ráust‑i ‘weeps’, prisérgstėti, ‑ėja ‘to watch over, to guard’ : prisérgst‑i ‘watches over, guards’.The class in ‑inėti provides 6 formations directly derived from the stems in ‑sta: dilbstinė́ti ‘to loiter, to hang around’ : dil̃bsta ‘loiters’, dygstinė́ti ‘to shoot, to start to grow little by little’ : dýgsta ‘starts to grow’, mirštinė́ti ‘to die constantly (about a moderate number of deaths occurring during a certain period of time)’ : mìršta ‘dies’, plūstinė́ti ‘to wander’ : plū́sta ‘wanders’, snūstinė́ti ‘to walk sleepy’ : snū́sta ‘snoozes’, virstinė́ti ‘to fall down repeatedly, to sway’ : vir̃sta ‘falls down’.The class in -inti has 4 verbs based on the stems in -sta: bìrstinti ‘to scatter, to strew (slightly)’ : (dialectal) bìrsta ‘pours out (intr.)’, ìlgstinti ‘to linger, to delay’ : ìlgsta ‘becomes long’, pùrstintis ‘to put on airs’ : pur̃sta ‘swells’, virstinti ‘to come swaying’ : vir̃sta ‘falls down’. One should note that at least two formations are causative (bìrstinti and pùrstinti).The formations in ‑yti possibly based on the stems in ‑sta are the following: džiáustyti ‘to dry (trans.)’ : džiū́sta ‘dries (intr.)’ (cf. iterative džiáustyti ‘to hang out to dry’ : džiáuti ‘idem’), gąstýtis ‘to be afraid’ : gą̃sta ‘becomes frightened’, gramstýti ‘to plunge (repeatedly)’ : grim̃zta ‘sinks, plunges’, ilgstytis ‘to become long’ : ìlgsta ‘becomes long’, raibstytis ‘to be dazzled’ : raĩbsta ‘is dazzled’, (ne)įrìmstyti (‑ija) ‘(not) to calm down (intr.)’ : nerìmsta ‘is not calm’, nurìmstyti ‘to calm down (trans.)’ : nurìmsta ‘calms down’, slū́gstyti ‘to make (swelling) go down’ : slū́gsta ‘(swelling) goes down’, svaigstytis ‘to wander’ : svaĩgsta ‘to start feeling dizzy, to become delirious’. A number of these verbs can also be simple derivations in ‑styti, but at least causative cases (džiáustyti, nurìmstyti, slū́gstyti) are more reliable examples as this meaning is not typical for the formations in ‑styti.There are no good examples of verbs in ‑oti which could be based on the present stems in ‑sta. However, one should note that there is a small group of verbs which seem to have an independent suffix ‑stoti, ‑stoja, cf. išėstóti (the present stem is not attested) ‘to wipe out’ : (iš)ė́sti, ė́da, ė́dė ‘to eat away’; laipstoti, ‑oja ‘to climb, to fly (repeatedly)’ : lìpti, lìpa, lìpo ‘to climb’, lakstóti, ‑ója ‘to fly about’ : lė̃kti, lẽkia, lė̃kė ‘to fly’, užžirstóti (the present stem is not attested) ‘to become covered by falling particles’ : (už)žìrti (žir̃ti), žỹra (also žìrsta), žìro ‘to fall, to scatter’. These examples could reflect a well known variation of present (factitive and iterative) stems in *‑ā and *‑āja (cf. Lith. mė́tyti, mė́to beside mė́toti, mė́toja (rare), Latv. mę̃tât, mę̃tãju, OCS mětati, mětajǫ, Lith. statýti, stãto : statùs (stãtas) beside bjaurója : bjaurùs (bjaũras)).There are 2 formations in ‑uoti which can be directly related to the base stems in ‑sta: ilgstuoti ‘to linger, to delay’ : ìlgsta ‘becomes long’, linkstúoti ‘to bend (intr.)’ : liñksta ‘bends’.

LEXICAL “DIVERGENCE” AND “CONVERGENCE” BETWEEN BALTIC AND SLAVIC LANGUAGES: A STATISTIC ANALYSIS OF MATERIALS IN R. TRAUTMANN'S DICTIONARYSummaryAs far as a clear answer has not been given with respect to the theory of “Balto-slavic lin­guistic unity”, apparent similarities in lexemes between these two linguistic groups should be exa­mined in comparison with those among other linguistic groups.This paper is an attemp to show the “degrees” of similarities in the lexemes between Baltic and Slavic languages in a statistic manner. For this purpose, lexical materials are taken from R. Trautmann's Dictionary (1923), and the analysis is based on two notions of “divergence” and “convergence”.On the basis of all the items in the Dictionary, the author of this paper distinguishes some groups of items in terms of their distributions. First, he draws a dividing line between the “convergence” type and the “divergence” type, the latter of which turns out to consist of three sub-types (D-1, D-2 and D-3). Then he regards the items of the “convergence” type as the “candidates” of the “Balto-Slavic lexemes” with the highest degree of commonness. The author finds in the Dictionary a group of 83 independent items on one hand, and a group of 10 deriva­tive items on the other, which are both considered to belong to the “convergence” type.From the author's point of view, other groups of items are, more or less, ranked in the peripheral position with respect to those “central” two groups of items.

A HEBREW THEORY CONCERNING THE BALTIC LANGUAGES IN THE CONTEXT OF 16TH C. PALAEOCOMPARATIVISM AND A RELATED ENIG­MATIC TEXTSummaryIn the wider context of the history of the linguistic ideas concerning the Baltic languages, and espe­cially of the Palaeocomparativism of the 16th century, we should also like to present and comment on the idea that the Baltic languages derive from the Hebrew language (this theory completes the picture I already tried to give in a series of papers on the Slavic, Roman, Fourfold, Greek and other linguistic theories).The main authors and works related to this idea in the 16th c. are: Johannes Funck (1518-1566) and his Chronologia ab orbe condito (Nürinberg, 1545; Königsberg, 1552, 1566; Wittenberg 1578); Severin Göbel (1530-1612) and his works: De Succino Libri Duo (1565), Einfeitiger Jedoch gründtlicher Bericht vnd Bedencken, Vom vrsprung des Agadt oder Bernsteins... (1616); Johannes Loewenklau (1537-1593) and his works Annales Sultanorum Othmanidarum (Frankfurt am Main, 1588), Neuwe Chronica Tiirckischer nation (Frankfurt am Main, 1590).Loewenklau (1588) quotes the enigmatic text Ieru Ieru Masco Lon, which was repeated with some variants in later editions and by other authors of that time. The text has resisted until now many attempts at an explanation (M. Praetorius, Ph. Ruhig, X. Bohusz). Previous explanations of the text are discussed in this paper and a new interpretation is proposed. Finally we consider the text to belong to the Lith. tradition and we explain it as follows: “Lord, Lord (cf. Lith. exclamation jerau! < germ. Herr) throw (cf. Lith. mesk) beer (cf. Lith. alų, i.e. alaus statinę, or sim.)”. Linguistic and cultural arguments supporting this explanation are also given.

ON THE INTERCONNECTION BETWEEN THE NAMES OF TREES AND BIRDS IN BALTIC LANGUAGES Summary This paper is an attempt to prove the existence of bilateral connection between the names of birds and trees. The names of mountain-ash (Viburnum opulus L.) and snowball tree (Sorbus aucuparia L.) being often mixed, the semantic model „name of a bird” →„name of a tree” is suggest­ed for both of them. The author of the paper suggests the existence of this model in the Lettish putenes (Viburnum opulus L.): putns „bird" and gives a parallel etymological version of the Lithua­nian pùtinas.

ON THE AREA—TYPOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE BALTIC ORIGIN WORDS IN BYELORUSSIAN DIALECTS Summary The paper deals with the area—typological characteristics of the words of Baltic origin, func­tioning in Byelorussian dialects. It concerns the zones of functioning of the words of Baltic ori­gin on the linguistic map of Byelorussia, taking into account the degree of their concentration (strong, intermediate, weak). Considering the role of the words of Baltic origin in the lexical system of Byelorussian dialects, the main types are distinguished, namely: (1) the words of Baltic origin comprising all the dialect areas of Byelorussia; (2) the words of Baltic origin used in some group of dialects generally in the neighbouring areas; (3) the words of Baltic origin concentrated in the dialects of the north-western part of Byelorussia. Besides, the paper describes the types of areas characteristic of the Baltic origin words in Bye­lorussian dialects.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EAST LITHUANIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE, ITS RISE AND DISAPPEARANCESummaryThe Old Lithuanian literary records of the 16th and 17th centuries indicate the existence of three variants of literary Lithuanian at that time. An early literary variant based on the local West High Lithuanian dialect arose on the territory of Eastern Prussia (now the Kaliningrad District). Two literary languages developed on the territory of the Great Dukedom of Lithuania — Central Lithuanian (on the basis of the dialect of Kėdainiai environs) and Eastern Lithuanian. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the origin and fate of literary Eastern Lithuanian.A short characteristic of Eastern Lithuanian and a review of some attempts to establish its dialect background are followed by a detailed analysis of specific Eastern Lithuanian features and a conclusion is drawn that the town koine of Vilnius — the capital of the Great Dukedom of Lithuania served the basis for the formation of literary Eastern Lithuanian.The following features are of importance in accepting Vilnius as the centre of literary Eastern Lithuanian:the presence of ō in all positions, peculiar to the environs of Vilnius and quite alien to many present-day Eastern Lithuanian dialects, which have preserved an older pronunciation (ā or ) esp. in unstressed positions;the presence of doublet forms with tautosyllabic combinations of the an type, indicating the proximity of the literary record to the an‖un isophone, which actually ran about 10—15 kilometres to the South-West of Vilnius;the presence of sporadic cases of the Dzūkai change of t, d into c, dz; its isophone ran to the East of Vilnius;the presence of pronoun forms of three types. 1) Nom. Sg. fern, tó (=present-day tà), 2) the same case form tój, 3) Nom. PI. masc. tíej, Instr. Sg. mase. túoj, fem. tj > tų́j (=present-day lite­rary tiẽ, tuõ, tà); the contact area of these forms is just the environs of Vilnius;the presence of the 3d pers. Present tense forms without the ending -i (mýl side by side withmýli);sporadic monophthongization of ai, ei into a, e in kaĩp, teĩp, šiaĩp;sporadic spelling ey for the diphthong ai, indicating the weakened („Eastern Lithuanian”) pronunciation of the first component of the diphthong, typical of the dialects to the North of Vilnius.There are also other numerous linguo-geographical factors, supporting the above-mentioned localization of literary Eastern Lithuanian. On the other hand, no data contradicting such a hypothesis have been found in the literary records.In the paper the rise of the literary language on the basis of the Vilnius koine is substantiated by historical arguments as well; resp. a complicated linguistic situation of the 14th— 16th centuries in the Great Dukedom of Lithuania is subjected to an analysis. The importance of the literary language under investigation for the entire Lithuanian linguistic culture is established.On the basis of the dialectological analysis of the written records of later centuries a conclu­sion is drawn that literary East Lithuanian ceased to exist early in the 18th century in connection with the increased Polonization of the Lithuanian town aristocracy.

Based on the Corpus parallèle de Textes Littéraires (CTLFR-LT), consisting of French fiction texts and their translations into Lithuanian, the present article aims to show the functional versatility of the French verb finir ‘to finish’. The paper focuses on the following particular constructions: S((in)anim) + finir + (GN); S((in)anim) + (en) finir de + V(inf); S ((in)anim) + finir par + V(inf); pour finir. While retaining its literal meaning, the verb finir ‘to finish’ exhibits a great range of modally marked uses. These uses, considered peripheral in the majority of French monolingual and bilingual grammars or dictionaries, nevertheless appear to be statistically very significant in the present dataset. The study shows that the verb finir ‘to finish’ can be used as a component of various constructions in which it loses its core lexical meaning and functions as an adverbial or discourse connector. The analysis of the data of the corpus Corpus parallèle de Textes Littéraires merely confirms the fact that the constructions under consideration can have a two-fold reading: the adverbial function of time and the function of a sentence adverbial.

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic units (e.g. lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann 2015). First steps towards checking the validity of this hypothesis had been undertaken in pioneering works in the 1990s/2000s (e.g. Stubbs & Barth 2003). These studies were however limited by the small size of their (exclusively English) corpora. The present study explores the role of some patterns (phraseological motifs) in distinguishing French literary subgenres. It also proposes a case study of some motifs related to the verbal (dire avec sourire ‘to say with a smile’) and non-verbal communication (adresser un sourire ‘to send a smile’). Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies lexico-syntactic constructions in literary genres which are automatically extracted from the corpora. The main purpose is to show the relevance of the notion of phraseological motif (Legallois 2012; Longrée & Mellet 2013; Novakova & Siepmann 2020) for the distinction of literary subgenres. Linking form and meaning, these ‘multidimensional units’ fulfil pragmatic as well as discursive functions. The data has been extracted from large French corpora of the PhraseoRom research project https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. They are accessible on http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/phraseobase/index.html and contain 1000 novels (published from the 1950s to the present), partitioned into six sub-corpora: general literature (GEN), crime fiction (CRIM), romances (ROM), historical novels (HIST), science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY). The results of our study reveal some unexpected differences between the literary subgenres: e.g. the motif dire d’une voix ‘to say in a voice’ in HIST compared to GEN. In FY, expressions of verbal communication are related to shouting and screaming. Expressions related to the non-verbal communication (prendre dans ses bras ‘to take in one’s arms’) are specific to ROM, where body language is overrepresented. In SF, there is a very limited number of these types of expressions. More generally, the motifs provide the link between the micro level (phraseological recurrences) and the macro level (the fictional script).

The current paper examines the function of a specific construction comme je l’ai dit and its role in a particular type of oral discourse. The phrase occurs with high frequency in an established discursive genre, namely, debates in the European Parliament (EP). It is presented as a parenthetic construction, including elements with an anaphoric function, and endowed with a specific discursive aim. In order to better understand the raison d’être of this syntactically autonomous form in the specialized corpus, a mixed semantic-discursive approach is adopted. The aim of the study is to highlight the main properties of the construction bearing a particular functionality and to specify its status in discourse from the perspective of the active interlocutor. Given its rather simple morphological paradigm, its rather stereotypical enlargements, and its easy mobility, comme je l’ai dit reveals certain specificities of the referential process. The reference of the anadeictic type causes a sort of “duplication” of the object of discourse and also its reconfiguration. The return to the already said, with the aim of re-modeling it, is in fact accompanied by a re-saying, a repetition of the locutor’s own speech. The interrupting, the going back, the reworking and advancing, involved in the use of the analysed construction, seem to have several implications. The presence of comme je l’ai dit is justified by the speaker’s intention to construct relevant discourse that takes into account intralocutive and interlocutive dialogism. The interruption followed by a relaunch is a signal that redirects the attention of the interlocutor, while the repetition, which is a reminder of the already said, preserves the continuity of the discourse. The two processes set up by comme je l’ai dit, anaphoric reference and repetition, have the function of ensuring the coherence and the continuity of ongoing discourse through the tradeoff between saying, repeating and discursive memory. The importance of adjustments between speaker and interlocutor is the basis of the chosen discursive strategy. The functional perspective brings out the interpersonal aspect of the referential procedure.

In this paper, we discuss the question of discourse markers (DM) – a category conceived differently by theoretical and applied linguistic approaches. Unlike in applied approaches, in which DMs are considered desemantized/grammaticalized lexical units devoid of their own semantics and therefore of status in the language, we consider DMs to constitute a full-fledged category of language, having its own semantics and distribution, both of which play a crucial role in the construction of discourse (Paillard 2011, 2012; Franckel 2008, 2019). This hypothesis has been developed in theoretical linguistics and has seen little evidence from a perspective of the acquisition and didactics of foreign languages. Based on cross-analysis of linguistic theories (Benveniste 1974; Ducrot 1980; Hopper & Traugott 1993; Culioli 1990,1999; Franckel & Paillard 2008) and on distributional analysis of data of the spoken corpora, we show that the absence of specific linguistic status for DMs has repercussions at the didactic and acquisition levels: DMs are generally approached in an ad hoc manner, all functions combined, which leads on the one hand to gaps in the acquisition of French and, on the other hand, to the ambiguity of criteria for evaluation. Therefore, at the level of applied linguistics, we suggest the integration of DMs in the learning path as a full category, an integration that must be carried out on several axes – semantic, syntax and prosodic – and be based on an authentic oral corpora of the spoken language. At the theoretical level, we use transversal analysis in order to give yet another argument in favor of a semantical-enunciative approach to discursive markers.

In this paper, English and German are compared historically along with other Indo-European languages (henceforth IE languages), focusing on their alignment changes. English and German are often compared, e.g. Hawkins (1986), but alignment is surprisingly not mentioned. This absence is perhaps because all of the modern IE languages have one type of alignment. However, historical comparison reveals that earlier IE languages had a different type, and the change from an earlier type to the modern one helps us to explain the current grammatical structure in English and German. This paper begins with a description of different alignment types which consequently raises various issues concerning variations of transitivity. Various differences in these types are described in detail. Then, the transitivity is compared in English and German. Once this comparison is explained historically, differences between these two languages appear clearly. This paper, based on comparative analysis, also mentions possible developmental paths for the future changes, especially in German.

Meaning extension, including metaphors and metonymies, has traditionally been associated with the language of fiction. Cognitive linguistics has given this area a new impetus by unravelling the metaphoricity of our everyday language and various discourses ranging from spoken to written, from learner language to academic or professional (legal, medical, political). Lakoff (1991 and 1995), Cienki (2005), Schmidt (2003), Cibulskienė (2006), Vaičenonienė (2002) and many other researchers seem to give preference to political and socio-economic discourse which has generated within this branch of linguistics a large amount of research all over the world. Academic discourse (AD) and its multiple layers of meaning, however, has received less attention since it is generally believed that AD aims at discovering the truth, explaining and arguing, it is rigid, critical and unambiguous. According to Hyland (2004, 87), AD depends upon the demonstration of absolute truth, empirical evidence or flawless logic. Its persuasive potency is seen as grounded in rationality and based on exacting methodologies, dispassionate observation, and informed reflection. (…) We see this form of persuasion as a guarantee of reliable knowledge, and we invest it with cultural authority, free of the cynicism with which we view the partisan rhetoric of politics and commerce. So this paper attempts to provide evidence for the claim that AD, like any other discourse, is equally inclined to meaning extension, specifically, metaphors and metonymies. The paper is structured around several key issues: first, it gives background to the study, including a discussion on academic discourse, its relation to other discourse types, the contrastive parameter of investigation and other methodological issues and second, it identifies major types of metonymical and metaphorical extensions as reflected in the data corpus and manifested in linguistic texts in English (EN) and Lithuanian (LT).

Machine translation systems, machine-readable dictionaries or other computer-oriented electronic lexical resources present a challenging task in the case of the Lithuanian language. Many of them are related to the problem of non-equivalence resulting from cultural and systemic differences and thus existing on various levels of a language – lexical, morphological and syntactic. This paper focuses on instances of non-equivalence between Lithuanian and English on the morphological level. More specifically, the resolution of non-equivalence problems caused by morphological gaps between English and Lithuanian is investigated. Morphological gaps represent a type of lexical gaps, which are understood as lack of direct lexicalisation for a certain concept. The paper is written with two goals in mind. First, I would like to present the phenomenon of lexical gaps and its subtype, morphological gaps, its relation to translation. Second, I wish to compare how these cases are rendered in bilingual dictionaries and in texts, i.e. in the parallel English-Lithuanian corpus. The comparison leads to certain recommendations for translators, lexicographers and other researchers working on human language technologies. This contrastive study is corpus based. Corpus linguistics is one of the most popular methods in modern linguistics. Pragmatically it is beneficial to a researcher – in a corpus (monolingual or multilingual) it is possible instantaneously to see numerous examples of a word in use. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of such data allows one to judge the collocational and colligational patterns a word forms, as well as its semantic and prosodic preference (for more about the theoretic postulates of corpus linguistics, see Sinclair 1996, Stubbs 2001). A multilingual corpus (comparative or parallel) provides a linguist with invaluable information about two (or more) languages – interesting similarities and, most importantly, contrasts significant for further language description.

Over the past several decades a vast body of literature has emerged investigating the native speaker’s implicit ability to assess the appropriateness of a grammatical sentence in a particular context. The present paper attempts to examine some of the most influential approaches that address the question of how cognitive and pragmatic factors correlate with constituent order. In a field where so much literature has been written there is an urgent need to be very selective; the paper therefore focuses on very general tendencies, facts and assumptions that relate to the vast area of the present discussion.

This paper aims to examine the meeting points between phraseology and humor research, focusing on the role and the functions of fixed phrases in humor discourse. The examples to illustrate certain aspects of usage of fixed phrases for joke purposes are taken mainly from social media such as Facebook and Twitter and include jokes in English, German, Lithuanian, Russian, and Polish. In the course of the investigation, a distinction ought to be made between set phrases (idioms in the narrower sense of the term, proverbs, catch phrases etc.) and fixed phrases in general. Set phrases (phrasemes) have an “added value” regarding their meaning – be it a figurative element, be it ready-made reasoning or behavioral models in short form in the case of adages. In humor discourse idioms – and proverbs – are used mainly for wordplay, in which both the literal and the idiomatic meaning are activated. The wordplay can happen also in verse form. Adages can be transformed or twisted resulting in new parodistic or funny sayings. Fixed phrases outside of the phraseology can be separated into two groups: phrases typical for a particular discourse type and joke frame related phrases. The former, as means to evoke a certain frame, are used in parodistic jokes (e.g., the phrase ladies if he evokes the dating tips frame). The latter constitute a distinct class of fixed phrases which can be found only in the humor discourse: these phrases act as joke formulae und provide a basis for bigger or smaller joke categories. Certain phrases in this group, such as checks notes or nothing like deserve a mention as irony markers with a distinctive evaluative character. The shared feature of all these idiomatic and non-idiomatic phrases is that they are well-known, re-occur in the language and, in that respect, can considered belonging to the sphere of interests of phraseology. Regarding the main functions of fixed phrases in the humor discourse, they can contribute to the social play, provide the cues to switch to a nonserious humor mindset or express evaluation – from mild mockery to aggressive ridicule.

A controversial issue for teachers of German as a foreign language is the balance between content and form. This also applies to vocabulary work in the field of phraseology. The modeling of language competence in the communicative approach is based on the understanding of language as a means of communication. Accordingly, the primary claim of communicative language didactics is to go beyond the description of structures of the foreign language and to place appropriate, situated linguistic action at the center of teaching. Against this theoretical background, content-oriented approaches such as Task-Based Learning have emerged in foreign language didactics, which emphasize the communicative aspect of language and place the didactic emphasis on situated, authentic tasks. Nevertheless, this emphasis did not lead to the suppression of form-based approaches which consider precision in language mastery by focusing on formal aspects through exercises to be necessary and desirable. This paper examines the question of the importance of exercises and tasks in phraseology-based vocabulary work. Against the theoretical background of the approaches of Task-Based Learning (TBL) and Focus on Form (FoF), possibilities for the integration of content-oriented and form-focussing teaching concepts for the promotion of phraseological competence are shown by means of concrete examples. Furthermore, the question of their balance in teaching is discussed.