At the intersection of historical morphology and syntax: The Baltic verb from a diachronic perspective

 

Organizers:

 

Description:

Probably due to their relatively narrow geographic distribution, the Baltic languages have not received the same level of attention from typologists and historical linguists as those belonging to the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic branches. Yet the Baltic languages have much to offer, as they show many fascinating typological features as well as intriguing (and intricate) historical developments (cf. Arkadiev, Holvoet & Wiemer 2015: 62–66). While often praised for their phonological antiquity, they also preserve many archaic-looking morphological features (cf., e.g., Nau & Spraunienė 2021: 211 on the Baltic future marker). At the same time, they can be distinguished from related languages through all kinds of morphological and syntactic peculiarities. 

The Baltic languages provide the interested scholar with a rich system of verbal morphology. One the one hand, more than its Slavic sister branch, Baltic has extended the inherited derivational morphology into a synthetic system in which each root can have a higher or lower number of interrelated formations associated with different diatheses or Aktionsarten (Arkadiev, Holvoet & Wiemer 2015: 65–66 and Villanueva Svensson 2020: 382–83). These are formally differentiated through a combination of suffixation, ablaut, and metatony (cf., e.g., Petit 2004 and Pakerys 2021), and they can have highly specialised meanings, such as diminutives and intensives. On the other hand, Baltic has heavily regularised the present and preterit systems based on the opposition [±transitive] (Schmid 1966, 1967). 

As far as individual verbal categories are concerned, there has been an upsurge in debate on their diachrony in recent years, e.g. in the development of the East Baltic conditional mood (cf. Petit 2018 and Fries & Hill 2022). Verbal (morpho)syntax, such as valency change and alignment, voice, discourse organization (taxis), evidentiality, and TAM, has also attracted much interest from a comparative-historical and typological perspective (see Holvoet 2014, 2020, Holvoet & Nau 2015, 2016). 

This workshop aims to bring together scholars with an interest in the wider domain of the historical morphosyntax of the Baltic verb or more specifically in any of its subfields. ‘Historical’ is here envisaged in the broad sense as including not just a prehistorical (potentially Indo-European) perspective, but also approaches dealing with more recent (or pre-modern) language stages, such as those of the Old Lithuanian documents. Thus, the current workshop is open to papers discussing the development of verbal categories in Baltic from a morphological or (morpho)syntactic standpoint. All topics that fall under the overarching theme of the historical morphosyntax of the Baltic verb are welcome, including, but not limited to these: 

  • research into the origins of specific verbal categories, formants, or roots. 
  • historical accounts of Baltic verbal constructions and functional categories. 
  • language interference studies on phenomena related to the Baltic verb. 

 

References 

  • Arkadiev, Peter, Axel Holvoet, & Björn Wiemer. 2015. Introduction: Baltic Linguistics – State of the Art. In P. Arkadiev, A. Holvoet & B. Wiemer, (eds.), Contemporary approaches to Baltic linguistics, 1–110. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. 
  • Fries, Simon & Eugen Hill. 2022. Insights into the diachrony of the East Baltic subjunctive mood. Baltistica 57(1). 5–44. 
  • Holvoet, Axel (ed.). 2014. Grammatical relations and their non-canonical encoding in Baltic. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
  • Holvoet, Axel. 2020. The middle voice in Baltic. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
  • Holvoet, Axel & Nicole Nau (eds.). 2015. Voice and argument structure in Baltic. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
  • Holvoet, Axel & Nicole Nau (eds.), 2016. Argument realization in Baltic. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
  • Nau, Nicole & Birutė Spraunienė. 2021. Future tense and narrativity. Baltic Linguistics 12. 209–47. 
  • Pakerys, Jurgis.  2021. Obligatory features of Lithuanian verbal inflection classes. In P. Arkadiev, J. Pakerys, I. Šeškauskienė & V. Žeimantienė (eds.), Studies in Baltic and other languages: A Festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday, 268–90. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press. 
  • Petit, Daniel. 2004. Apophonie et catégories grammaticales dans les langues baltiques: Linguistique baltique et comparaison indo-européenne. Leuven: Peeters. 
  • Petit, Daniel. 2018. Between syntax and semantics: The origin of the East Baltic conditional mood. Indogermanische Forschungen 123. 211–46. 
  • Schmid, Wolfgang. 1966. Baltische Beiträge IV. Indogermanische Forschungen 71. 286–96. 
  • Schmid, Wolfgang. 1967. Baltische Beiträge V. Indogermanische Forschungen 72: 116–22. 
  • Villanueva Svensson, Miguel. 2020. The Balto-Slavic ā-aorist. Transactions of the Philological Society 118. 378–400. 

 

Registration: 

If you would like to submit a paper for this workshop, please fill out the registration form (will be available in February 2025).