A typological perspective on Latvian grammar / Andra Kalnača; managing editor, Anna Borowska; associate editor, Helle Metslang; language editor, Uldis Balodis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kalnača, Andra, author.

Contributor:

Borowska, Anna, editor.

Metslang, Helle, editor.

Balodis, Uldis, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Latvian language--Grammar.

Latvian language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (198 pages) : illustrations; digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Warsaw, [Poland] ; Berlin, [Germany] : De Gruyter Open, 2014.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Theoretical studies of Latvian grammar have a great deal to offer to contemporary linguistics. Although traditionally Lithuanian has been the most widely studied Baltic language in diachronic and synchronic linguistics alike, Latvian has a number of distinctive features that can prove valuable both for historical, and perhaps even more so, for synchronic language research. Therefore, at the very least, contemporary typological, areal, and language contact studies involving Baltic languages should account for data from Latvian. Typologically, Latvian grammar is a classic Indo-European (Baltic) system with well-developed inflection and derivation. However, it also bears certain similarities to the Finno-Ugric languages, which can be reasonably explained by its areal and historical background. This applies, for example, to the mood system and its connections with modality and evidentiality in Latvian, also to the correlation between aspect and quantity as manifested in verbal and nominal (case) forms. The relations between debitive mood, certain constructions with reflexive verbs, and voice in Latvian are intriguing examples of unusual morphosyntactic features.Accordingly, the book focuses on the following topics: case system and declension (with emphasis on the polyfunctionality of case forms), gender, conjugation, tense and personal forms, aspect, mood, modality and evidentiality, reflexive verbs, and voice. The examples included in this book have been taken from the Balanced Corpus of Modern Latvian (Lidzsvarots musdienu latviešu valodas tekstu korpuss, available at www.korpuss.lv), www.google.lv, mass media, and fiction texts (see the List of language sources) without regard to relative frequency ratios.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. The Paradigmatics and Declension of Nouns

2. The Paradigmatics and Conjugation of Verbs

3. Aspect

4. Mood

5. Modality and Evidentiality

6. Voice

7. Reflexive Verbs

References

Sources

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access. Unless otherwise specified individually in the content, the work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed May 28, 2015).

ISBN:

9783110426984

3110426986

9783110411317

3110411318

OCLC:

908918662