Der Nominativ in Zeitadverbialen im Litauischen

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA LII (2005), 41 – 58 The Nominative in Time Adverbials in Lithuanian Markus Roduner Institute of the Lithuanian Language This paper deals with the nominative in temporal adverbials (mainly durative) in Lithuanian. On the basis of an analysis of a text corpus it was established that certain lexemes show a strong tendency to appear in the nominative in adverbial function. Other constructions involving temporal adverbials in the nominative tend to become fixed expressions. We argue that the so-called nominative object could have played, or still plays, a part in generally supporting the use of temporal and spatial adverbials in the nominative case. When describing the occurrence of the nominative in adverbial function at a synchronic level, it can be said that (a) it occurs mostly with quantifying modifiers before the noun and (b) it describes a time space from some fixed (sometimes unfixed) point in the past up to reference time or, in the case of the present, up to speech time (as in English he has been singing for three hours). 0. INTRODUCTION This article aims to examine more closely the nominative time adverbials that occur sporadically in Lithuanian but regularly in very specific cases. Wherever possible, the contemporary Lithuanian written language (bendrinė kalba) was investigated, using the corpus of contemporary Lithuanian (KT). For individual phenomena that do not occur as such in the written language, published dialect texts (LKT, LTCH) and the author's own phonotheque¹ were consulted. Fully fossilized expressions and pure adverbs expressing time are not the subject of this article. The use of the nominative in adverbial time expressions is, at first glance, rather unusual, at least for speakers of Western European languages². In those— 1 The recordings were made as part of two research projects together with staff members of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and are partly accessible in the Institute of the Lithuanian Language's phonotheque in Vilnius. Edmundas Trumpa and Asta Leskauskaitė assisted us in interpreting the passages relevant to us, and we would like to express our sincere thanks to them here. 2 Jablonskis (1957: 560) bemerkt dazu: „Vardininkas kitoms (antrinėms) sakinio dalims, ypač aplinkybėms, reikšti yra ne visai paprastas mūsų gramatikoms dalykas“ („Der Nominativ zur Bezeichnung anderer (sekundärer) Satzteile, besonders von Adverbialen, ist ein nicht allzu gewöhnliches Faktum unserer Grammatiken.“); Valiulytė (1998: 259): „Kaip žinia, vardininkui aplinkybės funkcija nebūdinga. Tačiau turime atvejų, kada šis linksnis vartojamas veiksmo trukmei reikšti“ („Wie allgemein bekannt ist, ist die Verwendung des Nominativs in Adverbialfunktion für diesen nicht typisch. Trotzdem gibt es Fälle, in denen dieser Fall zum Ausdruck der Handlungsdauer Verwendung findet“). 42 | MARKUS RODUNER In the Western European Indo-European languages3 that have a reasonably well-developed case system, oblique cases (accusative, instrumental, dative, genitive, etc.) are used almost exclusively to express adverbial temporal relations (point in time, duration, repetition). In German, for example, one might think of archaic genitive time expressions, mostly already fossilized as adverbs, such as morgens, nachts (also des nachts), or the many accusative forms such as letzten Monat, nächsten Samstag. Alongside these purely case-marked nouns, nouns with prepositions also function very prominently as time adverbials; compare, for example, the German am Abend, im Sommer. Prepositional constructions also make up a substantial, though comparatively smaller, part of time adverbials in Lithuanian4. Of the various cases, the nominative discussed in this article is by far the least frequently used for temporal expressions. In what follows, however, it will become clear that this case is used more frequently, especially in certain expressions and in particular dialect areas, to denote above all duration and constantly repeated actions. It nevertheless always competes with the “grammatical” accusative. 1. THE NOMINATIVE FOR EXPRESSING DURATION 1.1. (jau) + time expression ‘(already) for X years, months, etc.’ Der Nominativ kann eine Zeitdauer nach Šukys (1998: 83) im Prinzip nur in Verbindung mit Ordinalzahlen und bestimmten Pronomen ausdrücken. Valiulytė (1998: 260) führt in diesem Zusammenhang zusätzlich aus, dass der Nominativ die Handlungsdauer meist in Verbindung mit dem Präsens, seltener auch mit dem einfachen Präteritum (būta-sis kartinis laikas) bezeichnet, oft unter Setzung von jau. Ein Beispiel für ein Zeitadverbiale mit beidem ist folgender Satz: (1) Mes kelinti metai bendradarbiaujame su AIDS centru we:NOM5 already how manyth: NOM.PL6 year:NOM collaborate: PRES.1.PL with AIDS center: INS.SG Paulauskienė (1989: 74) schreibt dazu: „Vardininko, kaip aplinkybės, funkcija yra šalutinė. […] Dažniausiai aplinkybių funkciją jis atlieka ne vienas, o sutapęs su kitais žodžiais – skaitvardžiais ir įvardžiais, su jais drauge ir prieveiksmeja“ („Die Adverbialfunktion des Nominativs ist sekundär. […] Meist funktioniert er nicht allein als Adverbiale, sondern zusammen mit anderen Wörtern, Numeralia und Pronomina und erstarrt zusammen mit ihnen allmählich zum Adverb“). 3 In Basque, which as an ergative language has no accusative, the nominative is used primarily to express duration, but not the duration for which something has been ongoing, which is expressed by the inessive (cf. Lafitte 1978: 429). For Finnic, see section 4. 4 However, these are not the subject of this article and will therefore not be discussed here. 5 The following abbreviations are used in the grammatical glosses: ADV: adverb; AKK: accusative; DAT: dative; F: feminine; FUT: future; GEN: genitive; HPRT: semi-participle; IMP: impersonal; INE: inessive; INS: instrumental; LOK: locative; M: masculine; N: neuter; NEG: negation; NOM: nominative; PAR: partitive; PL: plural; PPP: past passive participle; PPA: present active participle; PPrP: present passive participle; PRAES: present; PRAET: preterite; REFL: reflexive; SG: singular. 6 Metai ‘year’ is a plurale tantum in Lithuanian; therefore, the corresponding ending appears here on the agreeing kelintas. DER NOMINATIV IN ZEITADVERBIALEN 43 ‘We have been working with the AIDS Center for many years.’ (KT) The use of the construction jau + numeral or pronoun (kuris ‘which’, keleri ‘a few’, keletas ‘a certain amount, several’, etc.) in combination with the nominative to express the duration for which an action has already been ongoing is also common in language close to the norm. Table 1 provides a admittedly limited overview of the frequency7 of the nominative and the competing accusative in the structure discussed here: TABLE 1: JAU + DURATION Time expression | Nom: cardinal numeral | Ordinal kelintas | Acc: cardinal numeral | Ordinal kelintas šimtmetis / šimtmečiai ‘century/centuries’ | Sg 4 / Pl 11 | 6 | Sg 33 / Pl 36 | 11 metai ‘year(s)’ | 83 | 80 | 76 | 46 jau keleri / kelinti metai ‘for several years already’ | 61 | 15 | 28 | 1 mėnuo / mėnesiai ‘month(s)’ | Sg 24 / Pl 74 | 68 | Sg 14 / Pl 113 | 17 jau keli mėnesiai / kelintas mėnuo ‘for several months already’ | 57 | 15 | 66 | 1 valanda / valandos ‘hour(s)’ | Sg 4 / Pl 4 | — | Sg 25 / Pl 15 | — Although the (sparse) statistical data hardly allow for a conclusive interpretation, especially for the less frequent time expressions, we can nevertheless observe that, contrary to the claim made by Ambrazas (1996: 548), the nominative clearly predominates with certain lexemes. For the lexemes metai and mėnuo, the results show approximately equal use of the nominative and accusative with cardinal numerals; with ordinal numerals, however, the nominative predominates, and for jau kelinti metai / kelintus metus, the search for fixed expressions yielded a dis- 7 The nouns mentioned in Table 1 were analyzed. For šimtmetis ‘century’ and valanda ‘hour’, no further breakdown was made because of the small number of attestations. In addition, minutė and sekundė were also examined, but are not included here because of their (expected) extremely sparse occurrence. For metai and mėnuo / mėnesiai, the two categories of nationwide and regional press were examined. In addition, for metai, the reliability of the results was cross-checked by searching for combinations (one, two, several… years already). 44 | M A R K U S R O D U N E R ratio of 254: 33 in favor of the nominative, which points to an adverbial expression that has already become highly fossilized. For the less common time designations, the accusative seems to be the norm. This is also confirmed (though, given the small number of attestations, this should probably be treated with caution) by the time adverbial jau n-ta vasara ‘already the n-th summer’, where the accusative likewise predominates, by 24: 6. The construction since so long can also be transposed into the past, while the construction itself remains unchanged. Here, too, what is described is an action/state that continues in the past from a certain point in time up to and including the reference time in the past, with the verb usually appearing in the simple preterite (anterior-simultaneous): (2) Jau treji metai ji nevaikščiojo nors puikiausiai galėjo eiti. Already three: year:NOM she walk:NEG.PRAET.3 NOM.PL ‘She had not walked for three years, although she could have walked perfectly well.’ (KT) In both of the examples mentioned above, the nominative time expression occurs, on the one hand, as a nominative in combination with certain modifiers, and, on the other, additionally with the ominous jau ‘already’. The nominative can, however, also occur in simply marked statements, as the following examples show: the first illustrates simple marking by jau, the other by a numeral. (3) … kad jo vairuojamos automašinos jau that he: GEN drive: PPR.P.Gen.Sg.F car: GEN.Sg already mėnuo ieško Kauno kriminalistai. month:NOM.SG search:PRAES.3 Kaunas: GEN criminal investigator: NOM.PL ‘… that the Kaunas criminal investigators have already been looking for his car for a month.’ (KT) (4) Trys mėnesiai nesu jam žodžio tarus. three:NOM month: his:NEG.PRAES.1.SG he:DAT word: say- NOM.PL GEN.SG ing PPP. NOM. SG.F ‘I haven’t exchanged a word with him for three months.’ (KT) With example (4), one could add to Valiulytė’s formulation that the nominative occurs both with and without an attribute⁸ that, although formally valanda has no attrib- 8 Valiulytė (1998: 260): „Vardininkas esti be pažyminio ir su pažyminiu arba su valdomu kilmininku“. Der Nominativ in Zeitadverbialen 45 ute, one such attribute is nevertheless implied, namely the numeral vienas ‘one’ (or, of course, here its feminine form viena). This follows directly from the grammatical properties of nominal time expressions in Lithuanian, since in specifying duration they can contain only certain nouns denoting time (e.g. diena ‘day’, valanda ‘hour’, mėnuo ‘month’, etc.), and since Lithuanian (like Russian, for example) has no articles, definite or indefinite, the quantifying numeral one is used only when it is to be given particular emphasis. 1.1.1. jau + ordinal numeral A subgroup of the nominative time expressions discussed here consists of time expressions with ordinal numerals of the type jau treti metai ‘already for three years (literally, already the third year’⁹). In official language (documents from government agencies), the accusative is used almost exclusively¹⁰. The relevant examples from KT included both nominative and accusative time expressions with ordinal numerals. (5) Aikštėje šalia fontano jau trečia valanda square:Loc.Sg beside fountain:Gen.Sg already third:Nom.Sg.F hour:Nom.Sg be perstogės dainavo nacionalinės estrados veteranai without interruption sing:PRAET.3 national variety-entertainment veteran:NOM.Pl ‘In the square, by the fountain, the national variety-entertainment veterans had already been singing without interruption for three hours.’ (KT) The sentence quoted here further shows that the construction jau + ordinal numeral/kelintas can also be used with the preterite. We can observe that its semantics correspond to those in example (2). Instead of an ordinal numeral, the noun in the nominative in the time adverbial can also be combined with the pronoun kelintas ‘which in sequence’. Sentences of the type nuo Verbūnų girininko jau (already) kelintas (which in sequence:Nom.Sg.M) mėnuo (month:Nom.Sg) nedvelkia degtine ‘the forester from Verbūnai has not been giving off the smell of spirits for months now’ (KT) are also quite common in written language. Here, as above in statements with an ordinal numeral, we can assume that the nominative is used because 9 The semantic difference between jau treji metai ‘already for three years’ and jau treti metai ‘already the third year’ is that in the latter case the three years have not yet fully elapsed. 10 So auch Šukys (1998: 83): „Oficialiuose kalbos stiliuose paprastai vartojami vien trukmės galininkai“. Auch die Analyse der Beispiele aus KT legt dies nahe, für die untersuchten Zeitbezeichnungen wurde kein Beispiel aus staatlichen Dokumenten (LR Valstybiniai dokumentai), die immerhin 8% des Korpus ausmachen, für die beiden in 1.1 und 1.1.1. diskutierten Strukturen gefunden, dagegen etliche aus den Stenogrammen des Seimas, die die mündliche Sprache der Parlamentsmitglieder reflektieren. 46 | MARKUS RODUNER which is conditioned by the conjunction, present in the speaker’s/writer’s consciousness, of kelintas with this case. Another example of this is (1). 1.2. Interim conclusions The examples discussed in 1 and 1.1 lead me to draw the following interim conclusions regarding this construction: 1 This is a construction with the structure (jau) + quantifying pronoun or numeral + noun in the nominative. Jau may be omitted if the noun is specified more precisely by a modifier¹¹, but it must be present if there is no attribute (at any rate, I have found no counterexamples in the portions of KT that I have reviewed). Going beyond the observations made by Valiulytė (1998), we can note that although in a few statements—namely, when the numeral vienas ‘one’ is implied but not expressed—the rule stated above, requiring jau to be expressed, is indeed observed, in our opinion it is not the presence or absence of jau that is decisive here; rather, the semantics of quantification motivates the nominative. 2 In the case of this construction, Jablonskis’s conjecture¹² (1957: 560) may be correct: that it could have arisen through the reduction of a two-clause structure, so that jau trys metai nebebuvau gimtinėje is to be understood as a reduction of jau trys/treti metai (bus: the verb is not obligatory), kai(p) nebebuvau gimtinėje. Sentences of the latter type with kai(p) are attested and fairly frequent in both spoken and written language; compare the following example: (6) It has already been three months that my statement has been lying in the party board’s Already three:NOM month:NOM.PL that lie:PRES.3 party:GEN.SG board:GEN.SG drawers. drawer:LOC.PL my application:NOM.SG ‘My application has been lying in the drawers of the party leadership for three months already.’ (KT) 2. TIME EXPRESSIONS OF REGULAR REPETITION 2.1. Statements of the type kas mėnuo ‘every month’ In large parts of Lithuania, the time expression for an action that is repeated regularly is put in the nominative, with the noun always preceded by kas ‘each’ (in this case 11 Vgl. Valiulytė (1998: 261): „O prie vardininko su pažyminiu arba su valdomu kilmininku (pvz., šimtas metų) dalelytės jau buvimas yra fakultatyvus arba jos visai gali nebūti“ („Im Falle eines Nominativs mit Attribut oder von ihm regierten Genitiv (z. B. šimtas metų ‘hundert Jahre’) ist die Partikel jau fakultativ oder kann ganz fehlen“). 12 That it is such a case is shown by the use of the modal bus there. DER NOMINATIV IN ZEITADVERBIALEN 47 indeclinable), more recently also kiekvienas ‘each individual’, and dialectally, instead of kas, the synonymous borrowing from Slavic kožnas precedes it. The written language avoids the nominative in the construction kas + time expression. Examination of relevant examples in the corpus of contemporary Lithuanian (KT)13 revealed considerable variation in the ratio of nominative to accusative: TABLE 2: KAS + TIME EXPRESSION TIME EXPRESSION SG NOM PL SG ACC PL metai (every year / every X years) 173 49614 - 66 mėnuo 815 105 315 92 valanda 2 26 73 48 minutė 8 45 47 28 It is evident that the accusative singular predominates by far. In the plural, the situation differs from lexeme to lexeme, although the two cases are represented in a fairly balanced way. metai stands out completely from the rest, strongly favoring the nominative. In Lithuanian, the use of kas with the nominative, particularly in generalizing statements such as proverbs, is not limited to temporal adverbials, but is also used with adverbials expressing location: (10) Kas what:NOM namai house:Nom.Pl — tai that:ADV dūmai. smoke:Nom.Pl ‘Where there is a house, there is also smoke.’ (Cited in Paulauskienė 1989: 74.) While in the latter example the two sentence constituents can still be regarded as autonomous, with the two nominatives in each case syntactically interpretable as dependents of the conceivable copula yra ‘is’, this is more problematic in example (9), where kas metai is fully integrated into the sentence as a temporal adverbial. The question arises whether the nominative is simply triggered by the pronoun kas. Kas is primarily the interrogative pronoun for persons and things in the nominative (‘who / what’), but it is also a relative pronoun and is used generically (kas nors ‘someone’). In 13 Four temporal expressions were examined by way of example in combination with kas, namely mėnuo ‘month’, metai ‘year’, valanda ‘hour’ (each in singular and plural, except for the plural tantum metai), and minutė. 14 Only examples for which at least 5 accusative attestations were available were counted. The predominance of the nominative is very clear here. 15 For mėnuo, only examples from the national and regional press were examined, since the pattern is clearly apparent. 48 | M A R K U S R O D U N E R In all these functions it is declinable. Finally, it is used mainly in spoken language to mean ‘every’, with the pronoun itself remaining undeclined. Thus, we say kas (Nom.Sg) metai (Nom.Pl) ‘every year’, without number agreement between kas and the noun. However, a causal connection between kas and the nominative is ruled out by the fact that the noun with which kas occurs can appear in different cases, as in: kas trečiame (third:Loc.Sg) posėdyje (meeting:Loc.Sg) nedalyvauja ‘he does not attend every third meeting’16. 2.1.1. Intermediate conclusions Fraenkel (1928) meint in Bezug auf die hier diskutierte Struktur, dass diese eigentlich ein „aus Pronomen und Substantiv bestehender Relativsatz“ sei, der „vom Sprechenden als adverbiale Bestimmung des regierenden Satzes betrachtet werden kann“ und führt zur Untermauerung seiner Theorie Parallelen aus dem Polnischen wie co raz (= lit. kas kartas) ‘jedes Mal’, co rok (= lit. kas metai) ‘jedes Jahr’17 an. Wenn ich diese Hypothese Fraenkels richtig verstehe, müsste man von einer zugrundeliegenden korrelativen Struktur des Typs kas metai, tas... ‘was Jahr <ist>, das...’ ausgehen18. Diese müsste allerdings schon in einer früheren Phase der Sprachentwicklung fast durchgängig als Adverbiale in den Satz integriert worden sein, da im heutigen Litauischen kaum Beispiele für die Zwe Satzstruktur existieren. 2.2. Time adverbials of the type visas laikas ‘the whole time’ Time adverbials in which the noun is modified by visas ‘whole, (Pl) all’ can be divided into three groups, the first of which is directly related to the statement types discussed in Section 1.1, the second to those in Section 2.1, and the third to those in Section 3. a. The first group consists of statements of the type jog mokyklos nelankęs jau visas (whole:Nom.Sg.M) mėnuo (month:Nom.Sg) ‘that he has not attended school for a whole month already’ (KT). Such sentences can be equated, on the basis of their structure and semantics, with those discussed above in Section 1.1, with the time expression here additionally modified by visas. Instead of jog mokyklos nelankęs jau mėnuo ‘that he has not attended school for a month already’, we now have jog mokyklos nelankęs jau visas mėnuo ‘that he has not attended school for a whole month already’. Both sentences are probably in 16 Here too, however, the nominative is possible in colloquial or dialectal speech: kas trečias posėdis nedalyvauja. 17 The possibility that the structure was borrowed from Polish would need to be investigated more closely here. 18 I have not encountered corresponding statements in temporal expressions in Lithuanian. By contrast, the example kas namai – tai dūmai (Example 10) fits well here. Fraenkel (1928: 32) likewise cites an example from Polish with a correlative two-clause structure: co (what:Nom) autor (author:Nom.Sg), to (that:Nom) osobna (separate:Nom.Sg.F) metoda (method:Nom.Sg) ‘every author has their own method’. DER NOMINATIV IN ZEITADVERBIALEN | 49 Their propositional structures are scarcely distinguishable from one another, so what was said above in Section 1.1 applies here in much the same way. Here, as there, the verb is generally in the present tense; thus, a situation or state is likewise described that begins at a particular point in the past and extends over the entire time span up to the present (or, in the case of a verb in the preterite, up to the reference time in the past), or, in the case of actions, is performed repeatedly throughout the entire period 19. b. The second group, which in my opinion should be distinguished from this one, consists of statements of the following kind (recordings from Musteika, Varėna district): (11) Visas laikas sėjom. all:NOM.SG.M time sow:PRET.1.PL ‘We sowed throughout the whole time.’ In the preceding example, the Lithuanian equivalent of the German die ganze Zeit ‘the whole time’ is used with the preterite. Semantically, this statement does not reveal whether the long-lasting action (visas laikas) is still continuing or not. However, from the course of the conversation, it can be inferred that it refers to a long time span extending up to an unspecified point in the past, since the statement is to be understood as an answer to the interviewer's preceding questions (namely, whether they used to sow rye). They differ from the structures discussed in 1.1, and especially from Example (2), which agrees with the examples cited here in terms of tense, in that no starting point is mentioned here, and it is also unclear whether the action might not be repeated up to the time of speaking. Nor can we group them with the example (12) quoted below, since there a completed period in the past is described, even if it is not clearly located, whereas here we are dealing with a time span in the past that is open at both ends (possibly continuing up to the present). By contrast, these examples, with their semantics of a long, uncompleted period, fit well with the temporal adverbials of the type dieną naktis ‘day and night’ discussed in 2.3. The construction discussed most recently occurs almost exclusively with the noun laikas ‘time’ (or the loanword česas ‘ditto’), which suggests that it is already a fossilized expression. Moreover, I was unable to find any example from the written language in KT, only a single, clearly dialectal one: Dainavau (sing:PRET.1.SG) visas laikas per visų (all:ACC.SG) gyvenimų (life:ACC.SG) ‘I sang all my life.’ c. LKT (199) also contains an example of a statement in the past that covers a defined period: 19 For statements of this kind with the preterite, compare: jau visas mėnuo neĮjo ‘it had not rained for a whole month already.’ 50 | MARKUS RODUNER (12) ji sirgo visà naktis – she be.ill:PRET.3 whole:NOM.SG.F night:NOM.SG nuomerali turi epilepsy:ACC.SG have:PRES.3 ‘She was ill all night—she has epilepsy.’ The example comes from the village of Žalioji (Vilkaviškis district) in southwestern Lithuania, not far from the border with Kaliningrad Oblast and Poland20. In view of its structure, the sentence quoted here can be grouped with the statements discussed in Section 3. 2.2.1 Parallels from Russian dialects Nominative temporal adverbials also occur in some northern and several central and southern Russian dialects. Here too, temporal adverbials occur in the nominative in combination with ves’ ‘whole’, cf. the examples discussed in Kuz’mina (1993: 14–15). More often, in central and southern Russian, ves’ ‘whole’ does not agree in case with the noun: ves’ is in the accusative, while the noun is in the nominative, as in vsju (whole:Acc.Sg.F) zima-to (winter:Nom.Sg.F-generalized) delal sanki ‘I went sledding throughout the whole winter’ (example from Kuz’mina 1993: 15). This suggests a gradual shift toward the accusative, leading to the present-day written standard, in which temporal adverbials of the type vsju zimu ‘the whole winter’ are used only in the accusative in this context. However, these expressions are already so strongly lexicalized (as Kuz’mina, ibid., notes) that the original nominative zima is used dialectally as an adverb (in winter). 2.2.2 Interim conclusions Here, an attempt to interpret the motivation for assigning the nominative proves problematic. An interpretation in terms of the incorporation of a nominal sentence outlined above is hardly plausible here21. In any case, I see no reason to derive a sentence such as visas laikas bičių laikėm ‘we kept bees the whole time’ from **visas laikas buvo (toks), kad bičių laikėm ‘it was the whole time (such) that we kept bees’ or the like. To postulate statements of the latter type as a basis is also questionable insofar as, unlike the frequently occurring sentences discussed above in section 1.1, which were later shortened, no such statements can be attested. 2.3 Temporal adverbials of the type diena naktis ‘day and night’ Another group of temporal adverbials in the nominative consists of statements describing an action that is habitually performed the whole time or that is being performe- 20 That this is not an isolated example is shown by the following sentence from the same dialect group: sėdėjom visą (whole:Nom.Sg.F) naktis (night:Nom.Sg) ‘We sat there the whole night’. 21 In his discussion of embedded nominal sentences that are integrated as adverbials into the sentence as a whole, Fraenkel (chapter 5) does not mention the structure visas vakaras. It is therefore unclear whether he too considers it to have arisen from an originally independent nominal sentence. Der Nominativ in Zeitadverbialen 51 must and usually consist of two time designations (e.g. ‘day and night’, ‘morning and evening’, etc.). In terms of its semantics, this statement type should be seen as closely related to the immediately preceding (visas laikas ‘all the time’). Both are generalizing time expressions associated with habitual actions. Time adverbials of this structure are probably already fixed expressions, and as such are quite common in the standard written language: (13) … kad rytas vakaras kasdien jis praeinąs ta Veronikos gatve į darbą ir namo that morning:NOM.SG evening:NOM.SG every day he:NOM pass:PPRA.NOM.SG.M this:INS.SG.F Veronika:GEN street:INS.SG to work and home … ‘that he passes down Veronika Street to and from work every morning and evening’ (KT) It is entirely possible that these expressions ultimately derive from paratactic little sentences of the type buvo rytas, buvo vakaras, ir jis vis miegojo ‘it was morning, it was evening, and he kept sleeping’, which then entered the speakers’ vocabulary as fixed expressions. 3. TIME ADVERBIALS OF DURATION IN CONNECTION WITH COMPLETED ACTIONS In LKT (263) we find an interesting statement showing that the nominative can also occur in time expressions that denote a duration in the past in connection with a telic verbal expression: (14) kariumenė(je) prabuvau trys metai army:LOC.SG spend:PAST.1SG three:NOM.PL year:NOM.PL ‘I spent three years in the army.’ The nominative in this statement can be explained satisfactorily neither by Šukys’ formulation of the possibility of nominative time adverbials in connection with certain pronouns and, especially, with jau, nor by Jablonskis’ interpretation of nominative time expressions as reductions, i.e. the integration of an appositional clause with the verbal expression omitted. Valiulytė, too, gives no examples of the type in example (14); indeed, she even denies (cf. Valiulytė 1998: 262) the possibility that such time adverbials exist in the nominative22. By contrast, 22 Thus, she writes there that in a statement such as laukia jau valanda (Nom) / valandą (Akk) ‘he has been waiting for an hour already’, both the nominative and accusative are possible, with the nominative being the predominant form. According to Valiulytė (ibid.), a telic verbal expression in the past can be combined only with the accusative (pralauke valandą (Akk) ‘he waited for an hour’), but not with the nominative (*pralauke valanda (Nom)). However, the example cited above contradicts this. 52 | MARKUS RODUNER A justification of the nominative by quantification would fit well here. Since the nominative can hardly be explained otherwise here, we must probably assume that certain quantifying modifiers trigger or favor the occurrence of this case. Examples of direct objects in the nominative with the verb kainuoti ‘to cost’, which are otherwise also difficult to account for, can serve as support for this theory: (15) Vienkartinis apsilankymas suaugusiems kainuoja 7 litai single:NOM.SG visit:NOM.SG adults:DAT.PL cost:PRES.3 litas:NOM.PL ‘A single visit for adults costs seven litas.’ (KT) During our fieldwork, in addition to kainuoti + NOM, which is heard in large parts of Lithuania and, as the non-isolated example from KT attests, is also quite common in the standard written language, we recorded the following utterance in Smarliūnai (Lazdijų district): (16) Tris litai mokėjo dabar three:ACC litas:NOM.PL pay:PAST.3 now ‘One paid three litas now.’ Here the relationship between the nominative and the accusative has become completely confused: the numeral trys is indeed in the accusative, as expected in the standard written language, but does not agree with the noun, which appears in the nominative, in accordance with our hypothesis that certain quantifying modifiers induce nominative case marking23. 4. NOMINATIVE NOUNAL TIME ADVERBIALS IN IMPERSONAL CONTEXTS Time adverbials in the nominative that occur together with a non-finite verbal form constitute a distinct category, since here the nominative is directly associated with the systematically impersonal sentence structure24, which also conditions the occurrence of nominative objects2526. Although Jablonskis (1957: 559–560) likewise lists nominative time adverbials as a distinct category, further below (1957: 562) he gives side by side examples of what he calls the subject nominative 23 The phenomenon of case non-agreement in this Lithuanian example appears, as far as I could determine, to be unique in Lithuanian, but it has a parallel in certain Russian dialects in time adverbials, as in the example mentioned above, všju zima ‘throughout the whole winter’. For examples of the nominative in quantity expressions from colloquial Latvian, see section 7. 24 Zum Begriff vgl. Timberlake (1974). 25 Zum Begriff NOMINATIVOBJEKT vgl. Timberlake (1974), Ambrazas (2001) mit weiterführender Literatur. 26 For the connection between nominative objects and nominative time adverbials in Russian dialects, where the two phenomena, as in Lithuanian, are to a large extent DER NOMINATIV IN ZEITADVERBIALEN 53 (subject nominative)27designated case (in current understanding, nominative objects in connection with non-finite verbal forms (infinitives, participles))—as well as those in which a nominal time adverbial occurs with the same non-finite verbal forms. Thus, in the same place (1958: 562, Example 1), alongside: teko (befall:PRAET.3) pagaliau arkliui griežtas (serious:NOM.SG.M) žodis (word:NOM.SG) tarti ‘in the end, I had to have a serious little talk with the horse’; mums teks (befall:FUT.3) ištisi (whole:NOM.PL) metai (year:NOM) drauge gyventi ‘We will have to live together for a whole year.’ The proximity of duration adverbials and direct objects (cf. Holvoet and Semėnienė 2004: 21–22) makes it plausible that nominative objects were/are one of the supports for the preservation of nominative time adverbials. Negated expressions of duration, like negated direct objects, occur in the genitive: (17) Nemačiau nė vieno dramblio. see:NEG.PRAET.1.SG not one:GEN.SG.M elephant:GEN.SG ‘I did not see a single elephant.’ (18) Nelaukiau nė vienos dienos. wait:NEG.PRAET.1.SG not one:GEN.SG.F day:GEN.SG ‘I did not wait a single day.’ (Both examples from Holvoet and Semėnienė 2004: 21.) The same also applies to duration adverbials and direct objects in impersonal environments. In the dialects that have them, both occur in the nominative (cf. example above). Objects / duration expressions function similarly in Finnish, more precisely in Ostrobothnian Finnish, which has often (cf. Timberlake 1974, Ambrazas 2001) been brought into connection with nominative objects in Lithuanian and also in Russian dialects: (19) Olen Suomessa viikon be:PRAES.1.SG Finland:INE.SG week:GEN/AKK ‘I am in Finland for a week.’ En ole Suomessa viikkoa be:NEG.PRAES.1.SG Finland:INE.SG week:PAR.SG ‘I am not in Finland for a week.’ identischen Dialektgebiet vorkommen, vgl. Kuz’mina (1993: 15): „Očen’ verojatno, čto vremennye konstrukcii, vključajuščie v svoj sostav im. padež ed. čisla suščestvitel’nyx žen. roda, genetičeski svjazany s ob”ektnymi, odnako v nastojaščee vremja territorii rasprostranenija étix dvux tipov konstrukcij sovpadajut liš’ častično“ („Es ist sehr wahrscheinlich, dass die temporalen Konstruktionen, die einen Nominativ Singular femininer Nomina beinhalten, genetisch mit den Objektkonstruktionen [d. h. Nominativobjekt – Anm. d. Verfassers] zusammenhängen, zumal zur heutigen Zeit die Verbreitungsgebiete dieser zwei Konstruktionen in der Mehrzahl der Fälle zusammenfallen“). 27 On page 560, § 6 Jabl1 writes: “We often use the subject nominative (§ 1, sentences 4, 5) in our language, and not in entirely ordinary ways: we place it in a sentence with certain infinitives and, more rarely, converbs” (“We often use the subject nominative in our language in a not entirely ordinary way: we place it in the sentence in combination with certain infinitives and, more rarely, gerundial forms”). 54 | MARKUS RODUNER Suomessa ollaan viikko Finnland:INE.SG sein:IMP Woche:NOM ‘One is in Finland for a week.’ (Example from Karlsson 2000: 125.) 5. THE NOMINATIVE TO EXPRESS THE POINT IN TIME / PERIOD WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS A remarkable example of the expression, in the nominative, of a period during which something happens is found in Jablonskis (1957: 559): (20) Šie metai mažą tebus šieno. dies:NOM.PL Jahr:NOM wenig:NOM.SG.N sein:FUT.3 Heu:GEN.SG ‘There will be only a little hay this year.’ In den Grammatiken der litauischen Sprache, bei Šukys (1998) und Valiulytė (1998) wird das Nomen metai in temporaler Funktion nur in zwei Kasus, dem Instrumental (auf die Frage ‘wann?’) und dem Akkusativ (auf die Frage ‘wie lange?’) angeführt. Jablonskis (1957: 560) versucht das von ihm selbst beigebrachte, bemerkenswerte Beispiel als eingeschobenen Satz zu erklären: This year is not good; there will be only a little hay. ‘This is not a good year; there will be only a little hay.’ > There will be only a little hay this year. ‘There will be only a little hay this year.’ However, it remains unclear to me why a statement this year is not good; there will be only a little hay should be shortened to there will be only a little hay this year. The shortening loses an essential part of the statement, namely that the year is not good (miserable). Of course, there will be only a little hay this year implies that this is a bad year, but why should we assume that this sentence arose through shortening? The only reason I can see for this is that the otherwise unclassifiable nominative time adverbial is thus “explained” in the simplest possible way28. 6. X YEARS BEFORE / AFTER… ‘SO MANY YEARS BEFORE / AFTER…’ A final group, which must be treated separately, consists of statements of the type du metai prieš karą ‘two years before the war’; compare the following example: (21) … kad sužadėtinis kelios valandos prieš pasipiršdamas that fiancé:NOM.SG some:NOM.PL.F hour:NOM.PL before propose:HPRT 28 That this šie metai is not simply hanging in the air is demonstrated by the adverb šiemet, also šiemetai according to LKŽe, as in šiemetai mirė (Dusetos, Zarasų r.). Šukys (1998: 84) also gives the following example of a nominative in temporal adverbial function: Kiti (other:NOM.PL) metai (year:NOM) irgi nesušalsim, turėsim kuo kūrent ‘Next year we will not freeze either; we will have enough to heat with’. Alongside this, the adverbialized form kitimet also exists here (see LKŽe). DER NOMINATIV IN ZEITADVERBIALEN | 55 mylėjos su kita moterimi love:PRAET.3.REFL with another woman ‘… that her fiancé had sex with another woman a few hours before proposing to her.’ In the case of this construction, however, its status as a temporal adverbial remains questionable. Although kelios valandos prieš pasipiršdamas must be understood as a temporal adverbial as a whole, kelios dienos alone does not refer to any possible verbal assertion but rather modifies prieš pasipiršdamas. The nominative as a modifier within a temporal adverbial is in any case in need of explanation. In written language, an accusative would also be more likely here; compare: (22) Kelerius metus prieš lėktuvo pagrobimą einige:AKK.PL.M Jahr:AKK.PL vor Flugzeug:GEN.SG Kidnapping:AKK.SG P. Brazinskas įvairiais kanalais rinko informaciją. ‘Some years before the airplane hijacking, P. Brazinskas gathered information through various channels.’ (KT) What is also striking here is the renewed combination of quantification with the nominative. 7. NOMINATIVE TIME ADVERBIALS IN LATVIAN? Since nominative objects also occur in Latvian, albeit much less frequently than in Lithuanian (cf. Ambrazas 2001), traces of nominative time adverbials may also be expected there. Sokols, ed. (1962) does not mention the possibility of time adverbials in the nominative. Gāters (1993), by contrast, gives several examples of this, which, like Jablonskis (1957) and Fraenkel (1928), he treats as insertions integrated into the sentence. One of the examples is the following: (23) Jāni, tava zāle Brīži stāvu brīži gulu Jānis:Voc your:NOM.SG.F grass:NOM moments:NOM.PL upright ‘Jānis, your [to be picked on Midsummer’s night] grass [= penis] <is> sometimes [lit. ‘moments’] erect, sometimes limp.’ (Gāters 1993: 73) Here, however, the nominative stands in place of an instrumental29. Another interesting fact mentioned there is that the pronoun kas ‘who, which’ can also be combined with the nominative in adverbial constructions in Latvian (cf. section 2.1). He gives, among others, the following example: kas svādine (Sunday:NOM), gonūs gōju ‘every Sunday I grazed the herd’ (Gāters 1993: 241) and compares 29 This, in turn, fits with example 19 above. 56 | MARKUS RODUNER it with Lithuanian statements of the type kas vakaras ‘every evening’. These, however, could themselves be modeled on a corresponding expression in Polish (cf. footnotes 17 and 18). Nau (1998: 15) erwähnt, dass im Lettischen in der Umgangssprache von den Numeralia 2-9 modifizierte Nomina im Nominativ statt im aufgrund ihrer syntaktischen Funktion erforderlichen Kasus stehen können: (24) Četri gadi mēs tikai no tiem desmit four:NOM year:NOM.PL we:NOM only from these:DAT.PL ten nodzīvojām tur; tad mēs atlaida mājās live:PRAET.1.PL there then we:AKK let go:PRAET.3 home ‘We spent only four of those ten years there, then they let us go.’ (Nau, ibid.) 8. CONCLUSIONS In the course of discussing the various types of statements in which nominative time adverbials occur, three different solutions were considered for how the nominative in adverbial function might be explained or at least motivated. These are: a. The nominative was originally part of an independent nominal clause or the subject of a paratactic clause, which was then integrated into the main clause as an adverbial. b. The nominative is motivated by certain pronouns modifying the noun (possibly as part of a fixed expression). c. The nominative occurs in quantifying expressions (especially, but not exclusively, with numerals). The first line of explanation is pursued, among others, by Jablonskis and Fraenkel. Thus, with regard to the nominative in time adverbials in Lithuanian, Jablonskis (1957: 560) states: “This nominative adverbial, or simply a secondary sentence constituent, must have arisen in the language chiefly through shortening or omission—from a whole particular sentence in which that nominative could have functioned as the subject, or from an embedded sentence: from ‘these years are bad, there will be little hay...’; ‘my brother, it will soon be all the years, is ill’ (as he is ill)...; ‘it is already several years ending since I have been visiting her...’” (“This nominative adverbial or other secondary clause element probably arose mostly through shortening or omission—from a complete sentence in which this nominative could function as the subject, or from an inserted clause: from šie metai negeri, maža tebus šieno...; brolis, bus jau visi metai, serga (kaip serga)...; jis, jau kelinti metai baigiasi, kai ją lankauja...”.) Dieselbe Hypothese wird auch von Fraenkel (1928, Kap. 5, 30ff.) vertreten, wo er den Nominativ in eingeschobenen, ursprünglich selbständigen Sätzen behandelt. This provides a plausible explanation for the statements discussed in 1.1 and 1.1.1; compare the interim conclusions in 1.2. Statements of the type jau trys mėnesiai and jau trečias mėnuo both denote, like those additionally modified by visas,. DER NOMINATIV IN ZEITADVERBIALEN 57 the statements (jau visas mėnuo) designate a period from a point A in the past up to the reference time or, in the case of the present tense, up to the time of speaking and beyond, not a completed period. In addition to quantification, this special semantics may further support the nominative. Some expressions such as šìe / kiti metai are probably already completely fossilized, since they can no longer be formed productively from other time designations. The restriction to certain lexemes points to lexicalization, as can be observed in dialectal Russian zima ‘in winter’. The same probably applies to visas laikas and rytas vakaras. The explanation for the other groups of nominative time adverbials is somewhat more difficult, since in these cases hardly any traces of the postulated paratactic structure remain, at least in present-day language. The discussion of the individual points revealed that the statement karīuomeneje prabuvau trys metai in example 14 and statements of the type visas laikas sėdavom ‘we sowed all the time’ (the latter, as mentioned above, probably an already fossilized expression) do not lend themselves to an analysis involving the integration of a paratactic clause. We must assume that quantifying modifiers here favor the nominative, which is confirmed by colloquial examples from Latvian. QUELLEN KT – Textkorpus der litauischen Gegenwartssprache des Zentrums für Computerlinguistik, Vytautas-Magnus-Universität, Kaunas, donelaitis.vdu.lt LKT – Lietuvių kalbos tarmės. Chrestomatija. Sudarė E. GRINAVECKIENĖ, A. JONAITÝTĖ, K. MORKŪNAS, B. VADAGIENĖ, A. VIDUGIRIS, Vilnius: Mintis, 1970. LTCh – Lietuvių tarmių chrestomatija. Sudarė R. BABEVIČIŪTĖ, A. IVANAUSKAITĖ, A. LESKAUSKAITĖ, E. TRUMPA, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2004. LKŽe – elektronische Variante des Wörterbuchs der litauischen Sprache, www.lkz.lt LITERATUR AMBRAZAS, V., red., 1996: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika. Antrasis pataisytas leidimas, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla. AMBRAZAS, V., ed., 1997: Lithuanian Grammar, Vilnius: Baltos lankos. AMBRAZAS, V., 2001: On the development of the nominative object in East Baltic. In: Dahl, V., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., eds., The Circum-Baltic Languages. Typology and Contact 2. Grammar and Typology, Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins. FRAENKEL, E. 1928: Syntax der litauischen Kasus, Kaunas: Valstybės spaustuvė. GĀTERS, A. 1993: Lettische Syntax. Die Dainas. Herausgegeben von Hildegard Radtke, Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. HOLVOET, A., SEMĖNIENĖ, L. 2004: Linksniu teorijos pagrindai. In: Holvoet, A., Semėnienė L., red., Gramatinių kategorijų tyrimai, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 11–33. JABLONSKIS, J. 1957: Linksniai ir prielinksniai. In: id., Rinktiniai raštai 1, sudarė J. Palionis, Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla. KARLSSON, F. 2000: Finnische Grammatik. Übertragen aus dem Finnischen von K.-H. Raabe. Bearbeitet von C. Hasselblatt und P. Jääsalmi-Krüger, Hamburg: Buske. KUZ’MINA, I. B. 1993: Sintaksis russkix govorov v lingvogeografičeskom aspekte, Moskva: Nauka. 58 | MARKUS RODUNER Labutis, V. 1998: Lietuvių kalbos sintaksė. Antrasis pataisytas leidimas, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla. Lafitte, P. 1978: Grammaire basque (Navarro-labourdin littéraire), Donostia: ELKAR. Nau, N. 1998: Latvian, München–Newcastle: LINCOM Europa. Paulauskienė, A. 1989: Gramatinės lietuvių kalbos vardažodžių kategorijos, Vilnius: Mokslas. Rathert, M. 2000: A semantics for durative adverbs. web.uni-frankfurt.de/fb10/rathert/publikationen/downloads/Proc-Band-Artikel/console-pr-mB.pdf Sokols, E., red., 1962: Mūsdienu latviešu literārās valodas gramatika 2. Sintakse, Rīga: LPSR Zinātņu akadēmijas izdevniecība. Šukys, J. 1998: Lietuvių kalbos linksniai ir prielinksniai: vartosena ir normos, Kaunas: Šviesa. Timberlake, A. 1974: The nominative object in Slavic, Baltic, and West Finnic, München: Sagner. (Slavistische Beiträge, 82.) Ul vydas, K. 1969: Vienaskaitos vardininko kilmės prieveiksmiai. Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 9, 7–15. Ul vydas, K., red., 1976: Lietuvių kalbos gramatika 3. Sintaksė, Vilnius: Mokslas. Valeckienė, A. 1998: Funkcinė lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. Valiulytė, E. 1998: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos sintaksiniai sinonimai. Vietos, laiko ir priežasties raiška, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. Markus Roduner Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, 10308 Vilnius, Lietuva markus@spl ius.lt Gauta 2005 06 01