Mažmožiai 2–3

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA L (2004), 135–138 NOTES Remarks TRIFLE 2 Rolandas Mikulskas (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 48, 87) links the adverb v’įršū·n recorded in Samogitia (KrŠ) with the inessive case viršūn in the dialects of the eastern Highlanders (today, people mostly say v’įr.šū· ~ viršūo, āpsukū· ~ apsukuo, v’el.tu· ~ veltuo and many others). This is highly doubtful (cf. the forms used there (KrŠ) and elsewhere: pàškūn., pàškuna·, šàl’īn., ž’ė.m’ie ~ žėmė(n): m’ėšk ž’ė.m’ie | n’ėkūnck, etc.). Here, that long vowel u· would seem to point to a different conclusion. The occurrence of this sonorant n has long been discussed by dialectologists: Kazimieras Būga (Rinktiniai raštai 1, Vilnius, 1958, 397–398, 588; III 692–693), Zigmas Zinkevičius (Lietuvių dialektologija, Vilnius, 1966, 196–198; it is a pity that only transposed forms are given), Vladas Grinaveckis (Žemaičių tarmės istorija, Vilnius, 1973, 332–334), and the author of these lines (“Kelios pastabos dėl formų šų, sesų”, Baltistica 2 (2), 1966, 205–207; Lietuvių kalbos tarmių morfoneminiai reiškiniai, Vilnius, 2001, 167–169). In the paradigm, forms with u· are quite widespread in southern Samogitia: šū·n ~ šuōn (= dog), rūdū·n ~ rudūon (= autumn), vā·kā·n ~ vaikāon (= child), vāik’ū·n ~ vaikūon (= child, boy), pavā·sar’ū·n (and pavā·ser’ū·n PVN) ~ pavāseriuon (pavaseriuo), bū·ndže ~ būonže (= birch), jū·nc ~ jūns (= you), v’ēltū·n ~ vēltuon (= in vain) VARN, UŽv, PVN, etc.; likewise, v’įr.šū·n must have acquired that non-etymological n from the -u· (<-uo) that arose in the ending. The entire history of these words supports this: especially the paradigms in which u· is always followed by n (cf. author, Baltistica 2 (2), 205–206), and it is hardly likely that the sonorant would have attached itself after the diphthongoid u·⁴, just as it has not attached itself after -ou < -uo in northern Samogitian, nor anywhere after -o· < -uo in western Samogitian). Vytautas Vitkauskas Lithuanian Language Institute P. Vileišio g. 5, 10308 Vilnius, Lithuania Received 2004 04 07 A MINOR POINT 3 The sonorant r may be hard or soft; in Lithuanian dialects it sometimes varies. Here are the cases: a. some of the southern Aukštaitian dialects have no r’ at all; before front vowels, some Vilnius and Utena Aukštaitians pronounce it hard (Z. Zinkevičius, Lietuvių dialektologija, Vilnius, 1966, 153–156; Lietuvių kalbos atlasas II, map 87); 136 | PASTABOS b. in some places it is pronounced hard before the reduced diphthong -ai: rai.kštė ‘raikštė’ Drsk, Rtn, krau.šis ‘kriaušius’ Kb, Vrn, krai.vas ‘kreivas’ Drsk, etc.; c. in the sequence *rj > *ri > r: brau.na ‘briauna’ Užv, Krš, Krtv, krau.š’is (standard-language kriaušis) Krš, Rdn, Tl, Eig, kruokt’ė ‘verkti’ (standard-language kriokti) Tl, Rdn, Varn, Šv, Rt, rä.uš’es ‘riaušės’ Šv, Grdm, etc. Loanwords conform to these patterns: krū’ks (Aukštaitian krūkas), šrūps (Northern Samogitian and Aukštaitian š’r’ūps | š’r’ūbas), krau.č’ūs ‘kriaučius, tailor’, krū’k’is ‘kriukis, crutch’ Krš, Krtv, Šauk, krū.k’is ‘ditto’ Rdn, Trš, Tl, etc. The entire area in Samogitian where *rjau, *rja, *rjo, *rju, *rjū developed into rau, ro, ru, rū is well known; there is no hardening of r before front vowels there (cf. author, Lietuvių kalbos tarmių morfoneminiai reiškiniai, Vilnius, 2001, 158–161). The compilers of the LKAII phonetics volume had not planned to investigate this phenomenon; the transcription of dialect data had not been standardized, and therefore many uncertainties had already been raised earlier, yet confusion persists even now. For example, the word sukrokė in LKŽXIX 626 (dialectal sùkruok’į Krš) is corrected to sukriokė (R. Mikulskas, Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 48, 87), while krū’kas in Klvr is assigned to kriūko1, although there, too, there can be no hardening of r (unless something extraordinary were involved). Thus the problem of *rj + a, a˙, u, u˙ is still linked to the hardening and softening of r, although it concerns the loss of old *i and the analogy that subsequently arose (when only rau, ro˙, ru, ru˙ or r’au, r’o, r’u, r’u˙ would be generalized in the dialects). In every case, one must examine the structure and system of the dialects closely. Vytautas Vitkauskas, Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 5 P. Vileišio St., 10308 Vilnius, Lithuania Received 2004 04 07 CAN AN EMPTY SPACE MEAN ANYTHING? In Professor Vladas Žulys’s article “On the Alleged Zero Copula” (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 48, 177–184), he takes issue with Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika (Vilnius, 1994), which treats sentences such as Oras gražus as having a zero copula. The article’s author considers the term zero copula (and zero forms in general) defective. That opinion deserves respect. I would only like to say a few things about the arguments used to support it. The first of these is the statement attributed to Immanuel Kant: Nothing has properties. The author adds: Nothing grows hair. If a class is empty, it has no members, and only members can have properties. Therefore, the statement is supposedly logically contradictory: Although there is no copula (nothing), it nevertheless has the meaning of the present tense of the indicative mood (a property) (p. 178). Accepting the rules of the game proposed by the article’s author—that appeals to authorities be left to theology—I shall mention none of the many works written about zero forms. The cited logical propositions are true, but they do not at all contradict the conception of zero presented in the Grammar. A linguistic zero is not some nonexistent empirical object or element equivalent to nothing. The term denotes the absence of a formal marker of a member of a grammatical paradigm, which, owing to the 1 Mikulskas avoided, for convenience, explaining the variants krūko, kruko, kriūko, as well as the alternations vašas (not even the impossible ašas), ą˙nčas, ūnčas, vō˙ṙšos, lō˙rsas (see R. Mikulskas, Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 46, 85).