Impersonal constructions with personal reference. Referents of deleted actors in Baltic and Estonian

Link to:
Collection:
Mokslo publikacijos / Scientific publications
Document Type:
Straipsnis / Article
Language:
Anglų kalba / English
Title:
Impersonal constructions with personal reference. Referents of deleted actors in Baltic and Estonian
Authors:
In the Journal:
Baltic linguistics [BaltL]. 2020, 11, p. 129-213
Subject Category:
LT
Baltų kalbos / Baltic languages; Finų kalbos / Finnish languages; Kalbų tipologija / Language typology; Semantika / Semantics; Leksika. Kalbos žodynas / Lexicon.
Summary / Abstract:

ENThis paper explores referential features of deleted actors in impersonal passive and impersonal constructions in three languages: Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian. Though cross-linguistically passive or impersonal verb forms of intransitive verbs are generally associated with indefinite human agency, our study shows that this correlation is not absolute: in the investigated languages passives and impersonals of intransitives, apart from generic and indefinite actors, may also imply contextually given, definite actors, and for some constructions, e.g. Estonian impersonals with the auxiliary saama ‘get’, this is actually their main use. Data for our study comes from large comparable corpora of web resources. In a small quantitative study we determine the factors that condition a personal use of an impersonal verb form in the three languages. The most important factors are verbal lexeme (certain lexemes show a greater preference for certain types of covert actors), as well as construction type: of two formally distinct impersonal (passive) constructions, one is preferred in non-impersonal functions where the covert actor is a contextually given person. Keywords: voice-related impersonal constructions, impersonal, passive, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, covert actors, cumulative construction, experiential perfect. [From the publication]

DOI:
10.32798/bl.700
ISSN:
2081-7533
Subject:
Kalbotyra / Linguistics
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2023-07-12 14:00:47
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