The independent partitive genitive in Lithuanian
The aim of the paper is to give a semantic description of the independent or bare partitive genitive (IPG) in Lithuanian in rather neutral, functional terms. The IPG is a multi-faceted category that bears on the domains of quantification and (in)definiteness. On its quantificational reading, the IPG encodes an implicit quantifier, arbitrary in its value. I have used the notion of (un)boundedness (re-)introduced in Paul Kiparsky’s (1998) seminal paper on the partitive case in Finnish. NP-internally, the IPG has two main readings: unbounded and bounded reading. The first reading provides the concept of the participant rather than ‘zooming in’ on particular instantiations. It is extremely weak referentially, probably the weakest option available in Lithuanian. This reading is restricted to those verbs in Lithuanian that allow their arguments to be kind-referring NPs (e.g., the subject of the existential to be, or object of to know). On the bounded reading, in turn, the IPG encodes an undetermined but delimited set, the reading is existential and resembles indefinite plurals. The individuals introduced by this reading are stored in the discourse model and may be picked up by anaphoric pronouns in the following discourse. They never constitute primary or foregrounded information of the message, though. Furthermore, I have claimed that the incremental-theme verbs and verbs of transfer in East Lithuanian interact with the IPG-marked object with respect to their aspectual properties. Here only the bounded reading of the IPG is available. This explains the ban on the occurrence of IPG in imperfective contexts in Lithuanian (such as progressive, which has no grammatical marking in Lithuanian, generic and iterated atelics) with incremental-theme verbs, because the imperfective interpretation induces an inherently unbounded event which is not compatible with the bounded reading of the IPG. Both bounded and unbounded values are assumed to be originally two different readings of the same implicit quantifier that have, however, acquired different distributions in the course of time.
References
Aissen, Judith
2003 Differential Object marking: Iconicity vs. Economy.
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
21: 435–448.


Ambrazas, Vytautas
(ed)
2006
Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika
.
A Grammar of Modern Lithuanian
. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.

Arkadiev, Peter
2011 Aspect and Actionality in Lithuanian on a typological background. In
Langues baltiques, langues slaves
,
Daniel Petit,
Claire Le Feuvre &
Henri Menantaud (eds), 61–92. Paris: CNRS Editions.

Babby, Leonard H.
2001 The genitive of negation: a unified analysis. In
Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Bloomington Meeting 2000
[Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 9],
Steven Franks,
Tracy Holloway King &
Michael Yadroff (eds), 39–55. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Bertinetto, Pier Marco
1997
Il dominio tempo-aspettuale: Demarcazioni, intersezioni, contrasti
. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Blake, Barry J.
1994
Case
. Second Edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Borer, Hagit
2005 Some notes on the syntax of quantity. In
Aspectual Inquiries
[Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 62],
Paula Kempchinsky &
Roumyana Slabakova (eds), 41–68. Dordrecht: Springer.


Borschev, Vladimir, Elena V. Paducheva, Barbara H. Partee, Yakov G. Testelets & Igor Yanovich
2008 Russian genitives, non-referentiality, and the property-type hypothesis. In
Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Stony Brook meeting
[Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 16),
Andrei Antonenko,
John F. Bailyn &
Christina Y. Bethin (eds), 48–67. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publishers.

Bossong, Georg
1998 Le marquage différentiel de l’objet dans les langues d’Europe. In
Actance et Valence dans les Language de l’Europe
,
Jack Feuillet (ed), 193–258. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gryuter.

Carlson, Greg N.
1977 A unified analysis of the English bare plural.
Linguistics and Philosophy
1, 413–457.


Champollion, Lucas
2010
Parts of a whole: Distributivity as a bridge between aspect and measurement
. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Comrie, Bernard
1978 Ergativity. In
Syntactic Typology: Studies in the Phenomenology of Language
,
Winfred Lehmann (ed), 329–394. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Corbett, Greville
1994 Systems of grammatical number in Slavonic.
Slavonic and East European Review
72(2), 201–217.
A revised version of: Systems of grammatical number in Slavonic. In
Studies in Number and Quantification
,
David Gil (ed), European Science Foundation Programme in Language Typology: Theme 7, Noun Phrase Structure: Working Paper no. VII/19.

Corbett, Greville
2000
Number
[Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics]. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.


Cruse, Alan
2000
Meaning in Language. An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dahl, Östen
1981 On the definition of the telic-atelic (bounded-unbounded) distinction. In
Syntax and Semantics
, vol. 14:
Tense and Aspect
,
Philip J. Tedeschi &
Annie Zaenen (ed), 79–90. New York: Academic Press.

Dahl, Östen
1984 Perfectivity in Slavonic and other languages. In
Aspect Bound. A Voyage Into the Realm of Germanic, Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Aspectology
,
Casper de Groot &
Hannu Tommola (eds), 3–22. Dordrecht/Cinnaminson: Foris Publications.


Declerck, Renaat
1989 Boundedness and the Structure of Situations.
Leuvense Bijdragen
78, 275–308.

Declerck, Renaat
1991
A Comprehensive Descriptive Grammar of English
. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

Depraetere, Ilse
1995 On the necessity of distinguishing between (un)boundedness and (a)telicity.
Linguistics and Philosophy
18(1), 1–19.


Doetjes, Jenny S.
1997 Quantifiers and Selection. On the distribution of quantifying expressions in French, Dutch and English. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics. (
[URL])
Dowty, David
1991 Thematic Proto-Roles and Argument Selection,
Language
67, 547–619.


Endzelīns, Jānis
1951
Latviešu valodas gramatika
[Grammar of the Latvian Language]. Riga: Latvijas valsts izdevniecība.

Filip, Hana
1989 Aspectual Properties of the AN-Construction in German. In:
Tempus — Aspekt — Modus. Die lexikalischen und grammatischen Formen in den germanischen Sprachen
[Tense — Aspect — Mood. Lexical and Grammatical Forms in the Germanic Languages] [Linguistische Arbeiten 237],
Werner Abraham &
Theo Janssen (eds), 259–292. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

Franks, Steven & James E. Lavine
2006 Case and word order in Lithuanian.
Journal of Linguistics
42(1), 239–288.


Givón, Talmy
1979
On Understanding Grammar
. New York: Academic Press.

Holvoet, Axel
1991
Transitivity and Clause Structure in Polish
. Warsaw: Slawistyczny Ośrodek Wydawniczy.

de Hoop, Helen
2003 Partitivity. In
The Second Glot International State-of-the-Article Book
,
Lisa Cheng &
Rint Sybesma (eds), Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.


Huumo, Tuomas
2010 Nominal aspect, quantity, and time: The case of the Finnish object,
Journal of Linguistics
46, 83–125.


Jablonskis, Jonas
1957
Rinktiniai raštai
. I tomas. Vilnius: Valstybinė grožinės literatūros leidykla.

Kagan, Olga
2005 Genitive case: A modal account. In
Proceedings of Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics
2,
Yehuda Falk (ed).

Kagan, Olga
2012
Semantics of Genitive Objects in Russian. A Study of Genitive of Negation and Intensional Genitive Case
. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/New York/London: Springer.

Keenan, Edward L. & Denis Paperno
2012 Overview. In
Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language
,
Edward L. Keenan &
Denis Paperno (eds), 941–950. Dordrecht: Springer.


Kiparsky, Paul
1998 Partitive case and aspect. In
The projection of arguments. Lexical and compositional factors,
Miriam Butt &
Wilhelm Geuder (eds), 265–307. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Kittilä, Seppo, Jussi Ylikoski & Katja Västi
Krifka, Manfred
1989
Nominalreferenz und Zeitkonstitution. Zur Semantik von Massentermen, Pluraltermen und Aspektklassen
. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.

Krasovitsky, Alexander, Matthew Baerman, Dunstan Brown & Greville G. Corbett
2011 Changing semantic factors in case selection: Russian evidence from the last two centuries.
Morphology
21, 573–592.


Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria & Bernhard Wälchli
Kuryłowicz, Jerzy
1971 Słowiański genetivus po negacij. In:
Sesja naukowa międzynarodowej komisji budowy gramatycznej języków słowiańskich
,
Stanisław Urbańczyk (ed.), 11–14. Wrocław: Ossolineum.

Lestrade, Sander & Helena de Hoop
2011 On case and tense: the role of grounding in differential case marking. Unpublished manuscript, Radboud University Nijmegen.

Löbner, Sebastian
1985 Natürlichsprachliche Quantoren – Zur Verallgemeinerung des Begriffs der Quantifikation.
Studium Linguistik
17/18, 79–113.

Lyons, Christopher
1999 Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Markova, Nina
1988 Roditel’nyj padež prjamogo objekta v russkom fol’klore Karelii [Direct object genitive in the Russian folklore of Karelia].
Jazyk russkogo fol’klora
[The Language of Russian Folklore],
E B Artemenko (ed), 96–104. Petrozavodsk: Petrozavodskij gosudarstvennyj universitet.

McNally, Louise
1998 Existential sentences without existential quantification,
Linguistics and Philosophy
21, 353–392.


Mehlig, Hans Robert
2006 Glagol’nyj vid i vtoričnaja gomogenizacija oboznačajemoj situacii: K upotrebleniju delimitativnogo sposoba dejstvija v russkom jazyke [Verbal aspect and secondary homogenization of the situation: On the use of the delimitative aktionsart in Russian]. In
Semantika i Struktura slavjanskogo vida
4 [Semantics and Structure of Slavic Aspect 4],
Volkmar Lehmann (ed), 235–276. München: Sagner.

Neidle, Carol
1988
The Role of Case in Russian Syntax
. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.


Paducheva
1997:
Padučeva, Elena V. 1997
Roditel’nyj sub”ekta v otricatel’nom predloženii: sintaksis ili semantika? [Subject Genitive of Subject in a negated sentence: syntax or semantics?].
Voprosy Jazykoznanija
2, 101–116.

Paducheva, Elena V.
1998 On non-compatibility of Partitive and Imperfective in Russian.
Theoretical Linguistics
24(1), 73–82.


Paducheva
2005:
Padučeva, Elena V. 2005
Ešče raz o genitive sub”ekta pri otricanii [Once again about the subject genitive with negation].
Voprosy Jazykoznanija
5, 84–99.

Partee, Barbara H.
1986 Noun phrase interpretation and type shifting principles. In
Studies in discourse representation theory and the theory of generalised quantifiers
,
Jeroen Groenendijk,
Dick de Jongh &
Martin Stokhof (eds.), 115–143. Dordrecht: Foris.

Partee, Barbara H.
1995 Quantificational Structures and Compositionality. In
Quantification in Natural Languages
,
Emmon Bach,
Eloise Jelinek,
Angelika Kratzer &
Barbara H. Partee (eds), 541–601. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pulishers.

Partee, Barbara H. & Vladimir Borschev
2002 Genitive of negation and scope of negation in Russian existential sentences. In:
Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: the Second Ann Arbor Meeting 2001
[
Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 10
],
Jindrich Toman (ed), 181–200. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Partee, Barbara H. & Vladimir Borschev
2004 The semantics of Russian genitive of negation: The nature and role of perspectival structure. In:
Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory
14,
Robert B. Young (ed), 212–234. Ithaca NY: CLC Publications.

Paykin, Katia
Forthcoming.
Russian Partitives and Verbal Aspect. In
Partitivity
,
Silvia Luraghi &
Tuomas Huumo (eds). Berlin: De Gruyter.

Pesetsky, David M.
1982 Paths and categories. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge.

Quine, Willard van Orman
1960
Word and Object
. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Rachilina, Ekaterina V.
(ed)
2008
Ob”ektnyj genitiv pri otricanii v russkom jazyke
. Moscow: Probel.

Sasse, Hans-Jürgen
2002 Recent activity in the theory of aspect: Accomplishments, achievements, or just non-progressive state?
Linguistic Typology
6, 199–271.


Seržant, Ilja A.
2012a Morphosyntactic properties of the partitive genitive in the subject position in Ancient Greek.
Indogermanische Forschungen
117, 187–204.


Seržant, Ilja A.
2012b
Pragmatics and Semantics of the bare Partitive Genitive in Ancient Greek
. Sprachtypologie und
Universalienforschung
65(2), 113–136.

Seržant, Ilja A.
Forthcoming-a.
Independent partitive genitive in Russian and North Russian. To appear in
Contemporary approaches to dialectology: The area of North, Northwest Russian and Belarusian vernaculars
[Slavica Bergensia 13],
Ilja A. Seržant &
Björn Wiemer (eds). Bergen: University of Bergen.
Seržant, Ilja A.
Forthcoming-b.
Independent partitive as a Circum-Baltic isogloss
.
Forthcoming paper
.

Smith, Carlotta
1997
The Parameter of Aspect
. 2nd edition. Dordrecht: Kluwer.


Tatevosov, Sergei & Mikhail Ivanov
Tenny, Carol
1994
Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface
. Dordrecht: Kluwer.


Timberlake, Alan
2004
A Reference Grammar of Russian
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (
[URL])
Traugott, Elisabeth
2003 Constructions in Grammaticalization. In
The Handbook of Historical Linguistics
,
Brian Joseph &
Richard Janda (eds), 624–646. Malden Mass.: Blackwell.


Vendler, Zeno
1957[1967]
Linguistics in Philosophy
. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Verkuyl, Henk J.
1972
On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects
. Dordrecht: Reidel.


van Geenhoven, Veerle & Louise McNally
2005 On the property analysis of opaque complements,
Lingua
115(6), 885–914.


Zimmermann, Thomas Ede
1993 On the proper treatment of opacity in certain verbs.
Natural Language Semantics
1(2), 149–179.


Cited by
Cited by 10 other publications
Bruno, Jone
Holvoet, Axel & Nicole Nau
Kalnača, Andra & Ilze Lokmane
Kozhanov, Kirill
Luraghi, Silvia, Merlijn De Smit & Iván Igartua
2020.
Contact-induced change in the languages of Europe: The rise and development of partitive cases and determiners in Finnic and Basque.
Linguistics 58:3
► pp. 869 ff.

Seržant, Ilja A.
2021.
Typology of partitives.
Linguistics 59:4
► pp. 881 ff.

Seržant, Ilja A., Katarzyna Maria Janic, Darja Dermaku & Oneg Ben Dror
Wiemer, Björn & Vaiva Žeimantienė
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.