The Status of Lithuanian Compound Past Tenses and Their Equivalents
The Status of Lithuanian Compound Past Tenses and Their Equivalents

Summary/Abstract: The paper covers quite a controversial subject in Lithuanian linguistics, i.e. Lithuanian compound past tenses (which are also referred to as analytic tenses or analytic predicates). The status of Lithuanian analytic predicate and its relation to finite verb forms was widely discussed in the second half of the 20th century. Therefore, it can be stated that there are three solutions proposed in Lithuanian linguistics: grammars include analytic tenses into the general paradigm of tenses, the authors of the reviews of the grammars claim that those are free phrases. The third opinion states that analytic forms are in a medium position between simple tenses and compound predicates and are adjacent to simple predicates. However, if two words possess the same meaning as one word and perform the same syntactical function, they are to correlate as different forms of expression of the same phenomenon. Thus, the paper provides the analysis of Lithuanian compound inceptive tenses and evaluates the meanings of them with respect to tense and modality. The analysis also covers compound forms with present tense passive and past tense active and passive participles. The grammaticalization of predicative compound constructions is a subject matter as well. The contrastive analysis of Lithuanian and English provides the research with more reliable data.

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