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The Lithuanian language, where derivation is one of the most common sources of new words and the major part of the vocabulary are derivatives, uses not only the place name Lietuva, but there are other related words that have different semantic and derivational relations. The object of the present article, dedicated to the centenary of the restoration of the Lithuanian state, is the derivatives with the stem lietuv- found in Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽe), supplement files of Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽPK), Data Directory of Neologisms (ND), and Corpus of the Current Lithuanian Language (DLKT). The analysis of 102 derivatives with the stem lietuv- (58 nouns, 17 adjectives, 20 verbs, 7 adverbs), the relations between them, and their usage particularities allowed to draw the following conclusions: 1. 9 words were derived from the place name Lietuva, 35 words were derived from lietuvis, which in turn were the basis for other derivatives of the further stages. The family mostly consists of derivatives of several stages: 1st degree derivatives (9), 2nd degree derivatives (39), 3rd (36) and 4th (18) degree derivatives. According to the part of speech the nouns are dominant: 34 suffix derivatives, 16 compounds, 4 prefix derivatives, 2 inflexional derivatives, and 2 derivatives of not settled system of derivation stages. 2. The data of Corpus of the Current Lithuanian Language (DLKT) revealed that some derivatives are part of the Lithuanian active vocabulary, are common and are quite frequently used, while others belong to the periphery of the vocabulary as they are known only from writings or are newly created (the usage examples of 28 derivatives were not found in the corpus). 3. The Lithuanian language not only uses derivatives incorporated in dictionaries but allows creating neologisms as well: 25 derivatives not incorporated in dictionaries were found in Data Directory of Neologisms and Corpus of the Current Lithuanian Language (DLKT). The meanings of all neologisms are easily understood from the context. Some derivatives incorporated in dictionaries have acquired new meanings. 4. Some new derivatives could be incorporated in dictionaries: Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽe) could include the compound mažalietuvis, -ė, and the adjective lietuviakalbis, -ė could be included in Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language. 5. Some derivatives with the stem lietuv- are related in terms of variation or synonymy: in total, 7 rows of derivational variants and 6 rows of derivational synonyms were formed and discussed. Sometimes the derivatives of different derivation degree are synonymous. The members of some rows of synonyms have a high degree of synonymity and substitution possibilities, but more often even semantically close derivatives have stylistic differences and / or the use frequency of derivatives varies.
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The language technologies that are seeing rapid development all over the world are grounded on digital language resources: various dictionaries, databases, corpuses, and similar compilations of structured and scientifically described language data. The digital resources of the Lithuanian language are also undergoing an increasing degree of integration in general databases (see http://lkiis.lki.lt, https://www.raštija.lt) and preparation for the digital global market of languages. These resources are used for the development of digital tools and services (such as online search engines, machine translation tools, semantic wordnets, and finally, artificial intelligence). The article offers an introduction into a digital compilation of neological data – the online Database of Lithuanian Neologisms that has been under development by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language since 2011 and is now subject to ongoing updates (ND, http://naujazodziai.lki.lt). Designed to capture Lithuanian neologisms of the early 21st century, it mirrors the changes in the vocabulary of the Lithuanian language and its semantic, morphemic, formational structure. As of late 2018, the ND contains nearly 5,000 neologisms and about 19,000 usage examples. The purpose of the article is to describe the possibilities of trolling for data to be included in the ND and the directions in which they could expand, based on the semantic, structural, and functional attributes of the modern-day Lithuanian language. The first segment deals with the term neologism that has been adopted in the ND, the principles of presenting the data, and the problems with neologism descriptions. It shows that the database can benefit both neological researchers and language users. The second segment examines the development of the ND search engine based on the above requirements. Neologisms in the ND are described following principles that resemble those of the established practice of foreign neologism dictionaries. The information on each neologism in the ND is presented in two blocks: (1) general information on the neologism (a heading, its accentuation; neologism classification based on the characteristics of its form; grammatical attributes; variations of form; neologism origin, original form; formational properties of neologisms; kindred words); (2) the meaning(s) and usage of the neologism (neologism definition; the relationship between the neologism and the norm of the standard language; thematic fields of usage; functional and expressive shades; other variations; semantic ties with other neologisms in the ND; usage examples and dated sources and authors thereof). The ND search engine is being developed on the basis of the above attributes of neologisms, considering the requirements of neological researchers and users of the language (for instance, the ND has a broad application in the process of teaching the Lithuanian language at schools of general and tertiary education). The structuring and initial studies of neologisms reveal their properties that drive wider investigation of the new vocabulary and development of new models to describe them.
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For the purposes of identifying the productivity of the types of formation of neologisms that fall into the formational category of names of characteristics (nominal abstractions), the article focuses on the ongoing Database of Lithuanian Neologisms (DN), which registers new linguistic units (words, word formations, and abbreviations) that emerged at the turn of the century and have found common usage. The DN material has been analysed from a formational perspective and compared to the descriptions available in Lithuanian grammars of the second half of the 20th century (the Grammar of the Lithuanian Language (GLL) and the Grammar of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (GCLL)), where names of characteristics are grouped by the formational ability of formational affixes. There were 142 derivatives of formational suffixes found in the DN. Analysis of the names of characteristics recorded in the DN has revealed that the suffix -umas, which was considered the most formational in the grammars (30 lexemes), surrenders its position to the suffixes -ystė (47 lexemes) and -izmas (41 lexemes). The international suffix -izmas is highly productive in the Lithuanian language, even though the GLL and the GCLL strongly concur on it not being formational. It is the analysis of derivatives of this suffix that has pointed to some changes in the formational foundation, with reliance on a more variegated foundation that has been left out of the traditional grammars, that is the syntagma, the word formation, and the abbreviation. By contrast, the productivity of the suffix -ybė, which is considered as highly formational both in the GLL and the GCLL, has somewhat diminished (17 lexemes). The database also contains records of 4 non-productive suffixes (-ovė, -ulys, -yba, -ūra) and one regenerate affix, -esys, which the GLL considers a rare suffix of nominal abstractions that is only typical of dialects. Over the period covered by the study, 9 suffixes (-enybė, -uma, -atvė, -atis, -astis, -ata, -(i)ava, -umė, -ra) were not found in the DN at all. Of course, compiled manually, the DN material does not offer a completely objective and detailed view of neologism formation, yet the limited study has shown that so far it is the only effective and systemic database for new linguistic units in Lithuania.
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The article deals with the meanings of the noun flower and their definitions in the dictionaries of the Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, and English languages. The study has revealed that Lithuanian dictionaries only provide one meaning of the word flower. Latvian, Russian, and English dictionaries identify more meanings of the same word. Nearly all of the dictionaries covered usually combine the traditional definitions of the meanings of flower and their cognitive counterparts. The most common cognitive attributes mentioned are: the brightness of a flower (e.g., ‘usually bright in colour’), its smell (e.g., ‘normally nice-smelling’), and purpose (e.g., ‘a plant cultivated for its (lovely) blossoms’, ‘used as a gift’). Having analysed the definitions of the meanings of the word flower in the Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, and English dictionaries, we have to admit that the dictionaries of the Lithuanian language should contain more meanings of this word. Illustrative examples from the latter dictionaries show that there are two meanings of the word flower: a ‘flower as a plant’ and a ‘picked flower’. It is probable that the Lithuanian language has a third meaning of the word flower, which is a ‘flower as a blossom’. Yet this presumption needs to be verified with data from corpuses and surveys. The dictionaries of the Lithuanian language should provide more detailed definitions of the word flower, in greater reliance on the cognitive strategy of the definition of a meaning by accentuating the chromatic distinction of the flower, its smell, stating its purpose, possibly lifetime, and so on. These are the things to consider in writing a lexicographic article on flower for the Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language (Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas).
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The article addresses the issue of whether the lexeme khaki is unambiguous in written Lithuanian, and of how deeply it is rooted in the language. The names of the colour are dissected from a syntactic-semantic standpoint, in reliance on material from the Corpus of the Modern Lithuanian Language (CMLL) by the Centre of Computational Linguistics at Vytautas Magnus University. Analysis of the CMLL cases and their comparison with potential synonyms has revealed that this adjective can have the meanings of ‘(light) (greyish) brownish green (colour)’, ‘(light) greyish and/or greenish and/or yellowish brown (colour)’, and ‘(light) brownish or greenish yellow (colour)’. In general and with reference to the prototype green resp. brown, we can talk about transitional khaki shades of grass and earth. Based on the analogy of the colour of sand, the khaki of earth with its broader sense is distinguished from the khaki of grass, which usually correlates with the colour of the military uniform. The colour khaki is verbally expressed using its simple and/or complex lexeme. In modern Lithuanian, the names of this colour can be used both in variation and in opposition. This has to do with the type of the construction (attributive vs. predicative) and/or semantic combinability (natural objects vs. man-made artefacts). Semantically, khaki can be vague. The complex lexeme of the colour is rather more definite and transparent. The study has showed that the loanword khaki is taking its first steps towards solidifying its place in the Lithuanian language.
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We describe participle treatment from the very Proto-Indo-European language grammar, when it was referred to as an adjective, further describing antique times during which a participle was treated as an independent part of speech, also discussing 20th century grammars stating that a participle is a verb form, finally noticing 21st century trend which we see very clearly in educational literature as well as websites aimed at the wide public to give the status of an independent part of speech back to a participle. The view of a participle in other languages such as German, English, and Russian is also discussed. We further provide arguments as to why a participle is referred to as an independent part of speech by showing flaws in the academic grammar statements basing the reason for a participle to be a verb form. According to one of the grammars, the reason behind this is that a participle is required to form complex verb tenses. However, a group of a few participles is enough: nominatives of present and past simple tenses. Any other forms there are incomparably more of are not used for building verb tenses, yet they are treated as verb forms. We noticed even more drawbacks when referring to participle as a verb form: there are inconsistencies found in the very verb definition: The “verb” is described as the part of speech listing only the morphological categories of a personalized verb. Logically, in this case, all of those categories should be listed including both the case and gender i. e. what participles have if they are verb forms. The statement that participles are assigned to verbs because of the voice and tense categories joining them with verbs and it is not convincing because non-personalized verbs do not have voice morphemes does not imply voice hence. That is why we cannot join participles with verb by something verb does not have.
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The Preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia declares: “Since ancient times, the identity of Latvia in the European cultural space has been shaped by Latvian and Liv traditions, Latvian folk wisdom, the Latvian language, universal human and Christian values.
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The research object of this article is the essays written during the Lithuanian language and Literature State matura examination in 2019. The aim of the research is to investigate the essays from the perspective of punctuation, identify the most common punctuation mistakes based on the applicable punctuation norms and present methodological recommendations concerning the teaching/learning of punctuation of various syntactical units in the comprehensive school. The quantitative study of the essays confirmed the insights provided by earlier studies concerning a strong tendency of deteriorating pupils’ punctuation skills. By their frequency the mistakes of punctuating the clauses in a complex sentence significantly exceed other mistakes. More troublesome cases include the punctuation of attributes, parentheses and explanatory parts of the sentence. Unmotivated punctuation, which is not based on the internal structure of the sentence, is also rather common in the language practice of pupils. The high number of such mistakes is determined by the poor skills of syntactical and punctuation analysis. Apparently, the overestimation of intonation as a punctuation criterion plays an important role in the occurrence of mistakes. The compulsory punctuation rules are mainly based on syntax. Therefore, it is very important to strengthen the skills and abilities of syntactical analysis. The source of mistakes is both the lack of and poor knowledge of the rules. It is important to make pupils aware that the variety of the variants of optional punctuation is only useful for those who are well versed in punctuation and understand which rules are elementary, compulsory and helping to grasp the thought and which only show its nuances and a different intonation.
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Veps language materials are represented in a number of linguistic atlases: they are occasionally found on maps in the ”Atlas Linguarum Europae”, were included in the 3-volume ”Atlas Linguarum Fennicarum”, and now the ”Linguistic Atlas of the Veps Language” is complete. Its materials allow for a deeper insight into the formation history of the Veps dialect map, which portrays the Balto-Finnic heritage, Veps innovations, language contacts with cognate and neighbour nationalities, first of all Karelians and North Russian groups. The paper deals with the nominations for the concepts ’in-house stove’ and ’sauna stove’. Relying on the dialectal material from linguistic maps the author contemplates on the original Veps names for elements of the stove, which Veps refer to as mät, hil’mät, lezi, as well as on the names for ’sauna stove’ (kivduk / küuduk, küudug), and draws conclusions about the words denoting the sauna itself (kül’bet’, küubet’, kil’bet’). Having analyzed the distribution and etymology of the vocabulary in this lexical sphere, the author questions that the Veps sauna is a late borrowing and urges ethnographers to reconsider the Veps sauna history in favor of its greater age, specific characteristics and functionality.
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The article analyses 716 Lithuanian plant genera names used in Povilas Matulionis’ glossary Žolynas. Dalys II. Lietuvos augalų žodynas ir augalų taislas (1906). Matulionis’ Žolynas is the first plant glossary published in Lithuania. Žolynas contains the names of the plants collected from writings and manuscripts with the abbreviation of the name of the author who wrote or created the name of a plant displayed next to. About 86 percent of names of all the genera of plants and mushrooms presented in Žolynas have such abbreviations. Most of the names included in the glossary are the plant names given by Jurgis Ambraziejus Pabrėža and Laurynas Ivinskis. Most of the plant genera names in Žolynas (42 percent of all genera names) are those of Pabrėža taken from his dictionary Botanika arba Taislius auguminis (BT) published in the USA in 1900, which contains a small part of his manuscript Taislius augyminis of 1843. Slightly more than half of Pabrėža’s plant genera names given in Žolynas are identical to the ones in BT, and the rest part of the names given in the dictionaries under analysis have differences. The analysis has shown that over 10 plant genera names presented in Žolynas with the abbreviation of Pabrėža were not included in any of his works under analysis, thus, these names are probably not taken from the writings of the said author. The number of plant genera names by Ivinskis included in Žolynas is twice less than the number of names by Pabrėža. Matulionis referred to Ivinski’s drawings of mushrooms as a source. However, the analysis shows that only eight mushroom genera names were taken from Ivinski’s surviving manuscripts of mushroom atlas Scaurus Agaricus rufo divaceus and included in Žolynas. Comparing the plant genera names given in Žolynas with the names presented in another Ivinski’s manuscript Prigimtūmenė, it is clear that Ivinski’s plant genera names used in the glossary were taken not from the mentioned manuscript. Most likely, Matulionis used other Ivinski’s manuscripts or secondary sources.
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Light verb constructions (LVCs) are verb-noun constructions in which the noun carries the semantic meaning and the verb is semantically reduced, when compared with its main meaning, for example, atlikti analizę (‘to perform an analysis’). LVCs in Lithuanian have not been addressed much so far. The analysis of Lithuanian LVCs was carried out as a part of the PARSEME project on verbal identification of multiword expressions (MWE). This paper aims at presenting some initial findings on the identification of LVCs in Lithuanian, based on the 1st edition of the PARSEME shared-task results (2017). We describe the identification process according to the semantic and syntactic features of LVCs (PARSEME guidelines 1.0 2017) and discuss the grammatical features of the identified Lithuanian LVCs. LVCs seem to be less frequent in Lithuanian than in other languages: they make up about 0.2% (215 instances) of the analysed 200,000 token corpus. Based on the number of different LVCs, there seem to be two groups of verbs functioning as light verbs: a relatively small group of common light verbs used in the most prototypical examples of Lithuanian LVCs (e.g., vykdyti ‘to perform’, atlikti ‘to perform’, daryti ‘to do’, and turėti ‘to have’) and a larger group of less common light verbs. Most of the nouns in analysed LVCs have suffixes -imas and -ymas, which are the most typical Lithuanian suffixes for deriving a noun from a verb. Almost 40% of all LVCs are used with 1–3 words intervening between a verb and a noun.
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The article presents new or revised etymologies for the words luga (Juncus), karsima ‘to cut off branches’, tera(s) ‘strip of leather for reinforcing stitching’, tiib ‘animals’ (birds, insects) flying organ’ and tõrkuma ‘to not obey, resist’.The vernacular word luga : lua ~ loa ~ luga, denoting herbs of the genus Juncus, is known in the South Estonian dialect area and in some adjacent dialects. This plant name has been adopted as the official Estonian word for the plant family Juncaceae and the genus Juncus: loalised and luga respectively. The word luga is not found in other Finnic languages, and has been regarded as of unknown etymological origin. I suggest a possible Baltic origin, comparing Estonian luga to Latvian luga, also ļuga ‘swampy floating mat in an overgrown lake’ and Lithuanian lū́gas, lū̃gas ‘low spot submerged by river; swampy river branch; pool of water; muddy pool, quaking bog; pond; deep spot in a river’, liūgas ‘small marsh, morass’, liugė́ti (liùga, liugė́jo) ‘to sway, waver’. The comparison is based on two facts: Juncus plants grow in humid and wet meadows, pastures, and on the banks of bodies of water; according to semantic typology, the name for the place where the plant grows may have begun to denote the plant itself. The presumptive loan base featured the vowel u-, not ū- (*luga- ~ *lugā), as Baltic ū > Finnic ū, but the phonetic structure of the loan base does not allow for further specification as to whether the word is an older Baltic or newer Latvian loan; however, considering the relatively small South Estonian usage area of luga, the newer Latvian loan hypothesis is more likely.The verb karsima ‘to cut off branches’, known in the Coastal and Islands dialects of Estonian, has equivalents in all Finnic languages except Livonian. It is an eventual Baltic loan: *skardī- > Old Proto-Finnic *karti- > Late Proto-Finnic karsi-, compare to Lithuanian skardу́ti (skar̃do, skar̃dė), skárdyti (skárdo, skárdė) ‘to kill, butcher (animals); to cut, sever; to tear apart, rend with teeth, rip, break (e.g. thunder breaking trees) etc’, Latvian skā̀rdît ‘to break into small pieces, stamp, pound, pulverize’. Jorma Koivulehto has suggested a Germanic etymology for the verb karsia: Proto-Germanic *skarđian-, compare to Old Icelandic skerđa ‘to dent, damage, reduce’, Old English scierdan ‘to wound’, vüsks skerten ‘to tear apart, injure, cripple, reduce’. As with Baltic loans, the older stratum of Germanic loans also took part in the phonological change ti > si, as a result of which both etymologies are acceptable from a phonological point of view, where both the Baltic and Germanic loan base is related to the same Indo-European archetype: semantically, however, the Baltic verb is closer to the Finnic karsima.Finnic terä represents many homonymous stems of different origin: ‘cutting face of an edge tool; grain; strip of leather for reinforcing stitching etc’. I have previously shown that Finnish terä ‘sun/moon disc; corolla, petal; blossom’ as well as Estonian tera ‘(sun)ray’ and terendama ‘to reflect in the air, loom’ are old Baltic loans: < Baltic dialectal *stera- ‘ray, reflection, gleam, glow’. In the article I seek to demonstrate that this same Baltic dialectal loan base *stera- is also the source of North Estonian tera, teras, South Estonian teräs(s) etc ‘strip of leather for reinforcing stitching’. The word has been recorded in all Finnic languages except Livonian, e.g. dialectal Finnish teräs ‘strip of leather for reinforcing stitching; peripheral slat of door or window’, tere ‘strip of leather’; unplowed wedge of field land between furrows’, Karelian terä ‘width of fabric’ etc. Finnic etymological tradition links this word family to the native Finno-Ugric (more specifically Finnic-Volgaic) word terä ‘cutting face of an edge tool, grain’. However, a Baltic etymology is both phonologically appropriate and semantically more logical, drawing a connection to concepts related to the development of clothing. The eventual loan base is Baltic dialectal *stera-, compare to Latvian stara ‘zone, piece of land; rag, tatter; branch, twig’, (bikšu) stara ‘trouser leg’; compare to Slavic *ster-: Russian простерéть ‘to stretch forward, out’; Indo-European archetype: *ster- ‘band, line, ray’. In the Baltic languages, derivatives with a b are more common: Lithuanian sterblė̃, ster̃blė ‘skirt, front piece of woman’s skirt or jacket, bottom edge of a piece of clothing; katuseräästas’, Latvian starbele, starbeles ‘ridge (a strip of fabric or leather sewed on to a piece of clothing to serve as a hem), fringe, wide hem’, ster̃bele ‘coat hem, fringe, gird’; Indo-European archetype *ster-b- ‘to spread out, stretch out, strew, scatter about’.Coastal siib : siive, North Estonian tiib ~ tiiv : tiiva, tiivas : tiiba ~ tiiva, South Estonian siib ~ siiv : siiva ~ siivo, siivas : siiba ‘big pinion (of bird); lateral or protruding side of something (e.g. windmill, seine, plow; hem of a piece of clothing etc) has equivalents in all Finnic languages except Veps, e.g. Finnish siipi ‘bird’s wing, quill; linnutiib, tiivasulg; fish’s fin; side net of seine etc’, Karelian šiibi id. The Finnic equivalents of this word derive from the same Baltic loan base as Estonian teivas, Finnish seiväs etc, but as a separate borrowing: Late Proto-Finnic *sīpa- ~ *tīpa- << Old Proto-Finnic *sejpa- ~ *tejpa- < Baltic *steiba-, compare to Lithuanian stíebas ‘spar, buttress, pillar; stick, pole; stalk, reed, stub; quill’; Indo-European archetype *steib(h)- ~ *stēib(h)-, *steip- ~ *stēip- ‘rod, bar, cudgel; stiff(ened); to compress, tighten’. The semantic line of Estonian tiib etc ‘animals’ (birds, insects) flying organ’ is vividly represented in the loan base: Lithuanian plunksnos stiebas: iš žąsies stíebo pasidarė plunksną i rašė ‘quill: one made a pen from a quill and wrote’. Analogous substitution is assumed in the cases of Baltic loans such as Estonian liig, Finnish liika, Estonian riit, Finnish riitta, Estonian and Finnish tiine, Estonian kiitma, Finnish kiittää. Presumably, the loan base was a neutrum noun, one of the forms of which served as the origin of the Finnic loan (compare to Russian neutrum nouns крыло́ ‘(bird’s) wing’, перо́ ‘feather, pen; fish’s fin’. In Finnic languages, especially in Estonian, the alternation of stems ending in as- ~ äs- and a- ~ ä-is widespread, including in Baltic loans (e.g. Finnish ankerias ~ ankeria, apilas ~ apila, Estonian jääras ~ jäär; Estonian tiib ~ tiivas and siiv ~ siivas are also products of this secondary development. The semantic development of Estonian tiib and related forms progressed as follows: ‘bird’s wing or tail feather’ → ‘bird’s wing (as well as the flight/movement organ of other animals)’ → ‘a lateral part of an object that resembles a bird’s wing’. In the Northern Finnic languages (Finnish, Ludic), the original meaning of this Baltic loan comes forward, ‘bird’s wing or tail feather’.Estonian tõrkuma ‘to not obey, resist, hold back, refuse; to err, go astray; (South Estonian) to tremble, shudder’, is an eventual Baltic loan, with a plausible etymological equivalent in Courland Livonian te̮r̄gə̑b ‘(he/she) berates/scolds’: *terk(k)V- < Baltic *derk- (~ *derg-), compare to Lithuanian dérgti (dérgia, dérgė) = der̃kti (der̃kia, der̃kė) ‘to curse, slander, defile, vilify; to ruin, damage, to work poorly, fecklessly; to behave nastily, to be mischievious; to live immorally, licentiously; to hit, strike etc’, dergùs ‘ugly, repulsive, disgusting’, Old Prussian dergē ‘(they) hate’, dergēuns ‘intolerable; hated, despised’, Latvian der̂gtiês ‘disgusting, unpleasant, repellent, to sicken/disgust’, Indo-European archetype *dergh- ‘to tear, break, tug, haul; to hurt’. The expected Finnic substitute of Baltic*-rk- is *-rk- (> Estonian-Livonian -rg-; Courland Livonian te̮r̄gə̑b is an example of this substitution), but the alternative substitution *-rkk- (> Estonian -rk-) cannot be ruled out, or it is the result of a separate development: tõrkuma : tõrgun has conformed to the pattern of -uma verbs (featuring consonant gradation) expressing frequentativity. The verbal nouns tõrk and tõrge ‘machine failure etc; inhibition of ability to function, reluctance to do something’, as well as some dialectal forms, derive from tõrkuma. Previously, hesitant and contradictory opinions have been expressed about this Estonian word family. The Baltic etymology proposed herein unites all of the stem variants discussed in a phonologically and semantically logical manner.
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Review on: Benita Laumane, Zvejasrīku nosaukumi Latvijas piekrastē, Liepāja: Liepājas Universitāte, Kurzemes Humanitārais institūts, 2019
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The aim of this research was to measure the vocabulary size of native speakers of Lithuanian language attending the 11th grade in small cities and to compare the results with the research conducted in Vilnius schools. This paper aimed to find out whether the place of residence and the gender factor have a statistically significant influence on the size of the vocabulary and discover if any sociolinguistic factors can impact it. The research material consisted of 242 responses given to a sociolinguistic survey and vocabulary size test. T-test and regression analysis were applied in the research.The results of the study indicated that the average vocabulary of an 11th grade student consists of approximately 51,400 lemmas. Vilnius school students have an average vocabulary size of about 52,800 lemmas; the vocabulary size of small towns students is lower – 50,000 lemmas. The T-test statistical analysis has revealed that the difference in the mean size of the vocabulary across genders is statistically significant (p = 0,011). It was found out that the vocabulary size of students living in Vilnius is statistically significantly bigger than that of students in the smaller cities (p = 0,002). The regression analysis indicated that gender can affect the vocabulary size. The analysis showed statistical significance (p = 0,004) that watching movies in the Lithuanian language can impact the vocabulary size of students living in small towns.
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The possible Baltic origin of the Finnic word *vana ’flood, inundation’ is discussed: Baltic *tvana-: Lithuanian tvãnas, tvãnai pl ’deluge of a river, inundation, flood; a large number (of); abscess’etc.
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Quite many companies or organisations experience smaller or larger crises for an abundance of various reasons and yet a situation is not immediately named a crisis as such, even though the signs are rather clear. That was the case with the crisis communication of “Vinted”. The research aimed to analyse the external crisis communication in “Vinted” (as mother company in Lithuania) and “Kleiderkreisel” (as daughter company in Germany) for the topic is hardly analysed, especially linguistically. The material for crisis communication in “Vinted” was gathered from the articles in business news portal “Verslo žinios” (www.vz.lt) and the material for the analysis of crisis communication in “Kleiderkreisel” was gathered from the official “Kleiderkreisel” internet forum. It was noticed that the types of crises are different and because of that companies choose different ways for communication, meaning that “where” and “how’ the company communicates with its community was influenced by the type of crisis itself. Communication of Vinted (statements in Lithuanian language) and “Kleiderkreisel” (statements in German language) was analysed and compared using the discourse analysis method which later led to recognition of different types of crises and the different crisis communication models that were applied. Due to the reason, that the data of Vinted covers 2016–2017 and the data of ‘Kleiderkreisel’ covers 2014–2016, it allows to see the outcomes of both cases of crisis and further communication. In 2019 “Vinted” has received a new investment and became the first Unicorn in Baltic countries. Because the company grows further in the year 2020, it can be presumed that communication and managements strategies applied in the years of crisis were correct.
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Aim. The aim of this study is to analyse how personal names are transcribed in the written works of Latvian as foreign language learners, as well as the most typical mistakes when transcribing personal names in other languages, the attitude of students towards the Latvianisation of their personal names, and the experience of Latvian language teachers in teaching the principles of transcribing personal names. Methods. The study uses the corpus analysis method, as well as a survey of students and survey of teachers who teach Latvian as a foreign language. The article includes error analysis of the personal name transcription established in the corpus and the analysis of the survey results. Results and conclusion. It was found out that students mostly know how to transcribe their names in Latvian; less frequently do they know how their surname should be transcribed. Their attitude towards Latvianisation of personal names is various: positive, negative or neutral. Latvian as a foreign language teachers emphasize the principle of transcription of foreign personal names and the need to provide its justification in the study process. It was concluded that further Latvian language acquisition process needs to be focused more on the problems with transcription of foreign personal names. Originality. This study highlights the aspect which is little researched in the applied linguistics – the issued linked to transcription of foreign personal names in the process of learning the Latvian language. The novelty is related to the use of a new resource (error-tagged learner corpus) data.
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Gerbiamasis Krokuvos profesorius savo veikalu po K. Būgos, E. Fraenkelio, J. Kazlausko, V. Urbučio pajudino mūsų kalbos leksikos etimologijų nagrinėjimą, viską pateikia gerai mokėdamas visas baltų kalbas. Remiasi svarbiausiais mūsų LKŽ, K. Sirvydu, iš dalies A. Juška, ypač Z. Zinkevičiumi. Tad turime suprasti veikalo ypatingumą ir svarbą mūsų kalbos mokslui, reikšti pagarbą mokslininkui, nes mes šia prasme esame gan atsilikę.
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This article consists of addenda to the author’s Słownik etymologiczny języka litewskiego, Vilnius 2007. It also contains a list of errata to this dictionary.
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