Axel Holvoet
Biographic Data
| ID | 5902405 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Axel Holvoet |
| GIVEN NAMES | Axel |
| FAMILY NAME | Holvoet |
| SIGNATURE | HOLVOET A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vilnius University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1744-5893 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 40 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Haplology and diplology of grammatical markers in Slavic and Baltic
This article deals with Slavic and Baltic instantiations of grammatical haplology, i. e., situations where two constructions ‘share’ a grammatical marker. In addition to haplology of reflexive clitics, an analogous case of haplology of irrealis markers is examined. We further explore the potential of the notion of grammatical diplology, referring to situations where (as a result of oscillation in the choice of a host rather than of redundant mark…
Lithuanian and the syntactic structure of pseudo-clefts
The article deals with the pseudo-cleft construction (also known as wh -cleft) in Lithuanian, a Baltic language. It focuses on the syntactic and morphosyntactic changes that have set the Lithuanian pseudo-cleft apart from its source construction, the specificational copular construction. It is argued that this pseudo-cleft has become monoclausal as a result of a process in which the kernel component of the pseudo-cleft construction (consisting of…
Towards an enhanced semantic map for imperatives
This article is a contribution to the semantic map of imperatives, prompted by an implicational map proposed earlier in the literature. The tentative semantic map proposed here abstracts away from differences in use that can be attributed to pragmatics, like distinctions between commands, requests, suggestions etc. The functional differentiation resulting from person and number value, which determines a different character of the directive speech…
A hitherto unnoticed type of verb-framed construction in Lithuanian and the typology of event conflation
The article starts out from a Lithuanian construction denoting achievement of an excessive value of some parameter of an incremental event. It is verb-framed, that is, the main-clause verb denotes motion along a path towards a normative value of the parameter involved. Its implications for our understanding of the Talmyan typology of event conflation are discussed. Event conflation in the domains of spatial motion and change of state has received…
The Perfective present in Lithuanian
This article offers a picture of the Lithuanian perfective present, with particular emphasis on the treatment of habituality and genericity, the use of aspect forms in narrative text types, and peripheral constructionalised and often pragmatically specialised uses of perfective presents partly harking back to the actional differences underlying the aspect opposition in Baltic as well as in Slavonic. The introductory part of the article offers a g…
The Tame domain in Baltic and its neighbours. An introduction
This article outlines the aims, methodological approaches and research topics of the thematic volume Studies in the TAME Domain in Baltic and Its Neighbours. It also briefly characterises the individual contributions to the volume, highlightingtheir main ideas and pointing out their relevance to ongoing discussions as well as the impulses they can give to further (also cross-linguistic) research. The grammatical domains explored in the volume are…
Irrealis in Baltic and Baltic Fennic
This article is a study in the use of irrealis in complementation in the two Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian, and in two Fennic languages, Estonian and Finnish. Four domains of complementation are singled out: propositional, desiderative, apprehensional and evaluative. All investigated languages show limited use of irrealis in the propositional domain (in identical conditions, viz. under main clause negation), as well as in the apprehens…
The Lithuanian mirative present and its history
The article deals with a Lithuanian mirative construction based on the present active participle with the continuative and progressive prefix be-. In Lithuanian grammar it has been described as a tense form or (more recently) as a member of the evidential system, but it is here dealt with as a construction in its own right. On the basis of a corpus search the authors attempt to define the place of the mirative present among constructions containi…
The notion of mood reexamined, against the background of modality
Though mood and modality are usually mentioned in close conjunction, as one research domain, the notion of modality has recently become increasingly prominent at the expense of mood. Yet the notion of mood, mostly restricted to the realis-irrealis distinction, has not been discarded. In this article an attempt is made to understand the enduring viability of the notion of mood by looking at the features prototypically associated with it. These fea…
The dual nature of irrealis in complementation
This article explores the connection between irrealis mood and type of complement clause. It is argued that irrealis performs different functions in propositional and state-of-affairs complements, reflecting either irreality (non-actualisation in a situation that often has a concrete location in time) or lack of temporal and situational anchoring. While these distinct functions could be viewed as different realisations of a general irrealis meani…
Antipassive reflexive constructions in Latvian
The article presents a corpus-based investigation of the antipassive reflexive constructions of Latvian. They are subdivided into deobjectives (with suppression of the object) and deaccusatives (with oblique encoding of the object). The emphasis is on the lexical input for the two constructions, frequencies and degrees of lexical entrenchment. The authors identify two subtypes of deobjectives: behaviour-characterising deobjectives (lexically entr…
The voice domain in Baltic and its neighbours
This article outlines the aims, methodological approaches and research topics of the thematic volume Studies in the Voice Domain in Baltic and Its Neighbours. It also briefly characterises the individual contributions to the volume, highlighting their main ideas and pointing out their relevance to ongoing discussions as well as the impulses they can give to further (also cross-linguistic) research. The grammatical domains explored in the volume a…
The rise of the affixal reflexive in Baltic and its consequences
The article deals with the consequences of the affixalisation of the formerly enclitic reflexive pronoun in the Baltic languages. This affixalisation caused a reorganisation in the system of reflexive marking, as the new affixal forms became restricted to middle-voice meanings. The Old Lithuanian and Old Latvian texts reflect a transitional stage in this process. Oscillations in the choice of a verbal form to which an affixalising reflexive prono…
Lithuanian intensive causatives and their history
The article deals with a small group of Lithuanian verbs in which causative morphology has acquired an intensive function. While causative-intensive polyfunctionality is well attested typologically, the Lithuanian instance is interesting in that the intensive function manifests itself in reflexivised causatives. This development seems to be a consequence of the co-occurrence of causative and reflexive derivation as devices for building transitivi…
The facilitative middle in Baltic and North Slavonic
The article deals with the facilitative middle, a gram often simply referred to (especially in literature of the formal persuasion) as ‘the middle’ (e.g., The bread cuts easily). While in the Western European languages this gram is nearly exclusively generic or individual-level (kind-level) and has no explicit agent (these features are correspondingly often regarded as definitional for ‘middles’), the Baltic and Slavonic languages have constructi…
Sources and pathways for non-directive imperatives
This article deals with the mechanisms by which directive imperatives develop into grams with various non-directive meanings. The types discussed include conditional and concessive, historical, mirative and echoic-necessitive imperatives. It is argued that such non-directive functions should not be traced back to putative general meanings of the imperative but arise, in various specific constructions and through various mechanisms, from the prope…
Insubordinated concessive imperatives
The article deals with a constructional idiom attested in both Baltic languages as well as in the neighbouring Slavonic and Fennic languages and in Yiddish, containing as its central component what is argued to be an insubordinated imperatival concessive clause and characterising a situation by hyperbolically describing the consequences conceivably flowing from it or a course of action it could be imagined to induce. This construction, which is c…
Minor grams in Baltic
Introduction
An elusive experiental tense construction in Latvian
The article is a contribution to the study of experiential and indefinite past-tense forms. It offers an analysis of the Latvian past-tense construction tikt + PPA, which is now a feature of the Latvian standard language though it was originally restricted to Eastern Latvia (probably mainly the High Latvian dialects). It can be characterised as an experiential but has a wider scope than the prototypical experiential, which refers to event types i…
Absentives or ambidirectionals
The present article introduces the ambidirectional, a construction (or sometimes just a distinct type of use of a gram basically serving another function) referring to two-way motion events in the past. The discussion starts out from the notion of absentive, which has already established itself in the literature since de Groot (2000). In many languages the construction ‘be’ + INF, claimed to be an absentive, exists only in a past-tense variety. I…
The agentive construction in Baltic and Fennic
The article deals with the agentive construction, a construction identifying the agent used mainly in adnominal position and in the position of nominal predicate but distinct from the agented passive. The notion is known from Finnish grammar (where it has dedicated morphological marking, the agentive participle), but the article describes a similar construction in Latvian. The marking of the agent in the Fennic and Baltic agentive construction is…
Antipassive reflexives in Latvian
The article deals with antipassive reflexives in Latvian, with side glances at other Baltic and Slavonic languages. The purpose of the article is to locate antipassive reflexives in the semantic space of reflexives and middles by establishing their mutual relationships and their conceptual and diachronic links to other types of reflexive-marked middles. Two types of antipassive reflexives already identified in the literature, viz. deobjectives an…
Reflexive permissives and the middle voice
The article deals with the ‘permissive middle’, a permissive construction characterized by the coincidence of the permittor and the embedded clause patient (as in They allowed themselves to be cheated) and belonging to the middle voice in the sense that its formal markers, though originating as reflexive pronouns, have lost their original reflexive function. Such permissive middles can be clearly set apart from permissive reflexives in those lang…
Voice and argument structure in Baltic
Contemporary Approaches to Baltic Linguistics
Baltic languages have only marginally featured in the discourse of theoretical linguistics and linguistic typology. The book aims to reconnect Baltic linguistics and the current agenda of the theoretical and typological study of language. The book is intended for a broad linguistic audience, including typologists and theoretical linguists.
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Par vienu objekta datīva paveidu baltu valodās
Complex (bi-clausal) passives in Latvian and Lithuanian and their connection with the nominative object
KAI KURIOS LIETUVIŲ IR LATVIŲ KALBŲ NEVEIKIAMOSIOS RŪŠIES YPATYBĖS IR JŲ RYŠYS SU OBJEKTO VARDININKU Straipsnyje aptariama lietuvių ir latvių kalbų „kompleksinio pasyvo“ kilmė. Šiuo terminu yra apibūdinamas neveikiamosios rūšies tipas, kur nuo pagrindinio predikatinio veiksmažodžio priklausomos bendraties objektas tampa sakinio subjektu vietoj beasmenės neveikiamosios rūšies konstrukcijos, išlaikančios objekto galininką su bendratimi, pvz.: lie.…
On the functions and grammatical status of the Latvian modal particle lai
PAR MODĀLĀS PARTIKULAS lai FUNKCIJĀM UN GRAMATISKO STATUSU Latviešu valodas gramatikās partikula lai parasti tiek minēta tikai kā analītisko imperatīva formu sastāvdaļa (lai nāk, lai neaizmirstam). Šai rakstā tiek aplūkoti trīs partikulas lai lietošanas tipi: (1) teikumos ar pamudinājuma vai vēlējuma nozīmi (Lai viņi nāk), (2) deontiskajos jautājumos (Ko lai es daru! Ko lai es būtu darījis!), un (3) teikumos ar vērtējuma (neaprobēšanas vai šaubu)…
Infinitival relative clauses in Baltic and Slavonic
INFINITYVINIAI SANTYKINIAI SAKINIAI BALTŲ IR SLAVŲ KALBOSE Latvių kalba, skirtingai nuo lietuvių kalbos, turi infinityvinių santykinių sakinių, žyminčių vardažodines grupes (grāmatas, ko lasīt „knygos skaitymui, ~ kurias galima skaityti“). Lietuvių ir slavų kalbos turi tik vieną infinityvinių santykinių sakinių tipą: jie žymi egzistencinio predikato neišreikštą subjektą (yra ką valgyti, nėra ką/ko valgyti; r. ecmь, чmo дeлamь) arba veiksmažodžio …
Once more the Baltic genitive of agent
DAR KARTĄ APIE BALTŲ KALBŲ VEIKĖJO KILMININKĄ Straipsnyje aptariamos dvi pagrindinės baltų kalbų veikėjo kilmininko kilmės hipotezės: V. Ambrazo pateiktas veikėjo kilmininko aiškinimas iš posesyvinio kilmininko (remiantis Fraenkelio ir kitų ankstesnių tyrinėtojų iškeltomis mintimis) ir W. R. Schmalstiego siūlymas susieti šį reiškinį su (hipotetiniu) ergatyviniu prokalbės sakinio modeliu. Posesyvinės kilmės pėdsakai konstrukcijose su veikėjo kilm…
The Latvian language and its dialects
Impersonals and passives in Baltic and Finnic
R. Schmalstieg, The Historical Morphology of the Baltic Verb
Modals in Baltic
Interpretive deontics
This article introduces the notion of interpretive deontics, i.e. deontic expressions used interpretively (in the sense of Sperber and Wilson 1986). It is argued that languages may develop grammaticalized or semi-grammaticalized means to refer to other people's acts of volition (typically, but not only, demands put on the speaker). This gram type, here illustrated from Slavonic and Baltic, encompasses different usage types ranging from requests f…
Beyond external possession
The present article deals with the dative external possessor construction in Latvian. Attention is drawn to the widespread occurrence of this construction, extending to constructions with relational nouns practically functioning as adpositions. The carrying-over of the external possessor construction to what would otherwise be described as adpositional phrases creates certain problems for syntactic description. Emphasis is, however, on the semant…
Towards a semantic map for definite adjectives in Baltic
The paper deals with semantic developments in the Lithuanian and Latvian definite adjectival forms. The basic function of definite adjectival forms in Baltic is to mark the definiteness of the noun phrase. However, the adjectival marking of definiteness creates an interesting situation in which the noun phrase has several slots for the marking of (in)definiteness. In certain cases, different values for definiteness may appear in different slots: …
Vocative agreement in Latvian and the principle of morphology-free syntax
Latvian grammars state that the form of adjectives modifying vocatives in Latvian can be determined by morphological rather than syntactic case: a special vocative ending -o is claimed to be possible only when the vocative controlling agreement has a special form distinct from the nominative. This would contradict Zwicky’s principle of phonology-free and morphology-free syntax, as normally only the morphosyntactic feature value of the noun should…
Polish mieć and the semantic map of interpretive deontics
The notion of interpretive deontics, based on that of interpretive use as defined by Sperber and Wilson (1986), was introduced in Holvoet and Konickaja (2011). The present article builds further on the results presented there. Starting out from the interpretive deontic uses of the Polish modal verb mieć and establishing their connection with other uses of this verb, the author attempts to give a more complete picture of conceptual relations in th…
Obliqueness, quasi-subjects and transitivity in Baltic and Slavonic
The article discusses the subjecthood of datival least-oblique NPs (called ‘subject-like obliques’ in the introduction to this volume) in clauses based on intransitive two-place predicates, mainly with reference to Baltic and Slavonic. The approach in the article crucially invokes the notions of obliqueness hierarchy and case hierarchy. Canonical subjecthood being defined as the pairing of least-oblique status with nominative marking, structures …
Grammatical Relations and their Non-Canonical Encoding in Baltic
This is the first of three volumes dealing with clausal architecture, grammatical relations, case-marking and the syntax–semantics interface in Baltic. It focuses on the grammatical relations of subject and object and the viability of these notions in languages like Lithuanian and Latvian, which have a rich case morphology and show many deviations from the canonical nominative-accusative pattern of case-marking. The issues examined include differ…
Phasal and proximative complementation
The article deals with Lithuanian constructions based on the verb baigti ‘finish’. They have traditionally been dealt with in the context of phasal complementation. In this article it is argued that the verb baigti actually underlies two different types of constructions: in addition to phasal constructions with imperfective infinitives there are also proximative constructions with perfective infinitives. The proximative construction refers to an …
Voice and argument structure in Baltic
Contemporary Approaches to Baltic Linguistics
Baltic languages have only marginally featured in the discourse of theoretical linguistics and linguistic typology. The book aims to reconnect Baltic linguistics and the current agenda of the theoretical and typological study of language. The book is intended for a broad linguistic audience, including typologists and theoretical linguists.
Control alternations. On control properties in infinitival goal adjuncts in Baltic
This article deals with control phenomena in a particular type of infinitival adjuncts in Baltic, viz. in goal adjuncts with transitive verbs of motion. It has already been noted in the literature that, though infinitival adjuncts are often assumed to have implicit subjects controlled by the matrix clause subject, certain subtypes select a matrix clause object as a controller. This is also often the case with goal adjuncts: individual languages m…
Reflexive permissives and the middle voice
The article deals with the ‘permissive middle’, a permissive construction characterized by the coincidence of the permittor and the embedded clause patient (as in They allowed themselves to be cheated) and belonging to the middle voice in the sense that its formal markers, though originating as reflexive pronouns, have lost their original reflexive function. Such permissive middles can be clearly set apart from permissive reflexives in those lang…
Antipassive reflexives in Latvian
The article deals with antipassive reflexives in Latvian, with side glances at other Baltic and Slavonic languages. The purpose of the article is to locate antipassive reflexives in the semantic space of reflexives and middles by establishing their mutual relationships and their conceptual and diachronic links to other types of reflexive-marked middles. Two types of antipassive reflexives already identified in the literature, viz. deobjectives an…
Insubordinated concessive imperatives
The article deals with a constructional idiom attested in both Baltic languages as well as in the neighbouring Slavonic and Fennic languages and in Yiddish, containing as its central component what is argued to be an insubordinated imperatival concessive clause and characterising a situation by hyperbolically describing the consequences conceivably flowing from it or a course of action it could be imagined to induce. This construction, which is c…
Minor grams in Baltic
Introduction
An elusive experiental tense construction in Latvian
The article is a contribution to the study of experiential and indefinite past-tense forms. It offers an analysis of the Latvian past-tense construction tikt + PPA, which is now a feature of the Latvian standard language though it was originally restricted to Eastern Latvia (probably mainly the High Latvian dialects). It can be characterised as an experiential but has a wider scope than the prototypical experiential, which refers to event types i…
Philosophy (37 works) · Linguistics (35 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (33 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Verb (18 works) · Mathematics (16 works) · History (15 works) · Linguistic research and analysis (13 works) · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity (12 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (11 works)