The Non-verbal Type of Small Clauses in English and Lithuanian
Author: Judita Giparaitė
Date Of Publication: Aug 2010
Isbn13: 9781443817233
Isbn: 1-4438-1723-6
The study The Non-verbal Type of Small Clauses in English and Lithuanian is one of the first attempts to apply the methods of generative grammar to the analysis of a fragment of Lithuanian grammar, i.e., constructions with secondary predicates of the type V [NP1 NP2] and V [NP1 AP], the sub-strings [NP1 NP2] and [NP1 AP] of which in generative works are usually called small clauses. The investigation is contrastive; the evidence of Lithuanian is compared with that of English. Whereas the syntactic study of secondary predicates in English has a certain tradition, traditional Lithuanian grammar does not have a single notion to what is known elsewhere as secondary predicates. In Lithuanian traditional grammar secondary predicates are usually referred to as a part of compound nominal predicates, predicative attributes, a part of complex objects and are not singled out as a distinct category but are given different, often contradictory treatments. Thus the research can be considered pioneering work as far as Lithuanian is concerned. It not only contributes to the theoretical discussion about the adequate way of dealing with secondary predicates in Government and Binding framework, but can also be considered instrumental in propagating modern methods of syntactic analysis in tradition-ridden Lithuanian grammar.

The present work addresses an important problem whether the Lithuanian and English constructions under investigation express a subject-predicate relationship and form a constituent and can be described as having the syntactic function of a clause. For this purpose, the syntactic and semantic as well as clausal properties of the sequences [NP1 NP2] and [NP1 AP] in the two languages under consideration are discussed. The clausal properties of the sub-strings [NP1 NP2] and [NP1 AP] are investigated on the basis of the presence of agreement features, sentence negation, the resemblance to full clauses, theta-role assignment, word order, and applying sentence constituency tests.

Judita Giparaitė has been working in the English Department at the Vilnius Pedagogical University since 1991. In 1996 she commenced her PhD studies at Vilnius Pedagogical University where she did research on small clauses in English and Lithuanian and took interest in problems and evolution of linguistics. During her doctoral studies (1996-2003) Judita Giparaitė completed five study visits to Erfurt University.

"Judita Giparaitė’s research addresses an important problem of general, English and Lithuanian linguistics, namely, the phenomenon of secondary predication and its clausal status ... The research gives an excellent account of the problem and is not restricted with the limitations of any deductively closed theory. The apparatus of the book is good and transparent, with glosses and comments to almost all the examples provided in the text. Therefore, Judita Giparaitė’s book is an easy reading for those linguists, who are not fluent in Modern Lithuanian."

-Dr. Anton Zimmerling, Moscow State University in Humanities, MGGU

“The main novelty of Judita Giparaitė’s book is that it deals with problems of Lithuanian syntax from a generative perspective. <…> Though it will not become a milestone in generative grammar, it is worth reading and raises a number of questions that will have to be tackled by subsequent researchers.”

- Axel Holvoet, Professor in the University of Warsaw, Senior research worker at the Institute for the Lithuanian Language, Vilnius

"Part I includes three essays. There is a useful review and analysis of that 1935 production of The Mother by the Anne Fletcher, the author of a useful new study of the Brecht collaborator, designer Mordecai Gorelik (reviewed in the last volume of The Brecht Yearbook). Her efforts gets Part I off to a strong start...

I applaud the attention it brings to Jones, one of America's immensely and uniquely talented actors/authors."

Don B. Wilmeth, emeritus, Brown University, Brecht In/And Asia, 2011

Giparaite’s book is an important and valuable contribution to the study of Lithuanian syntax and I wish to express hope that it will be followed by other high (and higher) quality books by Lithuanian scholar realising that their language deserves being analysed from the standpoint of contemporary.

Peter M Akaswly Institute of Slavic Studies

Baltic Linguistics Journal 2/2011

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