Voice and Argument Structure in Baltic

The second volume in the VARGReB series deals with voice in the wider sense, encompassing both alternations that preserve semantic valency, with passives as the most typical instance, and valency-changing devices such as the causative. Regarding the former, special attention is given to event-structural conditions on passivization, non-canonical passives, and the relation between passives and (active) impersonals. Papers dealing with causatives focus on valency patterns and argument marking in canonical as well as extended uses of causative morphology. Other articles consider converse constructions and the argument structure of middles, which seem to hold a position between voice in the narrow sense and valency-changing operations. An introductory article provides background information on the repertoire of voice alternations in Baltic from a cross-linguistic perspective. Representing different approaches and methods, the contributions to this volume offer fine-grained analyses of data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.

Anna Kibort, Oxford:
The articles gathered in this volume explore the complex phenomena of grammatical voice and valency changes in Baltic in unprecedented depth and with admirable clarity. The authors carefully untangle the type of voice or valency change from both its function and its realisation, look closely at non-canonical behaviour of constructions such as the passive and the impersonal, investigate in detail the syntax and semantics of morphological causatives, and revisit the anticausative, middle and other uses of the reflexive marker with a fresh and rigorous approach. The argumentation is amply illustrated with examples from corpora. The result is an excellent collection which will stimulate interest in typologists and theoretical syntacticians alike.