The Non-verbal Type of Small Clauses in English and Lithuanian

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.