Title: Lithuanian particles and discourse structure from a synchronic and diachronic perspective
This project is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania
Principal investigator of the project: Associate prof. dr. Erika Jasionytė-Mikučionienė
The duration of the project: 2021-2024
The project deals with a comprehensive analysis of the class of particles in Lithuanian. It is carried out from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective by exploring authentic data obtained from Present-Day Lithuanian corpora and from Old Lithuanian texts. The study examines particles in spoken and written discourse, in 19th century texts as well as in 16-17th-century semi-original and translated Old Lithuanian texts. The data is retrieved from the sub-corpus of fiction of the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (CCLL), the Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian, concordances of 16-17th-century Old Lithuanian texts compiled by the Institute for the Lithuanian Language as well as from texts not included into the database of the Institute. Moreover, a corpus of 19th-century texts is being compiled.
The project aims to provide a thorough synchronic and diachronic account of Lithuanian particles belonging to different semantic classes by focussing on the role of particles in discourse structure, by establishing the connection between particles and different units of discourse and by examining the formation and development of particles within the processes of (inter)subjectification and (de)grammaticalization as well as to specify the status of particles in Lithuanian grammar on the basis of a unifying methodology and new theoretical frameworks.