Draft version Lokmane, Ilze & Andra Kalnača. Modal semantics and morphosyntax of the Latvian DEBITIVE. Modes of Modality. Modality, typology, and universal grammar. Studies in Lan-guage Companion Series (SLCS). Volume 149. Leiss, E. & W. Abraham (eds.). Amster-dam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014, 167–192.

Modal semantics and morphosyntax of the Latvian DEBITIVE

Ilze Lokmane and Andra Kalnača University of Latvia, Riga

The paper discusses the Latvian debitive from the viewpoint of modality and syntactic structure. In typological linguistics the system of moods in Latvian and in particular the Latvian debitive as a unique linguistic form has been rarely described. The debitive is a mood expressing meaning of necessity or obligation in Latvian. Therefore the introductory part of the paper offers a brief de-scription of the mood system in Latvian explaining the functions of the debitive, its morphosyn-tax, and its modal semantics. The paper does not discuss exhaustively all the properties of the debitive and thus should be viewed as an initial discussion of this under-investigated subject mat-ter. It proposes an overview of the forms of the debitive as well as a description of its modal meanings and distribution. Further research should involve a more detailed description of modal meanings as well as the distribution of the debitive and its seeming likeness to impersonal and passive constructions.

1. Introduction

The verb moods that are traditionally used to express modality in the Latvian language coexist with the modal verbs and participle constructions. The structure and meaning of Latvian modal verbs and participle constructions correspond to the respective structure and meaning of the mo-dal verb and participle constructions used in the Germanic languages the likeliness of which have also been traced in the Latin and Slavic languages (more on this see Mathiassen 1997; An-dronovs 1998; Holvoet 2001, 2007). For example, in the Latvian language the modal verb va-jadzēt ‘to need/must’ and the debitive are close in their meaning; moreover, in some contexts it is also close in meaning with the present passive participle (e. g., ir darāms ‘must be done/has to be done’) (Mathiassen 1997: 131). However, the use of grammaticalized means, in particular the system of five moods (see section 1) strongly dominate over the modal verbs and participle con-structions in expressing modality in Latvian. This dominance brings out the role of the debitive in the Latvian modal realisations.

The object of the present study, therefore, is one of the Latvian language moods, the debitive. This article addresses the following issues:

1. The place of the debitive in the mood system of the Latvian language. Is it the verb mood or the passive form, or should it be viewed as a specific group of the verb forms?

2. Modal meaning of the debitive that is under-investigated in the research of the Latvian grammar and in other linguistic research.

3. The distribution of the debitive on the basis of the syntactic interpretation of the Dative, Accusative and Nominative case forms of the respective verb, which is a problematic case in the Latvian language.

The examples were extracted from Līdzsvarots mūsdienu latviešu valodas tekstu korpuss (The balanced Corpus of the Modern Latvian) (available at www.korpuss.lv), www.google.lv and mass media texts such as daily newspaper Diena from 2011–2012 (available at www.diena.lv). 2. The grammatical moods in Latvian

In Latvian grammars the debitive is analysed as one of the grammatical moods. The paper, there-fore, in line with the topic of this volume, first gives a brief insight into the system of grammati-cal mood in Latvian and the way it has been described by Latvian grammars. The paper does not present all forms of moods, persons and cases existing in the Latvian language, as the goal of this paper is the description of the debitive (see section 2), whereas for a more detailed discussion of the Latvian verb forms see Mathiassen 1997; Nau 1998; Holvoet 2001, 2007.

Traditionally, grammatical mood in Latvian has been described as a binary opposition of re-alis/irrealis co-occurring with specific grammatical markers of irrealis (Mūsdienu latviešu literārās valodas gramatika (The Grammar of Modern Standard Latvian) 1959: 600; Mathiassen 1997: 81; Kalme & Smiltniece 2001: 226; Nītiņa 2001: 74–75; Paegle 2003: 113):

(1) Realis Irrealis Indicative mood Oblique mood es dar-ot ‘they say, I do’ es daru ‘I do’ Conditional mood es darī-tu ‘I would do’

Debitive mood man ir jā-dara ‘I must do’ Imperative mood dar-iet! ‘Do it!’

(Paegle 2003: 113)

The marked member of the opposition is the irrealis modality marked by the distinctive feature of expressing the speaker’s attitude towards what they are saying by various grammaticalized forms (Paulauskienė 1994: 310; Plungian 2011: 435). The grammatical classification of these modal forms is evidence of the actual presence of such an opposition. The indicative mood in Latvian does not have any marked formants – the event is described using the indefinite and per-fect tense forms. The irrealis modality has specific grammatical formants: the postfix -ot (non-reflexive verbs), -oties (reflexive verbs) for the oblique mood, the postfix -tu (non-reflexive verbs), -tos (reflexive verbs), for the conditional mood, the prefix jā- for the debitive mood, and the ending -iet (non-reflexive verbs), -ieties (reflexive verbs) for the imperative mood. In Latvian linguistics, similar to Lithuanian, it has been proposed to classify moods according to the seman-tics of each mood opposing the respective meaning to the meanings of other moods, for instance, it is possible to oppose the imperative mood to the other non-imperative moods (see Pau-lauskienė 1994; Ambrazas 1997; Kalnača 2000, 2007; for the relation of the imperative mood with the other moods see also Holvoet 2007: 25). However, the most frequently used method of description of moods is the binary opposition of realis/irrealis. Obviously therefore the men-tioned method is considered to be the most useful in order to oppose the four non-indicative moods, as a generalized notion of irrealis, to the indicative mood. Thus, realis/irrealis opposi-tion has been applied in the present study, because the overall typology of the Latvian language

moods is an object of a separate research that due to the limits of the paper are not considered in detail.

Although all forms of mood in the clause are used as predicates and they carry the feature of finiteness, the category of person does not relate to mood in the same way for all types of mood. Only the indicative and imperative moods have true finite forms with the endings indicating the category of person, while the oblique, the conditional, and the debitive mood forms are non-finite or impersonal according to their source form (participles, infinitives etc.) and the gram-matical formant. They do not have the morphological paradigm of person. Therefore the oblique, conditional, and debitive mood forms are identical in all persons in the singular and plural (Kalme & Smiltniece 2001: 254). However, in actual usage the meaning of person in these moods is expressed syntactically by a personal pronoun or noun, or a noun functioning as the subject of the clause (see Table 1):

lasīt ‘to read’

Oblique mood Singular Plural

1st person es lasot ‘they say, I read’ mēs lasot ‘they say, we read’

2nd

person tu lasot ‘they say, you read’ jūs lasot ‘they say, you read’

3rd

person viņš,-a lasa ‘they say, (s)he reads’ viņi,-as lasa ‘they say, they read’

Conditional mood 1

st person es lasītu ‘I would read’ mēs lasītu ‘we would read’

2nd

person tu lasītu ‘you would read’ jūs lasītu ‘you would read’

3rd

person viņš,-a lasītu ‘(s)he would read’ viņi,-as lasītu ‘they would read’

Debitive mood 1

st person man ir jālasa ‘I must read’ mums ir jālasa ‘we must read’

2nd

person tev ir jālasa ‘you must read’ jums ir jālasa ‘you must read’

3rd

person viņam,-ai ir jālasa ‘(s)he must read’

viņiem,-ām ir jālasa ‘they must read’

Tab. 1: The paradigm of personal and number forms of the Latvian oblique, conditional and debitive (in-definite forms, active voice) (adapted from Kalme & Smiltniece 2001: 243–252)

In the oblique and conditional moods, the subject of the clause is marked by the Nominative case, while in the debitive mood by the Dative.

By some linguists the system of five moods has been viewed as controversial. They claim that for semantic and syntactic reasons the debitive and oblique moods cannot be analyzed as moods (see e.g., Marvans 1967; Andronovs 1998; Nau 1998; Holvoet 2001, 2007) and that, conse-quently, there are only three moods in Latvian – indicative, conditional, and imperative. Thus, for instance, Holvoet (2007) writes that the oblique mood should be analysed as a distinct verbal form of evidentiality. A similar analysis is offered for the description of the debitive proposing the term forms of debitive instead of mood and pointing out that they bear a functional likeness to Germanic modal verbs (English must and German müssen) (Holvoet 2007). Although the au-thors have rightly observed that the five-mood system is not without its flaws, they have not of-fered a method of description that is comprehensive and convenient. If next to three moods (in-dicative, conditional and imperative) we introduce distinct grammatical classes or even catego-ries (evidentiality and debitive), this would not resolve the problem of describing verbal forms, but would, on the contrary, make it more complex. Therefore, irrespective of certain flaws in the system the authors are aware of, the present research paper applies the traditional method of de-scription involving five mood paradigms. It must be noted that since the publication of the first

volume of The Grammar of Modern Standard Latvian in 1959, the five-mood system has been used in all Latvian grammars and textbooks. 3. Description of the Latvian debitive

To express the meaning of necessity or obligation in Latvian, a distinct mood form the debitive is used. The debitive is formed combining the 3

rd person present indicative with the prefix jā- and

the auxiliary būt in the finite tense (and mood) form. An exception is the verb būt ‘to be’, where the debitive forms are formed by adding the prefix jā- to the infinitive:

(2) a. darīt – dara – ir jā-dara ‘to do – do – must do’ b. būt – ir jā-būt ‘to be – must be’

The prefix jā- originates from the genitive singular form of the old Baltic anaphoric and relative pronoun, which is now extinct (see Endzelīns 1981: 511– 512; Holvoet 2001, 2007). It must be pointed out that the debitive is a linguistic formation existing only in Latvian – there is no corre-sponding form in other Baltic, Indo-European, or neighbouring Finno-Ugric languages.

From a formal point of view, the debitive construction is unmarked in terms of person and number categories. The subject of the action in the debitive mood is in the Dative case (see Fennells 1995b), where the Dative marks the semantic role of the agent (glossing abbreviations at the end of this article):

(3) a. Man ir jādara darbs I.DAT be.AUX.PRS do.DEB work.NOM ‘I must do the work’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Tev bija jāraksta vēstule you.DAT be.AUX.PST write.DEB letter.NOM ‘You had to write a letter’

(www.korpuss.lv) c. Kaimiņiem pēc nedēļas neighbour.DAT.PL after week.GEN būs jāpļauj mauriņš be.AUX.FUT cut. DEB grass.NOM ‘After a week the neighbours will have to cut grass’

(www.korpuss.lv)

In the present perfect of the debitive mood the auxiliary ir is often omitted:

(4) a. Darbs [ir] jādara rūpīgi work.NOM [be.AUX.PRS] do.DEB carefully ‘Work must be done with responsibility’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. No rītiem [ir] jāceļas laicīgi from morning.INS.PL [be.AUX.PRS] get_up.DEB on_time ‘We must get up on time in the morning’

(www.korpuss.lv)

The formation of the debitive mood forms involves a change in the syntactic structure of the clause:

(5) Indicative Debitive Es (SN) daru darbu (OA) → Man (SD) ir jādara darbs (ON)

Es daru darbu I.NOM do.PRS.1 work.ACC ‘I do the work’

as opposed to

Man ir jādara darbs I.DAT be.AUX.PRS do.DEB work.NOM ‘I must do the work’

In the debitive mood, the object of the obligation is usually in the Nominative case (see examples (1a-c) except for personal (1

st and 2

nd person) and reflexive pronouns, which are in the Accusa-

tive case (Fennell 1995b):

(6) a. Vienkārši ir jāatbrīvo mani no amata simply be.AUX.PRS dismiss.DEB I.ACC from position.GEN ‘I simply must be dismissed from the position’

(www.google.lv) b. Man ir jāsatiek tevi I.DAT be.AUX.PRS meet.DEB you.ACC ‘I must meet you’

(www.korpuss.lv) c. Cilvēkam ir jānodod sevi man.DAT be.AUX.PRS give.DEB himself.ACC Dieva rokās God.GEN hand.LOC.PL ‘The man should give himself into the hands of the God’

(www.google.lv)

The debitive mood has the following paradigm of tense forms (in the active voice, see Table 2):

darīt ‘to do’

present indefinite ir jādara ‘must do’

past indefinite bija jādara ‘had to do’

future indefinite būs jādara ‘shall/will have to do’

present perfect ir bijis jādara ‘must have been done’

past perfect bija bijis jādara ‘must have been done’

future perfect būs bijis jādara ‘will have to be done’

Tab. 2: The paradigm of the debitive (active voice) (Paegle 2003: 122)

In the perfect forms of the debitive, the auxiliaries are inflected for gender and number (exam-ples see in section 5.3; Table 2 shows the masculine singular form).

3.1 Sub-moods of the debitive

The debitive mood in Latvian differs from other moods in that it can be combined with other moods – the oblique and conditional. Thus in terms of semantics, one grammatical form sub-sumes a double modal semantics – oblique and debitive, or conditional and debitive meanings. Both sub-moods like the debitive mood itself have analytical tense forms. These combinations of moods are traditionally considered in the Latvian grammar as the sub-moods of the debitive, and their acknowledgement underlies, for instance, Endzelīns’ assumption that the debitive should not be distinguished as a separate mood of the verb, but defined as a variety of the indicative mood. (Endzelīns 1981; see also Mathiassen 1997: 130; Holvoet 2007: 41).

3.1.1 Combination of the debitive and oblique

The oblique sub-mood comprises both the meaning of necessity and of a related message as well as denoting the necessity for another person to perform the action:

(7) Man esot jāpērk maize I.DAT be.AUX.OBL buy.DEB bread.NOM ‘They say I should/ have to buy bread’

(www.korpuss.lv)

The combination of the debitive and oblique is formed by adding an auxiliary in the oblique mood form to a verb in the debitive mood – esot jādara ‘should be done’, būšot jādara ‘will

have to be done’. This sub-mood has the following paradigm of tense forms, see Table 3:

darīt ‘to do’ present indefinite esot jādara ‘should be done’

future indefinite būšot jādara ‘will have to be done’

present perfect esot bijis jādara ‘should have been done’

future perfect būšot bijis jādara ‘will have to be done’

Tab. 3: Paradigm of the oblique sub-mood of the debitive (active voice) (Kalme, Smiltniece 2001: 252)

3.1.2 Combination of the debitive and conditional

The combination of the debitive and conditional comprises both the meaning of weakened neces-sity and points to a desirable action that should occur:

(8) Tev tas būtu jāzina šodien you.DAT this.NOM be.AUX.COND know.DEB today ‘You should know this today’

(www.korpuss.lv)

The combination of the debitive and conditional is formed by adding an auxiliary in the condi-tional mood form to a verb in the debitive mood – būtu jādara ‘should be done’. The debitive conditional sub-mood has the following paradigm of tense forms (Table 4):

darīt ‘to do’ present indefinite būtu jādara ‘should be done’

present perfect būtu bijis jādara ‘should have been done’

Tab. 4: The paradigm of the conditional sub-mood of the debitive (active voice) (Kalme&Smiltniece 2001: 252)

Both of the above-described combinations of the debitive and other moods are widely used in all styles of speech – in the colloquial as well as written style, in mass-media texts, fiction, legal texts, literary prose etc. It may be assumed that the sub-moods of the debitive serve for language economy where through one single grammatical form one can express several modal and eviden-tial meanings without (or comparatively rarely) using such non-grammatical ways of expressing modality and evidentiality as specific types of clauses, discourse particles, or adverbs. 3.2 The debitive in the passive voice

The debitive, like all other moods in Latvian, has passive forms where the auxiliaries tikt ‘to be (in the meaning of a process)’ (indefinite forms) and būt ‘to be (in the meaning of an achieved result or state)’ (perfect forms) combine with the passive participle which agrees with the seman-tic object or patient in gender and number (see Table 5):

darīt ‘to do’

present indefinite ir jātiek darītam, -ai ‘must be done’

past indefinite bija jātiek darītam, -ai ‘must have been done’

future indefinite būs jātiek darītam, -ai ‘will have been done’

present perfect ir jābūt darītam, -ai ‘must be done’

past perfect bija jābūt darītam, -ai ‘must have been done’

future perfect būs jābūt darītam, -ai ‘will have been done’

Tab. 5: The paradigm of the debitive (passive voice) (Kalme & Smiltniece 2001: 252)

(9) a. Lūgumam ir jātiek pamatotam request.DAT.M be. AUX.PRS be.DEB base.PTCP.DAT.M ar medicīnisko izziņu with medical.INS letter.INS ‘The request must be based on a doctor’s letter of reference’

(www.google.lv) b. Kartē ir jābūt paskaidrotai map.LOC be.AUX.PRS be.DEB explain.PTCP.DAT.F lietoto apzīmējumu nozīmei used.GEN.PL term.GEN.PL meaning.DAT.F ‘The terms used in the map must be explained’

(www.google.lv)

The oblique and conditional sub-moods of the debitive can be used in the passive voice, see Ta-ble 6 and 7:

darīt ‘to do’

present indefinite esot jātiek darītam, -ai ‘they say it must be done’

future indefinite būšot jātiek darītam, -ai ‘they say it must be done some time in future’

present perfect esot jābūt darītam, -ai ‘they say it must have been done’

future perfect būšot jābūt darītam, -ai ‘they say it wil be done’

Tab. 6: Paradigm of the oblique sub-mood of the Debitive (passive voice)

(10) a. Precēm esot jātiek pārdotām product.DAT.PL.F be.AUX.OBL PFX-be.DEB sell.PTCP.DAT.PL.F

visā pasaulē all.LOC world.LOC ‘They say the products must be sold all over the world’

(www.diena.lv) b. Līdz septembra vidum darbam by September.GEN middle.DAT work.DAT.M esot jābūt padarītam be.AUX.OBL be.DEB do.PTCP.DAT.M ‘The say the work must be finished by the middle of September’

(www.diena.lv)

darīt ‘to do’

present indefinite būtu jātiek darītam ‘should be done’

present perfect būtu jābūt darītam ‘should have been done’

Tab. 7: The paradigm of the conditional sub-mood of the debitive (passive voice)

(11) a. Izcirtumā būtu jātiek stādītam clearing.LOC be.AUX.COND be.DEB plant.PTCP.DAT.M jaunam mežam new.DAT.M forest.DAT.M ‘A new forest should be planted in the clearing’

(www.diena.lv) b. Grāmatai būtu jābūt lasītai book.DAT.F be.AUX.COND be.DEB read.PTCP.DAT.F katrā ģimenē every.LOC family.LOC ‘The book should have been read in every family’

(www.diena.lv)

It is typically assumed by Latvian grammars that the debitive in the passive voice is not a fre-quently used verb form (see, e. g.,). Moreover, the paradigm of the debitive sub-moods in the passive voice shown in Table 6 and Table 7 has not been mentioned in the grammars of the Lat-vian language. However, passive forms of the debitive are commonly used in modern Latvian in formal correspondence where it is typical to communicate strong claims and requests. Both sub-moods of the passive debitive are attested in formal interviews and news reports in media-texts. 3.3 Problems of description of the debitive in Latvian grammars

Due to its morphosyntax and sub-moods, the description of the debitive in the Latvian grammars has so far been a rather controversial issue. For example, Endzelīns argued that the debitive is a variety of the indicative mood, Marvans and Nau analyzed it in terms of the so-called modal pas-sive. Andronov wrote about the gerundive, while Holvoet suggested a description of the debitive

as a particular class of modal forms with indicative, conditional, and oblique forms (Marvans 1967; Endzelīns 1981; Nau 1998; Holvoet 2001, 2007).

Fennell claimed, however, that the debitive mood has been attested in Latvian in the first Lat-vian language grammars of the 17

th century and that the presence of this category has not been

questioned in the most of the grammars published later on (Fennells 1995a: 95–109). This tradi-tion has persisted in the grammars written in the 20

th century where the debitive mood is ana-

lyzed as one of the five verbal moods pointing to a very special paradigm and distribution of the debitive mood (e. g., Mūsdienu latviešu literārās valodas gramatika (The Grammar of Modern Standard Latvian) 1959; Kalme & Smiltniece 2001; Nītiņa 2001; Paegle 2003). 4. The debitive and modality

Depending on whether modality relates to the contents of the proposition or the speaker’s atti-tude towards the event itself, two subtypes of modality are distinguished (Palmer 2001: 4–7):

1. root (event); 2. epistemic.

The present study does not discuss the relationship between the deontic and dynamic modalities (for more on this see Nuyts 2005; Gisborne 2007; Holvoet 2007). In the usage of the Latvian debitive it is not possible to distinguish between the deontic and dynamic semantics, because one and the same sentence can be interpreted as either deontically or dynamically depending on the context (not, however, by formal markers). In the present research paper the dynamic and deon-tic modalities are subsumed under the concept and term of root modality, where root modality stands for any type of modality that is not epistemic and has the semantics of obligation, permis-sion, necessity, and ability etc. (Matthews 1997: 324; see also the first level of classification of modals in Leiss 2008: 19).

Evidentiality, however, is viewed as a distinct semantic category which combines the means of linguistic expression involving reference to the source of a given information as well as the evaluation of the contents of expression (Wiemer 2007a: 198; Wiemer 2007b; see also Plungian 2001; Holvoet 2001; Aikhenvald 2004).

Moods in Latvian typically convey various modal and evidential meanings (Kalnača 2000, 2007, 2012; Holvoet 2001, 2007). Thus, for instance, the indicative mood is particularly multi-functional as in specific contexts it not only denotes a real event, but also may express root, epis-temic, and evidential meanings (Kalnača 2000, 2012). Likewise, the oblique mood that typically has the semantics of evidentiality may be used to express an epistemic meaning and, in certain syntactic constructions, also the semantics of root modality (Kalnača 2011). However, the im-perative mood always has the semantics of root modality, while the conditional mood of epis-temic modality (Kalnača 2012). The system of five moods and the respective grammaticalized modal and evidential meanings explain why, unlike in other languages, Latvian modal verbs, particles and adverbs obtain a minor role in the semantics of modality.

From the point of view of modality, the debitive expresses modal meanings that are mainly related to root modality. However, the classification of the functions of the debitive mood con-struction is problematic for various reasons.

Firstly, the debitive, as opposed to the imperative and conditional moods, can be regarded as polysemantic and can express not only root, but also epistemic meanings depending on context and situation (Kalnača 2012). However, as the usage data attest, the epistemic meaning is not typical and is used in particular grammatical contexts only – for instance, when the predicate is a

stative verb (see section 4.2). The deontic and epistemic meanings are not correlated with ad-verbs and particles in the clause as one or the other meaning emerges from within certain con-texts only. As discussed further on in the paper (section 4.2), a clause containing one and the same debitive form may have both the root and epistemic reading.

Secondly, both sub-moods of the debitive (conditional and oblique) may convey a combina-tion of several modal and/or evidential meanings thus complicating the classification of modal semantics. 4.1 The root modality reading

Traditionally, root modality is related to the imperative mood where the speaker wants to influ-ence the addressee with a certain degree of power (Palmer 2001: 80). However, the imperative mood is not the only form in Latvian encoding the meaning of root modality – in specific con-texts or communicative situations root modal reading can be expressed by other moods, modal verbs, and other expressive means (for more on these modal meanings and the means of convey-ing see Bybee & Fleischman 1995: 5; Nuyts 2005: 14–15; Nuyts; Byloo & Diepeveen 2005: 11–12; De Haan 2006: 32–41).

Thus, this specific meaning of influencing the addressee (usually expressed by the indicative mood) can also be expressed by the debitive mood. For instance:

(12) a. Tēvam šodien ir jāiet father.DAT today be.AUX.PRS go.DEB pie ārsta to doctor.GEN ‘Father must (definitely) see a doctor today’

(www.korpuss.lv) or

b. Māsai šovakar ir jābūt sister.NOM this.evening be.AUX.PRS be.DEB mājās septiņos home.LOC.PL seven.LOC.PL ‘Sister must (it is necessary) be at home by seven this evening’

(www.korpuss.lv)

It must be noted here that most language samples involving the debitive express the meaning of root modality, i. e. have a deontic reading (such examples are found both in the corpus and other sources). Comparing root modality expressed by the debitive and the imperative, the difference in the meaning is marked in that the imperative always denotes some request or order said di-rectly to the addressee. The debitive, on the other hand, denotes an action that the speaker or somebody else is committed to, as Portner argues, something we have to do because it is an obli-gation (Portner 2007: 380–381). Imperative and debitive semantic relation in the Latvian lan-guage is the object of the further research, and therefore is not described in detail in the present article (more on relations between imperatives and modals see Portner 2007).

4.2 The epistemic modality reading

When the speaker expresses some doubt over a definite action, the debitive mood forms acquire the epistemic meaning:

(13) a. Tur kaut kam ir jābūt there something.DAT be.AUX.PRS be.DEB ‘There must be something’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Kur ir mans spainis? Tu teici, ka tam ir jāstāv you say.PST.2SG that it.DAT be.AUX.PRS stand.DEB garāžā, bet tur tā nav garage.LOC but there it.GEN not_be.PRS.3 ‘Where is my bucket? You said it should be in the garage but it is not there’

(www.google.lv) c. Domāju, ka tai šokolādei think. PRS.1SG that this.DAT.F chocolate.DAT ir jābūt garšīgai be.AUX.PRS be.DEB delicious.DAT ‘This chocolate must be delicious’ (It is produced by the best manufacturer)’

(www.diena.lv)

As discussed earlier, the debitive does not usually have the epistemic meaning. At this stage of research it may be concluded that the epistemic meaning is characteristic mainly for stative verbs (e. g., būt ‘to be’, stāvēt ‘to stand’, gulēt ‘to sleep’, sēdēt ‘to sit’) (see, e. g., (12b), (13), (16), (18)). Root modal meaning is characteristic for all the other cases (see, e. g., (3), (4), (6), (7), (9)-(11), (12a), (15), (17)). Thus, the corpus data show mostly the occurrence of the verb būt ‘to be’ with the root and epistemic reading.

In the usage of stative verbs we can thus observe how one and the same sentence with the debitive can be interpreted either with the root or epistemic meaning contingent upon the con-text:

(14) Ilzes meitai ir jāguļ diendusa Ilze.GEN daughter.DAT be.AUX.PRS sleep.DEB nap.NOM ‘Ilze’s daughter must be taking a nap’

(www.korpuss.lv)

The modality expressed by the debitive can have two possible interpretations:

1. root modality – the girl is little, perhaps she is just a year old, and therefore taking a nap is

absolutely necessary for her well-being;

2. epistemic modality – we can conclude from the closed shutters on her window that Ilze’s

daughter is taking nap.

The possibility to use two modal meanings of the debitive in Latvian corresponds to the modal verb functions in other languages, especially the Germanic languages. As Nordström points out, the root modality (or deontic and dynamic modality according to Nordström) is more common, and it has originated the epistemic modal reading (Nordström 2010: 162-163). Thus, the same modal verbs can be used in the meaning of root modality and epistemic modality, whereas the

latter meaning is less common. This assumption also refers to the debitive in the Latvian lan-guage. Abraham and Leiss, however, claim that root modal reading and epistemic reading are verb aspect sensitive as to the selection of their infinitival complements. Thus, root modal read-ing is more characteristic for those modal verbs that embed infinitival perfectivity, whereas epis-temic modal reading is more common for the modal verbs that embed infinitival imperfectivity (Abraham & Leiss 2008: xiii; see also Abraham 2002, 2008). Concerning the modality expressed by the debitive, at this stage of the research the following assumption of Abraham and Leiss has been confirmed: the epistemic modal reading is characteristic only for imperfect stative verb forms of the debitive, especially the verb būt ‘to be’ forms. In the Latvian language, the root mo-dality expressed by the debitive obviously is not verb aspect sensitive. 4.3 Modal and evidential meanings of the debitive combinations

The combinations of the debitive mood with oblique and conditional are not semantically homo-geneous. Both the conditional combination (būtu jāiet ‘should go’) and the oblique combination (esot jāiet ‘perhaps should go’) express evidential and/or modal meanings.

The conditional combination comprises both the meaning of necessity and condition and points to a possible or desired action that should necessarily occur. In Latvian the conditional combination is typically used in contexts where the speaker wants to distance himself from some necessary action and perhaps express doubt over the necessity for such action:

(15) a. Izdevumi par mācību grāmatām cost.NOM.PL of exercise.GEN.PL book.DAT.PL būtu jāsedz skolai vai pašvaldībai, be.AUX.COND cover.DEB school.DAT or municipality.DAT bet ne vecākiem but not parents.DAT.PL ‘School and municipality not the parents should cover the costs of textbooks.’

(www.diena.lv) b. Augsto graudu cenu dēļ olu high.GEN.PL grain.GEN.PL price.GEN.PL due egg.GEN. ražotājiem būtu jāceļ cenas PLproducer.DAT.PL be.AUX.COND increase.DEB price.ACC.PL ‘Due to high price of grain egg producers should increase their prices.’

(www.diena.lv) c. Ja man vakar būtu bijis jāraksta if I.DAT yesterday be.AUX.COND be.PTCP write.DEB dienasgrāmata, tā būtu skumja journal.NOM it.NOM be.AUX.COND sad.NOM ‘If I had had to write my journal yesterday it would have been a very sad one’

(www.korpuss.lv)

In the cases like (15a-c) it may be best to claim that the auxiliary verb in the conditional mood is used to denote a weaker form of root modality as opposed to a combination of the root and epis-temic meanings that is typical of conditionals (Kalnača 2012).

If the predicate is a stative verb (in particular būt ‘to be’), also in the usage of the debitive mood conditional subtype, both the root and epistemic readings are possible:

(16) Māsai būtu jābūt mājās sister.DAT be.AUX.COND be.DEB home.LOC.PL

1. root modality ‘Sister should be at home’ – today is a day-off, and therefore my sister

should be at home; the auxiliary būtu in this case conveys a weaker meaning of root mo-

dality because the speaker assumes that there are circumstances due to which his/her sister

may not be at home after all;

2. epistemic modality ‘Sister could be at home (I think so)’ – we intend to visit my sister and

ask her husband to tell her. However, since he cannot reach her by phone he concludes that

my sister is usually at home at this time.

The combination of the debitive and oblique comprises both the meaning of a quoted message as

well the necessity for another person to perform the action:

(17) a. Valstij esot jāuzlabo state.DAT be.AUX.OBL improve.DEB tūristiem piedāvātais serviss tourist.DAT.PL offer.PTCP.NOM service.NOM ‘They say the state must improve the service offered to tourists.’

(www.diena.lv) b. Ārste teica, ka man doctor.NOM say.PST.3 that I.DAT būšot jāēd kalcijs be.AUX.OBL eat.DEB calcium.NOM ‘The doctor said I will have to take additional calcium’

(www.diena.lv) c. Veikalā esot bijis jāstrādā store be.AUX.OBL be.PTCP work.DEB četrpadsmit stundu dienā fourteen hour.GEN.PL day.LOC ‘Apparently they had to work in the store fourteen hours daily’

(www.korpuss.lv)

In the (15a-c) and (17a-c) the combination of the debitive and oblique is used to express a com-bination of the semantics of the root reading and evidentiality. If the combinations of the debitive and oblique stative verbs are used (particularly with būt ‘to be’ as the predicate), the meaning of a combination of the evidential and epistemic modal reading is conveyed. This is a reported epis-temic judgement:

(18) a. Māte domā, ka māsai mother.NOM think.PRS.3 that sister.DAT esot jābūt mājās be. AUX.OBL be.DEB home.LOC.PL ‘My mother thinks that my sister must be at home (for sure)’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Šīs konstrukcijas dārza mājiņām this.GEN design.GEN garden.GEN house.DAT.PL esot jābūt ļoti labām be. AUX.OBL be.DEB very good.DAT.PL

‘The design of these cottages must be very good’ (www.korpuss.lv)

In most cases, however, the meaning of the oblique subtype of the debitive mood tends to be in-terpreted as a combination of the root and evidential meanings. In Latvian it is customary to quote necessity where information about the commitment originates from a source other than the speaker himself. Therefore the evidential meaning scopes over the root/epistemic meaning.

It must be noted that the combination of several modal meanings as in Latvian is not an ex-ception; it is widely attested in the languages of the world languages (see Kalnača 2011, 2012). For instance, Van der Auwera et al. (2005) describe the so-called combination of situational and epistemic modalities to express the meaning of necessity and possibility where the situational modality is non-epistemic, i.e. deontic and dynamic modality (Van der Auwera; Ammann & Kindt 2005: 252–258). In the same spirit, Bybee & Fleischman (1995: 5-6) claim that one and the same linguistic forms can express both the epistemic and deontic modalities (see also Nuyts 2005: 16–17). 5. Distributional traits of the debitive

The syntactic properties of the debitive construction have traditionally been a matter of debate in Latvian linguistics. Unlike constructions with other moods, the subject of the finite verb is in the Dative in the debitive construction. The auxiliary būt ‘to be’ is not inflected for person; personal pronouns or nouns in the Dative express the semantic role of the agent. 5.1 The argument structure in debitive constructions

As discussed in section 2, the direct object of the finite verb is in the Nominative, except for the1

st and 2

nd person pronouns and reflexive pronouns which are in the Accusative (consider ex-

amples (6a-c).

(6) a. Vienkārši ir jāatbrīvo mani no darba ‘I simply must be dismissed from the position’ b. Man ir jāsatiek tevi ‘I must meet you’ c. Cilvēkam ir jānodod sevi Dieva rokās ‘The man should give himself into the hands of the God’

It has been traditionally assumed by Latvian grammars that the Nominative marks the subject while the Dative – the object. However, according to a number of subjecthood tests (as de-scribed, e. g., in Testelec 2001: 317–359), the Dative must be interpreted as the syntactic subject rather than the object for the following reasons (see also Fennells 1995b; Holvoet 2001, Holvoet 2007):

1. The semantic properties – the Dative denotes the agent, the Nominative denotes the patient:

(19) Mums jāpaņem balta papīra lapa we.DAT take.DEB white.NOM paper.GEN sheet.NOM ‘We have to take a clean sheet of paper’

(www.korpuss.lv)

2. Agreement features – usually there is no agreement control in debitive constructions.

There are very few cases when the Nominative object controls agreement – it can only be seen when the predicate is in compound form, and such examples will be analysed in section 5.3. However, the Dative subject controls agreement with a nominal predicate (see also Lokmane 2002, 2007):

(20) Sunim jābūt paklausīgam dog.DAT be.DEB controllable.DAT un maigam and affectionate.DAT ‘A dog must be controllable and affectionate’

(www.korpuss.lv)

3. Reflexivization control – the Dative subject controls reflexivization:

(21) a. Mums ir jāatrod sevi we.DAT be.aux.PRS find.DEB ourselves.ACC ‘We should find ourselves’

(www.korpuss.lv) or

b. Cilvēkiem jāatrod sevī people.DAT.PL find.DEB themselves.LOC spēks strength.NOM ‘People should find strength within themselves’

(www.korpuss.lv)

4. Word order – when there is a Dative subject in the sentence it usually occurs in the initial po-sition, as can be observed in examples (19)-(21). Reverse order is also possible, but it is marked, i. e., the Dative subject is stressed:

(22) Melnais darbs jādara man black.NOM work.NOM do.DEB I.DAT ‘I have to do all the hard work (with stress on the Dative subject man)’

(www.korpuss.lv)

Sentences with an empty subject position are also quite frequent in Modern Latvian:

(23) Kāpēc ir jāsnieg, ja tāpat nokusīs? why be.AUX.PRS snow.DEB if anyway melt.FUT.3 ‘Why should it be snowing, it will all melt down anyway?’

(www.korpuss.lv)

It is possible to drop also a referential (generic) subject. For sentences without Dative subjects there are two different word order patterns:

1. The Nominative argument occurs in the initial position, i. e., it is topicalized:

(24) Darbs jādara ar mīlestību work.NOM do.DEB with love.INS

‘One should do their work with love.’ (www.korpuss.lv)

2. The Nominative argument occurs after the debitive form of the verb, i.e., it is detopicalized:

(25) Jādara darbs, nevis jāstreiko do.DEB work.NOM not strike.DEB ‘We must work, not go on strike’

(www.korpuss.lv)

Furthermore it remains to be explained if the argument case assignment (Nominative or Accusa-tive) in the clause is somehow related to the syntactic relations in debitive constructions. 5.2 The choice between the Nominative or Accusative argument

One of the most striking features of the Latvian debitive is the competition between the Nomina-tive and the Accusative case. Currently, what can be observed is a tendency to replace the Nomi-native by the Accusative. The Accusative argument in the debitive is particularly widespread in spoken language (both in formal and colloquial style). Lately, such a pattern of usage has also been observed in mass-media texts, particularly in the readers’ comments thus pointing again to characteristics of the spoken language. See what Holvoet has stated on this novel development:

Future investigations should establish under what circumstances the nominative noun phrase con-tained in the debitive construction shows signs of being replaced with the accusative [...] whether the retention of the nominative is connected with topicalisation, whether it correlates with agree-ment features. (Holvoet 2001: 51)

The question to answer is the following: Are there any factors influencing the choice between the Nominative and the Accusative argument? On this it is argued by Holvoet that

In the modern (substandard) language there seems to be a tendency to retain nominative marking only when it is topicalized and the whole construction is functionally equivalent to passive, e.g., krāsa rūpīgi jāmaisa ‘the paint should be carefully mixed’, whereas it will be replaced with the ac-cusative if there is an agent to occupy the position of topic, e. g., (!) man vēl jāizmaisa krāsu ‘I have to mix the paint’. (Holvoet 2007: 174)

However, corpus data do not seem to support this assumption. The majority of debitive construc-tions in the corpus contain a Nominative argument which occurs both in topic position and fol-lowing the verb:

(26) a. Valsts jākopj tāpat kā dārzs state.NOM cherish.DEB just as garden.NOM ‘The state must be looked after like a garden’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Jākopj mūsu kultūra cherish.DEB our culture.NOM ‘Culture should be cherished’

(www.korpuss.lv)

In addition, the Accusative occurs sentence-initially (i. e., it is topicalized):

(27) a. Prātu jāiemāca skaistu skatīt

mind.ACC teach.DEB beautiful.ACC see.INF un skaistu dzirdēt and beautiful.ACC hear.INF ‘The mind should be taught to see the beautiful and to hear the beautiful’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Visu to labāko jāatdod bērniem all.ACC this.ACC best.ACC give.DEB child.DAT.PL ‘All the best should go to our children’

(www.diena.lv) c. To ir jādara ļoti uzmanīgi this.ACC be.AUX.PRS do.DEB very carefully ‘This must be done carefully’

(www.korpuss.lv)

This usage is particularly widespread in media-texts, e. g., see (28):

(28) Čavess teica, ka viņu ir jāievēl Cavez.NOM say.PST.3 that he.ACC be.AUX.PRS elect.DEB uz ceturto prezidentūras periodu for fourth.ACC presidency.GEN term.ACC ‘Cavez said he should be elected for the fourth term’

(www.diena.lv)

There are also examples attested with the Accusative argument following the predicate, both with and without the Dative subject; in this position Accusative argument is rheme:

(29) a. Pēc tam ir jāveic korekciju after this.DAT be.AUX.PRS made.DEB correction.ACC ‘Corrections must be made afterwards’

(www.diena.lv) or b. Viņiem jāsaglabā skaidru prātu they.DAT.PL keep.DEB clear.ACC mind.ACC ‘They should keep their minds clear’

(www.diena.lv)

In a coordinate sentence the Nominative may be used in the first clause and the Accusative in the second. No straight-forward explanation was found for the choice between the Accusative and Nominative in these cases:

(30) Jāveido laba komanda, form.DEB good.NOM team.NOM tātad jāmotivē darbinieku therefore motivate.DEB staff.ACC ‘A good team must be formed, therefore the staff should be motivated’

(www.diena.lv)

The Accusative is generally used if the debitive is followed by infinitive which governs the ob-

ject:

(31) Nu jāiet viņu ķert

now go.DEB he.ACC catch.INF ‘Now we should go and try to catch him’

(www.korpuss.lv)

However, the Nominative is also possible in such a chain, especially if an aspectual or modal

verb is used in the debitive. Such examples with aspectual or modal verbs in the debitive as (32a-

b) are very frequent in Latvian:

(32) a. Pieteikums ir jāsāk gatavot laicīgi application.NOM be.AUX.PRS start.DEB prepare.INF timely ‘We should start preparing the application timely’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Juristiem esot jāprot pareizi lawyers.DAT.PL be.AUX.OBL can.DEB correctly norobežot juridiskie argumenti delimit.INF legal.NOM.PL arguments.NOM.PL ‘Lawyers are supposed to correctly draw the line between legal arguments’

(www.diena.lv)

The examples (27)-(30) discussed above permit to draw a preliminary conclusion – the choice between the Nominative and Accusative argument in debitive constructions does not directly de-pend on the word sequence and on discourse topicalization. 5.3 The debitive and patterns of agreement

As was mentioned before (see section 5.1), debitive constructions should also be discussed from

the point of view of agreement. There are two types of constructions regarding agreement:

1. The participle of the perfect form of the debitive (see Table 2) agrees with the Nominative. 2. The participle of the perfect form of the debitive does not agree with the Nominative.

The majority of corpus examples do not show agreement patterns supporting the assumption that the Nominative form is not analyzed as grammatical subject of the sentence. In these examples the auxiliary is in the unmarked form of 3

rd person masculine singular, e. g., the masculine form

of the auxiliary does not agree with a feminine object in the Nominative:

(33) Esot bijis jāmeklē be.AUX.OBL be.PTCP.M look.DEB kāda bodīte some.NOM.F shop.NOM.F ‘Someone had to look for a shop.’

(www.korpuss.lv)

The singular form of the auxiliary does not agree with the plural object:

(34) Šīm personām ir bijis jānorāda these.DAT.PL person.DAT.PL be.AUX.PRS be.PTCP.M show.DEB deklarācijā savi naudas uzkrājumi declaration.LOC their money.GEN savings. NOM.PL ‘These people should have at least declared their savings in cash’

(www.diena.lv)

If the choice between the Nominative and Accusative argument were related to topicalization, agreement with the Nominative should be more frequent when the Nominative argument is topi-calized. Examples with agreement patterns support this assumption where only the Nominative argument in the sentence initial position agrees with the predicate both in number and gender:

(35) a. Sociālie nodokļi social.NOM.PL tax.NOM.PL ir bijuši jāmaksā be.AUX.PRS be.PTCP.PL.M made.DEB ‘Social taxes should have been paid’

(www.korpuss.lv) b. Sāpju ceļi pain.GEN.PL walks.NOM.PL ir bijuši jāizstaigā be.AUX.PRS be.PTCP.PL.M walk.DEB ‘Painful walks had to be taken’

(www.korpuss.lv) c. Vēsturiski cilvēktiesības vienmēr historically human_rights.NOM.PL always ir bijušas jāizcīna be.AUX.PRS be.PTCP.PL.F fight.DEB ‘Historically, human rights always have had to be fought for’

(www.korpuss.lv)

These agreement patterns demonstrate that topicalization and the choice of the object are in some, yet unclear way related. However, at this point of our research it cannot be concluded that this is the only factor influencing the choice of the case of the object. Further research should be made to provide more convincing generalizations. 6. Concluding remarks

The Latvian debitive is best analyzed as a mood because the verbal forms in the debitive have specific grammatical formants and the prevailing meaning is modal for the most part expressing root modality. However, the debitive may be used to also convey epistemic meaning, this mean-ing being attested only for a limited group of verbs, i. e. stative verbs and the verb būt ‘to be’ for the most part. The combination of modal meanings and evidentiality has also been attested, but this occurs as conditional and oblique sub-moods of the debitive.

Likeness of the debitive to the passive is misleading. The debitive paradigm has passive forms thereby confirming the claim that the debitive cannot be analyzed as the passive. This has been confirmed by the fact that the Nominative argument rarely agrees with an auxiliary in gender and number in the debitive construction, which is normally expected to happen in the passive con-struction. As the debitive constructions contain a generic agent and empty subject position, many Latvian examples are best translated into English as passive sentences. However, this does not have an effect on the interpretation of the debitive as a mood in the Latvian language.

The Dative in debitive constructions is best analyzed as the grammatical subject, while the Nominative or Accusative as grammatical object. It must be noted, however, that the construc-

tions where the Nominative must agree with the predicative participle may complicate such in-terpretation of the meaning. The number of constructions with agreement is relatively small.

The present research, however, does not support the thesis that the case form (Nominative or Accusative) of the object depends on the topicalization of the expression – more precisely, that the object in the Nominative case always marks topicalization. This assumption is not confirmed by the corpus data. Therefore, the parameters determining the case form on the object are subject to further research. Abbreviations

A Agent ACC Accusative ACT Active AUX Auxiliary COND Conditional mood DAT Dative DEB Debitive GEN Genitive F Feminine INF Infinitive INS Instrumental LOC Locative M Masculine NOM Nominative O Object OBL Oblique mood PL Plural PRS Present PRF Perfect PTCP Participle PST Past REFL Reflexive S Subject SG Singular

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