Mood and modality in Baltic

The present volume gives an overview of the mood systems and the expression of modality in both living Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian (Old Prussian is ignored as the poor quality of the texts in this language precludes reliable conclu-sions concerning its grammar). The aim of the book was not so much to make a fundamental contribution to the theory of mood and modality as to provide a par-tial remedy for the unsatisfactory situation in the grammatical description of the Baltic languages. The grammatical facts of these languages are not sufficiently accessible to generał linguistics and language typology because descriptions are few and such as are available are usually theoretically obsolete, diachronically biased and incomplete. Some of the reproaches formulated here, especially that of incompleteness, will no doubt adhere to the present work as well. Though the author has made ample use of Internet search engines, he offers no corpus-based results concerning relative frequencies of grammatical forms and modal expres-sions, tendencies in their use etc. The chapters of this book cannot aspire to give an exhaustive picture of the domain of mood and modality in Baltic; rather, they reflect what the author has thought theoretically or typologically significant and interesting. This accounts for certain phenomena of statistically marginal impor-tance being discussed in detail while many tendencies in contemporary Lithuanian and Latvian usage may have remained unobserved. The author hopes, however, to have brought to the fore a considerable number of ąuestions hitherto ignored or misrepresented in the literaturę, thereby clearing the path for further work.

Our warmest thanks are due to Prof. Wojciech Smoczyński for offering to publish this book in the series Baltica Varsoviensia, and to Prof. Wayles Browne (Cornell University) for kindly agreeing to check the English of the manuscript, as well as for many useful suggestions towards the improvement of the text.

A grant of the Lithuanian State Science and Studies Foundation (Lietuvos val-stybinis mokslo ir studiju fondas) towards the preparation of this book is grate-fully acknowledged.