Draft version Kalnača, Andra. Concurrence of Case Forms – Lapse or Norm in Standard Latvian. Kalbų studijos. Studies about Languages. Nr.3. Kaunas, 2002, 5–9. CONCURRENCE OF CASE FORMS – LAPSE OR NORM IN STANDARD LATVIAN ANDRA KALNAČA University of Latvia The grammatical and semantic systems of noun categories are undergoing obvious change in modern Latvian. The most vivid example of such change is in the category of case and it’s semantic structure. There is a concurrence between case forms for different syntactic functions, e.g., for negation G // N ‘makā nav naudas // nauda’/‘there is no money in the wallet’; in debitive construction 1 N // A ‘man ir jālasa grāmata // grāmatu’/‘I must read a book’; and for a negated direct object G // A ‘neteikšu neviena vārda // vārdu’/‘I’ll not say a word’. These grammatical processes are handled inconsistently in Latvian grammar-books. The concurrence of the accusative and the genitive is treated as an allowable variant, while the concurrence of the nominative and the genitive or the nominative and the accusative are considered as a lapse in Standard Latvian. This paper deals with the reasons for the concurrence of case forms and tries to ascertain why there are ambiguous grammatical descriptives in Latvian. The language material in this paper has been sourced from “Mūsdienu latviešu literārās valodas gramatika” (1959, 388-408) and Alfrēds Gāters “Lettische Syntax / Die Dainas” (1993, 70-205). Insofar as Latvian linguistics lacks extensive research into the semantics of the case system, the theoretical basis of this paper has been derived from the monographs and scholarly researches of Lithuanian as well as other linguists – Jonas Šukys “Lietuvių kalbos linksniai ir prielinksniai” (1998), Elena Valiulytė “Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos sintaksiniai sinonimai” (1998), Aldona Paulauskienė “Lietuvių kalbos morfologija” (1994) and “Lietuvių kalbos kultūra” (2000), Barry J. Blake “Case” (1997), Jerzy Kuriłowicz “The Inflectional Categories of Indo-European” (1964), Sturla Berg – Olsen “A syntactic change in progress: The decline in the use of the non-prepositional genitive in Latvian, with a comparative view on Lithuanian” (1999). The case classification of nouns is complicated in Latvian. The declension system consists of seven case forms – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. Every case form (excluding vocative) has a rich polysemy of meanings, which is closely associated with the semantic and grammatical structure of utterance. The case system, therefore, can be classified as morphologically syntactic (Paulauskienė 1994, 105). There is one semantic invariant among the different meanings of every case form. The semantic invariant is the paradigmatic meaning, whereas the others are derivative syntagmatic meanings. The paradigmatic meaning depends directly on the syntactic and semantic functions of the case form in utterance. The syntagmatic meanings are usually derived from paradigmatic ones, thus the synonymic relationship is definable between them (Kuriłowicz 1964, 179-206), e.g., the paradigmatic meaning of the nominative is the subject of utterance (‘Bērni rotaļājas’/‘The children are playing ‘Saule spīd’/‘The sun shines’). Derivative syntagmatic meanings of the nominative are: that of a direct object in passive voice – ‘Nams tiek celts’/‘The house is being built’; as a direct object in debitive construction – ‘Man ir jālasa grāmata’/ ‘I must read a book’; and the function of address - ‘Aija, nāc šurp!’/‘Aija, come here!’. Grammatical synonymy causes a polysemy of grammatical forms. The synonymy of case forms is linked to their syntactic usage – in formal representation of a subject, an object or in negation, address or apposition. Thus the subject of utterance can be both nominative and genitive and the direct object can be accusative, genitive and nominative etc. Such grammatical synonymy creates concurrence of case forms. One case form tries to replace another or both function in parallel. The concurrence of case forms had already been established in Latvian folklore texts, especially in the dainas (Gāters 1993). Jānis Endzelīns and Kārlis Mīlenbahs had discussed this topic in their earliest grammar books (Endzelīns, Mīlenbahs 1907). Very similar manifestations of synonymy have been found in Lithuanian (Paulauskienė 1994, 2000; Šukys 1998; Valiulytė 1998 etc.), Russian (Jakobson 1971; Современный русский язык 1999, 491 etc.) and Latin (Blake 1994, 22 -23, Coleman 1976). This is an indication that the synonymy of case forms is an old and universal process, which is associated with the unification 1 These constructions express necessity in Latvian, e.g., Man ir jālasa grāmata ‘I must read a book’. Debitive belongs to the system of moods in Latvian.