Lithuanian grammar

Properties and morphological categories

Grammatical terminology

Gender

• masculine
• feminine

• masculine
• feminine
• neuter

Grammatical number

Cases of declined words

• Nominative – vardininkas
• Genitive – kilmininkas; it also functions similarly to the ablative case in other languages.
• Dative – naudininkas
• Accusative – galininkas
• Instrumental – įnagininkas
• Locative cases:
• * Locative – vietininkas
• * Illative – ; dialectic, without clear status in the standard Lithuanian
• * Allative; obsolete, the singular is reduced to adverbs
• * Adessive; extinct
• Vocative – šauksmininkas

• inessive is fully used locative case. An example: nãmas – a house, namè – in a house, vyruose - in men. It is also used for a temporal meaning in some words: vakarè – in the evening. But more verbs are used in accusative for the latter meaning: vãsarą – in summer, rùdenį – in autumn, trẽčią vãlandą – in three o'clock. This accusative form also means duration: trečią dieną kepina – it is the third day when it sizzles. Plural forms for temporal "locatives" are expressed by instrumental: vakaraĩs – in / by the evenings, vãsaromis – in / by summers.
• illative is used sparingly. Some terms are normal, for example, in law: patráukti baudžiamõjon atsakomýbėn – to prosecute; literally: to draw, pull, move to penal amenability baudžiamają atsakomybę acc., not. Other examples: singular káiman – to the village, miškañ – to a forest, and forms of the common language į káimą, į mìšką; plural káimuos-na, miškúos-na and common forms į káimus, į miškùs;
• allative. Examples: namop – up to the home. Today it is used only in a few idiomic expressions like vakaróp – about nightfall, velnióp – to hell with smth.; šuniop – down the drain ; galóp – ultimately; nuteisti myriop - to send to the scaffold;
• adessive. Examples: laukíe-p sg. – beside the field, at the field, namíe-p sg.. It is a historical or dialectal case, extinct in modern standard Lithuanian, but it is preserved in the adverbs: namie – at home, netoli – not far, toli – far, arti – nearby, vienaip ar kitaip – anyway, savaip – in one's own fashion/way, tavaip – in your fashion/way, visaip – diversely. etc.

Nouns

Number

Noun modification by numeral

Declension

1. There are only two nouns ending in -i: pati 'wife' and marti 'daughter-in-law'. Their declension is the same to the second adjective feminine declension and similar to a second feminine noun palatalized declension. The noun pati is the same to a pronoun pati 'herself; myself f; itself '
2. Exception: petys m – shoulder, peties, etc., after this declensional pattern. The third declension is very similar to the fifth declension.
3. Duktė 'daughter' is the only word of the fifth declension, not having an ending uo. A word moteris 'woman, female' often has a genitive móters; the plural genitive of moteris is moterų ; it is the only normal form for the fifth declension and one of the two for the third. The more two words, obelis f – apple tree and dieveris m – brother-in-law, are the same declensional case as moteris, but dieveris, being masculine possibly has a sg. inst. -iu. Dieveris is also the only -er- masculine case.

   Typology

• Names of -as type have vocative -ai instead of -e of common nouns: Jõnas - Jõnai, Tòmas - Tòmai. Common nouns sometimes have this ending, it is usual for a word tė́vas: tė́vai and tė́ve.
• Words having -j- before the ending -as have two differences of declensional cases from other -as words; -j- is soft sound and the locative for these words is like in soft -is / -ys / -ias type, but with a vowel changed where needed for an easier pronunciation: vė́jyje, but naudótojuje. Vocative is also different: vėjau, naudótojau. This form is sometimes present in other cases: nom. brólis : voc. bróli and brolaũ, vélnias : vélniau. Many of these -j- words are made with an actors suffix -ėjas m, -ėja f, -t-ojas m, -t-oja f: veĩkti 'to act, affect; operate' – veikė́jas 'actor, character'; naudóti 'to use' – naudótojas 'user'.
• There are only a few -ias words, they are declined like -ys words, except some cases: nominative for kẽlias, nominative and vocative for elnias - elni, and vélnias - vélniau.
• -is and -ys words differ in that, that -is words are stressed on the stem and -ys words are stressed on the ending. In -is type almost half of the nouns has consonants t, d in the ending of a stem. In -ys type about 12% of nouns have t, d ending stem.

• a type; twelve nouns are of masculine gender: viršilà 2 – warrant-officer, sergeant, barzdylà 2 – bearded one , vaivadà – voivode , maršálka 1 – historical office: mareschalus, marshal. 265 - of common gender: mušeikà 2 – scrapper, bruiser, personà 2 – personage, nebrendilà 2 – immaturely behaving person, nekláužada 1 – tinker, namìsėda 1 – home-keeping, who sits at home. Two words have -i ending: martì 4 – daughter-in-law, patì 4 – wife.
• ė type; four nouns are masculine: dė̃dė 2 – uncle, tė̃tė 2 – dad, dailìdė 2 – carpenter, woodworker and ciùcė 2 – doggy. 19 words are of common gender: garsenýbė 1 – renowned, tauškalỹnė 2 – wind-bag, gasser, mėmė̃ 4 – gawk, spiegėlė̃ 3b – who shrieks too much. The t, d stems in -ė are present in the following percentage through the four accentuation paradigms: I – 15%, II – 35%, III – 23%, IV – 12%.

• There were 245 feminine and 24 masculine nouns in this class. 6 nouns have common gender: palikuõnis 2, 34b 'progeny, offspring', grobuõnis 2, 3a 'predator', žiniuõnis 2, 4 'knower; witchdoctor', delsuonìs 3b 'who is dallying', giežuonìs 3b 'tiresome, sour ', vagìs 4 'thief'. Some other -uonis words are attributed to a masculine gender, for example, geluonìs 3b – sting, deguõnis 2 – oxygen. A word vinìs f, c 4 'nail, spike' is also sometimes understood as of common gender. The singular dative is -iui for the common gender, like in masculine nouns. The biggest part of these words have -t- stem. The second accentuation pattern is the rarest, among its examples are: durys pl. 2 'door', slistis 2 'simulation', gaištis 2, 4 'dallying', masculine: pirmuõnys pl. – protozoa, deguõnis – oxygen. Words with a suffix -m-en-, for example, ãšmenys pl. 3b – blade, sė́dmenys pl. 3a – buttocks, nates, nẽšmenys pl. 3b – silts, sediments carried by a water stream, are attributed to the third declensional pattern here, but they are of the fifth: the singular nom. is -uo: sėdmuõ – buttock. The singular instrumental is -imi, like in the third declension, while for masculine words of the fifth declension the proper ending is given to be -iu; but -imi can also be and is chosen for the words of the fifth declension.

• There are only 19 words with a non-palatalized ending, and more -j-us, and -ius words.

• The number of words of this class is small. The words are of the third accentuation pattern; one word, šuõ – dog, is of the fourth and has sg. inst. -imì. One, or maybe even some more, word is of the first accentuation pattern, rė́muo – waterbrash.

Grouping by a syllable nucleus of a pre-desinential syllable

• The first declension
• *-as,
• *-is / -ys and a few -ias words. Their genitive singular is -io.
• The second declension
• *-a
• *-ė
• The third declension : -is; genitive singular is -ies
• The fourth declension : -us

Adjectives

Declension

• Most of the first type adjectives of the third declension are with the suffix -in-. These are easily made from other parts of speech by adding the suffix -in-. When made from verbs, they are mostly made from a past passive participle: vìrti – to boil, vìrtas – boiled, virtìnis – which is boiled, made by boiling. Consequently, the suffix is -t-in- for such adjectives. Such variants of verbal derivation easily become nouns, in this case it is a noun virtìnis – dumpling.
• Two adjectives of the third declension have long -ys: dešinỹs – right, kairỹs – left; plural nominative is dešinì, kairì; plural dative: dešiníems, kairíems. A short form of dìdelis, dìdelė is dìdis, didì. Dešinys, kairys, didis have neuter gender of the u pattern: dešinu, kairu, didu. Pronominal forms: didỹsis, didžióji, dešinỹsis, dešinióji. An adjective didelis, didelė hasn't pronominal forms. The word didis has more mingled forms: nominative is sometimes didus; genitive masc.: didžio / didaus; accusative: didį ; plural masc. nom. didūs; other forms are of the regular pattern.
• Some other forms having variations in a standard language: pė́sčias, pėsčià, pė́sčia – pedestrian, afoot; pėsčiàsis, pėsčióji and pėstỹsis, pėsčióji.

• Tiesi gatvė vs. tiesios gatvės
• Tiesi gatvė vs. tiesus kelias
• Tiesi gatvė vs. tiesią gatvę

Degrees of comparison

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Reflexive pronoun

Verbs

• The first conjugation is the most commonly found in Lithuanian, encompassing those verbs whose infinite form ends in -ati, -oti, -auti, -uoti or a consonant followed by -ti. This conjugation also has the highest occurrence of irregularity of all the Lithuanian verb cases.
• The second conjugation refers to those verbs whose infinitive form ends in -ėti. There are hardly any instances of irregularity for this conjugation. An exception: verbs that have -ėja in the Present Tense belong to the first conjugation.
• The third conjugation consists of those verbs whose infinitive form ends in -yti. An exception: verbs that have -ija in the Present Tense belong to the first conjugation.

• primary. This group encompasses most of the verbs with irregular or unpredictable forms;
• mixed ;
• suffixal.

Active voice

• Indicative
• Indirect
• Imperative
• Conditional

  Indicative mood

Present tense

Past tense

Past iterative tense

• Remove the infinitive ending -ti.
• Add the suffix -dav- to the stem.
• Finally, add the corresponding ending of the past tense for the first conjugation.

Future tense

• Remove the -ti ending from the infinitive form of the verb.
• Add the -s- suffix which is used to form the Future Tense. Note, that ...š or ...ž + -s- assimilates to š without the final s. In case the stem itself ends with a final ...s, it is eliminated as well: kąsti → kąs.
• Add the appropriate ending.
• All the persons in this tense are completely regular, except for the 3rd one. The latter of this tense changes depending on several rules:

Compound tenses

Perfect tenses

Inchoative tenses

Indirect mood

Imperative mood

• Remove the infinitive ending -ti.
• Add the suffix -k- to the stem.
• Finally, add the corresponding ending.

• By adding a simple grammatical prefix te- to the 3rd person of the present tense. Used moderately often.
• By adding a simple grammatical prefix te- to the 3rd person of the present tense and replacing the ending with -ie or -ai. Obsolete / rare.
• By adding one of the particles tè, tegùl, tegù, laĩ before the 3rd person of the present tense : tegùl dìrba – let him work, laĩ skaĩto – let him read. Used very often.

Conditional mood

• Remove the infinitive suffix -ti.
• Add the respective suffix and ending.

Passive voice

• Tinginys valgo duoną → Duona yra tinginio valgoma – A lazy one is eating bread → Bread is being eaten by a lazy one.
• An intransitive example: Vaikai smagiai pažais ir nueis miegoti → Vaikų bus smagiai pažaista ir nueita miegoti – Children will play pleasantly and then go to sleep → It we be played pleasantly and then gone to sleep by children.
• A reflexive example: Šeimos pykdavosi dėl menkniekių → Šeimose būdavo pykstamasi dėl menkniekių – The families used to quarrel for nothing → It used to be quarrelled in the families for nothing.
• An impersonal example: Po vakarykštės audros daug prilijo → Po vakarykštės audros daug prilyta – There is a lot of rain water after yesterday's storm – It has been a lot of rain water after yesterday's storm.

Participles

Adjectival participles

• One of the main functions of active participles is to describe a characteristic of a noun related to some ongoing, past or future action in which the said noun is the agent: migruojantys paukščiai – migrating birds, nepatyręs vairuotojas – inexperienced driver, pablogėsiančios darbo sąlygos – working conditions that will worsen. Only present, past simple and future active participles can fulfill this function.
• Another function of active participles is to describe a secondary action performed by the sentence subject before the main action: Atidariusi langą mergina grožėjosi tekančia saule. – Having opened the window, the girl admired the sunrise. This function is limited to the past simple participle and is one of its most common uses. If there is a need to describe a secondary action performed by the sentence subject at the same time as the main action, the pusdalyvis must be used instead : Atidarydama langą mergina grožėjosi tekančia saule. – While opening the window, the girl admired the sunrise. See "Adverbial participles" for further explanation.
• The third, a somewhat rarer, function is to explain another verb by indicating a secondary action of which the subject is the agent: Kaltinamasis prisipažįsta padaręs nusikaltimą ir labai dėl to gailisi. – The defendant confesses having committed the crime and sincerely regrets it. If the subject is not the agent expressed in the nominative case of a noun or a pronoun, an adverbial participle must be used instead.

Adverbial participles

• The primary function of the padalyvis is to indicate an action that is happening at the same time or before the event said with the main verb, of which the sentence subject is not the agent: Lauko darbus mes dirbome saulei šviečiant – We were doing the field works the sun shining; Skaniai pavalgius malonu pamiegoti – Having eaten a delicious meal, it is pleasant to take a nap.
• The primary function of the pusdalyvis is to indicate a simultaneous, but secondary action done by the sentence subject in nominative case : Lauko darbus mes dirbome dainuodami – We were doing the field works while singing. In this case the present padalyvis participle can be used as well: Lauko darbus mes dirbome dainuojant, but this time the sentence will mean: We were doing the field works while someone else was singing. A secondary action done previously by the sentence subject can be expressed with adjectival past simple participle: Lauko darbus mes dirbome padainavę – We were doing the field works having sung. When used with the preposition prieš, pusdalyvis and padalyvis denote a secondary action in future: Lauko darbus mes dirbome prieš dainuodami. – We were doing the field works before singing. Lauko darbus mes dirbome prieš dainuojant. – We were doing the field works before someone else started to sing.

• Another function of the padalyvis is to explain another verb by indicating a secondary action of which the subject is not the agent: Vartydamas seną albumą, prisiminiau mus šiame ežere maudydavusis – While seing an old photo album, I remembered us having used to swim in this lake. If the subject is the agent, an adjectival participle must be used instead.

• The būdinys reinforces the meaning of the verb being described: Šaukte šaukiausi pagalbos, niekas neatsiliepė – I was shouting loudly for help, nobody answered. Type I būdinys is used relatively often in some written and colloquial speech. Type II būdinys is very rare and can only be found in literary language. Their primary function is the same. In some grammars they are not considered verbs, but adverbs derived from verbs.

  Grammatical aspect

• The absence of a prefix for certain verbs: dìrbti – to be working, šaũkti – to be shouting, krìsti – to be falling.
• The presence of a suffix ti, -el combined with the absence of a prefix for certain verbs: maldáuti – to be begging, mė́tyti – to be throwing , šokinė́ti – to be jumping .
• The impossibility for certain verbs to be used without a prefix: užgaulióti – to be bullying, pãsakoti – to be telling a story.
• The complete or partial change of meaning for certain prefixed verbs: priklausýti – to be in possession, pakę̃sti – to tolerate, atsidúoti – to be stinking.
• For some prefixed verbs that merely indicate the ability to do something: panèšti – to be able to carry, nusėdė́ti – to be able to sit.

• The presence of a prefix for certain verbs: padìrbti – to work for a certain amount of time, pašaũkti – to call, nukrìsti – to fall. There are very few perfective prefixed verbs that would distinguish themselves from their imperfective unprefixed counterparts only by their perfective meaning, since any prefix almost always has a semantical nuance.
• The presence of the suffix -erti or -elti: dìrsterėti – to take a glimpse, kúoktelėti – to become insane.

• The absence of a suffix and a prefix for certain verbs:
• A specific tense in some other cases:

  Verb prefixes

General usage notes

• ap- round
• api- is a variant of ap- before b or p
• at- from, from somewhere
• ati- is a variant of at- before d or t
• į- in, be able to
• iš- out
• nu- away, from the start place
• pa- a bit, slightly, some time, till end, under
• par- similar to English re-
• per- through, thoroughly, completely
• pra- by, starting
• pri- up, to, to the place , much, many
• su- from everywhere, together, till end, completely
• už- behind, in , suddenly, unexpectedly
• už- on, over, completely

• ne- is a prefix that makes negative form of a verb: turiù – I have, neturiù – I haven't.
• be- says that an action of a verb:
• te- indicates:
• tebe- indicates that an action of a verb is still ongoing : Ligoninėje jį motina tebeaplanko – His mother still visits him to the hospital.
• nebe- indicates that an action of a verb is no longer ongoing : Ligoninėje jo motina nebeaplanko – His mother no longer visits him to the hospital.
• A verb cannot acquire more than one prefix, except for ne-, te-, be-, nebe- or tebe-. Only very few words are exception from this.
• The indicator of reflexion -si is used between the prefix and the root if the verb is prefixed, e. g.

nẽšasi but nusìneša, atsìneša
laikýtis but susilaikýti, pasilaikýti
teiráutis but pasiteiráuti

• The same rule is applied, when ne-, be-, nebe-, te- or tebe- is added:

nẽšasi but nesìneša, nebesìneša, also nenusìneša, neatsìneša, tebeatsìneša
laikýtis, but nesilaikýti, also nesusilaikýti, nepasilaikýti
teiráutis but nesiteiráuti, also nepasiteiráuti

Stress retraction

• past simple tense forms of primary verbs. This always happens when the 3rd person has an -ė ending, its stress would normally fall on its penultimate syllable and this syllable has a short vowel or a rising tone:
• Some present tense forms, but only if the stress of the 3rd person falls on its penultimate syllable, this syllable is not a suffix and has a short vowel or a rising tone:
• Past simple accent retraction is regular, present tense accent retraction is sporadic. If a particular verb retracts its accent in one tense, it does not mean that the other tense will follow suit.
• The accent retraction does not depend on a particular prefix and will systematically happen with every other prefixed structure. It means that even if dictionaries never include ne- type prefixes, the stress retraction can be deduced from other prefixed forms that dictionaries do include:
• The latter rule has two exceptions:
• The prefix pér- always has the falling tone and takes the stress in all parts of speech of that word, ignoring all the other accentuation rules: pérduoti – to transmit, nebepérsivalgymas – the inability to overeat.

  Stem classes

Non-suffixed

Suffixed

Syntax

Word order

Prepositions

Used with genitive form of noun

• iš - from, out of
• ant - on
• iki - until
• po - after, past, succeeding
• prie - near, at
• už - behind

  Used with instrumental form of noun

• po - under
• su - with
• sulig - up to
• ties - by, over

  Used with accusative form of noun

• į - in
• pas - to, at
• per - across, by, over, through, during, via
• pro - through, past, by
• apie - about

  Conjunctions

• ir - and
• bet - but
• ar - used to start a question, but can also mean "or"
• jei - if
• kad - that
• kol - until
• arba - or/but
• nes - because
• tačiau - however