Semantic description of adverbs of place in the first Latvian and Lithuanian grammars and their development

In grammars of the Latvian language until the mid 19th c. adverbs of place are frequently described along with particles, e.g., in Stender’s "Lettische Grammatik" (1783) there is a section entitled "Von den Adverbiis und andern Partickeln", or else they are not described at all, e.g., Adolfius (1685) divided adverbs into basic and derived, whereas Dressel wrote that adverbs are derived from adjectives by adding the ending -e. If adverbs were classified further, it was mostly into adverbia loci and adverbia temporis. In the second part of A. Bielenstein’s "Die lettische Sprache, nach ihren Lauten und Formen...", the first modern grammar of Latvian, is a section entitled Adverbia, in which along with the formation of adverbs Bielenstein gives their semantic classification. The newest semantic classification of adverbs of place in "Mūsdienu latviešu literārās valodas gramatika" (I 1959: 696) shows that since the times of Bielenstein’s grammar nobody has undertaken a more fundamental investigation of adverbs of place – both in the elementary and in the common Latvian grammars the principle of semantic division is based on the questions kur? "where, in what place?" (German wo?) and kurp? "where, to what place?" (German wohin?). Bielenstein described also a third group answering the question woher? "from where?". In the first modern grammar of Lithuanian, A. Schleicher’s "Litauische Grammatik" (1856) no special attention is devoted to adverbs of place. In the section Adverbia attention is focused only on the adverb’s formation, degrees of comparison and origin. Data from the first grammars show that adverbs of place began to be more carefully studied in Latvian grammars, although in the "Dabartinė lietuvių kalbos gramatika" the section allows one to conclude that in Lithuanian linguistics much more attention was paid to the semantic investigations of adverbs of p Cf. 1. Adverbs denoting the place where something is, takes place, is happening are encountered or (with verbs of motion) denote the place to which the motion is directed. They answer the questions kame? "in what?", kur? "in what place?", į kur? "where to?"; 2. Adverbs showing the place from which, out of which an action takes place or spreads. These adverbs answer the questions iš kur? "out of where?", nuo kur? "from where?"; 3. Adverbs denoting a place as a boundary from which or up to which an action is taking place. These adverbs answer the questions: nuo kur? "from where?", nuo kurios vietos? "from what place?", iki (ligi) kur? "up to where?", iki (ligi) kurios vietos? "up to what place?"; 4. Adverbs denoting direction of an action. These adverbs answer the questions: kur? "where to", kuria kryptimi (kur link)? "what direction, where to"; 5. Adverbs denoting the path, road, but only with verbs of motion (DLKG4 424–425). The main reasons for the differences between the research discussed: 1. Differences of languages: the degree of adverbialization of some Latvian and Lithuanian prepositional constructions. For example, in Lithuanian the sequences iki čia "up to here", nuo čia "from here" are completely adverbialized and are considered to be adverbs of place; in Latvian similar sequences līdz šejienei, no šejienes and adverbs of similar meaning are encountered only in certain positions, the second part of a compound is a declined noun. 2. A different point of view: some linguists, e.g., A. Bielenstein, consider the prepositional constructions no kurienes and similar constructions to be adverbs of place, whereas others do not