Conditional mood and politeness in Lithuanian in comparison with Estonian

The article deals with the morphological forms and functions in Lithuanian, focusing on the possibilities to express volition and action in the framework of politeness strategy and comparing these functions with the functions of the conditional mood in Estonian. Also, the author provides examples of usage frequency of the verbs prašyti ’ask, request’, norėti ’want’, and siūliti ’advise’ in the indicative and conditional moods, in texts written for various purposes and spoken language. The article analyses the use of the politeness code in the transcripts of the Lithuanian Parliament and makes an attempt to establish the reasons why a speaker selects the indicative or the conditional mood for expressing volition or bringing forth some action. The data come from an electronic corpus of Lithuanian that is available on the home page of the Lithuanian Language Institute (www.lki.lt)