Relations of locative constructions in the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius.

The article analyses cases of interaction between the inessive and the illative recorded in the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius when these cases take over each other's functions in a discourse. Following the attitude that the locatives alone, which are isolated from other units of the discourse, are not informative, the combinations of these cases with the components supplementing semantic information (verbs, nouns), i.e. locative constructions of the inessive and the illative, rather than single forms were chosen as the subject of the investigation. The double-nature interaction between these constructions can be distinguished: 1. Neutralisation of morphological nature when the plural forms of the illative that are shortened in locative constructions coincide with the plural inessive. Neutralisation of these forms could have been caused by morphological and systematic shortening. 2. Competitive use of the locative forms that occurred due to semantic motives when: a) the forms of the pronoun or adjective and the nominal inessive and illative compete between themselves in the locative inessive constructions formed from the pronoun or adjective and the noun; b) the nominal inessive and illative forms compete between themselves in locative constructions. The potential of the locative inessive and illative constructions to project almost identical spatial situations in the language could have created the conditions for a competitive use of semantic nature to occur. Also, the material under analysis enables us to conclude that both neutralisation of the locative inessive and illative constructions and the competitive usage are processes, which are currently taking place in the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Vilnius. Typological parallels entail an assumption that the linguistic phenomenon under discussion could be a typological generality rather than a distinctive feature of Lithuanian dialects