Anna Daugavet
St Petersburg State University
Latvian
dabūt ‘get’: An acquisitive modal?
Depending on the context the Latvian verb dabūt
‘get’ expresses either necessity or possibility in combination with the
infinitive, which makes it similar to what is known as “acquisitive modals” in
other languages, such as Swedish and Estonian. The Latvian verb is different in
that it is implicative rather than modal, i.e. the necessity or possibility
that it expresses is always actualized, unless the verb is negated. The use of dabūt
with the infinitive has developed from the meaning ‘onset of possession’
alongside other meanings that include ‘displacement/change of state’ and
‘unpleasant experience/damage’, the former also being found with acquisitive
verbs in other languages.
Keywords: modality,
participant-external modality, acquisitive modals, implicative verbs, Latvian