Konstrukcijos su prasme, prasmėmis

Abstract

The analysis of the Lithuanian syntactic constructions containing prasme, prasmėmis ('in the meaning/s'), which have almost fossilised and become cliches, has been based on 11 thousand cases of their usage. In the course of investigation, there were constructions identified which were not parts of the sentence. They were related to the sentence parts or components of nominal or adjectival parts of composite sentences through an accompanying sentence and were more like commentaries. The analysis focuses on the following major points. The constructions containing the words prasme, prasmėmis are of two structural patterns: in one of them they have attributes in concord and in the other the subordinate word is in the genitive case. The structures have become very frequent in written language, which is due to the frequency of use of bywords and other meaningless phrases containing prasme in spoken language. The majority of those bywords and meaningless phrases are outside the codified language norm and thus outside the interest of linguists. The paper suggests criteria for delimiting appropriate and inappropriate language structures. Correct structures that could replace the erroneous patterns with prasme, prasmėmis are presented; the selection is based on their conformity to the peculiarities of the Lithuanian language: priority is given to concrete rather than universal aspect of expressing the content. Of particular importance are the criteria of precision when expressing the content, conciseness and resourcefulness of expression.