Indefinite Temporal Adverbs “kažkada” and “kada nors”: Relationship of Meaning and Usage

Abstract

    The article discusses the shift in the usage of kažkada ‘sometime’ from the traditional model under which the time of the specific (real) action, which took place at an indefinite moment in the past, is described towards a less usual model where kažkada is used to describe the time of the non-specific (irreal) action, which may potentially occur in the future and which is traditionally expressed by the adverb kada nors ‘sometime’. Referring to Martin Haspelmath’s (1997) typological research addressing the implicational universals of indefinite pronouns, which also include pronominal adverbs, the article attempts to explain this shift and anticipates the further shift in the usage of kažkada. The analysis of kažkada usage patterns is based on the data provided by two text corpuses – the Corpus of the Modern Lithuanian Language and the Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian.