Disappearance of the auxiliary verb esti in the Lithuanian passive

Abstract

The prototypical passive voice in Lithuanian is an analytical construction consisting of a passive past participle and the auxiliary verb būti ‘to be’. Nowadays, the conjugation of this verb in the present tense is regular, except for the suppletive form of the third person yra, an East Baltic innovation, and historically, its original form was esti. Although the development and uses of the verb yra are well described, its development as a passive auxiliary verb has not received enough attention. The paper aims to trace the disappearance of the form esti from the function of an auxiliary verb in the passive constructions based on Old Lithuanian texts from 1547–1816, represented by prints from three historical dialects of Lithuanian.