A short grammar of Latgalian
Adam Mickiewicz University
Latgalian is a regional language of Latvia in Central Europe, regularly used by
an estimated number of 150,000 speakers. Genetically it belongs to the
Eastern Baltic branch of Indo-European. While its close relationship to
Latvian is apparent in basic vocabulary and inflectional morphemes, there are
also significant differences in the phonology, morphology and syntax of the
two languages, due to divergent development during the 17th - 19th c., when
Latgalia was politically and culturally separated from other Latvian territories.
Furthermore, contact with Slavic languages (Polish, Belarusian, Russian) has
played an important role in the history of Latgalian.
Typologically salient features of Latgalian include morphophonological
harmony with an opposition of back vs. front vowels and soft (palatalized or
alveolar) vs. hard consonants, a large inventory of non-finite verb forms,
genitive vs. accusative marking of direct objects, dative marking of primary
core arguments in a variety of constructions, the use of non-finite predicates
in represented speech, and the existence of a distinct logophoric pronoun
referring to the speaker of a reported discourse.
Nicole Nau is professor of Baltic languages and linguistics at Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She is also the author of LWM 217: