TY - JOUR AU - Vladimir Panov PY - 2020/12/30 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Exploring the asymmetric coding of autobenefactive in Lithuanian and beyond JF - Baltic Linguistics JA - bl VL - 11 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - 10.32798/bl.707 UR - https://www.journals.polon.uw.edu.pl/index.php/bl/article/view/707 AB - In this paper, I investigate a group of semantically close functions marked by the Reflexive marker in Lithuanian, which I address as autobenefactive. I provide a classification of these functions and then turn to a marking asymmetry which is characteristic of the them, namely the tendency to occur in perfective contexts and not to occur in progressive contexts. On the basis of a questionnaire, I show that this tendency indeed exists, although different verbs are involved to different degrees, and we are presumably witnessing an ongoing grammaticalization process. I then compare the Lithuanian marking asymmetry to a phenomenon in Georgian, in which the use of “subjective version” exhibits a similar kind of asymmetry with some groups of verbs. In the concluding section, I propose a typological explanation of the observed asymmetry, hypothesizing that the markers of both languages function in a way parallel to so-called “bounders” – telicizers with primary spatial meanings. ER -