Containmentand support: similarities and variation in Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian

This paper aims to describe how spatial semantic categories of  containment  and  support  are expressed in three languages, – Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian, – which are spoken in the same area, though only the first two of them are genealogically related. Our research is based on a production task (n = 60 for each language) consisting of answers to picture stimuli representing major subtypes of  containment  and  support : full containment, partial containment and interlocking for  containment  and support-from-below, adhesion, hanging and encirclement with contact for  support . The results show that the core types of  containment  and  support , namely, full-containment and support-from-below, are expressed most homogenously and using least terms in all three languages, but other sub-types trigger more variety. Cross-linguistically,  containment  is expressed similarly in the Baltic languages, but in terms of conceptualization and expression of  support , Latvian and Estonian share more commonalities. This provides new evidence for semantic diversity of the Baltic languages and language-contact induced peculiarities of Latvian.