Grammatical changes caused by contact between Livonian and Latvian

The article provides insight into the process of various grammatical changes in Livonian and Latvian that have taken place as a result of prolonged contact between the languages. Livonian is strongly influenced by Latvian at different levels due to the close contact between the speakers of two languages; it is necessary to note that speakers of Livonian were bilinguals for a long time. It is clear that Livonian has affected Latvian in a similar way. The process of mutual borrowings can be observed most clearly in the vocabulary, especially in dialects; however, there are changes that have occurred in the phonetics and grammar as well. Different changes can be found as a result of mutual influence. The paper presents case studies illustrating the changes of the case system in Livonian - the disappearance of exterior locative cases and the formation of dative, the merging of the translative and the comitative and the formation of the instrumental, the development of prefixes from inherited words, composition of negation, as well as semantic changes in the Latvian locative, formation of Latvian compounds using the Livonian pattern, formation of perfective verb forms using the construction 'motion verb + adverb' instead of Latvian prefix verbs. Although the grammatical structure of a language is considered to be relatively resistant to change, grammatical changes may occur in languages that are not related but are located in close proximity to one another for a long time. The results of Livonian and Latvian contact demonstrate that clearly.