The analytical passive arose in the course of the separate development of Lithuanian, though the preconditions for its rise must have existed in Proto-Baltic. Passive constructions are dialectally differentiated. In West and North Lithuanian, the passive is formed by means of agreeing participles and it is usually agentless (though agentive genitives occur as a result of reanalysis in phrases with an adnominal genitive). In East and South Lithuanian, the passive is formed by means of ancient neuter forms in *-mo and *-to often combined with agentive genitives, e.g. tėvo bùvo sãkoma 'it was said by the father', kìškio bėgta 'it is run by a hare', i.e.: '(apparently) a hare has run'. Such constructions are based on ancient nominal sentences with neuter predicates retaining the pure *-o stem, without grammatical agreement. The neuter nominal predicates (subsequently - neuter participles) in *-mo and *-to were similar in meaning to verbal abstracts and an adnominal genitive expressing the subject/agent could be added to them in the same way as to other verbal nouns. The possessive forms of the Lithuanian pronouns used in such phrases with neuter participles as with verbal abstracts show a close relation between the subjective and possessive genitives. The wide use of the agentive (subjective) genitive with the neuter passive participles in Lithuanian is apparently founded on their ancient nominal meaning
