SUMMARY
The supine inessive form in Salaca Livonian appears in a copular construction or as a sole predicate, and is usually associated with progressive and futurate readings. The linguistic data analysed in this study consist of example sentences in Salaca Livonian that are provided with Latvian, German, and/or Swedish translations. The data originate from the 19th century when Livonian was still spoken by Livonian-Latvian bilingual speakers in the northern part of Latvia. The present paper aims to study the functions and possible development of the supine inessive construction in detail, including the possibility of contact-induced change. The study takes a functional-typological and usage-based approach. We suggest that the usages of the supine inessive form reveal both language-internal development as well as instances of contact-induced development, more precisely reanalysis of Latvian forms with a similar function and/or form.