A case in search of an independent life
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Katja Västi
Abstract
The present study discusses senses of the Finnish verbless allative-initial construction with particular attention to the allative element. I argue that the construction under investigation cannot be defined as an elliptic structure, but rather is an independent and genuinely verbless construction and that there are at least eight distinct senses for the allative element. These senses are called actor, purchaser, target group, exploiter, receiver, affected, implicated actor, and encounterer. I argue that the first two have agentive features, which is cross-linguistically extraordinary for a goal-marking morpheme, whereas the other six relate to senses which the Finnish allative case is known to have in other constructions as well. For a semantic analysis, both an intuitive categorization and an experimental method, a paraphrase test, have been applied to the data of 500 headlines.
Abstract
The present study discusses senses of the Finnish verbless allative-initial construction with particular attention to the allative element. I argue that the construction under investigation cannot be defined as an elliptic structure, but rather is an independent and genuinely verbless construction and that there are at least eight distinct senses for the allative element. These senses are called actor, purchaser, target group, exploiter, receiver, affected, implicated actor, and encounterer. I argue that the first two have agentive features, which is cross-linguistically extraordinary for a goal-marking morpheme, whereas the other six relate to senses which the Finnish allative case is known to have in other constructions as well. For a semantic analysis, both an intuitive categorization and an experimental method, a paraphrase test, have been applied to the data of 500 headlines.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction to case, animacy and semantic roles 1
- Remarks on the coding of Goal, Recipient and Vicinal Goal in European Uralic 29
- A case in search of an independent life 65
- The division of labour between synonymous locative cases and adpositions 113
- Is there a future for the Finnish comitative? 135
- Animacy and spatial cases 157
- There’s more than “more animate” 183
- The coding of spatial relations with human landmarks 209
- A survey of the origins of directional case suffixes in European Uralic 235
- Dutch spatial case 283
- Case on the margins 305
- Why should beneficiaries be subjects (or objects)? 329
- General index 349
- Language index 353
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction to case, animacy and semantic roles 1
- Remarks on the coding of Goal, Recipient and Vicinal Goal in European Uralic 29
- A case in search of an independent life 65
- The division of labour between synonymous locative cases and adpositions 113
- Is there a future for the Finnish comitative? 135
- Animacy and spatial cases 157
- There’s more than “more animate” 183
- The coding of spatial relations with human landmarks 209
- A survey of the origins of directional case suffixes in European Uralic 235
- Dutch spatial case 283
- Case on the margins 305
- Why should beneficiaries be subjects (or objects)? 329
- General index 349
- Language index 353
