Serial Verbs in Finnish
Solveiga Armoskaite, Päivi Koskinen · Linguistic Discovery · 2014
Serial verb construction (SVC) phenomena pose challenges to descriptivists and theoreticians alike (Newmayer 2004, Aikhenvald & Dixon 2006, among many others).One recurring question is whether SVC is a language specific characteristic (cf.Stewart 2001) or whether it is a universally available construction utilized under specific conditions (cf.Déchaine 1993, Newmayer 2004, Muysken & Veenstra 2006).This study contributes to the debate with evidence from Finnish (Uralic language family), which has not previously been analyzed as a serializing language (contra Jarva & Kytölä 2007).Based on distributional facts as well as semantic and syntactic characteristics, we argue that the so called 'colorative construction' in Finnish is a SVC. 1 For numerous comments and discussions, we thank Erik Anonby, Lev Blumenfeld, Rose Marie Déchaine, Carol Lord, Kumiko Murasugi, Victor Manfredi, Martina Wiltschko, the participants of the Finno-Ugric Studies Association of Canada annual conference, the participants of the Canadian Linguistics Association annual conference and two anonymous reviewers.All the remaining errors are ours.2 The following abbreviations are used throughout the paper: Verbal suffixes: IdPhideophone; INF -A infinitive -(t)A 'to Verb'; E-INF -E infinitive (used for time & manner expressions) -(t)e; PRESpresent tense, unmarked; PASTpast tense -i; 1,2,3.SG & 1,2,3.PLsubject-verb agreement 1SG -n, 2SG -t, 3SG -V, 1PL -mme, 2PL -tte, 3PL -vAt Nominal suffixes: SG -Singular, unmarked; PL -Plural -t/-i ; POSS -Possessive suffixes 1SG -ni, 2SG -si, 1PL -mme, 2PL -tte, 3person -nsA (3rd person singular and plural possessive suffixes are identical and indicated with '3Poss'); NOM -Nominative,unmarked; PAR -Partitive -(t)A; ACC -Accusative (= non-partitive objects), unmarked or -n ; GEN -Genitive -n; INE -Inessive -ssA, 'in'; ELA -Elative -stA, 'from in'; ILL -Illative -Vn/-hin , 'to in'; ADE -Adessive -llA, 'on', 'at'; TRANS -Translative (change of state) -ksi, 'into' Other: |prosodic pause; ADJdenominal adjectivizer -inen; Vdenominal verbalizer -(An)tU Note: The capital letters A and U indicate morphophonological variation between [a]/[ä] and [u]/[y], based on vowel harmony.For instance, the (first) infinitive suffix may be either -ta or -tä, as in juosta 'to run' or sylkäistä 'to spit'.Further phonological processes apply to various suffixes.Discussion of these is beyond the scope of this paper.