Aspects de la ptosigénèse dans les langues finno-ougriennes
Jean Leó Léonard · Histoire Épistémologie Langage · 1999
abstract : Ptosigenesis (hence PG) is a Greek-based compound to label the rise of new flexional items in the framework of Case Grammar . Most often, PG results from the merging of locative or adverbial clitics, either deictics or postpositions. The Finno-Ugric group highlights in many interesting ways the cyclicity of PG (cf. Vepsian, Hungarian) and the trend opposite to PG : syncretic merging of nominal inflexion, with analytic strategies for the spelling of locative-adverbial roles (Livonian). The PG approach entails : a) that the phenomenon of expanding case inflexion may be cyclic, as empirically evidenced by Livonian, and therefore, oblique case morphology might be a questionable typological criterion, though it does correlate with suffixal types, or right-headed types of languages, b) The rise of complex case systems in specific languages accounts for the natural constraints and hierarchies at stake in language as a cognitive device for representing reality and the referential world. Generative Semantic Cognitive Theory (Jackendoff 1985, 1990) provides valuable insights into the process of new categories unfolding in core-grammars of some Fennic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Vepsian).