XII International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies, August 17-21, 2015, Oulu Verbs governing local cases in texts written by Swedishspeaking beginner-level learners of Finnish Tuija Määttä The Department of Language Studies, Umeå University
Short background - the first step: to find the words inflected in local cases (Määttä 2011) illative 1184, elative 350: in total 1434 allative 521, ablative 99: in total 620 - the second step: to investigate in what functions the words inflected in local cases occur (Määttä 2013) - the third step: to categorise the verbs governing the illative, elative, allative and ablative cases into semantic groups Datum Sidfot 2
The goal of the investigation to investigate what governing verbs with an adverbial inflected in the illative, elative, allative and ablative cases the students use in their texts to categorise the governing verbs into semantic groups according to Pajunen s model (1999, 2001) to investigate if the case in the adverbial is used correctly or not Datum Sidfot 3
The material and the method based on the Swedish sub-corpus of the electronic corpus entitled The International Corpus of Learner Finnish the material contains in total 43 496 tokens, 215 texts, compiled 2006-2009 to find the tokens inflected in local cases the WordSmith Tools software was used, the occurrences of the governing verbs and the incorrect occurrences of the cases were compiled manually Datum Sidfot 4
Number of the different governing verbs in the texts Governing verbs with adverbials inflected in illative 48 elative 41 allative 46 ablative 14 149 Datum Sidfot 5
Verbs governing an adverbial in the illative case (1) verbs expressing motion (the majority of the verbs) - mennä go, tulla come, lähteä leave, kaatua fall, hypätä jump, lentää fly etc. verbs expressing emotion - tottua accustom, tyytyä be satisfied, rakastua fall in love, kyllästyä get tired, pettyä be disappointed, luottaa trust, ihastua be charmed, etc. physiological verbs - herätä wake up cognitive verbs - uskoa believe, keskittyä concentrate, etc. Datum Sidfot 6
Verbs governing an adverbial in the illative case (2) verbs expressing possession - kuulua belong Datum Sidfot 7
Verbs governing an adverbial in the elative case verbs expressing motion - mennä go, tulla come, lähteä leave, kävellä walk, juosta run etc. verbs expressing emotion - pitää, tykätä like verbs expressing speed act - puhua talk, sanoa say, jutella chat, kertoa tell etc. physiological verbs - pyörtyä faint verbs expressing action - tapella quarrel Datum Sidfot 8
Verbs governing an adverbial in the allative case verbs expressing motion - tuoda bring, lähettää send, kaataa pour, viedä take etc. verbs expressing speed act - kertoa tell, sanoa say, puhua speak, selittää explane, mailata mail etc. verbs expressing possession - antaa give, lahjoittaa donate, tarjota offer, ostaa buy etc. verbs expressing action - sisustaa decorate, tehdä make, keittää cook etc. verbs expressing perception - näyttää seem, tuntua feel Datum Sidfot 9
Verbs governing an adverbial in the ablative case verbs expressing speed act - kysyä ask, pyytää request verbs expressing perception - tuntua feel, näyttää seem, kuulostaa sound, vaikuttaa seem verbs expressing possession - ostaa buy, saada get verbs expressing motion - mennä go, tulla come, hypätä jump, poistua leave verbs expressing space - jäädä stay Datum Sidfot 10
Some exemples of adverbials inflected in other cases instead of illative and elative in the choices of case some degree of hesitation can be seen (verbs of motion; the internal and the external cases are mixed up) - Menemme kahvilassa. (kahvilaan) We go to the café. - Ensin matkaisin jollekin suurelle kaupungille. (johonkin suureen kaupunkiin) First I ll travel to some big city. with some verbs the influence of the source language is obvious - ICAlla ostan juustoa ja maitoa. (ICAsta) From ICA I buy cheese and milk. - Haluaisin jäädä Istanbulissa pari viikkoa. (Istanbuliin) I would like to stay in Istanbul a few weeks. Datum Sidfot 11
Some exemples of adverbials inflected in other cases instead of allative and ablative - Kerro terveisiä Timosta! (Timolle) Give regards to Timo! - -- tiskasin yksi lasi tippui lattiaan --. (lattialle) -- I did the dishes and one glass fell on the floor --. - Seuraavana päivänä Timo soitti Liisalla. (Liisalle) Next day Timo rang to Liisa. - -- Närheä hiljeni ja kysy Timosta --. (Timolta) -- Närhi became quiet and asked Timo --. - Ravintolasta lentokenttään, lentokentässä ostaisin lentokone (lentokentältä) From the restaurant to the airport, at the airport I ll buy an aeroplane. - Ostan kukan ja suomalaista makkaraa torilla. (torilta) I buy a flower and Finnish sausage at the market-place. Datum Sidfot 12
About the preliminary results most of the verbs govern an adverbial inflected in the illative case - most of the verbs express motion and emotion verbs with an adverbial inflected in the elative case vary most semantically - verbs expressing motion, emotion, speed act, action, physiological verbs verbs with an adverbial inflected in the allative case mostly express speed act and possession least governing verbs with an adverbial inflected in the ablative case; the semantic categories vary in the most cases the students use the right case in the adverbials, problems with governing verbs expressing motion (direction and location) influence of the source language can be seen in some cases, especially in adverbials with verbs that are used in Swedish with the preposition i in and på at Datum Sidfot 13
References Määttä, Tuija 2011. Ruotsinkielisten alkeistason suomenoppijoiden paikallissijojen käytöstä. Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja 21. Tallinn, 154 182. Määttä, Tuija 2013. Paikallissijaisten saneiden funktiot ruotsinkielisten alkeistason suomenoppijoiden teksteissä. Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja 23. Tallinn, 238 264. Pajunen, Anneli 1999. Suomen verbirektiosta. Verbin argumenttirakenteen jäsenten valinnasta. Yleisen kielitieteen julkaisuja 1. Turun yliopisto. Pajunen, Anneli 2001. Argumenttirakenne. Asiaintilojen luokitus ja verbien käyttäytyminen suomen kielessä. Suomi 187. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Datum Sidfot 14