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If You Own It, It Exists; If You LoveIt, That Says Something about You, Not It: Semantically Conditioned Case inFinnish
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Djalali, Alex |
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | In Finnish, the object of a transitive verb is case marked in one of two ways: with the ACCUSATIVE or PARTITIVE case. Generally speaking, all Finnish transitive verbs are compatible with both accusative and partitive marked objects. Basically, which case is assigned can affect the interpretation assigned to a verb or its object. This suggests an instance of free variation in Finnish; that there are no governing principles that determine when accusative versus partitive case is assigned. This is not so. Which case is assigned is thought to be a function of the lexical semantics of the verb, its object, and the way in which their meanings are composed. This type of case assignment is referred to as SEMANTICALLY CONDITIONED CASE (SCC) and will be the primary focus of this paper. Evidently, SCC in Finnish carries with it a certain tension: On the one hand, case assignment affects the interpretation of a verb or its object; on the other, it is determined by the interpretation of a verb or its object. Fortunately, this tension can be resolved, at least in part, if we understand that many Finnish verbs have a sort of default case assignment behavior: Some Finnish verbs canonically assign accusative case, while others assign partitive. To better understand this, let us take as a starting point that the class of Finnish transitive verbs can be split three-ways between AMBIVALENT VERBS, ACCUSATIVE ASSIGNERS, and PARTITIVE ASSIGNERS. Members of the class of ambivalent verbs are compatible with both partitive and accusative marked objects, and depending on which case is assigned, the interpretation of the verb or its object may be affected. Accusative assigners differ in that, by default, they assign accusative case to their objects. While accusative assigners are compatible with partitive marked objects, when they appear with such an object, partitive case affects only the interpretation of that object and not of the verb itself. Similarly, partitive assigners assign partitive case by default. They too are compatible with accusative marked objects, and when they appear with such an object, accusative case affects only the interpretation of that object and not the verb. That the interpretations of both accusative and partitive assigners are unaffected by the choice in case not only provides evidence for treating the two classes as independent, but also suggests that a lexical semantic property (or conjunction of properties) of these verbs distinguishes the two classes from each other. Kiparsky (1998), for example, claims that the verbs in BOUNDED VPs like 'killed the bear', i.e., (1), are accusative assigners, whereas the verbs in UNBOUNDED VPs like 'look for the bear', i.e., (2), are partitive assigners. Formal details aside, for Kiparsky, a 'bounded' VP is one that cannot be modified by a degree adverbial such as 'more' or 'a lot'. So, for example, in (1), by this diagnostic, we would expect 'kill' to be compatible only with accusative case, which it is. On the other hand, in (2), we see that by this diagnostic 'look for', an unbounded predicate, is compatible only with partitive case: |
| Starting Page | 131 |
| Ending Page | 141 |
| Page Count | 11 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/30/paper2811.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
