ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Studia Fennica Stockholmiensia 9 Language contact and structural change An Old Finnish case study Merlijn de Smit Stockholm University ©Merlijn de Smit, Stockholm 2006 ISSN 0284-4273 ISBN 91-85445-53-3 Printed in Sweden by Intellecta, Stockholm 2006 Distributor: Almqvist & Wiksell International To my grandmother, Marie Beets-de Jong, whose abiding interest in languages and history inspired me. Contents 1. PRELIMINARIES................................................................................... 11 1.1. Swedish influence on Finnish morphosyntax: The research problem ........................................................................................... 11 1.2. The problem of contact-induced structural change ....................... 12 1.2.1. Dichotomies........................................................................... 12 1.2.1.1. Tadpoles and cuckoos .................................................. 12 1.2.1.2. Internal and external..................................................... 16 1.2.1.3. Causation and teleology ............................................... 20 1.2.2. The results of structural change ............................................ 23 1.2.2.1. Direct contact-induced structural change .................... 23 1.2.3.2. Indirect contact-induced structural change.................. 24 1.2.3. The motivations of contact-induced structural change......... 26 1.2.3.1. Interlingual identifications as a starting point ............. 26 1.2.3.2. Long-term convergence and metatypy: interlingual isomorphism ................................................................. 27 1.2.3.3. Contact-induced change and iconicity: intralingual isomorphism ................................................................. 29 1.2.4. The mechanisms of contact-induced structural change........ 33 1.2.4.1. Analogy......................................................................... 33 1.2.4.2. Reanalysis, extension and borrowing .......................... 34 1.2.4.3. Overt and covert interference....................................... 36 1.2.4.4. Contact-induced structural change as bilingual reanalysis and extension............................................... 38 1.2.5. Conclusion, by way of Whitehead ........................................ 41 1.2.5.1. Whitehead’s philosophical system............................... 41 1.2.5.2. Structure and process.................................................... 46 1.2.5.3. Contradictions and contrasts ........................................ 51 1.2.5.4. Advantages of a Whiteheadian framework.................. 54 2. THE SOCIOHISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF FINNISH- SWEDISH LANGUAGE CONTACT............................................................. 57 2.1. Brief sketch of the history of Finnish............................................. 57 2.2. Direct contact between Finnish and Swedish communities.......... 58 2.2.1. Swedish-speaking communities in Finland .......................... 58 2.2.2. Finnish-speaking communities in Sweden ........................... 62 2.2.3. Swedish as a language of the Finnish élite ........................... 64 2.3. The history of Literary Finnish ...................................................... 66 2.3.1. Old Finnish: birth and consolidation..................................... 66 2.3.2. Old Modern Finnish: Reform................................................ 69 2.3.3. Conclusion ............................................................................. 71 3. CORPUS AND RESEARCH OBJECT.................................................. 73 3.1. The corpus....................................................................................... 73 3.2. Alignment and case-marking in Modern and Old Finnish............ 78 3.2.1. Subject and object case-marking........................................... 78 3.2.2. Alignment .............................................................................. 80 4. THE PASSIVE......................................................................................... 85 4.1. The passive in modern Finnish....................................................... 85 4.2. The passive in Old Finnish............................................................. 87 4.3. Distribution of the passive in the corpus........................................ 92 4.4. Swedish source constructions......................................................... 93 4.5. The object of the negated passive .................................................. 97 4.6. Agreement..................................................................................... 106 4.7. Periphrastic passives with tulla.................................................... 109 4.8. Agent phrases................................................................................ 111 4.9. Overview....................................................................................... 113 5. NECESSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS ................................................... 116 5.1. Introduction................................................................................... 116 5.2. Distribution of the necessitive verbs pitää and tulla................... 117 5.3. Subject-marking and transitivity.................................................. 120 5.4. Subject-marking and lexical categories ....................................... 122 5.5. Word order and subject case-marking ......................................... 127 5.6. Explaining the redistribution of case-markers in M and L1........ 129 5.7. Differences in subject-marking between pitää and tulla............. 133 5.8. Reanalysis of subject as object? Active and passive infinitives . 135 5.9. Evaluation: contact-induced change and internally driven change in case of pitää.............................................................................. 147 6. RELATIVE PRONOUNS..................................................................... 152 6.1. Introduction................................................................................... 152 6.2. Relative pronouns as subject and object ...................................... 157 6.3. Relative pronouns and other variables......................................... 160 6.4. Relative pronouns in the Swedish source text ............................. 166 6.5. The origins of relative kuin........................................................... 172 6.6. Evaluation ..................................................................................... 179 7. LANGUAGE CONTACT AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN OLD FINNISH .................................................................................................... 181 7.1. Language contact and alignment change ..................................... 181 7.2. Direct and indirect contact-induced structural change ................ 184 7.3. Language contact and structural change...................................... 187 SUMMARY.................................................................................................... 194 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................ 200 REFERENCES ............................................................................................... 201 Corpus......................................................................................................... 201 Other references ......................................................................................... 202 APPENDIX A................................................................................................. 213 APPENDIX B ................................................................................................. 217 APPENDIX C ................................................................................................. 221 APPENDIX D................................................................................................. 224 Abbreviations 1, 2, 3 Personhood ABL Ablative ACC Accusative ADESS Adessive AGENT Agent Participle ALL Allative COND Conditional ELAT Elative ESS Essive GEN Genitive ILL Illative IMPER Imperative INESS Inessive INF Infinitive IPF Imperfect NEG Negative auxiliary NOM Nominative PART Partitive PARTIC Participle PASS Passive PF Perfect PL Plural PLPF Plusquamperfect POST Postposition PR Present REL Relative pronoun SG Singular TRANS Translative 1. PRELIMINARIES 1.1. Swedish influence on Finnish morphosyntax: The research problem It is well-known that the Swedish language has exerted its influence upon all subsystems of Finnish – according to Häkkinen (1997: 45), Swedish loanwords in Finnish number in the thousands. Also, in the wake of loanwords, the phonemes b, g, d and f have been integrated into Finnish phonology – even if all of them, with the exception of d, are quite marginal. The voiced dental stop (having developed from a voiced dental spirant) is much more frequent due to its usage, probably as a result of Swedish influence, as a weak-grade equivalent of t. Aside from this, one could mention the retaining of initial consonant clusters in loanwords in particularly the West Finnish dialects (Ojansuu 1906: 25-26, Häkkinen 1997: 40). Finally, Swedish influence on the morphosyntax of both dialectal and literary Finnish has been observed – some examples will be presented later. In these circumstances, it is rather surprising that Swedish influence upon Finnish as such is a rather underresearched area. Papers dealing with the subject as a whole may be counted with one hand (Cannelin 1926, Häkkinen