Case Alternations in Five Finnic Languages Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture Series Editors Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) R.M.W. Dixon (Cairns Institute, James Cook University) N.J. Enfield (University of Sydney) VOLUME 13 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bslc Case Alternations in Five Finnic Languages Estonian, Finnish, Karelian, Livonian and Veps By Aet Lees LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Old Town of Tallinn, Estonia. Picture courtesy of Ivar Leidus. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lees, Aet, 1938– author. Case alternations in five Finnic languages : Estonian, Finnish, Karelian, Livonian and Veps / by Aet Lees. pages cm — (Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture; 13) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-29634-3 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29636-7 (e-book) 1. Finnic languages—Case grammar. 2. Finnic languages—Case. 3. Finnic languages—Grammar, comparative. 4. Finnic languages—Grammar, historical. 5. Finno-Ugrians—History. 6. Finnic languages— Texts. I. Title. PH93.L44 2015 494’.54—dc23 2015012680 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1879-5412 isbn 978-90-04-29634-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29636-7 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments x Abbreviations xi 1 Introduction 1 1 The Aim of the Study 1 2 The Organization of the Present Study 2 3 Background Information Concerning the Languages 3 4 The Finnic Case System 7 2 Corpus and Methods 16 1 The Corpus 16 2 Methods 27 3 Object Case in Modern Finnic Languages 29 1 Introduction 29 2 Choice of Case Form from the Accusative Group 30 3 Negation 33 4 Alternation between Accusative and Partitive 35 5 Adverbial ‘Objects’ 48 6 Summary and Concluding Remarks 50 4 Synchronic Corpus Study of Object Case Alternation 52 1 Introduction 52 2 General Comments about the Languages 53 3 Results from the Synchronic Biblical Corpus 56 4 Summary and Concluding Remarks 91 5 Diachronic Study of Object Case 93 1 Introduction 93 2 Old Estonian Texts 94 3 Old Estonian Grammars 101 4 Estonian Secular Texts 103 5 Estonian Bible Texts 106 6 Finnish 134 7 Comparison of Old Finnish and Old Estonian 146 8 Karelian 148 vi contents 9 Livonian 156 10 Veps 162 11 Final Comments 166 6 The Undergoer (Logical Object) of Impersonal and Passive Verbs 168 1 Introduction 168 2 Impersonal 169 3 Compound Tenses of Impersonal Verbs 174 4 Subjectless Verbs 174 5 Personal Passive 175 6 Non-finite Passive Verbs 178 7 The Undergoer 179 8 The Agent 182 9 Synchronic Studies from the Corpus 183 10 Diachronic Southern Estonian Study 193 11 Northern (Standard) Estonian 198 12 Summary of Estonian Impersonal and Periphrastic Passive 206 13 Finnish Diachronic Study 207 14 Comparison of Estonian and Finnish 218 15 Karelian 220 16 Livonian 223 17 Veps 224 18 General Summary 226 7 Object Case in Relation to Verb Form 229 1 Introduction 229 2 Imperative Verbs 229 3 Infinitives 246 4 Participles 290 5 Summary 309 8 Copula Clauses 311 1 Introduction 311 2 Noun Phrase Copula Complements 312 3 Adjectival Copula Complements 323 4 Diachronic Studies of Partitive Copula Complements 327 5 Summary 334 Contents vii 9 Existential and Related Clauses 336 1 Existential Clauses 336 2 Possessive Clauses 361 3 Comparison of Possessive and Canonical Existential Clauses 375 4 Other Related Clauses 377 5 Concluding Remarks 378 10 Summary and Conclusions 380 1 Synchronic Corpus Study of Objects (Chapter 4) 380 2 Diachronic Studies (Chapter 5) 382 3 Impersonal and Passive (Chapter 6) 385 4 Verb Form (Chapter 7) 386 5 Predicates (Chapter 8) 387 6 Existential Clauses (Chapter 9) 387 7 Future Trends 388 8 Final Summarizing Remarks 390 Corpus Bibliography 393 Bibles, New Testaments and Gospels in the Corpus 393 Bibles and New Testaments Consulted but not in the Corpus 395 References 396 Index 409 Preface This study commenced in the mid-1990s, when the similarities and differ- ences in the use of case between Finnish and my native language of Estonian aroused my interest and led to the decision to study this in greater detail. The initial studies compared just Finnish and Estonian, using the same texts from the New Testament. The idea was to compare these languages also with other Finnic languages, and as I gradually became aware of New Testament transla- tions in the other languages, I extended the study. Although much has been written about case in the Finnic languages, a large proportion of the material is in Finnish or Estonian, and thus not readily avail- able for those not conversant with these languages. One of my aims is to enable non-Finnic linguists, who are interested in typology and historical linguistics to have ready access to such material. Much of the material, in a qualitative sense, is familiar to Finnic linguists. Nevertheless, the corpus study contains findings of interest also for the Finnic speakers. The quantitative analysis of the data is new. Acknowledgments I am grateful especially to Jane Simpson, who has encouraged and guided me throughout, even after she left the University of Sydney for Canberra, and also to Alexandra Aikhenvald for her constant advice and encouragement. When I began the project I was encouraged by a number of linguists, among them Lyle Campbell, who suggested that I study the languages also from a historical viewpoint. Anne Tamm has been a constant support to me and has provided me with some of the source material as well as helpful reference books. Aila Mielikäinen has been especially helpful in checking the Finnish sections of my manuscript and providing very helpful comments, as well as pointing me in the direction of finding further material for the corpus. She has also given me information about the history of Finnish Bible translation. Others who have given me much useful material for my study include Jaan Bärenson, Sirje Cook, Martin Ehala, Mati Erelt, Bill Foley, Külli Habicht, the late Orvokki Heinämäki, Annika Kilgi, Agu Künnap, Helle Metslang, Raimo Raag, Tiiu Salasoo, Virve Vihman and Jussi Ylikoski. Pastor (now Archbishop emeritus) Andres Põder guided me towards the Institute of Theology of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tallinn, which provided me with some old Bible mate- rial. Virve Raag pointed me in the direction of much early Estonian material in Uppsala. Lauri Carlson helped me understand some difficult aspects of Finnish grammar. I have also had help in that respect from Anders Ahlqvist, Maria Vilkuna and the Perendi family: Andres, Arja, Jüri and Sirje Perendi-Cook. I have had helpful discussions with Alexandra Aikhenvald, Bob Dixon, Mark Donohue, Nerida Jarkey, Helle Metslang and Virve Vihman.Toomas Pill helped me with the Greek source material before it became available on line. Baiba and Juris Liepins were helpful with Latvian grammar. I have received much support from members of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, including Bill Foley, Toni Borovsky and Michael Walsh. I thank all these wonderful people. Thank you also to an anonymous reviewer for very helpful suggestions. Last, but not least, I want to thank my husband Boris Lees who has been extremely supportive in every way throughout this time. This study was carried out while holding the position of Honorary Associate in the Department of Linguistics, School of Letters, Arts and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. It was not supported by any grants. Abbreviations 1,2,3 first, second and third person ABL ablative AC agent construction ACC accusative ADE adessive ADJ adjective/adjectival ALL allative APP approximative AUX auxiliary CAUS causative COM comitative COMP complement COND conditional CONNEG connegative COP copula DAT dative DIM diminutive E Estonian ELA elative EMP emphatic clitic/particle ES southern Estonian ESS essive EVID evidential F Finnish FREQ frequentative GEN genitive ILL illative IMP impersonal IMPV imperative INC inchoative INE inessive INF infinitive INST instructive INTR intransitive JUS jussive K Karelian L Livonian xii abbreviations LE East Livonian LW West Livonian NEG negative auxiliary/particle NMLZ nominalization NOM nominative NP noun phrase NT New Testament O object PAR partitive PASS passive PL plural POT potential PPP passive past participle PPTCP past participle (active) PRS present PST past PTCL particle PTCP participle PX possessive suffix Q interrogative particle REFL reflexive S subject SBJV subjunctive SG singular TRA translative V Veps Vo Votic V(P) verb (phrase) X adjunct chapter 1 Introduction 1 The Aim of the Study The aim of this study is to compare and contrast the use of case in five Finnic languages, especially the alternations involving the partitive case, and also the different forms of the accusative case. The languages include Estonian, Finnish, Karelian, Livonian, Veps and to a minor extent Votic, with occasional reference to some others.