Abstract
In the recent linguistic literature, an increasing attention has been devoted to the role of force dynamics in natural language. The present paper argues that the concept of force plays an important role in the Finnish case system. Translative case in this language is conventionally associated with change of state and the illative and allative cases, with change of location. Unexpectedly under such an approach, these forms are sometimes acceptable (and even required) in sentences that do not entail a change and superficially seem to be stative. This paper argues that translative, illative and allative are licensed by predicates that entail force exertion. While in many instances, force exertion results in a change, this is not an obligatory configuration, which explains the distribution of the cases under discussion.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abondolo, D. (2014). Colloquial Finnish: The complete course for beginners. London: Routledge.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bielecki, R. (2015). Finnish case grammar from the syntactic and semantic perspectives. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University Press.
Condoravdi, C., & Lauer, S. (2016). Anankastic conditionals are just conditionals. Semantics & Pragmatics, 9, 1–61.
Copley, B. (2010). Towards a teleological model for modals. Talk presented at the Paris Working Sessions on modality, goals and events. CNRS/ENS/Paris VIII.
Copley, B. (2019). Force dynamics. In R. Truswell (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of event structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199685318.013.7
Copley, B., & Harley, H. (2014). Eliminating causative entailments with the force-theoretic framework: The case of the Tohono O’odham frustrative cem. In B. Copley & F. Martin (Eds.), Causation in grammatical structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Copley, B., & Harley, H. (2015). A force-theoretic framework for event structure. Linguistics and Philosophy, 38(2), 103–158.
Croft, W. (2012). Verbs: Aspect and causal structure (pp. 120–151). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Groot, C. (2017). Discovering the assignment: An Uralic essive typological questionnaire. In C. de Groot (Ed.), Uralic Essive and the expression of impermanent state (pp. 1–28). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Dowty, D. (1979). Word meaning in montague grammar: The semantics of verbs and times in generative semantics and in Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Springer.
Farkas, D. F. (1988). On obligatory control. Linguistics and Philosophy, 11, 27–58.
Fong, V. (2003). Resultatives and depictives in Finnish. In D. Nelson & S. Manninen (Eds.), Generative approaches to Finnic and Saami linguistics (pp. 201–235). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Goldschmidt, A., & Zwarts, J. (2016). Hitting the nail on the head: Force vectors in verb semantics. In M. Moroney, C.-R. Little, J. Collard, & D. Burgdorf (Eds.), Proceedings of SALT 26 (pp. 433–450). https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v26i0.3780.
Grano, T. (2017). The logic of intention reports. Journal of Semantics, 34, 587–632.
Hjelmslev, L. (1935/37) La catégorie des cas. Facs. edition 1972, München: Wilhem Fink Verlag.
Holmberg, A., & Nikanne, U. (1993). Introduction. In A. Holmberg & U. Nikanne (Eds.), Case and other functional categories in Finnish syntax (pp. 1–20). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Huumo, T. (2019). Why Monday is not in front of Tuesday: On the uses of English and Finnish front adpositions in sequence metaphors of time. Linguistics, 57(3), 607–652. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0010.
Huumo, T., & Ojutkangas, K. (2006). An introduction to Finnish spatial relations: Local cases and adpositions. In M.-L. Helasvuo & L. Campbell (Eds.), Grammar from the human perspective: Case, space and person in Finnish (pp. 11–20). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Jackendoff, R. (1975). A system of semantic primitives. In R. Schank & B. Nash-Webber (Eds.), Theoretical issues in natural language processing (pp. 112–117). Arlington, VA: ACL.
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, R. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Janda, L. A. (1988). The mapping of elements of cognitive space onto grammatical relations: An example from Russian verbal prefixation. In B. Rudzka-Ostyn (Ed.), Topics in cognitive linguistics (pp. 327–343). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Janda, L. A., & Nesset, T. (2010). Taking apart Russian RAZ-. Slavic and East European Journal, 54(3), 476–501.
Kagan, O. (2011). The actual world is abnormal: On the semantics of the Bylo construction in Russian. Linguistics and Philosophy, 34(1), 57–84.
Kagan, O. (2016). Scalarity in the verbal domain: The case of verbal prefixation in Russian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kamp, H. (2007). Intentions, plans and their execution: Turning objects of thought into entities of the external world. Universität Stuttgart (Unpublished manuscript).
Karlsson, F., & Chesterman, A. (1999). Finnish: An essential grammar. London: Routledge.
Kennedy, C., & Levin, B. (2002). Telicity corresponds to degree of change. Unpublished manuscript, Northwestern University and Stanford University.
Koopman, H. (1993). The structure of Dutch PPs. Unpublished manuscript, UCLA.
Koopman, H. (2000). Prepositions, postpositions, circumpositions and particles: The structure of Dutch PPs. In H. Koopman (Ed.), The syntax of specifiers and heads (pp. 204–260). London: Routledge.
Korpela, J. K. (2015). Handbook of Finnish. E-painos, Kindle Edition.
Kratzer, A. (1996). Severing the external argument from its verb. In J. Rooryck & L. Zaring (Eds.), Phrase structure and the Lexicon (pp. 109–137). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Landman, F. (1992). The progressive. Natural Language Semantics, 1, 1–32.
Leney, T. (2010). Complete Finnish. London: Teach Yourself.
Lestrade, S. (2010). The space of case. Ph.D. dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Matushansky, O. (2006). Head movement and linguistic theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 37(1), 69–109.
Matushansky, O. (2008). A case study of predication. In F. Marušič & R. Žaucer (Eds.), Studies in formal Slavic linguistics. Contributions from Formal Description of Slavic Languages 6.5 (pp. 213–239). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
McFadden, T. (2002). The structure of inherent, quirky and semantic cases. Unpublished manuscript. University of Pennsylvania.
Niemi, C. (1945). Finnish grammar (3rd ed.). Duluth, MN: C.H. Salminen.
Nikanne, U. (1989). On locative cases in Finnish. In: J. Niemi (Ed.), Papers from the 11th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics. (pp. 147–164). Joensuu: University of Joensuu.
Nikanne, U. (1991). Zones and tiers: A study of thematic structure. Helsinki: The Finnish Literature Society.
Nikanne, U. (1993). On assigning semantic cases in Finnish. In A. Holmberg & U. Nikanne (Eds.), Case and other functional categories in Finnish syntax (pp. 75–89). Belin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Paavo, S. (1964). Suomen kielen lauseoppi. Helsinki: Tietosanakirja Oy.
Pearson, H. (2016). The semantics of partial control. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 34, 691–738.
Pentti, L., Marja-Liisa, H., Petri, L., Urpo, N., & Tiina, O. (1990). Suomen kielen paikallissijat konseptuaalisessa semantiikassa. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston suomen kielen laitos.
Portner, P. (1994). A uniform semantics for aspectual -ing. In M. Gonzalez (Ed.), Proceedings of NELS 24, (Vol. 2, pp. 507–517). Amherst, MA: GLSA.
Portner, P. (1998). The progressive in modal semantics. Language, 74, 760–787.
Salminen, T. (2002). Retention of abstract meaning: The essive case and grammaticalization of polyphony in Finnish. In I. Wischer & G. Diewald (Eds.), New reflections on grammaticalization (pp. 293–307). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stiebels, B. (1998). Complex denominal verbs in German and the morphology-semantics interface. In G. Booij & J. van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1997 (pp. 265–302). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Svenonius, P. (2012). Drowning “into” the river in North Sámi: Uses of the illative. In L. Filipović & K. M. Jaszczolt (Eds.), Space and time in languages and cultures: Linguistic diversity (pp. 73–94). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Talmy, L. (1983). How language structures space. In H. Pick & L. Acredolo (Eds.), Spacial orientation: Theory, research and application. New York: Plenum.
Talmy, L. (1988). Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science, 12, 49–100.
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Cambridge. MA: MIT Press.
van Lambalgen, M., & Hamm, F. (2005). The proper treatment of events. Oxford: Blackwell.
van Riemsdijk, H., & Huybregts, R. (2007). Location and locality. In S. Karimi, V. Samiian, & W. K. Wilkins (Eds.), Phrasal and clausal architecture (pp. 339–364). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Wolff, P. (2007). Representing causation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(1), 82–111. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.136.1.82.
Wolff, P., & Song, G. (2003). Models of causation and the semantics of causal verbs. Cognitive Psychology, 47, 276–332.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Edit Doron (RIP), Bridget Copley, Malka Rappaport-Hovav and Tova Rapoport for fruitful discussions of the topic. My thanks also go to the audiences of BLINC 2 and IATL 33 for useful and inspiring questions and comments. I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their important feedback. And, of course, I am grateful to my Finnish consultants for sharing their intuitions and answering numerous questions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kagan, O. Change versus force in the Finnish case system. Linguist and Philos 44, 649–693 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-020-09298-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-020-09298-4