Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Verbs, Bipositions, and Force Dynamics: How force dynamic strength varies between Finnish adpositional constructions Talmy (2000: Ch. 7) argues that force-dynamic (FD) meanings motivate and underlie many linguistic systems expressing physical interaction but also abstract relationships. FD meanings involve e.g. the exertion of force and resistance to a force. The participants of a force-dynamic interaction are a “focal force entity” called the Agonist, and another, opposing force element, the Antagonist. In our presentation we apply the concept of FD in an analysis of Finnish path adpositions (PAdp) läpi ‘through’, yli ’over’ and ohi ‘past/by’ and their uses with verbs indicating different degrees of FD. In the relevant expressions the Agonist is indicated by the grammatical subject and the Antagonist by the complement of the adposition (e.g. The horse[AGO] broke through the fence[ANT]). Roughly speaking, the verb (broke) indicates the FD effect of the Agonist and the Padp (through) that of the Antagonist. We start from the assumption that there are both verbs and adpositions with varying degrees of FD, and that their uses correlate in actual data. Verbs with a strong FD include päästä ‘to get [somewhere; through some resistance]’, ‘to pass’, murtautua ’to break into/through’, tunkeutua ‘to push through’, among others; consider a). a. Te+i+n ratkaisu+n viimeise+ssä nousu+ssa ja pääs+i+n Viki+n ohi Make+PST+SG1 decision+GEN last+INE slope+INE and get+PST+SG1 name+GEN past ‘I made the decision on the last slope and got past Vik’ FD verbs differ from each other with respect to phasal aspect: the FD effect they indicate may be incipient, ongoing, completed or merely attempted; as an example of an ongoing FD interaction consider b): b. Tuntu+i kuin joku yrittä+isi pääs+tä seinä+n läpi Feel+PST.3SG like someone try+COND get+INF wall+GEN through ‘It felt like someone was trying to get through the wall’ There are also differences in the degree of the Antagonist’s FD expressed by the PAdp. Finnish PAdps can be used in three constructions: as prepositions, postpositions or “quasi-adpositions (QAdp)”. The complements of prepositions and postpositions are in the genitive, but QAdps take their complement in a local case. For instance, the meaning ‘through the forest’ can be expressed by 1) a preposition läpi metsä+n [through forest+GEN], 2) a postposition metsä+n läpi [forest+GEN through], or 3) a QAdp metsä+stä läpi [forest+ELATIVE through]. Our hypothesis is that such constructions set up a hierarchy reflecting their degree of FD: QAdp > Postp > Prep. The QAdp indicates the strongest FD, the postposition an intermediate degree of FD, and the preposition the weakest FD. We argue that these differences follow from the overall meaning of these constructions. A preposition selects a proximal perspective to its landmark and profiles it only partially, whereas a postposition selects a distal perspective and profiles the landmark as a whole (Huumo and Lehismets, 2011). Therefore it is easier to conceptualize the landmark of a postposition as an obstacle. QAdps are grammatically autonomous: the locative relationship is indicated by the local case ending of the complement, and the QAdp is then a more autonomous element highlighting the FD meaning of the expression. References Huumo, Tuomas, Kersten Lehismets (2011). Finnish Path Adpositions: prepositions or postpositions, subjective or objective motion? In Bierwiaczonek, Boguslaw, Cetnarowska, Bozena and Turula, Anna (eds.): Syntax in Cognitive Grammar. Czestochowa: Wydawnictwo Wyzszej Szkoly Lingwistycznej, Poland. Talmy, Leonard 2000. Toward Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press