Remarks on the coding of Goal, Recipient and Vicinal Goal in European Uralic

Abstract

This paper discusses the coding of three roles, Goal, Recipient and Vicinal Goal (‘to the vicinity of’) in European Uralic languages. The paper shows that Uralic languages typically use cases for Recipients and Goals, while Vicinal Goals bear adpositional coding except for a few languages with extraordinarily rich case inventories. The explanation given for this is that Goals and Recipients are expected roles, borne by inanimate and animate endpoints of transfer, respectively, while Vicinal Goal is a marked role, not retrievable directly from the features of the landmark. Consequently, a more elaborate coding is needed. Many studies only concern Goals and Recipients, but the findings of this paper show that a broader perspective is needed for arriving at a better understanding of Goal.

Recent developments and open questions in the field of semantic roles

“…Intended Recipients are arguably a subtype of Beneficiaries, but so are Deputative/Substitutive Beneficiaries, and all of these are typically treated as subtypes of a single, somewhat generic, role. Animate and inanimate Goals are commonly treated in a parallel fashion in spite of their notable and cross-linguistically robust formal differences (see Kittilä & Ylikoski 2011 for a discussion in the context of Uralic). Motion events are usually distinguished from other manipulation situations, thereby leading to Theme being a different role from Patient, but change-of-state predicates are one single class, leading to affected Patients and effected Patients not being two separate roles (but see Hopper 1985 for cases in which these two types of Patients receive different coding).…”

The l-cases in Courland Livonian

“…This, Nevis suspects, is due to 'excessive theoretizing' by Kettunen, who, having found a number of words with l-case endings, adds these cases to the case paradigm. Nevis, however, considers these 'extraparadigmatic adverbs' that do not belong in the case paradigm (much in the same way as Kittilä and Ylikoski 2011;see below). Additionally, Nevis (1989: 101) assumes that both the singular and plural forms of the l-cases disappeared at the same time.…”

Lative in Hill Mari

“…примеры (41) и (42) из лугового марийского языка и горномарийского языка соответственно) и не имеет никаких других значений в пространственной сфере. Как показано в диахронических исследованиях (см., например, [Kittilä, Ylikoski 2011] и [Зорина 2002), маркер дательного падежа в марийских языках связан с древним l-овым суффиксом, имевшим направительное значение. Кроме этого, мы рассмотрели полисемию горномарийского латива в непространственной сфере и постарались связать его непространственные значения с пространственными.…”