Nyelvtudományi közlemények 91. kötet (1990)

242 BO WICKMAN
can be no doubt that the partitive is a genuine object case, but in Mordvin
it is not quite so evident the the ablative is to be regarded as an object case,
although a Mordvin sentence liké simán vette 'I drink water' corresponds
exactly in its construction to the Finnish sentence juon vettä with the same
meaning. Both the ablative and the inessive are predominantly local cases in
Mordvin, whereas in Finnish the partitive has lost most of its original local
function. An interesting discussion is given by Lars-Gunnar Larsson (1983.
121-129) in connection with the object in Mordvin. He gives an example
from Swedish, where the sentence han âter pá en smorgas means 'he is
eating a sandwich' but has the word-for-word construction 'he eats on a
sandwich'. Larsson says that it is difficult even for a native Swedish linguist
to décide whether the phrase pá en smorgas constitutes an object or not. In
my opinion this décision is not difficult at ail, because I do not think that
a prepositional phrase can be regarded as an object. It can thus be said
that in a case of this kind I attach more importance to the formai than to
the semantic point of view. I am rather inclined to take the same stand in
the Mordvin question and to call the ablative and inessive constructions in
question adverbials rather than objects, although I am quite aware that the
opposite opinion is also quite reasonable from some points of view.
A rather curious case of semantic considérations as opposed to formai
ones is found in the so-called accusative II in traditional Finnish grammar,
which is both historically and synchronically identical with the nominative
singular. This stem form without any ending, e.g. kala 'fish', is in traditional
Finnish grammar called accusative II when it lias the function of an object,
e.g. in the imperative sentence syö kala! 'eat the fish!' The way of reasoning
was evidently that here we hâve to do with an object, and an object should
be in the accusative, and therefore the nominative singular was called accusative
II in order to distinguish it from the 'real' accusative of the type
kalan. And this terminology became traditional and has survived to our
days.
The Uralic separative, which has become the Mordvin ablative and the
Finnish partitive, has in Lappish become the accusative in the plural. As
to the functions of this accusative plural, it has preserved only rudimentary
features of its earlier partitive function in cases like mi nieidâid 'which girl,
what girl', originally 'which of the girls'. It is indeed very interesting to note
that in the plural the partitive lias developed into an object case and thus
become an accusative, whereas in the singular the partitive has disappeared
altogether as a case of the object. Erkki Itkonen (1972) lias shown with the
aid of Lappish texts from the 17th and 18th centuries that this is a rather
new development and that in the old texts the partitive still functioned as
an object case with many verbs much in the same way as in Finnish.
Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 91. 1990.