Remarks on expressions of motion in Finnish

<strong>Remarks</strong> on expressions
of motion in Finnish
Urpo Nikanne
Åbo Akademi
Encoding of Motion in Language
12 March 2004

Contents of the talk
What can we say about conceptualization of
motion by studying (the Finnish) language?
Some examples of
• Motion verbs
• Locative cases & postpositions
• Constructions

PART I
REMARKS ON
MOTION VERBS

Examples of typical motion
verbs: jumping in Finnish
Finnish has two sets of verbs for ’jump’: momentanic (one jump)
and frequentative (several jumps)
hypätä, pompata (once)
hyppiä, pomppia (several times)
Vertical motion refers to motion along the vertical axis.
Horizontal and vertical motion may be combined. The actual
motion is not following the vertical axis. The vertical verbs can be
used.
Pomppaa1
Pomppaa2
Pomppii1
pomppii2

Some critical features of the motion
verbs
• Even though the motion encoded in the verbs is
schematic, , the verbs are sensitive to certain
spatial features, , for instance, , the shape of the
path, speed, , etc.
• Which verb would you use for this motion?
pomppaako

The grain levels of motion
• According to van der Zee and Nikanne (in progress),
there are three grain levels of encoding the path the
motion takes place:
1. neutral (mennä ’go,’ siirtyä ’change
place’ )
2. global (kaartaa
’go
along a curved path’)
3. local (mutkitella
’make
curves the path,’
hyppiä ’jump
(freq.)’)
• In addition to these three levels, it is possible to use a
manner of motion verb (horjua, heilua) to indicate a
neutral path.
F1

Lysbilde 6
F1 FIN; 07.03.2004

Grain level 0: neutral
mennä A:sta B:hen ’go
from A to B’ B
FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL CURVE
B
A

Grain level 1: global path
• kaartaa A:sta B:hen ’curve
on from A to B’ B
FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL CURVE
B
A

Grain level 2: local
mutkitella A:sta B:hen
’go
from A to B making small curves on the way’
FOCUS IS ON THE LOCAL CURVES
B
A

Manner of motion
• Manner of motion verbs like heilua, horjua,
vaappua etc. ’rock’ may me used with path
expressions. . The result is a grain level 0:
SUBJ - V(MANNER OF MOTION) - PATH
Mies horjuu töistt
istä kotiin.
man rock-3SG
work-ELA
home-ILL.
’The
man is rocking from work to home.’
Pragmatic factors an image of a curved path.
Not a necessary interpretation.

Some remarks on the grain levels
• There are not many verbs expressing grain levels
1 (global(
global) ) and 2 (local(
local).
There are only a handful
of verbs expressing the grain level 0 (neutral(
neutral).
• The role of pragmatics with level 2: the local
paths do not necessarily have to be encoded in
the verb.
• But: what is the reason the lack of verbs
expressing grain level 1?

Things to be studied
• Which spatial features can be encoded in the
LSS (lexical(
spatial structure) ) of the verb? Do
languages differ from each other in this respect?
• Are the three grain levels of the shape of the
path encoding universal or are there other
systems among the languages of the world?
• Are there differences between languages when it
comes to the number of verbs encoding
different grain levels in their LSS?

PART II
REMARKS ON
POSTPOSITIONS

’behind’ and ’in
front of’
(Nikanne
2003, see also Coventry & Frias 2001)
• In Finnish, there are two sets of postpositions
indicating the relations ’behind’ and ’in
front of’.
(directed,, 1-dimensional)
1
neutral
moving
objects
’behind’
takana
peräss
ssä
jäljessä
’in
front of’
edessä
edellä

’In
front of’ and ’behind’:
illustrations
Statitionary objectsneutral
postpositions
edessä ’in-front-of’ , takana ’behind’ (if
applicable).
• No intrinsic direction
Intrinsic direction
only deictic motivation
motivation
• Autot1 (intrinsic
d + motion),
Seuraaja (no intrinsic d + motion)
• Motion 1 dimensional directed path

Finnish & germanic languages
• Finnish: obligatory expression of direction.
• Germanic: not always necessary with motion
verbs.
• Compare:
• Autot1 (edellä, edessä) ’in
front of’ + place
• Autot2 (edelle, eteen) ’in
front of’ + direction
• Taakse, perää
ään

Orientations and dimensions
• According to Nikanne 2003, orientations and
dimensions are related to each other.
• In the study of Finnish postpositions, it turned out that
the vertical concepts (ylä- ’up’, ala- ’down’) are always
vertical.
• Other concepts (ete- ’in-front-of’, taka- ’behind’, sivu-
’side’) are more related to directionality and dimensions
than orientations.

Dimensions
up
back
horizontal
side
side
front
vertical
down

Besides and behind
• ’Side’ concepts (postpositions
vierellä, vieressä
’beside’)) and ’in-front-of’/’behind’ (edessä,
edellä ’in-front-of’ takana, peräss
ssä, jäljessä
’behind’) concepts are not necessarily
horizontal:
• Hyönteiset

Illustration of vertical and
”horizontal” concepts
• The vertical postpositions (’above,’ ’below’)
always refer to a vertical dimention.
• Vertikaali1
• The vertical relation between the objects: different
postpositions in Finnish – yläpuolella,
päällä, yllä(?),
’above’, alapuolella, alla.
• Vertikaali2
• The green fly: always alapuolella ’below’

Dimensions and orientations
(Nikanne
2003)
3D
vertical 2D
+ - perpendicular 1D
ylä-
ala-
(top) (bottom) + - + -
side1 side2 etu-
taka-
(front) (back)

Things to be studied
• Prepositions (or
postpositions) expressing
motionary objects in other languages besides
Finnish.
• The relationship between temporal and spatial
concepts.
• ’Side’ concepts: : the conditions under which such
postpositions as vieressä, vierellä, rinnalla etc.
’beside’ are allowed.

PART III
REMARKS ON
CONSTRUCTIONS

Constructions:
Motion without a motion verb
• There are constructions in Finnish indicating
motion without including a motion verb.
• I will introduce three of these constructions. All
of them have the motion verb as an optional
part.
• The grain level of the motion with these
constructions is 0 (neutral(
neutral).

Swedish Motion Modal Construction
No motion verb:
(Nikanne
& Östman 2002)
Jag måste
till Åbo
I must to Turku
’I must go to Turku.’
The motion verb is optional:
Jag måste
resa till Åbo
I must travel to Turku

Resultative:
V (causative) + OBJ + PATH
pakottaa ’force,’ käskeä ’tell,’
komentaa ’command,’ saada ’get,’ etc.
• Without a motion verb:
• Äiti pakotti Villen kylpyyn.
Mother forced Ville-ACC bath-ILL
’Mother forced Ville to take bath.’
• With a motion verb:
• Äiti pakotti Villen menemään kylpyyn.
mother forced Ville-ACC go-INF3-ILL bath-ILL
’Mother
forced Ville to take bath.’

päästä ’get’ + PATH
• Without a motion verb:
• Paviaanit pääsivät leijonien ohi.
baboons got-3PL lions-GEN by
’The baboons got by the lions’
• With a motion verb:
• Paviaanit pääsivät menemään leijonien ohi.
baboons got-3PL go-INF3-ILL lions-GEN by
’The baboons got by the lions’

joutaa / kelpaa ’~ be worth’ + PATH
• Without a motion verb:
• Tämä takki kelpaa kirpputorille.
this jacket is-worth flea-market-ALL
• With a motion verb:
• (?)Takki kelpaa menemään kirpputorille.
jacket is-worth go-INF3-ILL flea-market-ALL

The syntactic structure of the
S
NP VP
constructions
V (NP) PP
äiti pakotti Villen kylpyyn
(result)
paviaanit pääp
ääsivät leijonien ohi (get)
takki joutaa kirpputorille (worth)

Things to be studied
• How these constructions are understood?
(preliminary
ideas in Nikanne & Östman 2002,
Nikanne 1995)
• Finding more constructions of motion without a
motion verb.
• Description of the properties of these
constructions in detail.

Conclusions
• Motion is encoded in (the Finnish) language in both
lexical entries and constructions.
• Even though spatial expressions express spatial
relations in rather general terms, , the spatial features
encoded in spatial verbs are rather detailed when it
comes, e.g., ., to the form of the path. . In addition, spatio-
temporal features like speed are encoded.
• In order to better understand the motion encoded in
language, both theoretical linguistics and experimental
methods are needed.