Benefactives are constructions used to express that a state of affairs holds to someone’s advanta... more Benefactives are constructions used to express that a state of affairs holds to someone’s advantage. The same construction sometimes also serves as a malefactive, whose meanings are generally not a simple mirror image of the benefactive. Benefactive constructions cover a wide range of phenomena: malefactive passives, general and specialized benefactive cases and adpositions, serial verb constructions and converbal constructions (including e.g. verbs of giving and taking), benefactive applicatives, and other morphosyntactic strategies. The present book is the first collection of its kind to be published on this topic. It includes both typological surveys and in-depth descriptive studies, exploring both the morphosyntactic properties and the semantic nuances of phenomena ranging from the familiar English double-object construction and the Japanese adversative passive to comparable phenomena found in lesser-known languages of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The book will appeal to typologists and linguists interested in linguistic diversity and it will also be a useful reference work for linguists working on language description.
Inference is usually defined as a speaker’s personal but indirect evidence that is based on somet... more Inference is usually defined as a speaker’s personal but indirect evidence that is based on something that the speaker can directly witness (such as the result of an event), while assumption is based on something such as the speaker’s general knowledge of the world. This paper is concerned with inference and assumption in light of the semantics of the Finnish inferential and assumptive adverbs näköjään (inference) and varmaan (assumption). These are examined by administering a questionnaire study. The discussed scenarios differ according to three factors: the presence or lack of visual or sensory evidence, the temporal relations between the evidence and the claim that is made, and the strength of the evidence. The results of the study clearly establish that inference and assumption are separate notions (coded by different adverbs) and that the (non-) observability of the evidence noted above explains only a part of the attested cases; in general, the use of the adverbs is determined by how reliable the speaker considers the evidence to be. As a consequence, this paper proposes new definitions based on the speakers’ selection of the appropriate inferential/assumptive adverb based on how strongly they are willing to vouch for the truth value of their statement.
... oppilaa-lle teacher give-PST+ 3SG box-ACC pupil-ALL The teacher gave the box to the pupil (... more ... oppilaa-lle teacher give-PST+ 3SG box-ACC pupil-ALL The teacher gave the box to the pupil (3b) agronomi ansaitse-e raha-a perhee ... 5 The use of the verb antaa (as in* sade antaa maanviljelijälle satasia, 'the rain gives the farmer hundred Euro bills') is simply impossible here ...
Benefactives are constructions used to express that a state of affairs holds to someone’s advanta... more Benefactives are constructions used to express that a state of affairs holds to someone’s advantage. The same construction sometimes also serves as a malefactive, whose meanings are generally not a simple mirror image of the benefactive. Benefactive constructions cover a wide range of phenomena: malefactive passives, general and specialized benefactive cases and adpositions, serial verb constructions and converbal constructions (including e.g. verbs of giving and taking), benefactive applicatives, and other morphosyntactic strategies. The present book is the first collection of its kind to be published on this topic. It includes both typological surveys and in-depth descriptive studies, exploring both the morphosyntactic properties and the semantic nuances of phenomena ranging from the familiar English double-object construction and the Japanese adversative passive to comparable phenomena found in lesser-known languages of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The book will appeal to typologists and linguists interested in linguistic diversity and it will also be a useful reference work for linguists working on language description.
Inference is usually defined as a speaker’s personal but indirect evidence that is based on somet... more Inference is usually defined as a speaker’s personal but indirect evidence that is based on something that the speaker can directly witness (such as the result of an event), while assumption is based on something such as the speaker’s general knowledge of the world. This paper is concerned with inference and assumption in light of the semantics of the Finnish inferential and assumptive adverbs näköjään (inference) and varmaan (assumption). These are examined by administering a questionnaire study. The discussed scenarios differ according to three factors: the presence or lack of visual or sensory evidence, the temporal relations between the evidence and the claim that is made, and the strength of the evidence. The results of the study clearly establish that inference and assumption are separate notions (coded by different adverbs) and that the (non-) observability of the evidence noted above explains only a part of the attested cases; in general, the use of the adverbs is determined by how reliable the speaker considers the evidence to be. As a consequence, this paper proposes new definitions based on the speakers’ selection of the appropriate inferential/assumptive adverb based on how strongly they are willing to vouch for the truth value of their statement.
... oppilaa-lle teacher give-PST+ 3SG box-ACC pupil-ALL The teacher gave the box to the pupil (... more ... oppilaa-lle teacher give-PST+ 3SG box-ACC pupil-ALL The teacher gave the box to the pupil (3b) agronomi ansaitse-e raha-a perhee ... 5 The use of the verb antaa (as in* sade antaa maanviljelijälle satasia, 'the rain gives the farmer hundred Euro bills') is simply impossible here ...
The expression of knowledge in language (i.e. epistemicity) consists of a number of distinct noti... more The expression of knowledge in language (i.e. epistemicity) consists of a number of distinct notions and proposed categories that are only partly related to a well explored forms like epistemic modals. The aim of the volume is therefore to contribute to the ongoing exploration of epistemic marking systems in lesser-documented languages from the Americas, Papua New Guinea, and Central Asia from the perspective of language description and cross-linguistic comparison. As the title of the volume suggests, part of this exploration consists of situating already established notions (such as evidentiality) with the diversity of systems found in individual languages. Epistemic forms that feature in the present volume include ones that signal how speakers claim knowledge based on perceptual-cognitive access (evidentials); the speaker’s involvement as a basis for claiming epistemic authority (egophorics); the distribution of knowledge between the speech-participants where the speaker signals assumptions about the addressee’s knowledge of an event as either shared, or non-shared with the speaker (engagement marking).
The present study adopts a typological approach to investigate intersubjective uses of the Finnis... more The present study adopts a typological approach to investigate intersubjective uses of the Finnish clitic markers =hAn and =se, which are derived from third-person pronouns, within the emerging framework of engagement. The methods encompass two data gathering approaches: 1) a qualitative survey involving actual Finnish language users through a questionnaire to identify functions, and 2) a quantitative survey examining co-occurrences between the clitic markers and subject persons using the Suomi24 Sentences Corpus 2001–2020 for usage-based frequencies. The data analysis focuses on the interrelations with a subject person, drawing parallels with other languages which exhibit similar phenomena of pragmatic extension from referential uses towards engagement marking. The results reveal that the two Finnish clitics semantically inherit their referential meanings from their lexical forms and further extend them towards marking interlocutors’ intersubjectivity, enriching the engagement system of Finnish. A distinct difference related to the subject person becomes evident. On the one hand, =hAn as a recognitional marker more frequently co-occurs with first person, signalling the speaker’s involvement in epistemic management as a speech act participant responsible for managing inclusive attention and shared information with the hearer. On the other hand, =se as a contrastive marker co-occurs more frequently with third person in general and with second-person statements which involve the speaker’s observed information and its exclusivity.
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