How fictive dynamicity motivates aspect marking: The riddle of the Finnish quasi-resultative construction



: Huumo T

Publisher: MOUTON DE GRUYTER

: 2005

: Cognitive Linguistics

: COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

: COGN LINGUIST

: 16

: 1

: 113

: 144

: 32

: 0936-5907

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2005.16.1.113


This article studies fictive dynamicity as a factor motivating aspectual case marking in Finnish. In Finnish transitive sentences aspect is marked with the morphological case of the object: the restrictive object is used in sentences with a resultative meaning, whereas the partitive object is used in sentences indicating either atelicity, irresultativity, or progressivity. Interestingly, however, the restrictive object is also used in so-called quasi-resultative sentences, the aspectual meaning of which is atelic. These typically express a static physical location, perception, or cognition. In this article I argue that the use of the restrictive object in quasi-resultative sentences reflects the telic features of the conceptualization used to construct the representation of the atelic situation, where the atelic situation is represented as the result of a fictive change. This study thus extends the concept of fictive dynamicity to cover phenomena related to linguistic aspect.



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 20:44