Past Event

Finnish Serial Verbs: Properties & Structure

Dr. Solveiga Armoskaite
Contract Instructor, Linguistics
(Carleton University)

Problem: Finnish has a verbal construction (underlined in (1)) called colorative which combines two verbs: non-finite verb and a finite verb. The structure is said to fulfill stylistic and aesthetic functions (Rytkönen 1937, Jarva & Kytölä 2007).

The construction obeys a particular morphosyntactic restriction: Vii must be inflected for tense and person, while Vi has to be in infinitive form. It is ungrammatical to inflect Vi for tense and person and put Vii in infinitive:

Proposal: The syntactic structure of Finnish VV string is subject to well defined grammatical restrictions.

Claim (i): Finnish colorative constructions are serial verb constructions (SVC).

We show how Muysken & Veenstra (1995; 2006) criteria for SVC apply to the Finnish, summarized in table 1. In contrast, Finnish V(and)V strings do not meet the criteria.

Table 1. Properties of Finnish SVC versus non-SVC Finnish

Claim (ii): Finnish SVC emerge as a result of a restructuring operation (in the sense of Cardinaletti & Shlonsky 2004; see also Wurmbrand 2004). Thus, Finnish SVC takes the shape of the following syntactic structure:

(3) [FP1 [FP2 [FP3 [VP]]]

The structure allows for a number projections above the verbal phrase (VP). The VP is shell the locus of lexical and quazi-functional projections (FP). Under this view, infinitive Vi may nest within the enriched shell of an inflected Vii. This analysis allows to

(i) capture the behaviour of SVC as a unit, (ii) show the relation between the two Vs; (ii) maintain the monoclausal structure of SVC.

About the Presenter

Dr. Armoskaite received her PhD from the University of British Columbia, and is currently an instructor at SLaLS teaching several linguistics courses. She works on theoretical syntax and on Algonquian languages, especially Blackfoot.