Analysis Of Finnish Syntax

1
Analysis Of Finnish Syntax

• Gregory Clayman
• Prof. Harry Howard
• ANTH-359/759
• 10 December 2007

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Important Things To Know About Finnish Syntax

• Requirement for licensing Spec(IP) position means
  that in Finnish the Spec(IP) or subject must
  be filled though it can be filled syntactically
  instead of lexically. Requirement for INFL
  licensing requires INFL to be filled.
• Finnish, grammatically, has free word order.
  Sentences can be VSO, VOS, SOV, SVO, OVS, or OSV
  though it is often classified as an SVO language.
• No VP-fronting or other types of VP-movement in
  Finnish it is argued that VP does not exist in
  Finnish (though Vainikka the authority on
  Finnish linguistics) argues that VP DOES exist.
  . .it remains unproven
• Only Finnish auxiliary is olla - to be olla
  is ALWAYS base-generated in INFL and usually
  occupies this position

Basic Tree Adopted For Finnish
3
Finnish Text

• Paimenpoika oli paimenemassa lampaita, ja siellä
  koko päivään ollessaan hän puhui usiamman kerran
  lampaille. Ja kerran hän kysyi lampaalta, että
  Mistäs eniten lammas on kipeä?
• Niin lammas aina vastasi Pää-ää.

4
Finnish To English Gloss

• Original Finnish Text
• Paimenpoika oli paimenemassa lampaita, ja
  siellä koko päivään ollessaan hän puhui usiamman
  kerran lampaille. Ja kerran hän kysyi lampaalta,
  että Mistäs eniten lammas on kipeä?
• Niin lammas aina vastasi Pää-ää.

Literal English Translation A shepherd boy
was shepherding sheep, and there spending all day
he spoke several times to the sheep. And one time
he inquired from a sheep, that Whence most sheep
is ailing? Yet the sheep always only says
Pää-ää (the head)
Actual English Gloss A shepherd boy was
tending sheep, and there, as he was spending the
whole day, he talked to the sheep several times.
And once, he asked a sheep that Where is the
sheep ailing most? And the sheep always
answered, Pää-ää (the head)
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Syntactic Analysis
Paimenpoika oli paimenpoika lampaita A
shepherd boy was tending sheep
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Syntactic Analysis, Cont.
Ja siellä, koko päivää ollessaan hän puhui
usiamaan kerran lampaille And there, as he
was spending the whole day, he talked to the
sheep several times

• Due to the Finnish language's free word-order, a
  syntactic tree is a bit difficult for this
  construction, which syntactically contains hän
  in the Spec(IP) but lexically does not.
• In addition, ollessaan is not a verb here, but
  an inflection of olla in the incessive case
  that acts freely to roughly translate as was
  spending
• The agglutinative nature of Finnish makes this
  construction even more difficult to show in tree
  form. For example, lampaille to the sheep.
  The '-lle' is an allative case that makes this
  one noun in Finnish a prepositional phrase in
  English. The construction, in Finnish, looks
  like NP N' PP -lle NP lampai

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Syntactic Analysis, Cont.
Ja kerran hän kysyi lampaalta, että And once
he asked a sheep, that. . .

• Once again, hän is occupying, syntactically,
  the Spec(IP) position. -i on the end of kysy-
  occupies the INFL position.
• Lampaalta here, is again, lammas in the
  ablative case. The -lta suffix means from (ask
  from a sheep).
• Että always precedes WH-phrases usually
  occupies the Spec(CP) position (Vainikka, 1989)

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Syntactic Analysis of the Finnish 'WH' Structure
Mistäs eniten lammas on kipeä? Where is the
sheep aching most?
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Syntactic Analysis, Cont.
Niin lammas aina vastasi Pää-ää Yet the sheep
always answered Pää-ää! (the head).

• For the first time, we see the noun 'lammas' in
  its unchanged form The sheep (singular). It
  licenses the Spec(IP) position.
• And again we see -i occupying the INFL
  position, on the end of vastas answer.
• Niin is the Finnish coordinating conjunction.
  It can stand for 'and', 'but', 'so', 'yet', or
  'for'. It does not exist in spoken Finnish
  (puhekieli) but only in written Finnish
  (yleiskieli).

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Sources

• Vainikka, Anne Marjatta. Deriving Syntactic
  Representations in Finnish. Submitted to UMass
  for a phD in philosophy, 1989.
• Haegeman, Liliane. Thinking Syntactically, 2006.