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Changing Structures: Studies in constructions and complementation
Edited by Mark Kaunisto, Mikko Höglund and Paul Rickman
[Studies in Language Companion Series 195] 2018
► pp. 215–232

Anglicising Finnish complementation? Examining the rakastan puhua (‘I love to speak’) structure in present-day Finnish

| University of Helsinki
The paper addresses the question as to whether the complementation system of Finnish is currently undergoing a change which will ultimately lead to Finnish syntax recognising rakastan puhua (‘I love to talk/speak’) as a valid instantiation of the syntactic structure in question in addition to the traditional construction rakastan puhumista (‘I love talking/speaking’). At present, the former type is distinctly a marked type of expression whereas the latter variant is equally unmarked. The paper argues that while the emergence of the new type in Finnish may be attributable to the influence of the corresponding infinitival construction in English via translation, this is so only to some extent, and that the change Finnish syntax is undergoing in this respect is mainly due to some sociolinguistic and ideological considerations whereby users of the construction can identify themselves as belonging to certain subcultures or subgroups of speakers.
Keywords: language change, social identity, translation, verb complementation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language and fashion
  • 3.Language change: An ideological note
  • 4.Speaker-alignment as recipient design: Domestication and foreignisation generalised
  • 5.Final remarks: Language variation and language change diffusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.195.12hie
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