Chapter 4
The essive in Votic
This chapter presents an empirical study of the distribution of a marker referred to as the ‘essive’ in Votic. The description of the properties of this marker follows the linguistic questionnaire that captures the contexts in which essive and/or translative markers may occur in the Uralic languages. The study brings forward the innovations in the use of the Votic essive marker untypical in the Finnic context, including the loss of the impermanent component in the essive meaning, and the distortion of the state vs. change contrast originally encoded in the essive vs. translative opposition. The linguistic domains considered are non-verbal main predication, secondary predication, complementation, manner, and temporal adverbial phrases.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Data
- 1.2Case system
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1.3State case series
- 2.Non-verbal predication
- 2.1Copula constructions
- 2.2Semi-copula constructions
- 2.3Constructions with modal verbs
- 2.4Restrictions on the types of predicates that can be encoded by the essive
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2.5Formal restrictions
- Animacy
- Person and number
- Tense
- Number agreement
- 3.Secondary predication
- 4.Predicative complements
- 5.Adverbials
- 6.Temporality and location
- 7.Comparative and simile expressions
- 8.Essive versus translative
- 9.Word order and focus
- 10.Conclusions and final remarks
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Notes
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References