Beneficiary coding in Finnish

Seppo Kittilä | University of Helsinki

This paper examines the beneficiary coding in (Standard) Finnish. Finnish has an elaborate system of coding benefaction. Finnish uses two cases (allative and ablative) for this, in addition to which benefaction can be coded by an array of postpositions. As will be shown in the paper, the markers are not in free variation, but formal variation has a semantic basis. For example, the three types of beneficiaries (plain beneficiary, deputative beneficiary and recipient-benefactive) distinguished by Van Valin & LaPolla (1997) are relevant to beneficiary coding in Finnish. In addition, I will discuss beneficiary coding in light of other features, such as animacy, volition and transitivity of the denoted event.

Published online: 14 April 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.92.10kit

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Kittilä, Seppo

2014. In Perspectives on Semantic Roles [Typological Studies in Language, 106], ► pp. 151 ff.

Zúñiga, Fernando

2014. Benefaction proper and surrogation. Studies in Language 38:3 ► pp. 543 ff.

Zúñiga, Fernando

2016. In Advances in Research on Semantic Roles [Benjamins Current Topics, 88], ► pp. 109 ff.

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