With unusual structural characteristics, Finnish and Saami offer interesting challenges to linguistic theories formulated around more popular languages. Grammatically, for instance, languages in the Finnic and Saami group utilize extensive systems of case inflection on nouns to signal a broad variety of relations that in almost all other languages require additional words. Phonologically, as another example, the phenomenon of ‘consonant gradation’ is of particular interest to linguists.
This volume is the first to examine the phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics of Finnic and Saami languages within current generative linguistic frameworks. Collected here is research on these less-studied languages, some of which face extinction.
Diane Nelson is a lecturer in the linguistics and phonetics department at the University of Leeds. Satu Manninen is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Lund.
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
Satu Manninen and Diane Nelson
- I Phonology
- 2 Estonian Quantity: Implications for Moraic Theory
Martin Ehala
- 3 Opaque Consonant Gradation in Finnish - A Recourse to IO-OO Correspondence
Heli Harrikari
- 4 Finnish Noun Inflection
Paul Kiparsky
- II Syntax (Case)
- 5 A Liscencing Theory for Finnish
Ash Sudeh
- 6 Resultatives and Depictives in Finnish
Vivienne Fong
- 7 Postverbal Case Realization in Finnish
Anne Vainikka
- III Syntax (Other Topics)
- 8 Encoding (Non)Locality in Anaphoric Relations
Elsi Kaiser
- 9 Finnish PPs and the Phase Impenetrability Condition
Satu Manninen
- 10 Counting and the Grammar: Case Numerals in Inari Saami
Diane Nelson and Ida Toivonen
- 11 Constraints on the Morphological Causitives in the Torne Dialect of North Sámi
Mikael Svonni and Mikeal Vinka
- IV Language Change
- 12 The Emergence of a Definite Article in Estonian
Katrin Hiietam and Kersti Börjars
- 13 On the Negated Past in Finnic and Saami
Marit Julien
- 10 Counting and the Grammar: Case Numerals in Inari Saami
Diane Nelson and Ida Toivonen
- Language Index
- Subject Index
6/1/2003
ISBN (Paperback): 1575864126 (9781575864129)
ISBN (Cloth): 1575864118 (9781575864112)
Subject: General Language and Linguistics