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Shall We Play the Festschrift Game? pp 181–214Cite as

Necessive Expressions in Finnic Bible Translations

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Abstract

A corpus study has been carried out concerning necessive expressions in the Finnic languages Estonian, Finnish, Karelian (Olonets), Livonian and Veps, using the Gospel of St. Matthew in the New Testament in these five languages. The aim of the study is to compare the necessive expressions and their frequency in the various languages synchronically and diachronically. Although Livonian is now virtually a dead language, the New Testament (1942) has been used. In the modern section of the corpus Estonian and Karelian use mainly the verbs pidama and piteä respectively. In Finnish the construction ‘on -(t)tAvA’ is slightly more frequent than pitää. Veps has tarbiž almost exclusively and Livonian uses a possessive construction with the partitive case of the fourth infinitive ‘on V-mõst’. Diachronic studies show an excessive use of pidama/pitää in the older Estonian (southern and northern dialects) and Finnish texts, attributed mainly to German influence. Older translations of the Gospel of St. Matthew in Karelian and Livonian contain some necessive constructions, which are no longer found in the most recent translations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The letter after the number of the example indicates the language.

  2. 2.

    Of the Finnic languages only Livonian has a morphologically distinct dative case.

  3. 3.

    The final vowel of the possessive suffix is often omitted in the 1548 New Testament.

  4. 4.

    The orthography has been changed from the original 1863 translations to approximate that used in 1942. In 1863 lengthening of a vowel has been indicated by a macron either above or below the letter. The letters ö, ä and ü in 1863 have the diæresis under the letter, and õ is represented by o with a third dot beneath the diæresis under the letter.

  5. 5.

    The letter ŋ used here is represented in 1863 by n with a dot above the letter. In 1942 the velarization of n has not been shown at all.

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Maria Vilkuna for her review of my paper and the correction of errors concerning Finnish. Any remaining errors are of course my own. My thanks are also due to Jane Simpson, who looked at my paper from a non-Finnic perspective and made helpful suggestions concerning some sections which were not easy to follow. Jussi Ylikoski was of great help in finding the transliteration of the 1820 Karelian Gospel of St. Matthew, and I really appreciate that. I am also grateful to Toomas Pill for help with the original Greek text and to Baiba Liepins, who helped me to understand the Latvian construction.

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  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Aet Lees

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  1. Aet Lees
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Literature, Area Studies and, University of Oslo, Niels Henrik Abels vei 36, Oslo, 0315, Oslo, Norway

    Diana Santos

  2. Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 40, Helsinki, 00014, Finland

    Krister Lindén

  3. Informatics, University of Nairobi, School of Computing &, Chiromo Campus RM 105, Nairobi, 00100, Kenya

    Wanjiku Ng’ang’a

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Lees, A. (2012). Necessive Expressions in Finnic Bible Translations. In: Santos, D., Lindén, K., Ng’ang’a, W. (eds) Shall We Play the Festschrift Game?. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30773-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30773-7_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-30772-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-30773-7

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