Apologia of the Finnish abessive case

Authors

• Jussi Ylikoski University of Oulu & Sámi University of Applied Sciences

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23997/pk.110924

Keywords:

abessive, adverbs, case, Finnish

Abstract

The Finnish grammars customarily present a case system of fifteen morphological cases.
Most of them have gained a lot of attention from grammarians, but the most infrequent case,
abessive
(-tta/-ttä
‘without’) has remained little studied. Instead, even the most authoritative
descriptions have characterized the abessive as a marginal, defective, unproductive and
adverb-like category. This paper questions the prevailing view. Based on data drawn from
large corpora of modern written Finnish, it is shown that the abessive is a highly productive
morphological category. Special attention is given to the syntax of the abessive phrase, and the
data show that the abessive has most features characteristic of nouns: they may be accompanied
by various adjectival modifiers as well as by genitive modifiers and postmodifying relative
clauses. Moreover, contrary to earlier claims there are no specific features that would make
abessive forms derivational adverbs any more than other cases of the language.