Ongella Elmeri huitaisi Anselmia ongella: Lauseaseman vaikutuksesta eräiden adverbiaalityyppien tulkintaan

• Tuomas Huumo

Avainsanat: adverbiaali, semantiikka, syntaksi

Abstrakti

The interpretation of certain adverbials as affected by their clause position (englanti)

1995 (99)

Tuomas Huumo (University of Turku; [e-mail])

The interpretation of certain adverbials as affected by their clause position

The article examines the ways in which the position of local adverbials in the clause can determine their semantic interpretation. The general rule is that clause-initial adverbials are interpreted as having wider scope than clause-final ones with respect to the nuclear predication. A clause-initial locative adverbial is thus more likely than a clause-final one to be read as expressing the location of the entire event described, and the space it denotes often controls the spaces denoted by other adverbials.

In some cases a clause-initial adverbial is given a more abstract reading, different from its basic one, so that it can include other constituents within its scope. For example, a clause-initial locative may take on possessive or temporal features which could not be attributed to it in clause-final position. In some ambiguous cases, a clause-initial adverbial is interpreted as being more loosely associated with the clause nucleus than an equivalent adverbial occurring clause-finally. This means that even a basic semantic reading may vary with clause position. Hearers tend to interpret the meaning of an adverbial in such a way that the adverbial can realize the function which would be expected of it according to its position in the clause. For example: the adessive adverbial sahalla is ambiguous between the meanings 'by/with a saw' and 'at the sawmill'. The following sentences therefore have different interpretations: Sahalla Elmeri loukkasi ktens '[sahalla] Elmeri injured his hand', Elmeri loukkasi sahalla ktens 'Elmeri injured [sahalla] his hand'. The first one, with the clause-initial adverbial, is more likely to receive the locative reading 'at the sawmill', whereas the second one is more likely to receive the instrumental reading 'with a saw'. Word order thus affects not only the interpretation of the discourse function of the constituent concerned but also its syntactic function (i.e. whether it modifies the verb or the whole clause); it also affects the semantic role it is given (locative or instrumental), and even the lexical semantics ('saw' or 'sawmill').

The variation in the semantic function of a clause-initial locative is also manifest in the fact that it may be given an interpretation different from its basic meaning; for instance, it may be taken to modify some other constituent in a possessive sense. Clause-final adverbials usually lack the potential for this kind of alternative reading. Thus, the clause Bulgariassa presidentti metsst hirvi 'In Bulgaria the president hunts elk' is interpreted primarily as a predication about the president of Bulgaria; but Presidentti metsst hirvi Bulgariassa 'The president hunts elk in Bulgaria' is a predication concerning a president who is contextually known, and the adverbial Bulgariassa has a purely locative function.

Cases in which a clause-initial locative modifies some other element in the clause can be said to manifest the process of possessivization. In undergoing this process, a locative seems at the same time to lose something of its locative meaning, in that it may sometimes allow the presence of another locative in the clause which is spatially incongruent, yet without giving rise to a contradiction: the clause Tss talossa isnt ky joka ilta kapakassa 'In this house the master goes every evening to [in] the pub' does not mean that the pub is situated in the house mentioned but that the master is indeed the master of this house. On the other hand, the clause Tss talossa Liisa ky joka ilta kapakassa 'In this house Liisa goes every evening to the pub' does have the interpretation according to which the pub is in this particular house. The reason is that this house cannot modify Liisa possessively in the same way that it can modify the master, so that it remains purely locative and must be related to the other locatives in the clause.

Clause-initial adverbials are also unusual as regards their functional disconnectedness. They can lose part of their basic meaning and become more abstract, moving towards a topic function, in the same sense as topic structures in so-called topic languages. In Finnish, it is particularly the habitive (possessive) and instrumental adessives that seem to be able to fulfil this loose function. The disconnectedness of the habitive adessive is seen in that there is no direct possessive relation between two elements in the clause, but the whole state of affairs presented by the nuclear predication is, as it were, subordinated to the entity denoted by the habitive adverbial. Similarly, the instrumental adessive, becoming abstracted into a topic function, no longer expresses an instrument but rather a cause or condition; it presents a kind of framework associated with the instrumental use of its referent, a framework in which the state of affairs expressed by the nuclear predication is deemed to be valid.