Dynamic local cases in use. Expressing directional events in Finnish

Abstract

<p>This paper focuses on dynamic local cases, with special attention to spatial<br>descriptions which employ not only one but two or even several landmarks.<br>The study is based on a corpus of recorded Finnish dialect samples. The<br>data shows a strong goal bias, i.e., a tendency to favor expressions of goal<br>landmarks over sources, and especially so with descriptions with human<br>actors, as expected on the basis of previous studies. On the other hand, the<br>study does not directly support the idea that when the language has formal<br>means for differentiating between the expressions of source and goal, these<br>are aptly used to express more than one landmark per motion event. The data<br>is analyzed according to the verb type, the type of the spatial relationship<br>expressed by the landmark, and the construction type of the landmark<br>expression. It is shown that in Finnish, verbs of motion are more often than<br>other dynamic verbs accompanied by two or several landmark expressions,<br>which is an expected result. However, it is the construction type of the<br>landmark expression that gives the greatest motivation for the use of double<br>landmarks, which can be convincingly explained by the conceptualization<br>strategy of nesting.<br></p>