Putting PPs into order - Understanding prepositionality in the predominantly postpositional language Lule Sami ...

• Main Author: Ajer, Hanna Danbolt
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 2022
• Subjects: Adpositions; Ambipositions; Contrastive focus; Contrastiveness; Definiteness; Endangered languages; Fieldwork; Linguistics; FOS Languages and literature; Lule Sami; Minimalist syntax; Postpositions; Predefined alternative sets; Prepositions; Syntax; Universal Spine Hypothesis; Word-order variation; Norway; Tysfjord; Northern Norway; sami
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.95571; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/348152

This thesis investigates PP-internal word-order variation in an endangered Uralic language, Lule Sami, which is indigenous to parts of Northern Norway and Sweden. The study focuses on the factors underlying prepositional occurrences in this predominantly postpositional language. It is mainly based on spoken data containing more than 4,000 occurrences of adpositions, elicited from eleven native speakers of Lule Sami in Divtasvuodna/Tysfjord, the Lule Sami heartland in Norway. The study aims to contribute to our knowledge of Lule Sami, which is severely understudied. I argue that prepositionality in this language can mark that (part of) the PP is either contrastive or belongs to a system of conventionalised alternatives, which I term a PREDEFINED ALTERNATIVE SET. The findings from Lule Sami may be relevant to the study of related languages as well, as there appear to be many similarities with other Sami languages and Finnic languages. Furthermore, in identifying factors related to semantics and information ...