| Summary: | Loose genitives and the problem of possessive constructions (englanti)1/1997 (101)Tuomas Huumo (thuumo@utu.fi) Nobufumi Inaba (ninaba@utu.fi)LOOSE GENITIVES AND THE PROBLEM OF POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS An oft-repeated assumption in diachronic studies of Finno-Ugric languages is that the Finno-Ugric proto-language possessed a genitive case with the ending *-n. The genitive supposedly served an adnominal syntactic function as the case of noun modifiers (genitive attributes). It has also been assumed that the proto-language possessed another case with a similar ending (*-n), the lative, the syntactic function of which was adverbal, i.e. verb-modifying. The picture is further complicated by the existence of the formally identical instructive case, which has been etymologically connected with the genitive but nevertheless served a verb-modifying function. In Korhonen (1991), this traditional view was questioned and an alternative explanation offered, which proposed that the genitive in fact developed from the lative case via an intermediate stage where its function was that of dative; only later did it acquire the function of genitive and change from an adverbal into an adnominal case.The article examines the genitive case from the viewpoint of possessive constructions. In the present-day Finno-Ugric languages, the function of the genitive in indicating possession is twofold. On the one hand, it has the adnominal function of genitive attribute (directly connected with the old *-n genitive) in the Baltic-Finnic languages and in Lapp (Sami), Mordvin and Mari; on the other hand, it has special uses in verbal possessive constructions where a noun in the genitive case, indicating possessor, is separated by other constituents of the sentence from the noun indicating possessee. The writers refer to the latter type as the 'loose genitive'. To illustrate the loose genitive construction, consider the following Finnish examples: (a) Elmeri+n lompakko putosi jrve+en [Elmer+GENITIVE wallet fell lake+ILLATIVE], (b) Elmeri+n putosi ...
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