[Lingtyp] "I hide my stone in my house"

[Hartmut Haberland]

I am a German speaker and immediately I find the Finnish solution very plausible. After all, in German we also have

Der Stein liegt in der Schale. (Dative)
Ich legte den Stein in die Schale. (Accusative)

So German is actually Finnish-type, too, in part at least. The problem seems to be with German 'verstecken,' that is not seen as a movement verb.

Cf.

Ich verstecke den Stein hinter dem (not: hinter das) Haus.

There are other German verbs like that, e.g. anbringen, ablegen, abstellen, parken, archivieren, speichern, ... that work the same.

Same with Danish gemme 'verstecken, aufheben':

Jeg gemmer maden (inde) i spisekammeret.

Now inde is not obligatory, actually a bit awkward, but possible. But it indicates place (where?), not direction (whither?), and the corresponding directional adverb (ind) would be impossible here.

With verbs like legen, stellen, setzen, sich setzen German is like Finnish. But they seem to be in the minority.

Never thought of it -

Wir parkten das Auto im Hof (We parked the car in the backyard), not
*Wir parkten das Auto in den Hof (*into the backyard)

Besides
Wir stellten das Auto im Hof ab (roughly same meaning, but more like 'because it was in the way')
I would marginally accept
Wir stellten das Auto in den Hof ab
though.

Hartmut Haberland
Professor emeritus
[RUC]

Roskilde University
Department of Communication and Arts
Universitetsvej 1
DK-4000 Roskilde
Telephone: +45 46742841


Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> På vegne af Joo Ian
Sendt: 11. oktober 2018 13:01
Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Emne: [Lingtyp] "I hide my stone in my house"

Dear all,
I am interested in the following hypothesis:
In most of the world's languages, the PP "in my house" in sentence (1) and (2) are the same.
(1) My stone is in my house.
(2) I hide my stone in my house.
For example, in German:
(1) Mein Stein ist "in meinem Haus".
(2) Ich verstecke meinen Stein "in meinem Haus".
Although there are few languages where the PP of (1) and (2) are not identical, such as Finnish:
(1) Kiveni on "talossani". (Locative)
(2) Piilotan kiveni "talooni". (Illative)
But cases like Finnish are far fewer than English-like cases, I think.
I think this is interesting because the PP of (1) and that of (2) are semantically different: the PP in (1) is a location whereas that in PP is the endpoint of a placement event. If I can show that the two PPs are morphologically identical in most of the world's languages, then I can suggest that placement event profiles a static location as its endpoint and not a dynamic goal, like Rohde has argued in her dissertation (https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/18015)
Although I find this issue interesting, I would like to know if others find it so as well. What do you think? (Also, I would appreciate if anyone can let me know any other Finnish-like cases)
>From Hong Kong,
Ian Joo
http://ianjoo.academia.edu

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