[Lingtyp] retrolative

[Hannu Tommola]

Dear Christian, Johanna and all,

Johanna already gave examples in Finnish, so I'm late, sorry. Observe, however, something similar in Slavic:

two-way action

In Russian many imperfective verbs allow a ”two-way” action, e.g., vyxodit’ ‘go out (and come back)’, otkryvat’ ‘open (and close again)’. This is typically illustrated by a group of (“indetermined”) movement verbs as ezdit’ ‘go/ride/drive/travel’ (e.g., Nedavno my ezdili v gorod ‘We recently went to the town’), with a semelfactive perfective counterpart (My s”ezdili v gorod).

In Finnish, the multi-faceted verb käydä ‘go, run’ has this as one of the key meanings:
Käv-i-mme     eilen                 kaupungi-ssa / maa-lla.
go-PST-1PL     yesterday        town-INESS    countryside-ADESS
‘We went to the town/countryside yesterday’

There is a notable difference between the constructions in Russian and in Finnish as to the expression of the goal: in Russian a lative noun phrase, in Finnish an inessive/adessive one.

Best wishes,
Hannu Tommola
________________________________
Lähettäjä: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> käyttäjän Johanna Laakso via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> puolesta
Lähetetty: torstai 8. elokuuta 2024 12.04
Vastaanottaja: Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>
Kopio: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Aihe: Re: [Lingtyp] retrolative

Dear Christian, dear all,

Finnish käydä (käy-/käv-) is a nice example of a retrolative motion verb, used (among other functions) with the location in a static locational case instead of an (in/on)to- or from-case:

Käv-i-n kaupa-ssa
go-PST-1SG shop-INE
‘I went to the shop (and came back)’

as opposed to

Men-i-n kauppa-an
go-PST-1SG shop-ILL
‘I went to the shop (and then, perhaps, elsewhere, or something else happened which is relevant to the story)’

Tul-i-n kaupa-sta
come-PST-1SG shop-ELA
‘I came from the shop’.

The Finnish equivalent of ‘fetch’, hakea (hake-) (or also noutaa [nouta-]), also seems to have genuine retrolative semantics:

Ha-i-n kaupa-sta maito-a.
fetch-PST-1SG shop-ELA milk-PART
‘I brought some milk from the shop (went to the shop and came back with the milk).’

Unfortunately, I don't know of a nice term to describe "retrolative" semantics ("retrolative" itself was unknown to me), and the promising articles about the semantics of motion verbs in Finnish which I was going to refer to are unaccessible at the moment. (But please check Tuomas Huumo's CG account on Finnish motion verbs: https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/156251/The%20grammar%20of%20temporal%20motion.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y .)

Best
jl

--
Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (EVSL)
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Campus AAKH Spitalgasse 2-4 Hof 7
A-1090 Wien
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at • http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/
Project ELDIA: http://www.eldia-project.org/







Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> kirjoitti 08.08.2024 kello 11.19:

Dear colleagues,

I was told occasionally that there is a local relation - let's call it retrolative - consisting of a movement to reference point R and back to the point of departure. In the languages that have it in their grammar, it would be in a paradigm with ablative, allative, perlative. Unless I am mistaken, English only has it embodied in the meaning of fetch, and likewise in German holen.

  1.  Is retrolative the right term, or is the relation known under a different term?
  2.  Please give me a representative example of the type 'Jane went to R round-trip' or 'Jane fetched the axe from the shed' using a retrolative case or adposition or a retrolative formative in some other structural category.

Thanks in advance,
Christian
--

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
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Deutschland

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