Re: Adverbs of motion in agglutinating languages

Hello!

On 8/31/05, Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...> wrote:
> Basque (being a case-y language) would use something like beherantz
> (behe-rantz), which means "towards the bottom" (the root is behe,
> bottom). You could also form a verb meaning "to go down" from the same
> root... I'll take a guess at beheratu, which, looking at my
> dictionary... is correct!!! Well, anyway... beheratu = behe-ra-tu =
> bottom-allative-perf.part. So for instance "I went down" would be
> beheratu naiz, or literally "I to-the-bottom-ed".
That's quite similar to the way this kind of thing is expressed in
Finnish.

Finnish has a number of roots with meanings like "above/upper part"
(_yl-_), "below/lower part" (_al-_), "outside" (_ul(k)-_), "inside"
(_sis(ä)-_), "behind" (_ta(k)a-_) and so on. They inflect in the same
way as ordinary nouns, but many of these roots don't occur as "normal
nouns" anywhere -- they only occur with the inflectional affixes of
the local cases (inessive, adessive, allative, etc.; Finnish has a
whole bunch of them) and are used as as adverbs or postpositions of
time or place. For example,

(1) talon ulkona "outside the house" (but there is no word *ulko or
    some such meaning simply "the outside of something")
(2) pöydän alle "(towards) under the table", as in "the toddler
   crawled under the table" (but, again, there is no word *al or
   whatever meaning "the space below something")
(3) olen ulkona "I am outside/outdoors"

In examples (1) and (2), _ulkona_ (essive case) resp. _alle_ (allative
case) are used as postpositions; in example (3), _ulkona_ is used as
an adverb.

However, there are also some perfectly normal nouns that can be used
as such or as adverbs resp. postpositions. For example, _läpi_
(inflectional stem _läpi-/lävi-_) means "hole", but it can also be
used as a postposition meaning "through" (sometimes in its basic form
_läpi_, sometimes with an inflectional affix as _lävitse_).

And like in Basque, there are some verbs that consist only of such an
adverb or postposition stem plus a verb ending:

läpi "hole/through" -> lävistää "to perforate, pierce"
ohi "over" (as in "it's all over now") -> ohittaa "to pass (over)"
yli "over, above" -> ylittää "to cross, traverse, jump over, etc."

Hope that helps...

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)