CLITIC PARTICLES AND SEQUENCE CONSTRUCTIONS IN FINNISH:
OVERRIDING VERUM FOCUS
Finnish has free constituent order, which together with intonation expresses various pragmatic
meanings (Välimaa-Blum, 1988, 1989; Vilkuna, 1989; Kaiser, 2000, 2006). The verb-initial
orders, VSX and VXS, encode the emphatic affirmation of the truth of the proposition in a
context where its opposite is expressed or implied. In this paper, I examine cases where this
pragmatic value is cancelled by sentential clitics, which are speech act particles in that they do
not affect the truth value. I propose that these overrides result from the interplay of the
sequence constructions and those associated with the particles.
The following verb-initial orders challenge their negation by emphatically asserting the
truth of the proposition. This resembles the Verum focus of the German doch (Höhle, 1992)
and French si, but the Finnish examples contest the context proposition by either affirming (1)
or infirming (2) it. Note that negation in Finnish is expressed by a verb agreeing with the
subject in number and person.
(Context: it is not beautiful)
1. ON se kaunis!
It IS beautiful (contrary to what you say)!
is-3sg it-NOM beautiful-NOM
(Context: it is beautiful)
2. EI se ole kaunis !
It IS NOT beautiful (contrary to what you say)!
not-3sg it-NOM be-inf beautiful-NOM
Polar questions are expressed by the particle -kO attached to the end of the clause initial
constituent, as in (3) and (4). Now the sentences no longer express emphatic affirmation but a
question. I am only examining verb-initial orders, but any of the constituents below can
assume the initial position and be subject to the questioning.
3. On-ko se kaunis?
is-3sg-Q…
4. Ei-kö se ole kaunis?
not-3sg-Q…
Is it beautiful?
Is it not beautiful?
These kinds of question are conventionally answered with the initial word of the question
without the particle. Thus in (3), the agreeing answer is on and in (4) it is ei.
In the following as well, one particle or another cancels the empathic affirmation of the
sequence construction.
6. EI-KÖ-HÄN se ole kaunis.
not-3sg-Q-hAn…
7. Ei-kö se ole-kin kaunis.
not-3sg-Q it-NOM is-also…
I think it is beautiful enough, don’t you agree?
It is beautiful, isn’t it (I expect a positive answer)!
What is interesting about (6) and (7) is that, instead of the usual answer corresponding to the
initial word ei, the speaker wants the addressee to agree with him and answer with the positive
counterpart, on. This too means that the reading of the word order is cancelled.
Most of these clitics are so-called second-position particles (Wackernagel, 1892), which
means that their construction schemas must use configurational information. One of them
attaches to the finite verb, but its scope too is the entire proposition. I will argue that in
conceptual blending, the particle constructions override the readings of the sequence
constructions, and that some particle combinations actually form idiomatic, partly schematic
constructions. The pragmatic value of any given word order token thus is compositionally
contingent on its form and morpho-lexical content.
References
Höhle, Tilman N.
1992
Über Verum-Focus im Deutschen. In Informationstructur und Grammatik,
Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 4/1991–92, J. Jakobs (Ed.). Westdeutscher
Verlag, Opladen.
Kaiser, Elsi
2000
The discourse functions and syntax of OSV order in Finnish. Papers from the
Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 36,179–194.
2006
Negation and left periphery in Finnish. Lingua 116, 314–350.
Välimaa-Blum, Riitta
1988
Finnish Existential clauses – their syntax, pragmatics and intonation. Ph.D.
dissertation, The Ohio State University. Distributed by University of Michigan
Microfilms.
1989
Finnish Word Order as a Set of Syntactic Constructions. In Joyce Powers and
Kenneth de Jong (Eds.) Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (ESCOL ‘88),
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 5:500–511.
Vilkuna, Maria
1989
Free Word Order in Finnish. Its Syntax and Discourse Functions. Helsinki:
Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura.
Wackernagel, Jakob
1892
Über ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung. Indogermanische
Forschungen I(1892), 333–436.