Keywords: grammaticalization, causative construction, verb laskma, literary language, Estonian
The article provides an overview of the meanings of the Estonian core verb laskma (‘to let’), explains the development and usage of its grammatical constructions, and describes the most common semantic types of the laskma-causative (LET-causative). Data for this study were collected from corpora of written Estonian texts from the 16th century to the present.
The first instance of the laskma-causative is impossible to ascertain due to the grammatical constructions of laskma already appearing in written texts in the 16th and 17th centuries (explained as forced grammaticalization). However, the process of grammaticalization can be elucidated through the relationships among the meanings of laskma and bridging constructions.
The lexical meanings of laskma were categorized into four groups: ‘to move a substance somewhere or in some direction’, ‘to not hinder’, ‘to act at full speed’, and ‘to discharge something from a firearm’. The verb laskma appears in a permissive causative construction (causer + laskma + causee + Vda-inf), expressing the meaning of ‘to allow’. Laskma + Vda-inf also signifies ‘to ask someone to do something’. The usage of laskma + Vda-inf ‘to allow’ is the most frequent among all laskma usages in each century, currently accounting for 45% of all instances of laskma. Additionally, laskma appears in a phasal construction that denotes an initial phase (causer + laskma + causee + Vma-inf). The evolution of the da– and ma-infinitive constructions is demonstrated through the bridging constructions (“to allow to move into some place or state” and “to allow” (with the objective case)).
The cases of the construction laskma + Vda-inf (‘to allow’ or ‘to ask someone to do something’) that explicitly express causer and causee were analyzed in terms of semantic roles. Among 24 different types, the three most frequent types are AGENT-PATIENT-PROCESS (28%), AGENT-PATIENT-ACTION (21%) and AGENT-PATIENT-STATE (12%).
Kairit Tomson (b. 1986), MA, University of Tartu, Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, PhD Student (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), kairit.tomson@ut.ee
References
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