Organizer: Casper de Groot (University of Amsterdam)
Several languages of the Uralic language family have a marker which is usually referred to as the Essive case, generally defined in the following fashion: Essive carries the meaning of a temporary location or state of being, often equivalent to the English “as a (child)”.
The Essive seems to be a unique property of Uralic languages, since descriptions of any other language in the world do not mention the existence of an Essive as a case marker. Other languages mostly use adpositions, complementizers, or do not use a marker at all. A first investigation of the Essive in Uralic on the basis of linguistic descriptions reveals that the following six languages have an Essive: Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Karelian, Sami, and Votic. Relics of an Essive or alternative use of the Translative in the sense of the Essive are found in: Erzya, Khanty, Mansi, Moksha, Livonian, Selkup, and Vepsian. The investigation, however, also reveals that information about the distribution of the Essive is very scarce.
On the basis of a typological linguistic questionnaire an international group of linguists will in 2013 make a start to describe the use of the Essive markers in the Uralic languages. The investigation will take the form as starting point and then describes its function. The questionnaire will be based on descriptions and discussions in the linguistic literature of data from the six languages with an Essive. If an Uralic language under investigation does not have an Essive, the forms/constructions will be described, where other languages may use the Essive.
The area in which the Essive will be studied, can be defined in the following fashion:
• Referential vs Predicational
• Secondary vs Main predication
• Essive vs Translative
• Depictive vs Manner
• Depictive vs Temporal
• Time-stable vs Temporally bound
• Explicative vs Evaluative identification
The theme session is meant for both individuals and participants of the international group. The contributions should consist of papers (i.e. no reports on ongoing research or lists of examples). The topic of the paper should preferably relate to the central theme of the conference, but may also relate to some other theme.
Theme session program:
11.30-12.00 Emmi Hynönen A Dialect-Based Approach to the Finnish Essive Case
12.00-12.30 Elena Markus, Fedor Rozhanskiy Essive in contemporary Votic
12.30-13.00 Timothy Feist The essive case in Skolt Saami
14.30-15.00 Rigina Turunen Functions of Erzya Translative in Nonverbal Predication
15.00-15.30 Sirkka Saarinen Expressing temporary state of being in Mari – or how to manage without an essive case
15.30-16.00 Lotta Jalava Functions of the essive-translative in Tundra Nenets
16.00-16.30 Coffee break
16.30-17.00 Andrey Filchenko “Essive” in Eastern Khanty
17.00-17.30 Sándor Szeverényi Depicitive in Nganasan