Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby linguoboy » 2020-07-16, 15:25

Linguaphile wrote:
linguoboy wrote:I've pushed through to the end of the tree

Entä nyt? Tee puu uudelleen! Se oli hauskaa!

It took me a while to figure out what that lesson was about. I'm glad someone commented to explain what "tree" they were talking about because at first I thought this was more bizarre Duolingo whimsy. I sent my study partner screencaps of the phrase "It is over now. Are you okay?" with the comment "I think Duolingo is breaking up with me".

But now I'm actually going to use this thread for its intended purpose and ask a substantive question, since I know my friend is going to quiz me and I don't have a good answer: When is a predicate adjective in the partitive? Whitney includes this usage in his exhaustive list, of course: "(vii) 'Made of', 'partaking of the quality of': Ovi on tammea--The door is of oak. Pullo on keltaista lasia--The bottle is of yellow glass. Se on selvää--That is clear. Täällä on kaunista--It is beautiful here." Okay, but "partaking of the quality of" could apply to virtually any adjective. That's what they do--link qualities to objects. Why is it kaunista here but kaunis in a sentence like Kaupunki on kaunis? Does it have something to do with identifiability, i.e. a specific definite theme as opposed to an abstract implicit one?
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Linguaphile » 2020-07-16, 15:58

linguoboy wrote:When is a predicate adjective in the partitive? Whitney includes this usage in his exhaustive list, of course: "(vii) 'Made of', 'partaking of the quality of': Ovi on tammea--The door is of oak. Pullo on keltaista lasia--The bottle is of yellow glass. Se on selvää--That is clear. Täällä on kaunista--It is beautiful here." Okay, but "partaking of the quality of" could apply to virtually any adjective. That's what they do--link qualities to objects. Why is it kaunista here but kaunis in a sentence like Kaupunki on kaunis? Does it have something to do with identifiability, i.e. a specific definite theme as opposed to an abstract implicit one?


Naava gave a good post on this topic here about a year ago.

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby linguoboy » 2020-07-16, 18:04

Linguaphile wrote:
Naava gave a good post on this topic here about a year ago.

Thanks! This is a great response. (Now to go back through the exercises and see how well it fits the examples.)
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby linguoboy » 2020-07-21, 14:56

aikoa + -n > aion
poika + -n > pojan

Is there an underlying principle at work here?
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Linguaphile » 2020-07-21, 15:57

linguoboy wrote:aikoa + -n > aion
poika + -n > pojan

Is there an underlying principle at work here?

Consonant gradation.
Strong k is one of the letters that can undergo more than one type of gradation, including k:j (here, more specifically ik:j) and k:∅.

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby linguoboy » 2020-07-21, 16:02

Linguaphile wrote:
linguoboy wrote:aikoa + -n > aion
poika + -n > pojan

Is there an underlying principle at work here?

Consonant gradation.
Strong k is one of the letters that can undergo more than one type of gradation, including k:j (here, more specifically ik:j) and k:∅.

I understand consonant gradation. What I don't understand is why there are two different outcome when both words have the same underlying phonological shape: VikV. Why not both *ajon and pojan or aion and *poian? The genitive of aika, the etymon of aikoa, is ajan so is it just an orthographical differentiation between nouns and verbs?
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Linguaphile » 2020-07-21, 16:18

linguoboy wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:
linguoboy wrote:aikoa + -n > aion
poika + -n > pojan

Is there an underlying principle at work here?

Consonant gradation.
Strong k is one of the letters that can undergo more than one type of gradation, including k:j (here, more specifically ik:j) and k:∅.

I understand consonant gradation. What I don't understand is why there are two different outcome when both words have the same underlying phonological shape: VikV. Why not both *ajon and pojan or aion and *poian? The genitive of aika, the etymon of aikoa, is ajan so is it just an orthographical differentiation between nouns and verbs?

It's a bit of an outlier in that the changes strong k undergoes include k:j, k:v and k:∅ (plus various others when consonant clusters get involved) and, while there are rules about when to use each, there are also some exceptions. The Vik:j change (aika>ajan and poika>pojan) is one of those exceptions that occurs in a limited number of words.

I believe that many of the exceptions (and even the rules) tend to have to do with historical forms. In other words, they are following rules based on old forms, but the logic to them can't be seen unless you also know the older forms of the words. I know that's the case with Estonian; I assume that's likely sometimes the case in Finnish also.

Here's a fun overview: The diabolical k

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby linguoboy » 2020-07-21, 17:09

Linguaphile wrote:It's a bit of an outlier in that the changes strong k undergoes include k:j, k:v and k:∅ (plus various others when consonant clusters get involved) and, while there are rules about when to use each, there are also some exceptions. The Vik:j change (aika>ajan and poika>pojan) is one of those exceptions that occurs in a limited number of words.

Is there actually a perceptual distinction between ajan and *aian? Or is the difference strictly orthographical?

Linguaphile wrote:I believe that many of the exceptions (and even the rules) tend to have to do with historical forms. In other words, they are following rules based on old forms, but the logic to them can't be seen unless you also know the older forms of the words. I know that's the case with Estonian; I assume that's likely sometimes the case in Finnish also.

Except aika and aikoa have exactly the same etymon, so you'd expect whatever changes apply to one to apply to the other.

A lot of the changes make sense to me if I assume the weak gradation of /k/ was *ɣ. This would've been fronted and absorbed by front vowels (e.g. *joɣen > *joʝen > joen) and rounded before high rounded vowels, yielding /v/. You see similar sound changes in Welsh, which shows historical lenition followed by variable outcomes of *ɣ, including vocalisation (e.g. Proto-Brythonic *ėrɣ "snow" > Middle Welsh eiry > Modern Welsh eira).
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Linguaphile » 2020-07-21, 17:40

linguoboy wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:It's a bit of an outlier in that the changes strong k undergoes include k:j, k:v and k:∅ (plus various others when consonant clusters get involved) and, while there are rules about when to use each, there are also some exceptions. The Vik:j change (aika>ajan and poika>pojan) is one of those exceptions that occurs in a limited number of words.

Is there actually a perceptual distinction between ajan and *aian? Or is the difference strictly orthographical?
I believe so: /'ɑjɑn/ vs. /'ɑijan/. I can only say for sure that that's how it works in Estonian; most of my experience with Finnish is written, so I'll defer to someone else's expertise here. (Naava, are you around? ) Given the situation with dialects in Finnish, my guess is that it depends on the dialect, and at least those closer to Estonian would maintain the difference, but some speakers probably don't. :?: Again, I'm guessing there.

linguoboy wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:I believe that many of the exceptions (and even the rules) tend to have to do with historical forms. In other words, they are following rules based on old forms, but the logic to them can't be seen unless you also know the older forms of the words. I know that's the case with Estonian; I assume that's likely sometimes the case in Finnish also.

Except aika and aikoa have exactly the same etymon, so you'd expect whatever changes apply to one to apply to the other.
So you're going to really love this: a derivative of aikoa is aie, "intent."
Basically: it's Finnish. Don't expect whatever changes apply to one word to apply to another. :mrgreen:

linguoboy wrote:A lot of the changes make sense to me if I assume the weak gradation of /k/ was *ɣ.
Yes, it was.
In Estonian it has become k:g, k:j and k:∅.
In Votic, k itself has become tš in some situations, so the associated gradation is k:g, tš:j, tš:∅, tš:ď and tš:dž.
Last edited by Linguaphile on 2020-07-21, 22:52, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Naava » 2020-07-21, 21:31

Linguaphile wrote:(Naava, are you around? )

I am around! I'll read your posts more carefully later. We had a very belated birthday(s) party for me and my niece last weekend, and arranging that has kept me busy. I still have plans for tomorrow, but we'll see if I have the energy to come back to you in the evening! If not, I'll try again another day next week. :mrgreen:

I'll just quickly have a few words on what I can say so far:

linguoboy wrote: What I don't understand is why there are two different outcome when both words have the same underlying phonological shape: VikV. Why not both *ajon and pojan or aion and *poian? The genitive of aika, the etymon of aikoa, is ajan so is it just an orthographical differentiation between nouns and verbs?

Firstly, we're talking about Standard Finnish here. It's a (to some extent) artifical language created from a mix-and-match of several dialects and individual preferences of people who loved to argue about what the language should be like. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for aion vs pojan was that someone long ago thought it looks better that way or that the people agreed on some detailed rules for when to use <i> and when <j>, but it could also be copied from a dialect I'm not familiar with*. I need to look it up and see if I can find an explanation!

However, I think it could also be that ajon would've been a homonym of the genitive of ajo ('driving', 'riding', 'chase') but there aren't homonyms for pojan.

* I think it's worth mentioning here that my dialect doesn't make a distinction between these:
(ajan) aika : aijan
(pojan) poika : poijan
(aion) aikoa : aijon
(aie) aije : aikehen

They're either pronounced as /ɑijɑn/, /ɑj:ɑn/ or maybe even /ɑij:ɑn/.


linguoboy wrote:This would've been fronted and absorbed by front vowels (e.g. *joɣen > *joʝen > joen)

I'm sure you're delighted to know that in my dialect, it's joki : jojen.

Linguaphile wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Is there actually a perceptual distinction between ajan and *aian? Or is the difference strictly orthographical?
I believe so: /'ajɑn/ vs. /'aijan/. I can only say for sure that that's how it works in Estonian; most of my experience with Finnish is written, so I'll defer to someone else's expertise here. (Naava, are you around? ) Given the situation with dialects in Finnish, my guess is that it depends on the dialect, and at least those closer to Estonian would maintain the difference, but some speakers probably don't. :?: Again, I'm guessing there

(Linguaphile, I'm not sure what's going on with your /a/ vs /ɑ/ there. :D)

Yes, they'd be pronounced differently, although aian feels awkward to say. I don't know how to explain what the difference is though! Maybe it's something like /'ɑˌiɑn/. :hmm:

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Linguaphile » 2020-07-21, 22:30

Naava wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:(Naava, are you around? )

We had a very belated birthday(s) party for me and my niece last weekend, and arranging that has kept me busy.

:partyhat: :birthday: :partyhat: Paljon onnea syntymäpäivänäsi! :birthday: :partyhat: :partyhat:

Naava wrote:(Linguaphile, I'm not sure what's going on with your /a/ vs /ɑ/ there. :D)

:shock: I don't know either! The two ɑ's should be the same. I started out with /'ɑjɑn/ & /'ɑijɑn/, honest. :mrgreen: But I had at first used a different symbol for ' , over the ɑ (as Wikipedia does, for example, 'cause I'm not all that great with IPA and was looking for verification there), and cut-and-pasted it but it didn't come out looking right on this forum so I deleted that. When I typed in the ' and deleted the combining character, I guess I must have somehow replaced ɑ with a without realizing. Thanks for catching it. Some help I am!!
:silly:

Naava wrote:Yes, they'd be pronounced differently, although aian feels awkward to say. I don't know how to explain what the difference is though! Maybe it's something like /'ɑˌiɑn/. :hmm:

Google Translate does a reasonable job of pronouncing the difference for Estonian:
click here (hopefully it goes to the words I typed in and not just to Google Translate's main page) and then click on the speaker symbol in the lower part of the left box.
If I change it to Finnish, it pronounces both words the same, at least to my ears. I don't know how accurate it is, though. Naava, what do you think?

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby linguoboy » 2020-08-02, 3:05

So I completed the Finnish tree. The lack of proofreading made it somewhat frustrating. A few of the sentences were not just unidiomatic but downright ungrammatical (generally failures of verb agreement). I felt like I was smashing the "Report" option every time I took a test.

But probably the most frustrating thing of all is that Finnish and English differ substantially in how they express definiteness and verbal aspect and very little effort was made to teach or explain these differences. From reading the discussions, I could see English-speakers frequently struggling to understand why sometimes versions with either "a" and "the" were accepted and sometimes one or the other was marked wrong. Often, this was due to a failure to supply both variants, something which will presumably be fixed down the road, but there are cases where apparently only one or the other version accurately conveys the sense of the Finnish sentence (as Finnish-English bilinguals tried to explain). But as there's no real attempt to teach the underlying principles, learners are left to guess and get annoyed when they guess wrong.

It's similar with the verbs. In many of the sentences, it's ambiguous whether the verb is habitual or progressive, but only one English equivalent is accepted. Again, this is something which can presumably be fixed in most cases. But the existence of momentane verbs in Finnish--something which again is not explained in the Tips--means that sometimes a progressive reading isn't possible. For instance, I kept getting dinged for translating potkaisee as "is kicking" and would have thought this was more bad proofreading if some charitable soul hadn't come along and explained the difference between potkaista and potkia.

I understand that the Duolingo format severely restricts discussion of grammatical points, but even given these limitations, there are still ways to teach definiteness contrasts. (The lessons for East Asian languages manage this to a degree, for instance.) As for the verbs, I don't know if there are enough common verbs which lack aspect contrasts that one could simply use these and not open that can of worms. Failing that, I suppose the best solution would be adding supplemental aspectual clues (such as adverbs of time) which force one reading or another, but that seems pretty time-consuming and demands close proofreading from someone who's very comfortable with the nuances of both languages.

(The friend of mine on whose behalf I ran through the tree is already hitting a wall and she's only gotten to the first checkpoint. She uses the mobile app so she can't even see the Tips--which is mind-boggling failure of usability, to be honest.)
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby sa wulfs » 2020-08-08, 17:59

Naava wrote:Taikuri is a magician, someone who does magic tricks especially for entertainment.

Velho vs tietäjä is a trickier one. They both mean a person who can use magic.

Tietäjä is literally 'the one who knows'. They were the men and women of the village who knew the poems, stories, and spells, and their knowledge was also the source of their powers (although they could have innate magical abilities too). This makes sense because in Finnish mythology, you could control something/someone if you told it/them what its/their 'birth' or mythological origin was. For example, here's a rune describing the origin of iron with English subtitles:
[snip]

Thank you! That was an excellent explanation.
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby sa wulfs » 2020-09-07, 11:20

So I was reading Vieraat by Helmi Kekkonen and I came across this sentence:
Nelli on ainoa ihminen kenet Karen tuntee, joka toisen seurasta huolimatta saattaa kaivaa kirjan laukustaan ja ruveta lukemaan

What's with the relative kenet? Neither Karlsson's nor White's grammar seem to say anything on this topic, unless I missed it. As far as they're concerned, the only relative pronouns are joka and mikä. Jukka Korpela's Handbook of Finnish says kuka can be used as a relative if there's no antecedent and gives the following sentence as an example:
Hän voi valita, kenet hän haluaa

But in the sentence from Vieraat, isn't ihminen the antecedent of kenet, as it is of joka? Does the fact that there are two relative pronouns with the same antecedent in quick succession have anything to do with the use of kuka here? How does this work?

Kiitos!
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Naava » 2020-09-08, 19:29

sa wulfs wrote:What's with the relative kenet?

Spoken Finnish.

sa wulfs wrote:Does the fact that there are two relative pronouns with the same antecedent in quick succession have anything to do with the use of kuka here? How does this work?

If you wanted to keep it in standard Finnish, you would need to write ainoa ihminen, jonka Karen tuntee ja joka toisen seurasta huolimatta saattaa kaivaa kirjan laukustaan.

Dropping "ja" was probably a stylistic choice made by the author. Using "kuka" instead of "joka" makes it clear that even without "ja", we still have two coordinate clauses here: "ainoa" and "joka" form a pair, and "kuka" is only an addition. Notice how she also doesn't use a comma before "kenet".

If she hadn't done this and instead wrote Nelli on ainoa ihminen, jonka Karen tuntee, joka toisen seurasta huolimatta saattaa kaivaa kirjan laukustaan, the reader might try to find the antedecent of the second "joka" in the clause jonka Karen tuntee. That would make no sense because the antedecent is actually in the main clause, but you wouldn't know that because the grammar rules say it should be immediately before "joka" (except the exceptions, as always). So, I think you're right in a way when you said it has something to do with multiple relative pronouns near each other, but there isn't any rule saying you should always do this - on the contrary, you should avoid it if you wish to write strictly in standard Finnish.

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby sa wulfs » 2020-09-09, 10:14

That's a bit weird because I haven't noticed any other features of spoken Finnish in the text - although my question is proof that I'm not exactly equipped to detect any but the most obvious ones :P
I guess she must have felt it just flowed better than the strictly standard version? Anyway, thank you for the explanation! I hadn't even noticed there wasn't a comma before kenet.
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby sa wulfs » 2021-09-08, 9:51

So, as every student knows, foreign names that end in a consonant add -i- as a linking vowel before the case endings: Madrid~Madridissa. Ok, no problem. However, names that end in a silent consonant don't have a linking vowel, because of course they don't actually end in a consonant: Sainte-Croix~Sainte-Croix'ssa. So far so good.

But. Names that end in a silent vowel lack a linking vowel in spelling: Maine~Mainessa. My question is, how is that pronounced? Would that <en> be pronounced /in/, as if it had a normal linking vowel, or /en/, as the spelling would suggest?

I'm sure I must have heard plenty of examples of this so I should know the answer, but I don't think I ever noticed how you guys do it.
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Naava » 2021-09-08, 11:15

sa wulfs wrote:But. Names that end in a silent vowel lack a linking vowel in spelling: Maine~Mainessa. My question is, how is that pronounced? Would that <en> be pronounced /in/, as if it had a normal linking vowel, or /en/, as the spelling would suggest?

I can't find any recommendations or anything about this, so I can only use my gut feeling and say it depends on your pronunciation and personal preference. If you choose to mimic the native pronunciation of foreign names and words, it'd probably be more natural to use a linking -i-. If you try to adapt the word to Finnish phonology or pronounce the words as if they followed Finnish spelling rules, I think you could also use the vowel from the spelling.

So,
/meɪn/ > /meɪnissä/
or
/mein/ > /meinissä/ ~ /meinessä/
or
/maine/ > /mainessa/

I'd expect to hear the last one from people who don't speak the language where the word was taken from, who don't know how the word should be pronounced, or who just don't care. I admit I've sometimes belonged to that last group and read 'college' as /kolleke/ even though I know very well that's not how you say it in English. I also refuse to believe Hermione is not pronounced /hermione/ because I read the first four Potter books before I could speak English and got used to the name.

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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby sa wulfs » 2021-09-08, 21:39

Oops, I changed the example I was using in the middle of writing that post so it came out wrong, where I said <en> and /in/~/en/ it should have said <issA> and /issA/~/essA/. Good that it didn't trip you up ^_^U

So basically anything goes and there's no right or wrong way to do it. Thanks! That's good to know and your explanation was clear and helpful as always.

I never called her anything but /ermi'one/ so I feel you. Then again, in my native tongue trying to recreate foreign phonemes too closely just comes across as super snobbish and pretentious
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Re: Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-08, 21:50

Naava wrote:I also refuse to believe Hermione is not pronounced /hermione/ because I read the first four Potter books before I could speak English and got used to the name.


sa wulfs wrote:I never called her anything but /ermi'one/ so I feel you. Then again, in my native tongue trying to recreate foreign phonemes too closely just comes across as super snobbish and pretentious

And for the longest time I thought it was /hermion/ or /ermion/, too. (Basically close to what either one of you thought, except with a silent e.)


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