This study examines, within the framework of cognitive grammar, aspects of the relationship between clause structure and the construing of subjectivity, speaker perspective, in English and Finnish translations. The data is taken from two kinds of translation corpora: first, English into Finnish, and second, Finnish into English translations, which represent a variety of transitive and intransitive constructions.
The English into Finnish translations investigated are included in the data contained in my contrastive study comparing English static transitive sentences and their Finnish equivalents (Lehtinen, forthcoming); the study deals with transitive sentences with the verbs show, suggest, reveal, among others, and non-agents, such as locatives, as subjects. My analysis shows that, first, these constructions have as their Finnish translation equivalents basically two kinds of pattern: either identical, transitive ones, or, with certain constraints, intransitive ones. Second, I argue that the transitive construction with the above mentioned verbs and non-agent subjects may present a specific type of unprototypical construal which calls for an inference or position of the speaker in its semantic interpretation. Consider the following examples with show and suggest:
a. His music shows a sensuality coupled with an eerie quality that suggest somehow a blood-kinship with Dappertutto in Offenbach’s Hoffman. (Brown Corpus)
b. Examination of the data in Table /1 shows that a few samples contributed to raising the effluent BOD. (Brown Corpus)
Semantically, the verbs show and suggest contain an experiencer argument in their valence, or build a mental space in their meaning structure, and this mental space is anchored by an experiencer (i.e., the mental locus of a visual, auditory or cognitive event) (on mental space and semantic valence, see Croft 2001: 217, 274). In the above sentences, the implicit experiencer is the speaker; e.g., sentence (b) invites an inference by the speech act participants (speaker and hearer): ‘if we examine the data … we will see that …’.
As will be illustrated by my Finnish data below, the speaker may also express his/her subjective viewpoint or stand intransitively, by means of a local case construction. In general, in certain spatial expressions, the speaker can show his/her vantage point by choosing the appropriate adverbials. Consider the semantic contrast between the English directional expressions The motorway is planned to go from Jyväskylä to Tampere -The motorway is planned to go from Tampere to Jyväskylä. In terms of cognitive grammar, what is involved in such metaphorical usage is subjective, abstract motion in a situation that is stable in itself. However, the speaker construes it as a movement; he/she follows an imaginary trajectory from Jyväskylä to Tampere or vice versa (Langacker 2002: 157; as for the use of the Finnish local cases in such expressions, see Hakulinen et al. 2004: 1188-1189).
The aim of this article is, first, to describe he constructions involved - the English transitive sentences with show, suggest and reveal and locative subjects and their Finnish translations - , focusing on how the speaker’s viewpoint is construed in the translation. Second, I will also examine how a number of intransitive constructions are rendered in authentic English translations; i.e., how or whether the speaker perspective is retained in the English equivalent. These constructions have the verbs näkyä, paljastua, kuulua, plus (in most cases) a locative adverbial. These verbs are the intransitive counterparts of the transitive näyttää, paljastaa, kuulla, U-derivatives imposing a ‘passive’ or ‘automative’ (i.e., anti-causative) meaning on the event (Hakulinen et al. 2004: 331).
1. Subjectivity
The notion of subjectivity has been most often discussed in the context of modality. Subjectivity is a pragmatic notion, it is gradable, and its definitions vary from very broad to more specific accounts (see, e.g., Laitinen 1993: 164-166). Epistemic, subjective modality expresses the speaker’s viewpoint of the subject matter being talked about, whether he/she thinks something will happen or not, or how he/she judges a fact (Lyons 1977: 798-800): It may snow today, because there are clouds in the sky.
According to Langacker (2002) and Traugott (1995), ‘subjectification’ has occurred in a number of English modal verbs, which show a diachronic development from dynamic, i.e., objective, meanings to epistemic uses. Apart from modality, the speaker’s perspective shows, among others, in the use of deictic personal pronouns, and in the use of spatial expressions in which the speaker posits him/herself vis-à-vis the situation portrayed, his/her vantage point (Langacker 2002: 316, 326, 328). Langacker includes subjectivity / objectivity, deixis, vantage point and orientation in the dimension of perspective, perspective being one of the main types of focal adjustments, different ways of conceiving a given scene (imagery).
In translation studies, subjectivity, as well as the other cognitive linguistic dimensions of imagery, have been addressed by Tabakowska (1993) and Halverson (2006). Broadly taken, according to Croft and Cruse (2004: 58), who cite Heidegger, perspective means Dasein, situatedness, our being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1988: 79-80), and this involves, besides a particular spatial location, also being situated in a temporal, epistemic and cultural context. In this article, I use the term subjectivity for different kinds of construals which invoke the speaker’s (or narrator’s) viewpoint or stand in a variety of epistemic (abstract) and spatial environments.
The speaker’s situatedness in an epistemic or cultural context, and his/her spatial vantage point, add to the parameters affecting the conventional imagery, the linguistic resources used in scene construal. The dimensions determine conceptual scenes, situations and configurations of language use. Conceptualizer and scene construal include objects, sensations, relations, temporal and atemporal, concrete and abstract. They correspond to and depend on the cognitive abilities of the human mind. According to Tabakowska (1993: 73), what is essential in studying translation is that the dimensions of imagery relate to factors contributing to translation equivalence, tertium comparationis, the dimensions of comparability between the original and translation (cf. also Halverson 2006). Tabakowska suggests that “ ... [cognitive linguistics] makes it possible to systematize people’s old and empirically well-grounded intuitions” (1993: 74); in my opinion, this theory may contribute to the study of subjectivity in English and Finnish by explicating such regularities in correspondences that belong to translators’ intuitive knowledge but have not yet been systematically accounted for.
2. The construing of subjectivity in static transitive
I take the view that static transitivity expressing subjectivity is an extension of agentive transitive, referring to a situation in which the speaker includes him/herself as part of the event, in a way that is implicit but necessary for the expression to be interpreted (cf. Croft and Cruse 2004: 62-63; Halliday 1988: 172-173 speaks of ‘internal’ relation as opposed to ‘external’, i.e., objective relation). As mentioned above, in their semantic structures, these verbs build a mental space for an experiencer to experience a visual, auditory or cognitive sensation (or take an experiencer argument in their valence). Prototypically, the transitive verbs show and reveal are used for expressing action. Consider example (c):
c. She had shown the clipping to Philip at dinner ... (FECCS)
The subject, whose referent is an animate noun, bears the role of agent in the event. Agentivity features, which are themselves gradable (more or less volitional etc.), include the following dimensions: the act is volitional, conscious, controlled on the part of the agent. Typically (but not necessarily), the event involves, among others, an energy flow transmitted from the agent-subject to the patient-object, which is the target of the action; accordingly, it is a dynamic and telic event (causing a change in the target, and involving an inherent endpoint) (see Hopper and Thompson 1980).
Static transitive is unprototypical, profiling a state, or an abstract relation between two entities construed as action chain.The subject is less agentive: it is inanimate (as in 1-3) or human but non-volitional (as in 4), and the event is non-dynamic, with no energy, it is atelic, and the object referent may be an abstract noun (as in 1, 4 and 5), or a concrete noun that is interpreted in abstract sense in that particular context (as in 2-3).
1. The last picture, however, suggests a disturbing idea. (FECCS)
2. The two tables overleaf,… show most of the particles known today. (FECCS)
3. One ledger shows a James Ford, a Sam Ford, and a George Ford owing him several hundred dollars -… (FECCS)
4. He stands at the very back,… showing no signs of fatigue from holding two jobs at once. (FECCS)
5. Close examination of a corpus of classroom spoken discourse reveals how metaphor is employed by their teachers... (Cam. 2003)
The construction in example (5) involves two events, related by the verb reveal. The subject constituent codes a noun phrase in the form of nominalization, which profiles an event: it can be unpacked and rendered as a subclause. The sentence means something like ‘if we examine closely a corpus of classroom spoken discourse, this will reveal to us / we will see how metaphor is used by their teachers’ (Halliday 1988: 173). We can see that the nominalized subject construction includes the speaker as one of the observers referred to in the event of examining. In this construction, the speaker is unprofiled, yet, he/she has an onstage vantage point.
- Contrastive linguistic and translation correspondences
Contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistic typology that compares two languages in terms of their linguistic resources in the fields of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, in order to find similarities and differences between the languages in these fields. Contrastive studies often use translations as material providing data for examining the languages involved (Krzeszowski 1990). Translated sentences will, in the main, show similarity with the source language sentences, because they are meant to portray the same state of affairs as the original, conveying the ‘same’ message in the context at hand. This functional equivalence may involve syntactic correspondences to varying degrees; we may hypothesize that the translation realizes sameness in terms of structural mapping with the original. The structure of the translation is motivated, because the translation must portray the same situation as the original construction (cf. Croft 1990: 174).
The starting point in the present comparison is the assumption that in both the English into Finnish and Finnish into English translations, relating to the constructions discussed here, the original sentence and the translation are used to refer to the same state of affairs, and can be described, within the framework of cognitive grammar, as underlying the schematic relationship of containment or attribution (property, part-whole relationship) (Lehtinen 2006; cf. Dirven and Verspoor 1998: 83-87 and Croft 2001: 111). However, in construing these states of affairs, the linguistic resources available for the translator may differ, the translation reflecting a different construal.
In Lehtinen (2006) I suggest, on the basis of the analysis of my data on Finnish translations of English sentences, that translations tend to show the same information structure; the order old – new is likely to be retained in the translation. This order is iconically motivated; its basis is in the experience of the speaker / translator. On iconicity in tems of word order and information structure, see Croft (1990: 194). In typology, in general, iconicity (as opposed to arbitrariness) is understood as involving similarities in form-meaning mapping; the syntactic structure of a linguistic construction is thought to reflect the semantic stucture that the construction expresses. In other words, the use of a particular form is motivated by meaning, and the experience of the speaker. On iconic motivation, see, among others, Croft (1990: 170-; 2001: 219) and Tabakowska (1993: 52-54).
Accordingly, we may assume that the translation shows iconicity in terms of the correspondence of syntactic with semantic structure, similarly as the original sentence. We may then compare the pair in terms of iconic motivation, the form-meaning mapping, examining whether, and to what extent, the syntactic and semantic structures correspond to each other.
As mentioned above, a certain form or construction may be conventional in the source language but not in the translation. The translation may reflect a different construal. But it may also be the case that the translation is more iconic than the original construction; this is what I suggest in my study of a number of English static transitives and their Finnish translations (Lehtinen 2006); part of the translations present intransitive, ‘existential’ construals. In what follows I will mention certain typological features between English and Finnish that are likely to have a bearing on the resulting construals in the translations. I will then discuss the possibility that the different construal may be iconically motivated.
4. Subject and subject role in English and Finnish clause syntax
It is commonly agreed in syntactic description that subject properties involve, among others, such distributional properties as case marking and verb agreement; they also include a variety of behavioural and coding properties; see, among others, Croft (2001: 155-157). I will not deal with them here; rather, I will point out a number of facts that characterize English and Finnish subjects from a contrastive viewpoint.
It has been suggested in a number of studies contrasting English and Finnish that the languages draw the line between transitive and intransitive at different points on the continuum (see, e.g., Chesterman 1998; Hiirikoski 2004; Lehtinen 2006). Generally, from a contrastive viewpoint, English differs from Finnish in that the grammatical subject is semantically opaque, its main role is to convey the topic in discourse, while in Finnish, agents and agent-like participants, rather than topics, tend to be made subjects (Lehtinen 1984; Lehtinen forthcoming; on Finnish, Leino 1990: 415). It has been argued that static transitive subject such as a locative is untypical in Finnish (Vilkuna 1989: 179, Pajunen 2001: 113, Chesterman 1998: 194; Hakulinen et al. 2004: 876). Itkonen (1975: 31) suggests that while the English transitive is opaque in terms of agentivity, Finnish is transparent in this respect.
Accordingly, one difference between English and Finnish clause syntax relates to the use of transitivity. A second typological difference relates to functional word order: the languages are situated at opposite ends in the continuum of word order. In Finnish, word order is pragmatically determined, and in English, it is grammatical (Vilkuna 1989; Thompson 1987). The canonical word order makes the initial clausal subject appear more central in English than in languages with a less grammatical, more pragmatically determined word order (Thompson 1987: 25; Allerton 1982: 50).
In cognitive grammar, subjecthood is defined in terms of two cognitive operations: first, on the basis of perceptual attention (salience): typically, subject is the most prominent one of the participants on the scene. For example, in a movement process, the entity that moves tends to attract most attention, and is most likely chosen as the clausal subject. Second, subjecthood is determined on the basis of judgment, in which the speaker compares two elements of the scene and contrasts them, by specifying the position of one element relative to another, by viewing this object against a base. The idea of alignment into profile and base, or figure and ground, stems from Gestalt psychology (Langacker 1991: 5-6, 36; Croft and Cruse 2004: 62). Among other things, figures tend to be more mobile and are usually smaller in size than grounds, which tend to be stationary and backgrounded. This can be illustrated by the asymmetries contained in the following spatial expressions. In both pairs, the former expression is more natural than the latter one: The car is in front of the house - ??The house is behind the car. The bike is near the gate - ??The gate is near the bike. Another example is provided by the verb resemble, profiling a symmetric relation: ‘x resembles y’ = ‘y resembles x’ (Langacker 1991: 311). Cognitive figure-ground asymmetry explains why the following sentence sounds odd, nonsensical: *My mother resembles my daughter; compare it with My daughter resembles my mother.
In the cognitive linguistic description of the present data, we will deal with two dimensions. First, along situatedness, speaker perspective including salience, and second, along the figure-ground organization, asymmetries based on certain cognitive principles. There is also a third, textual, dimension, information structure, which relates word order to the taking of perspective (Croft and Cruse 2004: 61). This involves the fact that the subject tends to take the topic role in a clause, as conveying old, given information, as part of the common ground in the discourse. This will be addressed in the next section.
5. Subject and topic: Locative subject vs. locative adverbial
A number of Finnish translation equivalents in my data exhibit a restructuration, a pattern with a local case adverbial, a lexical verb that is intransitive derivative, and subject, corresponding to the English subject-object pattern. In Lehtinen (forthcoming) I propose that translations of sentences with non-agentive show and reveal show the following general tendencies. English static transitives translate transitively if the subject referent is abstract – as in sentence (5) above - ; if the subject noun denotes a concrete entity, a local case construction is often used; the verb is intransitive or passivized. This is illustrated by sentence (6) and its translation (6a) below. The construction in (6a) involves a local case adverbial Elative (‘from’-case) and a derivative of the transitive verb paljastaa. The derivative paljastua has a ‘passive’ or ‘reflexive’meaning, while the transitive is’active’, ‘causative’. The construction with show in sentence (4) above is translated as (4a), with the experiencer argument in the local case Inessive (‘in’-case), plus an intransitive verb näkyä. In Lehtinen (forthcoming) I also argue that in Finnish, construing transitively states of affairs in the experiential domain as in (4) above appears to be constrained; the mental locus is likely to be interpreted as volitional, agentive, if chosen as subject in Finnish.
4a. ... eikä hänessä näy merkkiäkään kahden työn aiheuttamasta väsymyksestä. (FECCS) ('and not in him shows-INTR any sign of fatigue caused by two jobs’)
6. To most women, men are still a mystery. Their questions often reveal a complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of men. (Gray, Mars and Venus on a Date, p.1)
6a. Useimmille naisille miehet ovat yhä mysteerio. Heidän kysymyksistään paljastuu usein miesten täydellinen väärinymmärrys ja väärintulkinta. (CTF) (‘from ther questions reveals-INTR often men’s complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation’)
As mentioned above, despite the syntactic difference, the information structure of the original is preserved in the translations, with the locative and experiencer in topical position (as given themes of the discourse at hand). This is a salient word order, that of ‘existential sentence’ in Finnish. The same order of the translation: container – content (locative or experiencer as topic and content as comment) may be considered as reflecting the same experiential iconicity as the original construction (cf. Tabakowska 1993: 54).
Examining the sentence pairs in terms of figure-ground alignment and perspective we find the following differences. In sentence (4), the expression containing the adjunct showing... takes the experiencer (expressed in the main clause) as the figure, but in the corresponding Finnish clause (4a), the experiencer adverbial hänessä is the ground, with the figure construed as merkkiäkään kahden työn aiheuttamasta väsymyksestä. In the pair (6-6a), the locative their questions is the figure in the English construal, but in Finnish, the locative is the ground, although it is in the topical position; the figure is the subject constituent miesten täydellinen väärinymmärrys ja väärintulkinta.
As regards the perspective, it seems that the Finnish local case construction is subjective in a way that differs from the English original. In the English original in (6), the speaker perspective is conveyed through the meaning of the verb, implicitly through the mental space built by the verb. The Finnish translation, which lexicalizes the relation with an intransitive (‘reflexive’) verb, utilizes the grammatical device of a local case, i.e., a spatial image, in construing the speaker’s or viewer’s vantage point.
The differences between English and Finnish perspectivization are illustrated by the following example. Example (7) is a passage from Finnish fiction (FECCS); it describes how the protagonist Harjunpää, mentioned in sentence (b), approaches a scene. The construals in (a), (c), (d), and (e) follow his experience: he hears singing (a) and sees people at the kiosk (c), and perceives some motion behind the bushes (d), (e). Accordingly, the subjective perspective builds up through the salient word order in sentences (a), (c), (d), and the first clause in (e). Apart from that, the expression in (e) with the verb näkyä also profiles a subjective construal, in particular, a relation on the visual domain between the perceiver and the event (motion). In terms of figure-ground organization, the expression construes this event as the figure, the ground being the sight of the observer. The salient word order has a textually ‘new’ subject-participant postposed into a non-initial position. This functional device of organizing participants in a clause in terms of information structure was originally called by Jespersen (1924 [1965]: 154-156) ‘existential sentence’. In English, the equivalent construction serving this fuction in discourse is there-sentence.
Example 7.
a. Hirvipatsaan suunnalla lauloi joku. (’by the moose statue sang someone’)
b. Harjunpää muisti että sen juurelta oli ainakin kahdesti löydetty tapettu mies. (’Harjunpää recalled that at it’s foot had at least twice been found a killed man’)
c. Kioskin tuntumaan oli kerääntynyt porukkaa. (’by the kiosk had gathered a crowd-PARTIT’)
d. Pensaiden takana lähellä altaan päätyä oli tekeillä jotain. (’behind the bushes near the pool’s end was going on something’)
e. Näkyi nopeaa, levotonta liikettä, joku huohotti, huusi … (showed-INTR fast, restless movement-PARTIT, someone panted, shouted’)
These devices can be compared with the English translation of the passage: in (a’), (c’), (d’) and (e’), the original word order is changed into a normal subject-initial construction. The English construction corresponding to the impersonal näkyi ... liikettä in (e) appears as a personal structure, with an experiencer subject they could see something flailing (e’).
a’. Somebody was singing by the moose statue.
b’. Harjunpaa recalled that at least twice had police found a man killed at the foot of this statue.
c’. Quite a crowd had gathered by the kiosk.
d’. Something was going on behind the bushes, near the pool.
e’. They could see something flailing, hear panting, then hoarse shouts … (FECCS)
In terms of figure-ground alignment, (e’) differs from the original, construing the state of affairs so that the experiencer argument is the figure. This reverses the image; in the original, the figure is liikettä. Compared with the Finnish subjective näkyi-construction, the translation (e’) seems less subjective, it is not from the perspective of the protagonist Harjunpaa; rather, it is an objective description of the scene, viewed from outside the stage – by the narrator. The expression they could see involves a modality marker, but of a dynamic sort, adding to the objective construal: ‘they were able to see’, ‘it was possible for them to see’ (dynamic as opposed to epistemic modality; Hakulinen et al. 2004: 1481; Tabakowska 1993: 61).
To sum up, my data suggest the following regarding construing subjectivity in English and Finnish sentences. Corresponding to the metaphorical transitive in locative and experiential domains in English, the Finnish translation lexicalizes the relation with an intransitive verb, utilizing the grammatical device of local cases, i.e., a spatial image. Compared with the English construction, which is opaque in terms of subjectivity / objectivity, the Finnish local case construction seems semantically more transparent, and the translation is iconically motivated. The differences can be made more obvious with an analysis of translations from Finnish into English with the verbs involved. Such cases will be dealt with below. They reveal a variety of construals. In the following sections I will also discuss the two kinds of the locative adverbial, stationary and directional, in terms of motivation.
- The locative adverbial: stationary or directional
In sentence (4b) above, the case predicate construal is with the Inessive case (hänessä). In the terminology of cognitive grammar, the case predicate INESSIVE profiles a schematic relation of INCLUSION so that its trajector, the schematic PATH, is INDETERMINATE, i.e., not specified, and the schematic landmark is SURFACE (on the cognitive linguistic description of Finnish case predicates, see Leino 1989, 1990). The following example illustrates the use of the Inessive case with näkyä. The translation construes the situation transitively, with a Locative subject (8a’).
Example 8.
a) Lähteenmäki painoi jotain nappulaa. b) Tiskin suojissa olevan monitorin kuva vaihtui. c) Ruudussa näkyi kookas kiiltävä Volvo; huivipäinen nainen lukitsi parhaillaan kuljettajan ovea. (‘Lähteenmäki pressed a button. Behind the desk-being-monitor’s picture changed. On the screen showed-INTR a large shining Volvo’)
a’) The duty officer pressed a button and the monitor beneath his desk showed a large, shining Volvo; a woman ... (FECCS)
In (b-c), the situation is viewed subjectively from the perspective of the protagonist, after his pressing the button, first, the picture changing, and then, the screen showing a Volvo and a woman shutting the driver’s door. The translation packs the predications in (a-b) into one and coordinates this with the first sentence. The locative the monitor beneath his desk is made the salient figure, the subject of a transitive construal, due to the canonical word order. The situation is viewed less subjectively, it is not from the viewpoint of the duty officer. The following translated passage also contains alocative adverbial in Inessive case with näkyä, indicating a subjective viewpoint. The translator has used an overt experiencer subject and a transitive verb in (c’) (he saw the ... Act as a blatant effort), similarly as in (8e’) above; what is highlighted is the protagonist and his vision (figure), not the way how the situation appears to him.
Example 9.
a) Kaikkialla maailmassa nämä alat kuuluivat keskushallinnon valtapiiriin. b) Vastaavasti suomalaiset joukot oli alistettava sotaministeriölle kaikkine tästä aiheutuvine organisatorisine muutoksineen. c) Suomen asevelvollisuuslaissa näkyi räikeä pyrkimys autonomian korostamiseen ja muusta keisarikunnasta eristäytymiseen, … (’correspondingly the Finnish armed forces had to be placed under the war ministry with all organizational changes caused by it. In the Finnish Conscription Act showed-INTR a blatant effort to promote autonomy and separate from the rest of the Empire’)
a’) Everywhere in the world these sectors were under the authority of central governments. b’) Therefore, Vannovskij concluded, the Finnish armed forces had to be placed under the Russian Minister of War and reorganised accordingly. c’) He saw the Finnish Conscription Act as a blatant effort to promote autonomy and separation from the rest of the Empire, ... (FECCS)
Apart from that, the translated passage contains another change, in (b’), which adds to the objective conceptualization in the English translation. The Finnish original (b) contains an epistemic adverbial vastaavasti and a passive, i.e., agentless, verb form oli alistettava. These two features contribute to subjectivity (cf. Laitinen 1993: 166). The translator has added Vannovskij concluded, which makes the person making the inference explicit. Accordingly, the situation in the translated passage is not viewed from the perspective of the protagonist but objectively, as if from outside the stage.
7. Directionality
In this section, I will discuss the construction with the directional local adverbial, as well as their English translations. Apparently, which case the verb takes, stationary or directional, is contextually determined. It seems that the ‘direction from’ case is used in epistemic contexts. In spatial uses, the direction case indicates the vantage point of the experiencer participant: in (11), the man is on the road, i.e., outside the scope of the adverbial; substituting the expression with the static case metsässä would indicate that the man is in the forest, within the scope of the adverbial. However, (10) seems to be ambiguous in terms the scope of the adverbial; the boys are either in the field or out of it.
10. He hypähtivät kopin kulmalle ja kyyristyivät. Kentällä ei näkynyt liikettä, ei kuulunut askeliakaan. (’they jumped down to the shed’s corner and crouched. In the field not showed-INTR movement, not was audible-INTR steps-either’)
10a. The boys crouched and peered around the corner of the shed. In the field nobody was moving, there were no sounds. (FECCS)
11. Kun metsästä ei kuulunut mitään, mies tumppasi savukkeen tiehen ja huusi: ... (’when from the forest nothing was audible-INTR , the man stubbed the cigarette onto the road and yelled …’)
11a. Still no sound from the forest: he stubbed his cigarette out on the road and yelled: ... (FECCS)
In the directional expressions, the trajector of the case predicate PATH is specified: in the ‘direction to’ cases, elaborating TERMINATIVE PATH, the end point is specified. In the ’direction from’ cases, elaborating INITIATIVE PATH, the starting point is specified. The verb näkyä can be used to profile both kinds of relations (Leino et al. 1990: 274). Consider examples (12-13) below; they make up a passage in a Finnish novel (12a and 13a are my translations).
12. Noustiin jokivarresta katua, johon tuomiokirkon valaistut tornit näkyivät ja tultiin hotelliin tuomiokirkon aukiolle. (Ska003) (’they ascended from the river bank a street, onto which the church’s illuminated towers showed-INTR and came to the hotel onto the church’s square’)
12a. They walked from the river bank up the street in which they could see the illuminated towers of the church and they got to the church square.
13. Aukio ja tuomiokirkon tornit näkyivät Martikaisen huoneen ikkunastakin, ja heidän seisoessaan myöhemmin yöllä ikkunan luona aukiolla kulki muutama ihminen. (CTF, Ska003) (’the square and the church’s towers showed-INTR from Martikainen’s room’s window, ...’)
13a. The square and the church towers could be seen from the window of Martikainen’s room too, and later at night when they were standing at the window some people were walking in the square.
In (12), the trajector of the case predicate ILLATIVE is TERMINATIVE PATH, and the narrator-viewer follows a trajectory from the towers to the street, which is his/her vantage point. In (13), the trajector of the case predicate ELATIVE is INITIATIVE PATH, the narrator-viewer follows the trajectory from his vantage point in the room to the church. A number of other sensory verbs can be used in construals involving subjective motion: kuulua (‘sound’, ‘to be audible’, ‘X can be heard’), tuntua (‘feel’, intransitive use), muistua mieleen (‘come to one’s mind’). See examples (14-16). Example (14) shows that kuulua can be used with a ‘direction-to’ case as well. (15a and 16a are my translations.)
14. Kun hän otti auton avaimet esiin, nainen käänsi päänsä vinottain. Kokouspaikka oli vajaan sadan metrin matkan päässä. Joskus sieltä kuului puhetta ja marssilauluja tänne asti, jos piti ikkunaa auki. (’sometimes there-from was audible-INTR talk and marching songs here-to up, if one kept the window open’)
14a. As he dug out the car keys, the woman turned her head away. The meeting place was only about a hundred meters from the house. If one kept a window open, one could sometimes hear the talk and the marching songs from it. (FECCS)
15. Muistui mieleen stipendi, jonka Nurmijärven NKY, Nuorten Kristillinen Yhdistys, oli kansanopistoa varten luvannut. (CTF, sbi002) (’came to mind a grant which NKY, Nurmijärvi’s Christian Society, had for the folk high school promised’)
15a. The grant came to my mind which the NKY, The Nurmijärvi Christian Society, had promised for the folk high school.
16. Ulkoilman kylmyys tuntui lasin läpi. (CTF, sde004) (‘outdoor’s coldness felt through the glass’)
16a. One could feel the outdoor coldness through the glass.
As mentioned above, these U-derivative verbs have a ‘passive’ or ‘automative’ (anti-causative) meaning. We can construct a corresponding transitive expression, which imposes an ‘active’ meaning: Lähteenmäki näki ruudussa kookkaan kiiltävän Volvon (‘L. saw on the screen a large shining Volvo’), Näin kadulle tuomiokirkon valaistut tornit (‘I saw to the street the illuminated towers of the church’), He näkivät tornit Martikaisen huoneen ikkunastakin (‘They saw the towers from the window of Martikainen’s room’), Hän kuuli sieltä puhetta tänne asti (‘He heard from there talk up here’) , Muistin stipendin (‘I recalled the grant’), Tunsin ulkoilman kylmyyden lasin läpi (‘I felt the outdoor’s coldness through the glass’) (Cf. Itkonen 1974/5: 39. Itkonen discusses such parallelisms between transitives and intransitives with reference to ergative features in Finnish.)
What is involved is a relatively concrete use of the verbs näkyä, kuulua, paljastua, with the directional case predicate indicating the speaker’s or protagonist’s vantage point. The following cases present conceptions that are more or less abstract. In example (20), the subjective construal with näkyä and kuulua has a subclause. Similar cases are in (21) and (22); the construction with näkyä occurs in an epistemic context, inviting an inference on the part of the speaker / hearer. It is, accordingly, a fairly abstract use of the verb.
17. [Kirkkojen] rakennusvaiheista ja sisustuksista näkyy usein koko paikkakunnan historia. (’from churches’ building history and interiors shows-INTR often the whole area’s history’)
17a. Their building history and interiors are often closely connected with the history of the area in question. (FECCS)
18. Teoksesta korostuu Koiviston merkittävä rooli yhtenä Suomen tekemän vapaakaupparatkaisun päätekijänä, … (’from the book is underlined-INTR Koivisto’s crucial role as …’).
18a. The book underlines Koivisto’s crucial role as one of the major contributors to the free trade agreement between Finland and the EEC, ... (FECCS)
19. Aukun kasvoista näkyi kiihtymys. (’from Auku’s face showed-INTR anger’)
19a. Auku’s anger was apparent on his face. (FECCS)
20. Ihmettelen miten selvästi Arista näkyy ja kuuluu, että hän on uskova, ... (’I wonder how clearly from Ari shows-INTR and is audible-INTR, that he is Christian’)
20a. I am amazed at how obvious his faith is, … (FECCS)
21. Teoksesta näkyy myös, että Koivisto mielsi toimintansa Suomen Pankin pääjohtajana ennen kaikkea vakaan talouspolitiikan tekijäksi. (’from the book shows-INTR also, that K. understood his role …’)
21a. It also shows that Koivisto understood his role as Governor of the Bank of Finland to be primarily that of formulating stable economic policy. (FECCS)
22. Tässä jokaiselle valokopiot alueen kartasta. Siitä näkyy, minne saakka palo on mennyt. (’here for everyone photocopies of the area’s map. From it shows-INTR, how far the fire has got’)
22a. I’ve photocopied the map of the area for each of you. Your copy gives you some idea how far the fire’s got. (FECCS)
It would seem that the impersonal construction with Elative is so conventionalized that it may be considered somewhat grammaticalized. This schematic pattern can be used in the domain of semantic content, for example, with a number of other verbs too. Sentence (18) above illustrates the verb korostua (‘be underlined, emphasized’); other verbs used in this domain include, among others, ilmetä (‘appear’), välittyä ('be conveyed'), hahmottua ('be profiled'), piirtyä ('be drawn/profiled'), löytyä ('be found'), hehkua (‘glow’), huokua (‘radiate’). The transitive (causative) counterparts of, say, paljastua and korostua take a static case adverbial rather than the Elative case: Korostan teoksessa Koiviston merkittävää roolia (‘I underline in the book K.’s crucial role’) (cf. *Korostan teoksesta Koiviston merkittävää roolia).
8. Subjectivity and translation correspondences
As we have seen the translations of subjective construals may be structurally non-equivalent, which points to differences in imagery in the languages. In the following, I will summarize the options employed in the English translations of the Finnish data. Examples (8a’), (18a), (21a) and (22a) above are transitives with locative subjects; in examples (7c’), (9c’) and (14a) the transitive construal has a personal subject, and the expression in (10a), In the field nobody was moving, has a personal subject of an intransitive verb. In this article, I argue that these translations are objective conceptions, lacking the speaker perspective. Other lexical options used in the translated data include the expressions be apparent / obvious (19a), (20a), and passives such as X could be seen from Y (13a) and X was reflected as Y (no example provided). Example (10a), ... there were no sounds, illustrates the English there-construction, which is, as mentioned above, a functional equivalent of the Finnish existential sentence. They are both perspectival construals with a salient word order.
The use of directional cases seems a unique feature in the Finnish clause syntax. Directional cases are employed with verbs denoting transfer like jäädä (‘remain’), saapua (‘arrive’), löytyä (‘be found’), myöhästyä (‘be late’), unohtua (‘be forgotten’) and the corresponding causatives, among others (Hakulinen et al. 2004: 1188-1189); these verbs tend to take a ‘where’-case in the Indo-European languages. The polysemy of the Finnish local cases with reference to prototype analysis is discussed by Croft (2001: 116-117). In the expressions construed subjectively, the use of the direction cases is motivated by the subjective motion by the conceptualizer, by his/her viewing the scene along a trajectory between the target of the perception and his/her vantage point. The analysis carried out in this article shows that the sensory verbs can take both direction-to and direction-from cases in construing a subjective vantage point. In a Finnish novel, the following directional adverbial was found with the verb vihata (‘to hate’): “Ei saa vihata haudan taakse”, which corresponds to ‘You should not hate (anyone) beyond-ILLATIVE his / her grave’ (Jorma Palo, Leikkikuolema).
Sources
CTF = Corpus of Translated Finnish compiled by Anna Mauranen and Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit at Savonlinna School of Translation Studies. University of Joensuu. Savonlinna 2000.
The Brown Corpus. Consists of text corpora representing American English non-fiction and fiction, published in 1961; about one million words. Contained in ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora. CD-ROM. 1991. Bergen: Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities. University of Bergen.
FECCS = The database corpus stored by Finnish-English Contrastive Corpus Studies, English Department, University of Jyväskylä. English books and their Finnish translations, plus Finnish books and their English translations, fiction and non-fiction.
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