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1/ Today, I finally present to you: differential object marking (DOM) in Balto-Finnic languages (also called Finnic or (Balto-)Fennic). In these languages, object marking is used to express a bunch of things and linguists still fight about what exactly it does #LinguisticSunday
2/ Firstly, what are Balto-Finnic languages? They are a branch of the Uralic language family (cousins of #Hungary, #Saamic etc.) and spoken in #Finland, #Sweden, #Russia, #Estonia and #Latvia.
Pepethefrog1234567890 / CC BY-SA ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Pepethefrog1234567890 / CC BY-SA ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
3/ As official languages of Finland and Estonia, (Standard) #Finnish (ca. 5 Mio. speakers) and (Standard) #Estonian (ca. 1 Mio. speakers) are the by far most widely spoken and researched languages of the branch, followed by #Karelian (30.000+), #Veps (~1.500), #Ingrian (~150), ..
4/ … #Votic (8?) and #Livonian (extinct), leaving aside the so-called Finnish and Estonian “dialects” which are spoken by a considerable amount of people in daily life. All languages except for Estonian and Finnish are threated by language death to different degrees
5/ The Balto-Finnic languages are known for their huge case inventories. Veps probably has the most cases (23), for the case inventories of Estonian and Finnish see below (from Lees: 8).
The verbs are morphologically complex as well, but we won’t talk about them today.
The verbs are morphologically complex as well, but we won’t talk about them today.
6/ And now for the DOM! If you are new (welcome!) are can’t remember what DOM is, please look here first: https://twitter.com/dietweeterei/status/1297476483598909440?s=20
7/ The crucial point of the Balto-Finnic DOM is the distinction between partitive and accusative or total objects. The Balto-Finnic languages don’t have a separate morphological marker for accusative case, …
8/ ...the function of the accusative case in other languages is usually carried out by the genitive in the singular and the nominative in the plural (the specific suffixes differ a lot between the language and I will not list them here). This may remind you of Russian.
9/ One function of the partitive case overlaps with similar cases and constructions in other languages in that it marks entities taken from an (abstract) whole. Compare #French and Finnish below.
10/ But the partitive is also used to mark direct objects and, most importantly, it is the default case to mark direct objects. Multitudes of linguists have spent huge parts of their academic life to explain when the “accusative” appears instead of the partitive.
11/ It is also important to mention that the DOM in Balto-Finnic is not considered as real DOM by all linguists. Some only classify phenomena as DOM where the DOM is triggered by inherent factors of the object. But we will see that this does not necessarily apply to Balto-Finnic.
12/ For example, one feature that all Balto-Finnic languages share is that negated verbs usually come with objects in the partitive. In the example from Livonian below “leibə” is in the partitive singular (Lees: 224).
13/ So, one factor that triggers DOM in Balto-Finnic is polarity and this is not a feature inherent to the object and therefore no DOM in the strict sense. We aren't strict and call this phenomenon DOM anyway 
14/ For sentences with positive verbs it gets wild. I’m very sorry to tell you that I can’t present an explanation to you that covers every single case of object marking in every single language – because such an explanation does not exist!
15/ Linguists are happy when they can explain why a case appears in a specific sentence in a specific context but often they are not even trying to predict what case will be used by a speaker. The DOM is often depended on what a speaker wants to focus on.
16/ The following examples are restricted to active indicative sentences with a common noun as object of a finite verb, the situation in other sentences differs a lot – because everything else would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
17/ Now, apart from polarity another factor which is often said to trigger DOM is called “resultativity”. An action which has no important result is called “irresultative” and is said to trigger partitive case.
18/ In the Finnish examples below, the bear(s) may not be hit in the first set of sentences and therefore the action is irresultative and comes with partitive. But in the second example, the bear(s) are shot, the action is resultative and comes with accusative. (Kisparsky: 2-3)
19/ The DOM is also often said to express further aspectual differences, namely completed/perfective vs incomplete/imperfective events. In the Estonian examples below, the situation is not completed but the hitting may go one …
20/ … while in the second sentence the situation is completed since the victim is knocked down (quoted in Lees: 37) sorry for the violence again).
21/ There are also factors inherent to the object which are considered important. If an entity is affected as a whole or a definite quantity is affected than the accusative may be used. In the example from Estonian below, all mosquitoes are killed being a definite quantity…
22/ …while in this example from Veps only some of the available alcohol is to be sold. (Lees: 44)
23/ The factors are interconnected. There are for example classes of verbs which always trigger a partitive while other verbs imply an aspectual reading or a reading pertaining to quantity.
24/ This thread only contains a list of factors that may be partly responsible. I wanted to show you how complicated the description of even well researched languages like Finnish is. I hope I have made you curious about Balto-Finnic languages
25/ Of course, there are always linguist who disagree with former analyses and one of them is Kiparsky (1998). Instead of the factors mentioned above (except for the polarity) he proposes a concept called “boundedness”.
26/ I find his explanation quite convincing you can read it here for free https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/wuppertal.pdf #LinguisticSunday
Some literature on the topic (there are endless other options in every framework you can wish for!)
Lees, 2015: Case Alternations in Five Finnic Languages
Kiparsky, 1998: Partitive Case and Aspect
Larsson, 1983: Studien zum Partitigebrauch in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen
Lees, 2015: Case Alternations in Five Finnic Languages
Kiparsky, 1998: Partitive Case and Aspect
Larsson, 1983: Studien zum Partitigebrauch in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen
