Adjectives co-occurring with the illative form of the MA-infinitive in Finnish and Estonian

Abstract

In both Finnish and Estonian, the illative form of the MA-infinitive/supine can be used at the end of a predicative clause, as in the Finnish olimme hitaita oppimaan (‘we were slow to learn’) or the Estonian olen küps seda aktsepteerima (‘I am ready/ ripe to accept it’). In these sentences, a characteristic expressed by an adjective is attributed to the subject of the sentence, with the scope of the characteristic related to a single activity marked by the illative form of the MA-infinitive/supine. In this paper I will present data to describe this type of construction in both languages and will analyze it as a constructional schema in terms of cognitive grammar (Langacker 2000, 2008). My analysis will concentrate on the adjectival component of the schema with the help of examples from Estonian and Finnish corpora.

Keywords

• illative
• MA-infinitive
• supine
• cognitive grammar
• constructional schema
• adjective
• antonymy