摘要：The paper discusses two cases of valency alternations in Modern Finnish that to our knowledge have
not attracted much attention. We discuss sentences (a) in which a verb which is normally used
intransitively, i.e. without an object, is used transitively, i.e. with an object, and (b) in which a transitive
verb appears with a new type of object. Examples (1) and (2) show what kind of phenomena is of
interest:
Effected objects:
(1a) Edwards loikki kauden kärkituloksen.
Edwards jumped season.GEN top.result.ACC
‘Edwards made the current season’s top result (in the triple jump).’
(HS 2.7.2001, p. D5)
(1b) Menendez heitti maailmanennätyksen.
Menendez threw world.record.ACC
‘Menendez broke the world record (in the javelin).’
(HS 2.7.2001, p. D5)
(2) Objects participating in a possessive transfer:
(2a) Panu Kylliäinen golfasi EM-hopeaa.
Panu Kylliäinen golfed European.Championship-silver.PARTV
‘Panu Kylliäinen won a silver medal in the European golf championships.’
(headline, HS 13.8.2000, p. C9)
(2b) Laakkonen ohjasti EM-pronssia.
Laakkonen steered European.Championship-bronze.PARTV
‘Laakkonen won a bronze medal in the European trotting championships.’
(trotting; headline, HS 19.8.2001, p. C5)
The valency of the verbs – defined as the actant scheme in which the verbs appear, combining semantic
and syntactic properties – in these sentences differs from their conventional valency. What the sentences
have in common is that the activity performed by the agent participant results in achieving the entity
expressed in the object: the described results or the prizes mentioned. The verb merely specifies the
means of achieving them.
The paper provides a description of sentences such as (1) and (2) as well as the verbs and the
nominal constituents occurring in them. To account for these sentences we propose a constructional
approach: the effected object construction and the possessive transfer construction enable Finnish
speakers to deviate from the conventional valency properties of verbs and use conventionally
intransitive verbs transitively, or transitive verbs with objects that are not selected in the basic valency
entries of the verbs. Furthermore, there is a particular circumstance under which the two valency
alternation patterns preferentially take place. The two constructions conspicuously often occur in the
language of the sports press in which they have reached an established status. The particular context and
the corresponding genre give rise to two specific constructions, which might seem odd in another
context.
It seems to us that instead of treating valency alternations in one context by considering them to be
properties concerning a verb or a verb class defined by semantic features, it may prove useful to take
into account the specific genre and the corresponding extralinguistic contextual variables. According to
this study, such factors can be crucial for understanding valency changes.
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