Päivitetty 1.1.2002  –  Palautteet

Virittäjä-lehti  >  Hakemistot  >  Kirjoitukset ja tiivistelmät: 2/2001 (105)

Hannele Branch
 
MONTAA: GRAMMATICAL ERROR?

For many decades the indefinite pronoun moni has been classified in normative grammars of Finnish as: moni (nom.): monta (part.; not: montaa). Montaa was treated as ’a grammatical error’ until 1995, when it was accepted by the National Finnish Language Board into the standard language, though with certain reservations. The article seeks to explain why this form was regarded as incorrect for so long.

The writer examines the occurrence of montaa in printed material from the late eighteenth century up to the present day. Although several scholars first drew attention to the role of monta as a nominative form as early as the 1850s, general opinion has continued to treat it as the partitive case of moni, whereas montaa has been treated as a pleonastic partitive (albeit contrary to the logic of Finnish). The ’incorrect’ montaa partitive was first mentioned explicitly in 1931. For several decades montaa was treated as a separate word or grammatical case form and not as a syntactic phenomenon.

Using examples, the article examines the occurrence of monta and montaa as subject, direct object and direct object related adverbial, and as a component of a ’quantifier sentence’. Examples also occur of montaa as partitivus mensurae.

The article defines the role of monta as a nominative case. Monta appears as the subject of an affirmative intransitive sentence when the non-divisible referent of the subject is definite. As a direct object it can replace both the -n ending and the nominative form accusative when the referent of the direct object is definite and/or the action expressed by the verb of the sentence is resultative. In such contexts montaa acquired a partitive function. It occurs as the subject of an affirmative intransitive sentence in which the divisible referent of the subject is of indefinite, non-limited quantity and/or the action expressed by the verb is irresultative. Furthermore, montaa occurs as the subject of a negative intransitive sentence. As a direct object montaa occurs in an affirmative transitive sentence when the action expressed by the verb is irresultative and/or the action is directed only to a part of the referent. Because the direct object of a negative sentence in Finnish is always in the partitive, montaa also denotes this function. In the case of the direct object related adverbial and the ’quantifier sentence’, monta occurs in an affirmative and montaa in a negative sentence.

The writer argues that montaa occurs because Finnish needs to make a distinction between a resultative and an irresultative (aspectual) referent and a definite and an indefinite (quantitative) referent. Thus, montaa denotes a partitive alongside monta as a nominative. The occurrence of the montaa partitive in negative sentences is explained by the fact that the partitive in negative sentences is aspect-related, and all aspectuality can be seen as the opposition between entity and non-entity.

Acceptance of montaa as a partitive form has been slow because of the normative approach of the National Finnish Language Board and of authors of authoritative works on language usage. Nevertheless, this approach has not been able to resist the impact of the ’invisible hand mechanism’ in the longer term, which has broadened the functions of the partitive case in Finnish, and continues to do so.