Dal finlandese all’estone: considerazioni tipologiche e cenni diacronici sulle costruzioni invenitive

Abstract

This paper expands on the existing research on invenitive constructions in Finnish by providing new data on the closely-related Estonian. Invenitive constructions (Lat. invenio ‘to find’) are a novel class of morphosyntactic construction-strategies that express locative and existential functions. They employ a verb with meaning ‘find’ which then gets semantically bleached and assumes the function of a quasi-copula. Invenitive constructions are fairly common in Europe, but present different characteristics based on the animacy of referents being located. After introducing invenitive constructions in Finnish and in the European context, this paper analyzes invenitive constructions in Estonian from a typological perspective, discusses the possible diachronic sources of such constructions based on observations on other languages, and shows possible future research directions.