Paikallissijaisten saneiden funktiot ruotsinkielisten alkeistason suomenoppijoiden teksteissä
The functions of the local cases in texts written by Swedish-speaking beginners-level learners of Finnish

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates how frequently and in what functions Swedish-speaking beginners-level learners of Finnish use the six local cases. The specific focus of the article is on the comparison of correct and incorrect use of the local cases in their different functions. The investigation is corpus-based, and the material used in the study is the Swedish sub-corpus of the electronic corpus entitled the International Corpus of Learner Finnish. the texts were compiled during the period 2006–2009 at Umeå University. The research material, which was analysed using WordSmith Tools so'ware contains a total of 43 496 word tokens, of which 4 408 are inflected in the local cases. The analysis to find out the different functions in which the local cases occur was carried out manually, because at the time of the analysis the corpus was not yet linguistically annotated. The corpus is divided into four groups: place, time, verb government and others. The results show that learners use the local cases mostly to express concrete places. This is natural because on the beginners’ level the most elementary functions of local cases are presented and learned. However, the material contains many occurrences of verbs that govern a local case, and there are also di&erent types of expressions of time. The group designated “Others” includes occurrences of local cases in various functions, for instance, the adessive case expressing possessor, instrument, or vehicle. In most expressions, the learners use the local cases correctly. Only in 7% of the expressions did the learners choose an incorrect local case; these errors are to be found mostly in expressions of concrete places and imply an overuse of the allative case. Expressions of time or verb-governed local cases seem to be easier for the learners. However, in expressions of time the adessive case is sometimes used incorrectly instead of the essive case which is not systematically presented in the beginners-level course. Incorrect adessive use instead of verb-governed allative also occurs frequently. The conclusion of this investigation is that Swedish-speaking beginnerslevel learners of Finnish have already mastered the basic functions and uses of the Finnish local cases, despite the fact that the expressions of local and directional relations in Swedish and Finnish are structured very differently, reflecting a di&erent perception of the world. The results of this study can be utilized in teaching and in producing teaching materials for courses in Finnish as a foreign language.

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