Kur tev sāp? – Where does it hurt? Location and impersonal predicates referring to body parts in Finnish and Latvian
Kur tev sāp? – Where does it hurt? Location and impersonal predicates referring to body parts in Finnish and Latvian

Summary/Abstract: This article describes the non-canonical syntactic constructions of NPs and third person singular verb forms that express physical sensations, typically pain, in a certain body part. The starting point is Finnish, where impersonal constructions with NPs in the partitive or local cases form the centre of this semantic field. The test sentences, stemming from typological research material, are compared to their equivalents in Latvian. The results show that in Latvian, the nominative predominates, although locatives are used as well. Of the immediate linguistic neighbours of Latvian, Estonian follows the same strategy, while Lithuanian verbs of pain, which have received much attention, resort mostly to accusatives and locatives. In the broader Finnic field, the cognate languages express this using partitive NPs, while Russian employs a great deal of body parts in the locative and accusative, but also in the nominative. If an outside influence on Latvian and Estonian is considered, German seems to be the likeliest candidate, though there as well, locatives are a natural means for expressing sensations deep within the body.

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