The Case of the Object in Early Estonian and Finnish Texts

Abstract

The case of the object in Balto-Finnic languages alternates between accusative and partitive. In modern Finnish the accusative case is used more frequently than in Estonian. The present study looks at the usage in older texts, using a section of Bible translations in southern Estonian (1686), northern Estonian (1739) and Finnish (1642) as well as additional material in Estonian. In old Finnish the proportion of partitive objects was similar to modern Finnish, except for personal pronouns, which were predominantly partitive. The modern accusative case forms of the personal pronouns were introduced into the standard language in the 19th century. In southern Estonian the majority of objects were in the partitive case. In northern Estonian plural objects were often accusative (the plural accusative being homonymous with the nominative) and singular objects partitive. In many instances the opposite case has been used in a revised version of this translation, prepared in 1938. Possible reasons for the differences in development will be considered.