On 'on' in Uralic and Ossetic: from adpositions to case suffixes

Abstract

In comparison to Indo-European languages, the Uralic language family is quite famous for its rich case inventories, although the number of Proto-Indo-European cases is usually reconstructed slightly higher than that of Proto-Uralic. Most studies on the development of Uralic and Indo-European case systems have focused on the general trends within the two families: Uralicists have been largely occupied with trying to understand the rise of new cases, while Indo-Europeanists have been concerned about the reconstruction of ancient case systems and the causes and effects of their gradual loss. This paper takes an alternative stance to a small part of the phenomena in question and provides a diachronic and synchronic comparison of a semantically restricted set of secondary cases in Uralic and Indo-European by comparing the emergence of ‘on’ cases such as the so-called adessive or superessive cases in languages like Finnish and Karelian on one hand, and in Iron and Digor Ossetic on the other. While the formal similarity of the adessives like Livvi Karelian divanal ‘on a couch’ and Iron Ossetic диваныл [divanəl] id. is only accidental, a closer look at the similarities and differences of such forms as well as at their analogous origins in ancient adpositions makes it possible to identify a number of factors that have made these quite similar yet typologically less common cases emerge and develop to their present forms.