<b> Adpositions with the stems ala, ylä and pää in the language of Mikael Agricola’s writings</b>

The language of Mikael Agricola’s (c 1510–1557) writings represents an interesting phase in the development of the Finnish system for adpositions. In the Finnish language, the older Uralic system of postpositions has undergone expansion and a new system of prepositions has been adopted. On the other hand, the adposition system found in Agricola’s writings has also been strongly affected by foreign models, because Agricola’s texts are mainly translations of religious texts, which by and large use a word-for-word translation strategy.

In the thesis, I explore Agricola’s use of adpositions; more specifically, which adpositions carry the meaning of ‘being under’ or ‘being over’ something, and in what other functions these adpositions are used. My main focus is on the semantics of the adpositions. I also study the syntactic features of adpositions and adposition structures; these are intertwined with semantics, since the meaning of adpositions is established in the adposition clause. Finally, I compare Agricola’s use of adpositions to the corresponding adpositions of present-day Finnish.

Adpositions with stems <i>ala, ylä</i> and <i>pää</i> form an interesting subject for research. Their frequency in the data, however, is highly uneven. The overwhelming majority of the adpositions studied in the thesis are <i>päälle</i>; there are only two occurrences of adpositions with the stem <i>ylä</i>. Adpositions typically denote a location ‘under’ or ‘above’ something. Almost half of the adpositions, however, can be classified as semantically unmotivated and as representing a foreign model in terms of the Finnish language; they do not occur in present-day Finnish. In Agricola’s texts they act in more grammatical roles than the corresponding adpositions of present-day Finnish. In the thesis, the corresponding adpositions in the source languages are carefully analysed. All other uses of the adpositions are marginal in relation to spatial ones and those based on foreign models. The original meanings of the adpositions have not changed much since Agricola, but adpositions considered to originate from foreign models have been intentionally eliminated in presentday standard Finnish.

It is also noteworthy that the system of adpositions with the stems <i>ala, ylä</i> and <i>pää</i> has changed since Agricola. His texts include the adposition <i>ala</i>, which corresponds to the modern adposition <i>alle</i>. Likewise the adposition <i>yllä</i> is absent in Agricola, as are the internal locative cases of the adposition <i>pää</i>.