The illative vs. postpositions in Komi-Zyryan

The paper, based on the Komi Corpus materials, analyzes cases of the competition between the illative and postpositions within syntactic structures expressing spatial relations. The trends in the distribution of case and postpositions in various lexical and semantic conditions are discussed. The study showed that in constructions describing the direction of movement into various objects in modern Komi, the illative is emulated by the postpositions pi̮čke̮ ‘in’ (into hollow receptacles); pie̮ ‘in’ (into a substance), pe̮vste̮ ‘in’ (into a set or mass of homogeneous objects). The illative’s competitors in expressing other directions of movement are: the postposition vi̮le̮ ‘on’ (to the surface of an object); the postposition ji̮le̮ ‘on’ (to the end part of an object); the postposition dore̮ ‘to’ (toward an object); the postposition bеrde̮ ‘to’ (localization of contact); the postposition оrde̮ ‘to’ (toward smb’s place of residence). Sometimes, the same context allows for the use of more than one postposition paralleling the illative, though with a different view of the movement goal. For example, in the constructions pi̮rni̮ bad’d’e̮ ~ bad’ pi̮čke̮ (~ bad’ pie̮ ~ bаd’ pe̮vste̮) ‘go to the willows’, the illative and the postposition pi̮čke̮ imply an object with an inner space, the postposition pie̮, an object with a continuous space, and the postposition pe̮vste̮, an object made of a set of items. The choice of the postposition depends on what characteristics of the object the speaker aims to emphasize. Unlike the illative, the postpositions have more specific spatial meanings and are less frequent in most cases except in the case of the postpositions pe̮vste̮ ‘in’, vi̮le̮ ‘on’, and ji̮le̮ ‘on’. The expansion of the use of spatial postpositions may be attributed to their specific meanings which set them apart from the illative, as well as to the Russian language influence.