Finnish en-form converb expressing concomitance as a part of reported speech

Converbs, also known as gerunds or adverbial participles, can be defined as nonfinite verb forms whose main function is to mark adverbial subordination (Haspelmath 1995: 3). Finnish is referred to as a polyconverbal language (see e.g. Nedjalkov 1998: 430) and Finnish converbs has been widely studied as structures which can modify the main clause in a way that resembles both ordinary NPs and finite adverbial clauses; they can express also time, means or manner, purpose or lack of certain circumstances (Ylikoski 2003: 205).
This paper aims to shed light on the lexical representation of the E-infinitive form with instructive case (from now on -en form converb), which is one of the six semantically specialized converb forms in Finnish. The -en form converb usually expresses concomitance (Ylikoski 2022: 944), but also manner in general and simultaneity of situations (VISK 2004: § 516). The analyzed data were extracted from the subcorpus of fiction in the parallel corpus InterCorp v16ud (avalaible online: www.korpus.cz), which enables the comparison and analysis of data from Finnish fiction with its Czech and English counterparts and vice versa.
Comparison of Finnish non-translated and translated fictional texts shows a difference in semantic groups of the most frequently used -en form converbs as well as a statistically significant difference in their relative frequencies; in translated texts (i.p.m. 2 325,68), the -en form is more frequent than in non-translated texts (i.p.m. 1 385,19) which could suggest some sort of a translation universal, e.g, conventionalization in target language. Syntactic alignment of the parallel corpus InterCorp v16ud based on Universal Dependencies brings also the possibility to analyze larger context, e.g. the parent verb (parent lemma) of the -en form converbs, which leads us to the conclusion that in fictional texts, especially the ones translated into Finnish, the -en form converbs often accompany reporting verbs such as sanoa ’say‘, kysyä ’ask‘ and vastata ’answer‘, which corroborates the previous results from a study on English reporting verb said and its modifications (cf. Čermáková & Fárová 2024). Further qualitative analysis of the Czech and English counterparts shows that the Finnish -en form converb is used as a translation counterpart of many more English and Czech syntactic forms than was understood so far (see examples 1-3 excerpted from originally English fiction). However, its semantic repertoire is somewhat restricted, mainly to the verbs of motion, speech, and perception.
 

1) FI: "Ei", Ford sanoi ystävällisesti hymyillen.
no Ford-NOM.SG say-3.PST friendly-ADV smile-EN.CVB
CZ: "Ne." Ford mu věnoval přátelský úsměv.
EN: "No," said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. (IC v16ud - Adams)
 

2) FI: - Anna se minulle, Beatty sanoi väkinäisesti hymyillen.
give-2.IMP it-NOM.SG I-ALL.SG Beatty-NOM.SG say-3.PST fixed-ADV smile-EN.CVB
CZ: "Dej mi to, Guyi," řekl Beatty se strnulým úsměvem.
EN: "Hand it over, Guy," said Beatty with a fixed smile. (IC v16ud - Bradbury)
 

3) FI: “Prinsessa“, sanoi isoisä hymyillen.
Princess-NOM.SG say-3.PST grandfather-NOM.SG smile-EN.CVB
CZ: "Princezno," usmál se.
EN: "Princess," he smiled. (IC v16ud - Brown)