The aim of the project
The original aim of the project was to give a syntactic and semantic analysis of some verbal derivational categories in North Sámi: 1) the semelfactive/durative-alternation, 2) “passive” inchoatives, and 3) verbs with secondary predication. However, the investigations related to types 1 and 2 were more time consuming than anticipated. In addition, project time had to be allotted to a paper dealing with North Sámi inceptive verbs. The first version of this paper was submitted to a journal before the project period, but revisions were done in the project period. However, since the paper is thematically closely related to category 1, the investigations for that paper formed the basis for the first topic dealt with in the project, and consequently, it contributed to the fulfilling of the objectives of the project. The third topic, verbs with secondary predication, was left out.

Results
In the following, I present the results as they appear in the individual papers.

“Beginnings in North Sámi”, partly written before the project period, but thematically connected to topic 1 of the project, deals with the inceptive in North Sámi. Inceptive, the beginning of an event or a state, can be expressed by means of an auxiliary, as in (1).

(1)    Álggii             munnje     savkalit.
    begin.PAST.3SG    me.ILL         whisper.INF
    ‘S/he began whispering to me.’

Inceptives of unaccusative verbs (intransitive non-agentive verbs) can also be expressed by means of derivational suffixes. For some verbs this means that the thematic vowel (the vowel in the second syllable) of the base verb is replaced, as in the examples in (2):

(2)    a.     buollat ‘burn (intr)’ > buollát ‘begin to burn’
    b.    johtit ‘travel’ > johttát ‘begin to travel’
    c.     vardit ‘bleed’ > vardát ‘begin to bleed’

I reached the following conclusion concerning the syntactic structure of derived inceptive: “the complement of the inceptive head is a VP which encodes an (unbounded) activity”, and the following concerning the morphological realisation of inceptive: “The theme vowel of the derived verb is either the result of the spellout of the inceptive head overriding the spellout of V, or else the theme vowel of the derived inceptive verbs could be seen as the realisation of inc+V in combination”.

Verbal derivational categories that can be realised as a change of thematic vowel became the topic of the next paper, “Theme vowels in North Sámi: Spanning and maximal expression”. The semelfactive/durative-alternation, which was one of the morphological patterns that the project aimed to analyse, is one of the derivational categories that can be expressed in this way. Some examples are shown in (3).

(3)    DURATIVE                    SEMELFACTIVE
a.    cirgut ‘spurt (repeatedly)’        –    cirget ‘spurt once’
b.    čavgat ‘tighten (repeatedly)’        –    čavget ‘tighten once’
c.    diškut ‘splash (repeatedly)’        –    dišket ‘splash once’

Having realised that a better understanding of the thematic vowels was a prerequisite for a satisfactory analysis of this alternation, I decided to also include inceptive and passive, the two other categories that can be expressed in the same way. I had come to the understanding that the thematic vowel of the base verb represents the verbaliser, but it was nevertheless difficult to explain the replacement of the thematic vowel that we see in the derived verbs. I ultimately proposed an analysis where the thematic vowels seen in the derived verbs are phonological realisations of two syntactic elements: the verbaliser and the element representing the derivational category.

Similar analyses have already been proposed within Distributed Morphology, the theoretical framework that I use, and the term spanning has been applied to cases where one element in the morphology represents two or more elements in the syntax. I argue that certain morphological patterns found in North Sámi provide support for the existence of spanning. This becomes even more evident if the verbal conjugation is considered. Some verbal forms are built up of several morphological markers, such as log-a-i-met ‘read-v-past-1pl’, whereas in others there is only one marker following the root or stem, as in lohk-en ‘read-past.1sg’. In a model where morphologically complex words are built in the syntax, as in Distributed Morphology, this means that the suffix -en in lohken is the realisation of the whole sequence of syntactic elements that are instead spelled out as separate suffixes in logaimet. It follows that the principle that regulates the competition between vocabulary items has to be reformulated, since the original version of this principle, the so-called Subset Principle, is based on the assumption that each vocabulary item represents only one syntactic element.

Another conclusion is that semelfactive verbs are derived from the corresponding durative verbs, at least in North Sámi. Some earlier proposals take semelfactive verbs to be derived from durative base verbs, while others have claimed that semelfactive verbs are basic and durative verbs derived. In North Sámi the direction of derivation is evident, and it is possible that semelfactives are derived in the same way also in other languages.

In the paper on thematic vowels the North Sámi verbal conjugations are presented as briefly as possible, although they involve many challenges for the morphological analysis. A more thorough discussion of the conjugations was given at the conference Formal Approaches to Sámi Languages in Tromsø, in February 2016. It has however not been published.

The so called “passive” inchoatives found in North Sámi were the starting point for the paper “Transitivity Alternations in North Sámi”. But instead of focusing on this verb type only, I ended up dealing with transitivity alternations in North Sámi more generally, and I reached the conclusion that the structural (syntactic) relation between the transitive and the corresponding intransitive verb varies somewhat, although not always in the way that the morphology seems to indicate.

The three main results from the project
The most important result from the project is that I have reached an understanding of the thematic vowels in North Sámi, including cases where they alternate. This is relevant for all types of verbal morphology in the language, and possibly also for the nominal morphology. Thus, I now have a foundation on which analyses of other morphological categories can be built.

Another major result is found in the analysis of transitivity alternations, where I conclude that there are weaknesses in the traditional understanding of the different verb types as well as in the more recent one, according to which all transitivity pairs involve the same syntactic structures. What we do find is pairs where the transitive verb is causative and formed from the corresponding intransitive verb and also pairs where the transitive verb is a simple transitive structure built on the same root as the corresponding intransitive verb. S-marked verbs constitute a separate class, having more structure than ordinary unaccusatives but no external argument.

A result of more theoretical relevance is that I have shown how distributed morphology can be applied to North Sámi, and also how the concept of spanning then must be included in the analytic toolbox.

New research questions generated by the project
The project has provided a basis for further investigations of morphological phenomena in North Sámi. The conjugations, which were addressed very briefly in Julien (2015), could be analysed further. Another interesting type is the so-called subitive verbs formed from motion verbs, e.g. girdilit ‘fly off’ from girdit ’fly’, where the derivational suffix appears to add direction. Some of the verbal derivations found in this language also raise the question of how much meaning can be encoded in the verbaliser. For example, some verbs formed from adjectives involve the meaning component ‘appear to the senses’, e.g. bahčistit ‘taste bitter’, from bahča ‘bitter’, and gohcistit ‘smell rotten’, from guohca ‘rotten’. There are also so-called sensive verbs, such as hánášit ’consider (someone) stingy’, from hánis ’stingy’. In all these cases, one can ask where the additional meaning component comes from. Could it be that the verbaliser also adds meaning component like ’sensation’ or ‘evaluation’? In addition, the verbs that were left out of the project could now also be addressed.

International relations
Results from the project have been presented at the following conferences:

High and low inceptives in North Sámi. Presentation at 25th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Reykjavík, 15 May 2013.

Inceptives in North Sámi: Spanning and maximal expression. Presentation at Grammar in focus, Lund university, 5 February 2015.

Inceptives in North Sámi: Spanning and maximal expression. Presentation at West Coast Conference of Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 33, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 27–29 March 2015.

Transitivity alternations in North Sámi. Presentation at CamCoS 4, Cambridge, 8 May 2015.

Inceptives in North Sámi: Spanning and maximal expression. Presentation at 25th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, IKER, Bayonne, 23 May 2015.      

On conjugation classes in North Sámi. Presentation at Formal Approaches to Sámi Languages. University of Tromsø, 21 February 2016.

Two key publications from the project
The two most important publications generated by the project are Julien (2015) and Julien (2016). In these papers the results from the main parts of the projects are presented. Both papers are published with international publishers of good reputation.

The publication strategy of the project
The publication strategy of the project was to get papers accepted in well reputed journals offering Open Access publishing. Papers from the project have been published in Finno-Ugric Languages and Linguistics, in Lingua, and in Open Linguistics. FULL and Open Linguistics are open access journals, whereas Lingua charges a fee for open access-publication.