4. Drowning “into” the river in North Sámi

This chapter documents and analyzes an instance in North Sámi of spatial morphology (directional case and adpositions) interacting with temporal interpretation (change of state). In effect, in North Sámi one can sleep on a floor or swim in a river, but one falls asleep ‘onto’ the floor, and drowns ‘into’ the river. The analysis relates the phenomenon to the Talmian dichotomy of ­satellite-framed and verb-framed expressions of path in directed motion. Specifically, I provide an analysis in which the illative gives the location of result states, assuming a decomposition of complex events including motion events. This provides a unified analysis of different uses of the North Sámi illative, at the expense of a unified analysis of directed motion constructions across English and North Sámi.