Infinitive constructions with the semantics of direction in the Veps language

One essential syntactic feature of the Baltic-Finnic languages is their verbal system. The paper addresses the Veps language syntactic constructions including infinitive I and illative infinitive III. Both forms can be compared with the only infinitive of the Indo-European languages. The said infinitives perform adverbial (final and local) and object functions, being the most productive ones of all the infinitive constructions. The Veps language has well preserved almost all of its infinitive forms, however, the impact of Russian syntax disturbed the harmonious picture of their use in speech. Now that the Veps written language is developing, it is important to form or restore this picture. The aim of the study was to define the functions of both infinitive forms, the features of their use, and the reasons for their synchronous use in the dialects of the Veps language and its written form by studying the transitivity of the main verb in the infinitive constructions and their syntactic role in a sentence. The category of verb transitivity or intransitivity is very important for determining the syntactic role of an infinitive construction. The syntactic function of the infinitive, which depends on a finite verb’s semantics, plays an important role in choosing the infinitive form. The authors analyzed the dialectal language material and the developing literary norms of the Veps language using the comparative and descriptive methods