Complement-taking predicates and the expression of desire

Formulating and communicating one’s wishes and desires is a salient part of online dating advertisements. In fact, the writer of (5.3) emphatically explains in his advertisement that one of the reasons why he is writing in the first place is to be able to articulate what he wants:

(5.3) Miksikö sitten tänne kirjoittelen? Ainakin haluan päästä kertomaan, mitä haluan.

(5.3) Why, then, am I writing here? At least I want to get to say what I want.

In this formulation the voicing of one’s desires is itself an object of desire (I want [to get to tell what I want]). The comment seems to imply that having an occasion to communicate one’s desires cannot be taken for granted and that a specific context is usually needed for that to be possible. As will be seen in this section and later ones, online dating advertisements seem to be particularly fit for such purposes. Expressions of desire are in relation both to the object of desire (e.g., whether it is an existent state of affairs in the world or merely a narrated ideal scenario) and to the speech event in which such desires are expressed. The aim of this and the following section is to see how such relations can be managed in online dating advertisements. The main focus in the following sections will be on the verb haluta (“to want,” “to desire”), which will be contrasted to a number of other CTPs.

Instances of both haluta (“to want,” “to desire”) (n=97) and toivoa (“to hope,” “to wish”) (n=64)⁸² are among the most frequent mental predicates in the data and have relatively similar patterns of usage. Their differences will be returned to shortly. Most instances of haluta (“to want”) have as their grammatical object a complement clause, an infinitive clause, or an NP that denotes one of the following: the self’s behaviors towards others and the consequences of such behaviors (5.4a), the behaviors of others towards the self and the consequences of such behaviors (5.4b), ideal or desirable events that lead to biographic turning points (5.4c), or the reflexive behavior of the self towards the self (5.4d). All sorts of combinations are also possible. For instance, in example (5.4c) the object of the writer’s desire is to encounter some other whose behavior towards her causes a particular kind of desirable feeling.

(5.4a) Haluan ottaa ihmiset ympärilläni huomioon ja sen teen ainakin jos on uskomista perheeseeni ja ystäviini.

82 The numbers of occurrence in the data (e.g., n=97) are noted here so that different CTPs can be roughly compared to one another and to the total number of texts (111) and sentences (2,010).

(5.4a) I want to take people around me into consideration and that I am doing at least if my family and friends are to be believed.

(5.4b) Haluan että mies saa minut tuntemaan itseni naiseksi, siihen on monia keinoja mutta oikea asenne vie pitkälle.

(5.4b) I want a man to make me feel like a woman, there are many ways to do that but a right attitude will take [you] far.

(5.4c) Haluaisin oikeasti tutustua rakastavaan ihmiseen ja kokea taas rakastumisen huuma.

(5.4c) I would really like to get to know a loving person and to experience the thrill of falling in love again.

(5.4d) Harrastan lisäksi lenkkeilyä ja punttisalilla puuhastelua vaikka ne eivät aina ole sitä mielekkäintä hommaa. Haluan kuitenkin pitää itseni kunnossa.

(5.4d) I also go jogging and to the gym although they aren’t always the most meaningful things to do. I do however want to stay in shape.

In example (5.4d) the stance expressed with haluan (“I want”) is used to balance the writer’s own negative stance in the previous clause. That is, a relatively undesirable habitual behavior is justified with a desire to aspire towards a more fundamental ideal. In all of these examples the mode of commitment (a mental state of wanting or desiring) is explicitly denoted by the CTP and deictically calibrated to the writer via 1SG inflection. (The voicing of others’ desires is possible in some cases too; see chapter 6.) Both the personal source of the value (mode event E^m) and the object in the world (content event E^c), then, are explicitly figured in the speech event (E^s).

Unlike its main rival toivoa (“to hope”), the verb haluta (“to want”) can take an infinitive complement (see example 5.4c; cf. *toivon tutustua rakastavaan ihmiseen; for toivon tutustuvani see 5.1.2). That is, it can be used to formulate tighter interclausal relations between mode events and content events than toivoa (“to hope”). Hence, if the tightness of the interclausal relation is iconic to the distance or overlap between the denoted events (see Givón 1980; Kockelman 2010: 52–84; 2006b: 91–92), then haluta (“to want”) in combination with an infinitive complement can be used to formulate content events that are causally and logically more dependent on self’s stance (i.e., would not exist without the self’s desiring or wanting them). Such linguistic formulation, then, can be used to specify to what extent the object of the desire is understood as ontologically distinct and independent from the act of desiring.⁸³ The high frequency of haluta may in part be explained by its syntactic flexibility, i.e., the fact that the tightness of

83 In more specific terms, this notion of ontological distance refers to the degree to which such events (or intentional statuses and their objects) are iconically overlapping in phenomenological quality and indexically related through causality (see Kockelman 2006b: 93).

the interclausal relation can be scaled to the exigencies of a given point in the text. Such expressions of wish or desire are inferentially linked to values and current or future intentions (see also footnote 81 and section 4.4.1). Instead of highly mental or affective construals of the denoted process, in online dating advertisements the verb haluta (“to want”) might be understood as a somewhat general marker of ideal worlds that (a) are relatively dependent on the self and (b) to the actualization of which the self is relatively strongly committed. In other words, haluta (“to want”) can be used to mark explicitly the act of modeling and committing to an ideal or desirable world so as to mobilize an equivalent commitment from the respondent. This is in strict contrast to such cases, in which ideal worlds are naturalized by fading out their author (the one who composed the evaluative representation) or even their principal (the one who is committed to the evaluative representation) (see section 5.2).

Before moving on with haluta (“to want”) and toivoa (“to hope”), let us compare them to a set of other frequent CTPs in the data that denote mental processes, beginning with the verbs pitää (“to like”)⁸⁴ (n=44), nauttia (“to enjoy”) (n=25), and rakastaa (“to love”) (n=12). In contrast to haluta (“to want”), they usually presuppose the existence of their objects in the world (whether persons, habits of behavior, places, or periods of time). Their grammatical objects therefore tend to be NPs. As was seen in chapter 4, a typical use of these verbs is in taxonomies that hierarchically list attributes or habits:

(5.5a) Pidän syksystä, sateesta, merestä, teestä, kirjoista ja pitkistä keskusteluista.

(5.5a) I like the fall, rain, the sea, tea, books and long conversations.

(5.5b) Rakastan lapsiani, pidän työstäni, nautin harrastuksistani ja ystävistäni.

(5.5b) I love my children, like my work, enjoy my hobbies and my friends.

Of the three verbs, nauttia (“to enjoy”) seems to be more flexible than the others. As seen in example (5.5b), like pitää (“to like”) or rakastaa (“to love”), it can be used to denote a habitual affective stance towards objects in the world. However, it often appears in the data embedded in verbal chains (e.g., osata nauttia, “to know how to enjoy”; lähteä ~ päästä ~ olla valmis nauttimaan, “go to enjoy” ~ “get to enjoy” ~ “be ready to enjoy”) and representations of shared activities (olisi mukava nauttia kanssasi, “it would be nice to enjoy with you”; joista mielelläni nautin myös mieh[e]n kanssa

“that I gladly enjoy with a man too”; nainen, jonka kanssa nauttia elämästä,

“a woman with whom to enjoy life”). That is, nauttia (“to enjoy”) is involved in denoting more concrete and temporally bounded states, which seem to be understood as more “energetic” or “material,” interpersonal, and attainable

84 Another frequent sense of the verb pitää (+ ESS) is “to regard something as something.” Such epistemic usages have not been included in the frequency count here.

by free will and conscious effort. Because of the syntactic flexibility of the verb, it can be used to insert a dimension of personal affect into representations of more concrete processes. Or, to put it differently, it can perhaps be used to give a positive prosody to “promotional” representations of concrete habits or goals (cf. hyvä, “good” in 5.2.1).

The relative distinction between “desirability” and “ideality” can be seen in the usages of the most common CTPs in the data too. For instance, the verb arvostaa (“to appreciate”) (n=30) denotes the kind of value that is primarily based on some internalized social norm, stereotype, or prototype rather than affect. It, therefore, naturally lends itself to evaluations that are directed at social types, such as types of persons or types of characteristics:

(5.6a) Arvostan myös itseluottamusta, aloitekykyä, kunnioitusta, luotettavuutta ja rehellisyyttä.

(5.6a) I also appreciate self-confidence, initiative, respect, reliability and honesty.

(5.6b) ¶Arvostan miestä joka on aktiivinen, osaa pitää hauskaa ja on 100% uskollinen.

(5.6b) ¶I appreciate a man who is active, knows how to have fun and is 100% faithful.

What is common to all the previously examined CTPs as opposed to haluta (“to want”) and toivoa (“to hope”) is that they take an evaluative stance towards objects that are construed as existing relatively independently of the self’s stance. That is, the writer is not so much modeling an ideal world to be actualized as he or she is selecting, theorizing, and committing to such objects in the world that he or she most cares for. Now that this distinction has been sketched, let us get back to haluta (“to want”) and discuss the choice of grammatical mood.