Christoph Blume XVII sajandi teise poole kirjakeele uuendajana
Christoph Blume as a language innovator in the second half of the 17th century

Summary/Abstract: This article provides an insight into the language usage in the mid-17th century ecclesiastical texts by the Northern Estonian author Christoph Blume: Das Kleine Corpus Doctrinæ (1662), Geistliche Wochen-Arbeit (1666), and Geistliche Hohe Fäst-Tahgs Freude (1667). The focus is on various morphosyntactic phenomena, such as the expression of negation and future tense, the translation of the definite article, and the relationship between analytical and synthetic locative constructions. The article also explores the extent to which Blume followed in his works the example of authoritative writers or the established norms of the written language of his time. While changes at the individual level of language usage may not be as prominent in linguistic history as broader trends encompassing the shared linguistic attitudes of multiple authors, they help to pinpoint the beginnings of linguistic shifts and offer a more detailed view of the variation and development of linguistic features by highlighting differences between authors’ texts. This study reveals that, on an individual level, the changes had begun to emerge in Christoph Blume’s ecclesiastical texts in the mid-17th century, although the changes became more widespread only in the final decades of the century. The language usage in Blume’s ecclesiastical texts reflect some characteristics typical of his time (e.g., ep-negation or the saama-future). However, his works also introduced several innovative linguistic features that his predecessors, such as Heinrich Stahl, had not yet adopted in their texts or had used differently. These include ei-negation, the negative form pole, as well as the omission of the translation for the German definite article. Blume likely adopted many of these innovative forms, which were atypical for contemporary Northern Estonian literary language, either to achieve suitable rhyming and rhythmic forms for his translations of ecclesiastical songs or as a result of his observations of the local population’s language usage.

• Details
• Contents