Kas ynned sa olbama sirnangot? Johannes Aaviku visionäärsus keeleteoreetilisest vaatepunktist
Language Visions of Johannes Aavik from the Viewpoint of Theoretical Linguistics

Summary/Abstract: Estonian philologist Johannes Aavik (1880–1973) is internationally best known for his conviction that literary Estonian should be enriched by means of coining the words he found missing in Estonian. If we ask whether Aavik was consistent in following the linguistic theories of his time, the answer is yes and no. Aavik viewed language as a machine that needed improvement. To achieve this any method was good. Aavik did not restrict himself with theoretical assumptions about the rules of phonotactics or the irreversibility of sound laws. If he could not make use of a theory or rule, he would violate these. He resorted to linguistic theories, in particular to historical linguistics only when he could use the arguments of the theory to support his own ideas. Aavik considered archaic and exceptional forms and rules as superior to regular forms, which he labelled as banal. For such kind of aesthetic reasons he denied linguistic analogy as a mechanism that restores regularity in grammar. He did not ask himself whether the identity of a language consists in form or substance (or, in other words, what is more decisive for identity – the project of a building or its building materials). Instead, he coined new words and grammatical forms meant to become exact counterparts of words and forms used in more civilized languages (e.g. Latin, French, russian, German, Finnish). In spite of his disregard for linguistic theories Aavik achieved quite a lot in his program of enrichment of literary Estonian. We should ask: What if he had not ignored the linguistic theories of his time? Another lesson we have to learn from Aavik’s work concerns his attempts to introduce into Estonian typologically alien constructions. This was certainly a useless and unjustified waste of mental energy. As we can see, Johannes Aavik had a passion to reform Estonian language in a revolutionary way. However, revolution is good only if it is (can be) stopped in time and its achievements are taken over by evolution. This is exactly what, happily enough, has happened to the Estonian language.

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