Estonian Clause Patterns — from Finno-Ugric to Standard Average European
Estonian Clause Patterns — from Finno-Ugric to Standard Average European

Summary/Abstract: Estonian clauses can be divided into two basic patterns: unmarked basic clauses and marked basic clauses, depending on whether the clause-initial topic is the subject or not. The main clausal topic of the unmarked basic clause has the typical coding and behavioural properties of the subject. The main clausal topic of the marked basic clauses is less grammaticalized than in the case of the unmarked basic clause. It may be realized not as a prototypical grammatical subject but as an adverbial (or an oblique or a direct object). If the sentence has the subject, it is a non-prototypical subject and its neutral position is after the verb (basic word order XVS). The main types of marked basic clauses include existential, possessive, source-marking resultative, and experiential clauses. The marked possessive, resultative and experiential clauses have their counterparts among unmarked clauses. Current trends in language use show expanding use of unmarked possessive and experiential basic clauses at the expense of marked clauses. This could be seen both as a language contact-induced shift from the Finno-Ugric clause patterns towards Standard Average European (SAE) patterns and as (just) simplification of the internal structure of the language. Resultative constructions show a tendency to use the focussed clause-final subject in both clause patterns.

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