Infostruktuuri osast eesti keele sõnajärje muutumisel
On the Role of Information Structure in Word Order Change in Estonian

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with word order change in spoken Estonian. The aim of the article is to demonstrate how information structure changes word order in certain clause types: constituent interrogatives (or special questions, e.g. Kes tuli? 'Who came?'), embedded constituent interrogatives (e.g. Ma tean, kes tuli. 'I know who came.'), relative clauses (e.g. Ma tunnen seda meest, kes tuli. 'I know the man who came.') and temporal and conditional clauses starting with kui 'when, if' (Kui sa tuled, helista mulle. 'When/if you come, call me.'). All these clause types start with a relative-interrogative word and all of them have earlier had a verb-final word order. Nowadays, in spoken Estonian (on the basis of Tartu University Corpus of Spoken Estonian) the number of verb-final clauses in these clause types is very different: verb-finality was commonest in the case of constituent interrogatives (77%), followed by embedded constituent interrogatives (71%), relative clauses (51%) and adverbial clauses starting with kui (43%). I suggest that the reason for such a variation lies in focusing the interrogative word. If the interrogative word at the beginning of the clause is focused, the clause tends to be verb-final. If the interrogative word is grammaticalized into a connective (as in relative and kui-clauses), the verb-finality tends to disappear.

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