Olema-verbi ellipsist eesti kirjakeeles
On the ellipsis of olema ‘to be’ in Written Estonian

Summary/Abstract: The Estonian verb olema ‘to be’, which functions as a copula and auxiliary may be omitted in certain grammatical and lexical environments. This study attempts to identify a) the most distinctive properties of the clauses where copula/auxiliary drop occurs and b) those circumstances under which copula/auxiliary drop is most likely to occur. Coordination ellipsis and other types of regular ellipsis are excluded from the study as they are not language-specifi c. The most distinctive properties of the omitted copula/auxiliary turned out to be (in order of signifi cance) its occurrence in third person singular and present tense, its occurrence in a subordinate clause, in a compound verb form, in a special construction with an experiencer or possessor in adessive case, and in fi xed expressions with juba ‘already’, veel ‘still, yet; again’, tarvis ‘needed, necessary’, vaja ‘needed, necessary’, ju (emphatic particle without a precise equivalent in English), alles ‘still; only (just)’, viga ‘fault; harm’ or ka ‘also, too; likewise’. At the same time, the probability of copula/auxiliary drop turned out to be highest in the fi xed expressions with the mentioned words and in the special experiencer/possessor construction. The second goal of the study is to provide an account of those diachronic circumstances which are responsible for the peculiar distribution of the copula/auxiliary ellipsis in the structure of contemporary Estonian. It is argued that auxiliary ellipsis in dependent clauses is a translation loan from a similar phenomenon in Early Modern German. Parallel infl uence of Russian with regard to ellipsis in experiencer/possessor construction and in certain fi xed expressions is likely but remains unproven. The study also identifi ed a number of structural properties of Estonian that are likely to have had an additive impact on the spread of ellipsis. They include the lexicalization of the negative emphatic particles eks and ega and the exceptional prominence of the resultative meaning in the semantics of the past impersonal participle.

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