We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The article investigates in detail a study aimed at eliciting word inflection acceptability judgments. The article points out the methodological weaknesses of the questionnaire and concludes that the results cannot be used as linguistic evidence for studying the contemporary Estonian morphological system.
More...
It is common knowledge that the theory of ternary quantity degrees of Estonian sounds was created by Mihkel Veske (1843-1890) and first published in his book about Estonian phonetics in 1879. However, Ado Grenzstein (1849-1916), an outstanding man of letters of the late 19th century, had published an article with a number of linguistic suggestions, including an idea of three contrasting lengths of Estonian sounds, both vowels and consonants, in the newspaper Postimees at the end of 1876. The argumentation and even the examples presented by Grenzstein are astonishingly similar to those of Veske published a few years later without any mention of Grenzstein’s publication. The theory of ternary quantities is not compatible with any theory of phonology and is nowadays abandoned in scientific descriptions of Estonian phonology. Modern views of the Estonian sound system also depart in one way or another from Ferdinand Johann Wiedemann’s (1805–1887) explanation of different accents (or stress) of short and long syllables. However, the theory of ternary quantity contrasts has played an important role in teaching Estonian, and factually this theory belongs to the most popular myths about the Estonian language. In modern times many outstanding scholars, Paul Ariste (1905-1990) and Ilse Lehiste (1922-2010), among others, have done a lot of work in order to translate the theory of ternary quantity oppositions into modern phonological terminology. A comparison of the ternary quantity rules defined by Ariste in 1963 and those by Lehiste in 1977/2000 reveals that there has been practically no progress in the reconciliation of this theory with theories of phonology. Nevertheless, Grenzstein is worthy of mentioning.
More...
On the Estonian territory there are at least six, if not seven place names with a putative underlying form *lüm(m)ättü. In view of settlement history those names refer either to old villages, medieval manors or similarly dispersed old allodial farms. as the landscapes where the places thus named sit do not look similar at all there is little hope in finding an appellative referring to a common characteristic of the landscape. Instead we can argue that the motivating name, which has originally contained a passive past participle, might rather be a pre-Christian personal name. The participial suffix belongs to the most frequent ones in ancient Finnic names. The personal name *lüm(m)ättü cannot be reduced to the orthodox form Kliment(i) of Clemens. Most of the medieval spellings of the names are luminitial, while the first spellings associable with the Estonian adaptation Leemet of Clemens appear in the 17th century. The hypothetical personal name *lüm(m)ättü can be compared to those deriving from the Finnic stem lempi, including the name of Lembitu, the 13th-century elder of sakala. It is surmised that one of the possible reasons behind the emergence of the lüm-initial variant could have been the perception of the sound of the personal name *lemmittü as expressive, which triggered a series of names with varying vowels.
More...
The article focuses on a nominal phrase or compound word invented by the translators of the first versified Estonian church hymnal (1656). Although the German versions of Lutheran church hymns had end rhyme, the hymns used to be translated into Estonian in prose and without any rhyme up to the mid-17th century. The translators of the hymnal of 1656 were the first to employ meter and rhyme following the strict versification rules established by Martin Opitz. In order to find pure rhymes various tricks were used. In five hymns, the frequent verb form on (’is, are, have, has’) was rhymed with the conspicuous phrase põrgu konn ’toad of hell’ as a synonym for ‘the Devil’. Although Martin Luther had indeed compared the devil to the toad, the corresponding compound word *Höllenfrosch or *Höllenkröte was unfamiliar in Lutheran German. Even the translators themselves seem to have had doubts about the Estonian phrase and it was mocked by the critics of the first hymnal. From later hymnals the phrase was eliminated, but it had probably already found its way to the vernacular. Since the end of the 18th century it has been registered in dictionaries. In the middle of the 19th century the author of the most famous collection of Estonian fairy tales F. R. Kreutzwald created his well known pseudomythological creature põhja konn ‘Toad of the North’ probably inspired by the same phrase.
More...
Toponymy has points of contact with several other disciplines, first and foremost with linguistics, history and geography. Based on those three, the article attempts to dissipate the doubts of Taavi Pae about Paul Ariste’s etymology of Pandivere, which associates the name with the Mordvin noun panda ‘hill’. The name of Pandivere is obviously quite old, but not so much for the heights, which have been named after a manor, which in turn has got its name from a village. From a linguistic point of view the initial component Pand(i)- may be associated with the Estonian noun põndak ‘hillock’. The word family of põnt : põnda with the derivatives põndak(as), põndas etc, all referring to a small hill, is quite widespread in Estonian dialects. In other Finnic languages the word stem is not used as a noun, but it does occur in place names. According to 19th-century Russian scholar Vladimir Mainov the Veps have referred to the Urals as Kivi-panda (kivi ‘stone’). In Finland there are several high and steep hills called Pantamäki (mäki ‘hill’). In earlier records the initial component of the name Pandivere ends in -e, which may be indicative of its being a plural attributive part. As the village was situated on two hills, the name may well have have been motivated by those: Pande ’GenPl hill’ + -vere. From a historical point of view the village is much older than first believed (1547). In the 13th century the village belonged to Koeru parish in Järvamaa county: in 1281 a small village called Pandevire is mentioned, in 1288 the spelling is Pandevere. The parish of Väike-Maarja, where Pandivere belonged later, is a much more recent formation, probably established no earlier than the late 15th century and then included in Virumaa County. Earlier the area used to border the prehistoric parish of Lemmundu in Virumaa. There is also a natural geographic association: the village is situated in a high terrain, which is not quite flat. There have been two hills there, about 250 m from one another, long serving as a source of sand. There are several legends about their origin. At least one of the two hills, Ammemägi, which is reported to have had a steep slope, used to serve as an important natural landmark, mentioned in 1646 as marking the border between Raeküla manor and the villages of Kadila and Naraka.
More...
Translation analysis is an effective way to refine our historical understanding of the totalitarian phenomenon. As our research into the communicative meaning of translation during the Soviet period in Estonia has shown, dichotomous oppositions such as ‘official culture’ vs ‘counter-culture’ fail to explain the dissonances that translations can introduce into the totalitarian monologue. The approach we have developed and applied to our case study is based on an exploration of different layers of translation’s historicity: starting from an analysis of systemic continuities such as censorship or state control of book production, and diachronic discontinuities like changes in the statistical figures on translation over the Soviet period, we arrive at a contextualized exploration of particular aspects of translation processes and their products. Taking into account the constraints of the totalitarian system and the loopholes it left, a study of both the censor’s interventions and the microstylistic decisions of translators reveal the dialogical and highly individual potential of translations, and also the highly individual character of the so called „totalitarian systems”, which can vary in their degrees of monologism in both space and time.
More...
In a multilingual cultural space such as the (former and contemporary) Baltic region, bilingualism, both oral and written, has been rather normality than exception. This also finds an expression in the literatures of this region. In the following I will examine the phenomenon of bilingualism and multilingualism in the literatures of Estonia in history and today. First, I will examine the historical forms of bilingualism before the foundation of the Republic of Estonia, against the background of the complicated oral and written language relations throughout history. Then I explore their topicality in the interwar and Soviet periods, and today. I also ask about the motivation of the authors to change or mix languages in their work, whether to reach a wider audience or a new poetic quality. Examples are from the work of Paul Fleming, Reiner Brockmann, Jacob Johann Malm, August Kitzberg, Ivar Ivask, Jaan Kaplinski, Igor Kotjuh, Øyvind Rangøy and Veronika Kivisilla.
More...
The article compares Estonian translations of the New Testament from the 1630s to the 1730s, covering the period from the first extant publications of pericopes until the first full Bible. All existing 28 versions of the gospel of Luke were studied: 21 texts in the North Estonian (or Tallinn) standard language, and seven texts in the South Estonian (or Tartu) standard language. The 62 verses from this gospel which occurred in all 28 translations were compared in five aspects: phonetic, inflectional, morphosyntactic, lexical and orthographical. Tables registering these differences formed input for computer analysis measuring the proximity of translation pairs.The analysis revealed that the first translations in the Tartu language differed greatly from one another in all aspects except orthography, whereas the translations in the Tallinn language can mostly be seen as a series of revisions of the same text. The standard languages were reformed significantly by the Wastne Testament (1686) in South Estonian and Johann Hornung’s translation in North Estonian (written in 1687–88, and preserved as a copy from 1694 called the München manuscript). In contrast to the South Estonian standard language, the language reform was not universally accepted at first in the North Estonian standard language.
More...
Reviews of: Renate Pajusalu. Sõna ja tähendus. [Tallinn:] Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2009. 207 lk; Silvi Tenjes. Semantika. Õppematerjal. [Tartu:] Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, [2010]. 119 lk.
More...
In this study, natural language processing (NLP) is used to analyse nominal inflection in Estonian proficiency examination writings representing the CEFR levels A2–C1. The aim is to define the nominal features that distinguish learner language production at each proficiency level. For this purpose, the frequency and variation of inflectional forms are measured in two ways: a) for the nominal parts of speech (PoSs) in total, i.e., considering the use of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numerals; b) for nouns, pronouns and adjectives individually (numerals were discarded due to low frequency). The analysed corpus contains 480 texts, 120 for each level. Nominal features based on the grammatical categories of number, case and degree of comparison are extracted from the morphologically tagged and manually corrected output of the Stanza NLP toolkit. Relevant features are selected according to the following criteria: they correlate with the proficiency level, their values change monotonically, and there are statistically significant differences between (some) adjacent levels. A2–C1-level texts are consistently distinguished by the number of cases used in the text as well as the ratio of singular and plural forms. The changes in the frequency of nominal inflectional forms mainly occur from level B1 to C1. The use of translative, nominative and genitive case are more strongly related to the text level, while partitive, inessive, elative and comitative case and comparative adjectives also differentiate some levels. Furthermore, the study indicates that it is beneficial to observe inflection-based features separately for each PoS when analysing L2 development. Firstly, the PoSspecific frequencies of some grammatical categories increase at different stages of proficiency. Secondly, changes may emerge for certain PoSs only. The identified criterial features could be used for automated assessment of Estonian L2 writings alongside lexical, syntactic and other linguistic features. The results can also help to specify the CEFR level descriptions for Estonian.
More...
This study aimed to describe the development of reading fluency and accuracy of Estonian students throughout an academic year. The longitudinal study assessed the reading skills of 112 students two times: in the winter of their third grade and the winter of their fourth grade. Three reading subtasks were used: connected text, word list and pseudo-word list. We found that reading fluency and accuracy developed significantly during the academic year, but the differences in the results of weaker and more skilled students were large. The average level of accuracy in reading was very high, while the reading errors that emerged were predominantly qualitative. However, the proportion of quantitative reading errors increased significantly when reading pseudo-words.
More...
Understanding the role of language errors and skillfully dealing with them is an important factor influencing the effectiveness of second language learning. The article focuses on teachers’ attitudes towards their 7th–9th grade pupils’ errors and how they address their errors. The results were obtained via an online questionnaire among teachers at different schools (n = 25), the results of which were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and compared with the principles of the usage-based approach (Martin et al. 2010, Eskildsen 2008, Mustonen 2015). In conclusion, teachers’ opinions are partly consistent with the usage-based approach. According to the teachers, their students make a lot of errors, and the most common type of errors are morphosyntactic. Teachers generally consider errors in the process of linguistic development to be natural, but they also think that errors need to be addressed. Concerning the feedback types, it was found that for dealing with errors in oral texts, a wider range of feedback types was perceived as useful than for written texts. In the written text, most teachers correct all errors, in the oral text, not all errors are corrected. When correcting errors in both oral and written texts, most respondents take into account the student’s language proficiency level and the type of task. In the oral texts teachers also take into account the recurrence of the error and the student’s personality, and in the case of written texts, previous learning of the subject. Errors in oral text are usually corrected after speaking, and more explicit learning is valued, which requires students to pay close attention to the errors and to correct the errors themselves. When correcting errors in a written text, teachers rather present the correct structures with explanations themselves. Teachers value the role of speaking in the development of linguistic accuracy and also allow learners to use language with errors. Repeated teaching of error-prone topics is also considered important to reduce errors. However, practice, especially oral practice of error-prone topics, is not seen as important. The impact of listening to authentic input on the development of linguistic accuracy is also underestimated, and the role of writing is rather underestimated. The study only reflects teachers’ self-esteem in terms of correcting errors, which does not mean that teachers behave exactly according to their opinions in the actual teaching process. It is also not clear from the study how good the teachers’ knowledge is of the errors characteristic in different stages of development. In the future, it would be worthwhile to study the same topic with lesson observations. It would also be worthwhile to differentiate between groups of teachers who have different views on errors. Despite some limitations, the results of the study provide important information in a hitherto unexplored area. The results should be taken into account in teacher training and the creation of methodological materials.
More...
The paper describes the Estonian National Corpus 2021 (Estonian NC 2021), the latest and the largest edition in the Estonian National Corpora series. The entire series of Estonian NC consists of four corpora: Estonian NC 2013, 2017, 2019 and 2021. The series was compiled by the Institute of the Estonian Language in cooperation with the software company Lexical Computing Ltd. All corpora are accessible through the Sketch Engine interface, a corpus query system developed and maintained by Lexical Computing Ltd. The data are also stored in the repository Entu at Center of Estonian Language Resources. The Estonian National Corpus 2021 contains eleven sub-corpora (i.e. Web 2013, Web 2017, Web 2019, Web 2021, Feeds 2014-2021, Wikipedia 2021, Wikipedia Talk 2017, the Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Literature, the Balanced Corpus, and the Reference Corpus) totalling 2.4 billion words. In addition, the corpus is divided into genres and topics. The most extensive part of the Estonian NC 2021 is the Estonian Web Corpora, i.e. texts crawled from the web. In the paper, we outline the process of crawling the web, the process of cleaning and post-processing the crawled data, and the methodology for classifying web texts into genres and topics. We also introduce new tools for the analysis of corpus data in Sketch Engine, and suggest further perspectives and needs for corpus development.
More...
Report on the conference “Soome-ugri seminar” held at Estonian Language Institute on December 6th 2011.
More...
Report on the conferences held in Riga and Tartu initiated by The Year of the Livonian Language and Culture 2011.
More...
Review of: Külli Prillop. Optimaalsusteoreetiline käsitlus eesti keele fonoloogilisest kujunemisest. Dissertationes philologiae Estonicae Universitatis Tartuensis 28. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2011. 260 lk.
More...
Review of: Liivlased. Ajalugu, Keel ja kultuur. Koostanud ja toimetanud renate Blumberga, Tapio mäkeläinen ja Karl Pajusalu. Tallinn: Eesti Keele sihtasutus, 2011. 436 lk.
More...
Review of: J. H. Rosenplänteri maakeele päevaraamat. Faksiimiletrükk keeleliselt redigeeritud rööpteksti, kommentaaride ja saatesõnaga. Koostanud Vello Paatsi ja Kristi Metste. Litteraria. Eesti kultuuriloo allikmaterjale. Vihik 25. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, 2012. 223 lk.
More...
The article deals with the designation of the specific vowels of Mari ӓ, ӧ, ӱ, ӹ and the consonant ҥ in early written monuments. The first writings appeared in the Latin alphabet. In these valuable sources, there is a fixation of letters unknown from the Russian graphic system. Unfortunately, authors of books and short texts, compilers of glossaries or word lists didn’t spell consistently. In the early writings based on the Cyrillic alphabet, Mari specific sounds are transmitted in different ways. They are mainly transmitted by similar Russian graphemes or by their combinations. The modern form of the letters appeared and became fixed in the graphic system of the Mari language in the second half of the 19th century after the formation of the Translation Commission of St. Gurius (Gurij).
More...
