The article deals with the parallel preposited adnominal non-partitive genitive in Baltic, Balto-Finnic and Scandinavian languages from the point of view of diachrony, areal linguistics and language typology where the latter perspective is based mostly on Greenberg's language universals. Data from Scandinavian historical syntax (Braunmüller's studies in word order) reveal a far more complex picture concerning the historical roots of the preposited genitive in the Nordic languages than one can observe from the smooth surface of to-day's Swedish, Danish and Norwegian which corresponds so neatly with the Baltic and Balto-Finnic languages with respect to the phenomenon in question.
The present study examines the diachronic development and renewal of demonstrative systems in the Finnic languages within the Circum-Baltic context. Drawing on usage-based data from existing Finnic corpora, the reconstruction addresses historical changes from Proto-Finnic to modern Finnic, identifying processes of reduction and restructuring, while unveiling also obsoletion of specific demonstrative forms. The analysis reveals that while Finnish and Karelian proper retain relatively archaic tripartite systems, Livonian, North Estonian, Votic, and Veps display substantial renewal, often leading to bipartite or monopartite paradigms. Comparative evidence indicates that contact with Slavic, and to a lesser extent Baltic and Germanic languages, played a key role in shaping these developments. Parallels with Russian compound demonstratives and Old East Slavic forms highlight recurring patterns of areal diffusion and contact-induced change within wider Circum-Baltic language ecology. At a theoretical level, the findings affirm the instability of demonstratives as a grammatical category prone to contact influence. Kokkuvõte. Chingduang Yurayong: Läänemeresoome keelte demonstratiivsüsteemide uuendamine Läänemere keeleliidu kontekstis. Uurimus käsitleb demonstratiivide diakroonilist arengut ja uuendamist läänemeresoome keeltes Läänemere keeleliidu kontekstis. Tuginedes olemasolevate läänemeresoome keelte korpuste kasutuspõhistele andmetele, käsitleb rekonstruktsioon ajaloolisi muutusi alates läänemeresoome algkeelest tänapäeva läänemeresoome keelteni ja toob esile süsteemide lihtsustumise, ümberkorraldumise ja paradigmade uuendamise protsesse, samuti konkreetsete demonstratiivsete vormide kasutusest välja jäämise. Analüüs näitab, et kuigi soome ja karjala keeled on säilitanud suhteliselt arhailised kolmetasandilised süsteemid, on liivi, põhjaeesti, vadja ja vepsa keeles toimunud märkimisväärsed uuendused, mis on viinud kahe- või üheosaliste paradigmadeni. Võrdlevad andmed osutavad nende arengute kujunemisel slaavi ning vähemal määral balti ja germaani keelte mõjule. Paralleelid vene liitdemonstratiivide ja vanaidaslaavi vormidega rõhutavad areaalse leviku ja kontaktmuutuste korduvaid mustreid laiemas Läänemere keeleliidu kontekstis. Teoreetilisel tasandil tõstab uurimus esile demonstratiivide ebastabiilsust grammatilise kategooriana, mis on keelekontaktide mõjudele kalduv.
Artikkel käsitleb gi-/ki-liiteliste indefiniitpronoomenite keegi ja miski käändevormide varieerumise ulatust ja varieerumist mõjutavaid tegureid kahe eesti keele suulise kõne korpuse, Eesti Rahvus ringhäälingu raadiosaadete korpuse ja Eesti taskuhäälingukorpuse põhjal. Kokku analüüsisin 975 käändevormi, millest 487 moodustasid pronoomeni keegi ja 488 miski vormid. Tulemustest selgus, et keegi puhul esinesid vormid, kus -gi/-ki paiknes käändelõpu järel, ning vormid, kus see paiknes käändelõpu ees või kahe ühesuguse käändelõpu vahel üsna võrdselt, vastavalt 54,2% ja 45,8%. Miski puhul oli nimetatud vormide osakaal 85,3% ja 14,7%. -gi/-ki asukoha varieerumist käändevormides mõjutas keegi puhul statistiliselt kõige tugevamalt kõnetempo ning miski puhul kõneliik. Binomiaalse logistilise regressiooni segamudeli järgi on 65% käändevormide varieerumisest seletatav kõnelejate individuaalsete erinevustega. *** "Variation in the case forms of the indefinite pronouns keegi ‘someone’ and miski ‘something’ in spoken Estonian" *** In the case forms of the indefinite pronouns keegi ‘someone’, miski ‘something’, kumbki ‘either’, and ükski ‘none’, the -gi/-ki can be placed after the case ending (e.g., kellelegi), before the case ending (e.g., kellegile), between two case endings (e.g., kellelegile) or before and after the case ending (e.g, kellegilegi) (Rull 1917, Saareste 1923). This variation has a strong dialectal background: forms with -gi/-ki after the case ending have historically been common only in Southern and Northeast Estonia (Saareste 1955: 16). In this article, I used data from Estonian Public Broadcasting’s Radio Corpus (Lippus et al. 2023a) and Estonian Podcast Corpus (Lippus et al. 2023b) to provide an overview of the extent of variation and to describe the factors influencing this variation. Results indicate that for keegi, -gi/-ki appears after (54.2%) and before or between two case endings (45,8%) at nearly equal frequencies, while for miski, the proportions are 85.3% and 14.7%, respectively. The primary factors influencing this variation for keegi were speech tempo, and for miski polarity.
Artiklis vaadeldakse eesti keelt teise keelena omandavate 8–10-aastaste laste sõnavara ja konstruktsioonide arengut aasta jooksul 2022. ja 2023. aastal läbi viidud pildikirjelduskatse põhjal. Aasta jooksul suurenes õpilaste sõnavara, areng toimus kõikides sõnaliikides suhteliselt ühtlaselt, siiski oli lekseemide hulga kasv kõige suurem omadus- ja asesõnade puhul. Ka konstruktsioonides toimus märkimisväärne areng, lisandus uusi konstruktsioonitüüpe ning need muutusid komplekssemaks. Sõnavara ja konstruktsioonide hulk oli omavahel seotud: mida suurem oli õppija sõnavara 2022. a pildi kirjelduses, seda rohkem eri konstruktsioone oli lisandunud tema 2023. a pildikirjeldusse. Eri sõnaliikide sõnavara ulatus konstruktsioonide arengut ei paista mõjutavat.
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"Development of vocabulary and constructions in the speech of young learners of Estonian as a second language over the course of one year"
The article examines the development of vocabulary and grammatical constructions on both phrase and clause level of children aged 8-10 years acquiring Estonian as a second language on the basis of a picture description test carried out in 2022 and 2023. Over the course of the year students’ vocabulary increased, development occurred relatively evenly in all parts of speech, however, the increase in the number of lexemes was the greatest for adjectives and pronouns. The growth of vocabulary was faster for children whose language skills were weaker in 2022. The constructions also developed significantly over the year: new types of constructions were added and they became more complex. In most children, the growth of structures was focused either on the phrase or on the clause level. The correlation between the number of lexemes and the number of constructions was significant: those children whose vocabulary was bigger in 2022 used more constructions in test conducted in 2023.The scope of the vocabulary of the different parts of speech does not seem to affect the development on the level of constructions. Data from the study on the relationship between vocabulary and constructions strongly support the view that syntactic development is driven by lexicon-level development, i.e. sufficient words must be acquired so that different types of constructions can be recognized and used.
The present article investigates Beserman constructions which contain adjectives inflected for number and nouns that they modify semantically. Prototypically adjectives do not show agreement in number with the head noun. Under certain circumstances, however, they may be marked for number by a nominal plural suffix -(j)os and a 3Sg possessive marker, or by a predicative adjectival suffix -(j)eś. Elicitation and corpus data show that constructions with the suffix -(j)os and a 3Sg possessive marker are used in contrastive contexts. As for -(j)eś-marked adjectives, we claim that two types of construction should be distinguished. Postposed -(j)eś-marked adjectives, according to syntactic tests, retain their original predicative properties. Preposed -(j)eś-marked adjectives share important properties with “prototypical” attributes in Beserman, and may be used under various information structure conditions, thus drifting towards holding the status of pure agreement constructions.
Kokkuvõte. Maria Usacheva, Maria Brykina: Besermani mitmuslike omadussõnadega konstruktsioonide süntaktilised omadused ja infostruktuur. Käesolev artikkel uurib Besermani keele konstruktsioone, mis hõlmavad arvus käänatud omadussõnu ja neid täiendavaid nimisõnu. Prototüüpselt omadussõnad ei ühildu arvus nominaalse põhisõnaga. Teatud tingimustel võivad nad siiski arvu väljendada nominaalse mitmuse sufiksi -(j)os ja kolmanda isiku ainsuse possessiivsufiksiga või predikatiivse adjektiivsufiksiga -(j)eś. Me usume, et sufiksiga -(j)os ja kolmanda isiku ainsuse possessiiv- suffiksiga konstruktsioonid on atributiivse nominalisatsiooni näited. Korpuse andmed ja küsitlus näitavad, et neid kasutatakse kontrasti väljendamiseks. Mis puudutab -(j)eś-markeriga omadussõnu, siis väidame, et eristada tuleks kahte tüüpi konstruktsioone. Järelasendis -(j)eś-markeriga omadussõnad säilitavad süntaktiliste testide kohaselt oma esialgsed predikatiivsed omadused. Eesasendis -(j)eś-markeriga omadussõnad jagavad olulisi omadusi “prototüüpsete” Besermani atribuutidega ja neid võib kasutada erinevates infostruktuuri tingimustes, mis lähendab neid ühildumiskonstruktsioonidele.
Abstract Global data processing has allowed us to reveal a set of specific folklore parallels between the Finnic and Sámi traditions on one hand and Siberian peoples on the other. We analyse the data for ten of these motifs, which consist of cosmological and aetiological concepts as well as trickster and adventure episodes. In Europe, these motifs are extremely rare, and in most cases occur only in the Finnic and Sámi traditions. In Siberia, the motifs are spread mainly among the Ob-Ugrians, Samoyeds, and Yeniseians. The pattern of distribution is consistent with the linguistic data concerning the east–west dispersal of Uralic speakers from their homeland and the evidence of gene flow from Siberia to the circum-Baltic area, which began no later than the Bronze Age. This suggests that spread of the observed motifs in Fennoscandia and the Eastern Baltic is due to migration and cultural impulses from the Volga-Ural region and North Asia.
It is well known that the basic word order pattern of a language is closely intertwined with the syntactic realization of argument focus constituents. SVO languages exhibit a focus position at the sentence’s right periphery, SOV languages exhibit an immediately preverbal focus position. The study at hand examines both the basic word order patterns and the syntactic realization of focus in Enets, Nganasan and Dolgan. The major outcome is that Nganasan and Dolgan are much more flexible with respect to their basic word order pattern and, in consequence, exhibit both an immediately preverbal focus position and a right-peripheral focus position, whilst Enets realizes argument focus constituents almost exclusively immediately preverbally.
Kokkuvõte. Chris Lasse Däbritz: Fookuse asend SOV ~ SVO variatsiooniga keeltes – tõendus eenetsi, nganassaani ja dolgaani keeltest. On üldiselt teada, et ühe keele põhiline sõnajärjestus on tihedas seoses (kitsalt) fookustatud konstituentide süntaksiga. SVO keeltes on (kitsas) fookus reali seeritud lause paremas perifeerias, SOV keeltes on (kitsas) fookus realiseeritud vahetult verbi ees. Selles artiklis uuritakse nii põhilist sõnajärjestust kui ka fookuse süntaksit eenetsi, nganassaani ja dolgaani keeltes. Uurimuse kõige olulisem tulemus on see, et nganassaani ja dolgaani keeltes on põhiline sõnajärjestus tunduvalt paindlikum kui eenetsi keeles. Sellepärast realiseeritakse nganassaani ja dolgaani keeltes (kitsalt) fookustatud konstituendid nii vahetult verbi ees kui ka lause paremas perifeerias, samas kui eenetsi keeles realiseeritakse nad ainult vahetult verbi ees.
Аннотация. Крис Лассе Дэбриц: Позиция фокуса в языках с вариативным порядком слов SOV ~ SVO – данные энецкого, нганасанского и долганского языков. Как известно, базовый порядок слов в языке определяет синтаксическую позицию фокусных аргументов. В языках SVO фокусные составляющие ставятся в конце предложения, в языках SOV – непосредственно перед глаголом. В данной статье рассматриваются базовый порядок слов и позиция фокуса в энецком, нганасанском и долганском языках и показывается, что в нганасанском и долганском языках порядок слов намного более свободен и, соответственно, фокусные аргументы могут располагаться как перед глаголом, так и в конце предложения; а в энецком языке позиция фокуса – почти всегда непосредственно перед глаголом.
The second issue of volume 11 of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies includes on the one hand topics of interest for scholars focusing on Medieval Studies, and on the other hand, further approaches aspects related to dissent and conformism, which were tackled during the tenth annual international conference on Nordic and Baltic studies in Romania. The conference entitled Dissent versus Conformism in the Nordic, Baltic and Black Sea Areas was held in Constanţa between June 6-8, 2019.
Maarja-Liisa Pilvik, Kadri Muischnek, Gerth Jaanimäe
et al.
Artikkel käsitleb digitaalse ressursi loomist aastatest 1866–1890 pärinevatest vallakohtuprotokollidest. Vallakohtuprotokollide tekstiandmebaas sisaldab ligi 420 000 sõna XML-märgendusega failides. Tekstid on keeleliselt mitmekesised, keelise kuju põhilised mõjutajad on uue vs. vana kirjaviisi kasutamine, murdelisus ning vallavõi kohtukirjutaja hariduslik ning keeleline taust. Samuti mängivad suurt rolli protokollide sisestamisel tehtud ortograafilised valikud. Tekstide keelelise analüüsi ning märksõnastamise jaoks katsetati automaatset morfoloogilist analüüsi ning nimeüksuste tuvastamist EstNLTK vastavate moodulite abil, hinnati väljundi kvaliteeti ning kaardistati analüüsi parandamise põhilised viisid. Vallakohtute protokollide kättesaadavaks tegemine ja otsitavuse parandamine tekstide keelelise ja temaatilise märgendamise abil aitab luua rikkalikku digitaalset ressurssi, mille kasutajaskonna moodustavad väga erineva tausta ja huvidega inimesed.
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"Creating a digital resource from 19th century communal court minute books"
This article describes an interdisciplinary attempt to create a digital resource from Estonian communal court minute books dating from 1866−1890, with the focus lying on using contemporary natural language processing tools for analyzing archaic language. The database contains nearly 420 000 tokens in XML-tagged files. The texts are linguistically diverse: the parallel use of old and new spelling systems, dialects, and the background of the parish clerk bring about a lot of language variation. There are also differences in the orthographic choices made during the manual insertion of the texts. For the purpose of linguistic analysis and tagging, automatic morphological analysis and named entity recognition was tested using EstNLTK libraries. A closer examination of the output suggested that it is necessary to use both text normalization and tool adaption for improving the quality of automatic analyses. This would result in tools, which would perform better at analyzing similar texts and which could, therefore, be applied in the automatic analysis crowd-sourced material. Making the communal court minute books accessible and searchable by supplying linguistic and topical information creates a rich digital resource which is subject of interest for many disciplines.
Acquisition of derivation is not a well-studied area in first language research and a comparative approach to the acquisition of derivation in different languages doesn’t exist. There is no information on how a child acquires derivation in a language with a rich and regular system of derivational patterns, or in a language where derivation is productive, but the system of derivational patterns is opaque. According to general ideas of complexity in a language, the child should start to use simplex stems first and, only after that, complex ones, that is, complexity should increase in the course of acquisition. Our paper is intended to address these issues, based on longitudinal child data from typologically different languages, Estonian and Russian. The results revealed significant differences in the acquisition of noun derivation in the two languages under observation. The system of noun derivation is acquired at a faster pace in Russian, while Estonian children have far fewer noun derivatives in their speech and they use different derivation suffixes with less regularity. Even so, the so-called building block model may be applied for both languages only partially.
Artikkelissa tarkastellaan inkeriläisten paluumuuttajien käsityksiä kielitutkinnosta, joka heidän oli suoritettava saadakseen oleskeluluvan Suomeen niin sanotulla inkeriläisstatuksella. Kielitutkinto oli käytössä vuosina 2003–2016. Tarkastelun kohteena ovat myös tämän kielitutkinnon vaikutukset kielenopiskeluun. Aineistona ovat paluumuuttovalmennukseen osallistuneiden, tutkintoon valmistautuneiden henkilöiden (n = 97) vastaukset kyselyyn, jonka he tekivät ennen kielitutkinnon suorittamista. Aineistoa tarkastellaan sisällönanalyysin keinoin. Aineiston perusteella kielenoppijat tiesivät tutkinnon rakenteesta ja sen suorittamisesta tietokoneella. Suorittajat olivat hyvin tietoisia myös siitä, että tutkinnon hyväksytty suorittaminen on edellytys Suomeen muutolle. Huomiota herättävää tässä aineistossa oli tutkinnon suorittajien myönteinen suhtautuminen kielitutkintoon ja kielen opiskeluun: tutkinnon lähetessä kielen opiskelusta oli tullut kiinnostavampaa ja mieluisampaa kuin ennen. Se, mitä tutkinnosta ajatellaan, voi vaikuttaa voimakkaasti siihen, kuinka tutkintoon valmistaudutaan ja miten tutkinnossa onnistutaan. Tämän aineiston perusteella inkeriläisopiskelijoilla oli hyvät edellytykset onnistua tutkinnossaan.
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"A high-stakes language exam: A gate to Finland, a stepping stone to Finnish"
This is a study on perceptions of Ingrian students preparing for a language exam. Ingrians are ethnic Finns who have been living in Russia and Estonia for many generations. In order to immigrate to Finland on the basis of Finnish origin they had to prove Finnish language skills at the Common European Framework level A2. In this paper, I analyze how students describe the influence of the exam on how they study Finnish. The data consists of students’ questionnaire responses (n = 97). The method is content analysis. On the basis of this data it seems that the students were aware of the structure and the computer based nature of the exam. They also knew that passing the exam was a precondition for a residence permit in Finland on the basis of Finnish origin, and that they only could take the exam once. What was exceptional in this data were the positive attitudes towards the language exam and studying the language: students reported that when the exam was coming closer, studying Finnish was more interesting and even more agreeable than it used to be. What learners think about the exam may have a strong influence on how they prepare for it and on how they succeed in it. This data shows that Ingrians had good chances to succeed in the exam.
"Comparison of fluency across proficiency levels in the writing process of native Russian-speaking learners of Estonian as a second language"
The aim of the current article is to describe fluency across proficiency levels in the writing process of native Russian-speaking learners of Estonian as a second language. The data of the study consist of texts written by 34 participants, all of whom were students at Tallinn University. The data were collected with the computer keystroke logging program ScriptLog. The written argumentative and narrative texts were rated by two experts according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The data were representative of four CEFR language proficiency levels: A2 (4 texts), B1 (13), B2 (13), and C1 (4). Fluency was analysed and described according to process, product, revision, pausing behaviour, and keyboard skills. Furthermore, the fluency of the writing process was measured on the basis of online and offline measures. The results of the study were compared across the proficiency levels. The fluency of the writing process increases with growth in proficiency, the greatest development being observed between levels B2 and C1.
Artikli eesmärk on uurida venekeelsete eesti keele õppijate kirjutamisprotsessi sujuvust ja selle seost “Euroopa keeleõppe raamdokumendi” A2-, B1-, B2- ja C1- keeleoskustasemega. Uurimuses osales 34 venekeelset üliõpilast, kellel paluti kirjutada loovkirjutis haridusteemal. Materjal on kogutud klaviatuuri klahvivajutuste salvestuse meetodil põhineva ScriptLog-programmiga. Sujuvust analüüsitakse kirjutamisprotsessi, lõpliku teksti, paranduste, pauside ning klaviatuuri kasutamisoskuse seisukohast. Lisaks on sujuvus arvutatud vastavalt protsessi ja produkti indikaatoritele. Uurimuse tulemusi võrreldakse keeleoskustasemeti. Tulemused osutavad, et teksti produtseerimine muutub keeleoskuse arenedes sujuvamaks, suurim areng on märgatav B2- ja C1-taseme vahel.
Professor of psychiatry Vladimir Chizh was a successor of Emil Kraepelin at the University of Tartu (now: Estonia; then: Russian Empire) during the years 1891â1916. The same period witnessed the second and decisive rise in Estonian national movement leading finally to the foundation of Estonian state in 1918. A particular character in Estonian national discourse was its notorious biologisation, i.e. strong presence of eugenical ideology. Professor Chizhâs scientific research supported this tendency. In 1901 Chizh published a study in which he compared the criminal activity of Estonians and Latvians. Chizhâs method derived from an assumption that the two neighbouring Baltic populations possess an extremely similar environmental, cultural and socio-political background. The biological (racial) essence of the two groups he believed to differ â Latvians belonging to Indo-European nations, Estonians being Finnic. Deriving from the previous â if any differences in the criminal behaviour of the two existed, these could be explained by biological factors. In the results of his work Chizh reported on a notorius disbalance in the criminality of the two nations, Estonians exceeding Latvians in a rough ratio 5:3. Chizh, supporting the teaching of Cesare Lombroso, had achieved in such a way his goal, i.e. he believed that he had proved the biological essence of criminal behaviour. For the Estonian community the study by Chizh opened a subsequent field for further discussions on the topic ânature versus nurtureâ.
<p><span>Artiklis uuritakse dialoogi kui erilist sidustekstide liiki, eesmärgiga määrata dialoogi struktuur, mille moodustavad mikrotaseme üksused – dialoogiaktid. Empiiriliseks materjaliks on väike telefoni- müügivestluste alamkorpus. Analüüsitavates kõnedes suhtlevad omavahel kaks ametiisikut: helistaja (koolitusfirma konsultant) pakub koolituskursusi, mida eeldatavasti vajab vastuvõtja (teise asutuse esindaja). Dialoogisalvestused on litereeritud, kasutades vestlusanalüüsi transkriptsiooni. Korpuses on märgendatud dialoogiaktid. Artiklis otsitakse reegleid, mis võimaldaksid automaatselt tuvastada müügivestluse erinevaid faase, kasutades selleks dialoogiaktide järjendeid ja nende positsiooni dialoogis. Edasine eesmärk on luua tarkvara dialoogide automaatseks pragmaatiliseks analüüsiks, sh dialoogiaktide, dialoogide lineaarse struktuuri ja alamdialoogide tuvastamiseks. </span></p><p>DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5128/ERYa9.07</p>
The political changes of 1989 stimulated a new perception and perspective of the Baltic Sea Region. And this gained momentum with the Eastern Enlargement of the EU. The new situation encouraged research as well. In this context the Baltic Sea is not an unchangeable physical setting, but also a construction of different actors or protagonists. People and powers continuously reinvent the Baltic Sea Region. That is why; the following paper focuses on the different notions of the Baltic Sea Region from the Middle Ages up to now and also examines the recent EU-Strategy of this region.