Siinses artiklis arutlen kahe küsimuse üle: kui õppija kasutab akadeemilise teksti kirjutamisel tekstiroboti abi, siis (1) kuidas võiks mõista tekstiroboti rolli selles protsessis ning (2) kui akadeemilise teksti kirjutamist käsitleda laiendatud kognitiivse protsessina, siis kas tekstirobot laiendab inimvaimu? Artiklis tekstiroboti võimalikke rolle kaaludes selgub, et tekstirobotit ei saa paigutada ühtegi kategooriasse, millega oleme akadeemilise kirjutamise kontekstis seni harjunud: see pole allikas, (kaas)autor, vestluspartner ega pelgalt tööriist. Teise küsimuse üle arutledes võtan aluseks laiendatud vaimu (ingl extended mind) lähenemise, mille järgi laienevad inimese vaimsed protsessid mõnikord väljapoole tema aju ja keha, hõlmates väliseid protsesse või vahendeid kognitiivse süsteemi osana. Artiklis selgitan, et sellest, kuivõrd vastab tekstiroboti kasutusviis usaldusväärse sidususe (ingl reliable coupling) kriteeriumidele, sõltub ka tekstiroboti kasutamise mõju inimvaimule. Arutluskäigust ilmneb, et inimvaimu laiendamiseks on määravaim usalduse kriteerium, mis eeldab kasutaja oskust tekstiroboti väljundit kriitiliselt hinnata. Kui kasutaja usaldab tekstirobotit pimesi ja kasutab väljundit seda kriitiliselt hindamata, siis tekstiroboti kasutamine pigem ahendab inimvaimu, pärssides kasutaja kirjutamis- ja mõtlemisoskuse arengut.
Abstract. Vivian Puusepp: Chatbots and the extended mind. How to under stand the role of artificial intelligence in academic writing? In this article, I discuss two issues: when a learner uses the assistance of a chatbot in academic writing, (1) how could the role of the chatbot be understood in this process? and (2) assuming academic writing is considered an extended cognitive process, does the chatbot extend the human mind? Studying the possible roles of the chatbot shows that the latter cannot be placed into any category that we are accustomed to in the context of academic writing: it is neither a source, a (co-)author, a conversation partner, nor a mere tool. Discussing the second question, I draw on the extended mind approach, which holds that human mental processes sometimes extend beyond the brain and body, in corporating external processes or tools as parts of the cognitive system. I argue that the extent to which the use of a chatbot meets the criteria of reliable coupling also determines its impact on the human mind. In the article, I clarify that the most crucial criterion for extending the human mind is the criterion of trust, which presupposes the user’s ability to critically evaluate the chatbot’s output. If the user blindly trusts the chatbot and relies on its output without any critical reflection, then the use of the chatbot may actually narrow the human mind, hindering the development of the user’s writing and thinking skills.
Rääkimisoskuse arendamine on teise keele õppes väga oluline, kuid sellega on õppijail ka palju probleeme. Üheks rääkimisoskuse arengut mõjutavaks teguriks on tunnis kasutatavad õppetegevused. Artikli alusuuringus arendati rääkimistegevuste klassifikatsiooni, rääkimistegevused jagati keelelise eesmärgiga harjutusteks ning suhtluseesmärgiga ülesanneteks. Selle klassifikatsiooni alusel analüüsiti üheksa täiskasvanute eesti keele kui teise keele B1-taseme õpperühma rääkimistegevusi ja nende mahtu. Tulemused näitavad, et kursustel räägiti küllaltki palju, kuid teadlikku rääkimisoskuse arendamist esines vähem. Kokkuvõttes kasutati tundides rohkem harjutusi ning vähem ülesandeid. Enim rääkimistegevusi viidi läbi kogu õpperühmaga, mis vähendas iga üksiku õppija rääkimismahtu. Rääkimisoskuse arendamine varieerus küllaltki palju sõltuvalt õpetajast ja õppematerjalist.
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"Learning activities that develop speaking skills in B1-level Estonian language courses for adults" *** This study examines the teaching of speaking skills in Estonian language classes. It aimed to investigate the activities used to develop speaking skills in B1-level Estonian language classes for adults. Research material was collected through lesson observations (n = 27) from nine adult B1-level Estonian language study groups. The average class size was 9–14 learners, exept for one group with 4 learners. The duration of one course was 120 academic hours, held 2–4 times a week. The observer attended three study meetings of each study group (2–4 academic hours at a time) and collected the following data: 1) list of all the activities related to developing speaking skills 2) a log of time spent on these activities, and 3) the speaking time of learners. The experience of teachers teaching Estonian L2 varied from two years to more than 20 years. Teachers had generally graduated from Estonian language and literature or Estonian as a foreign language/second language. Some teachers had previous experience in teaching Estonian to adults at the B1 level. In addition to adult courses, teachers also teach in general education, vocational education and the university. The activities were categorised as exercises or tasks. Exercises were considered to be fully supported (e.g. reading phrases, repeating what you heard) or partially supported (e.g. practicing grammar forms according to a model) reproductive activities. Productive speech activities that develop communicative skills or prepare for situations that require spontaneous speaking (e.g. improvisation, role-playing games) were considered tasks. A distinction was made between activities for monological and dialogical speaking. We also examined the use of the teaching material. Speaking activities were done a lot in classes – an average of 61% of the total learning time. Speaking activities included more exercises – 34% of the total speaking time – and fewer tasks – 27% of the total speaking time. There were used many receptive exercises. Of the types of tasks, the largest number of conversational tasks were used. The largest number of speaking activities was done with the whole group (56%). 34% of the total speaking time was used in pairwork and 10% in a small group (3–5 people). The results of the study show variation between the courses. There was also visible a link between the teacher and the use of the teaching material. The subsequent stage of the study examines the development of learners’ speaking skills during the course. In the final stage of the study, the relationship between the speaking activities used in the course and the development of speaking skills and motivation are examined.
"Verb constructions and complexity across proficiency levels in learner Finnish".
Learner language development can be analysed by measuring complexity, accuracy and fluency.
Complexity, our focus here, can be defined as the range and sophistication of learner language. Syntactic complexity is typically analysed by quantitatively measuring the length of production units or the amount of subordination rather than by exploring syntactic variation and diversity in learner language. In this article, the development of syntactic complexity in written learner Finnish across the CEFR proficiency levels is studied by exploring changes in the use of non-finite verb constructions. The aim of the study is to bring to light differences in complexity that are not captured by the traditional measures of syntactic complexity.
The data in the study comprise 241 written learner Finnish texts (23,596 words) from the University of Jyväskylä Cefling project corpus and they cover all CEFR levels, from A1 to C2. The data are explored both quantitatively and qualitatively. The focus of the study is on the changes in the use of verb constructions containing a finite verb and at least one non-finitive verb form, and on how those changes may reflect the development of syntactic complexity. The results show that the constructions studied do not necessarily grow in length but instead become more varied both lexically and structurally as proficiency increases. Such changes are not revealed by quantitative measures of syntactic complexity focusing on the length of production units. Hence, the results support calls to adopt a more qualitative approach to investigating syntactic complexity. They also suggest that, in some languages, syntactic, morphological and lexical complexity cannot always be separated.
Eesti keele kui teise keele täiskasvanud õppijaile valmistab rääkimisoskuse omandamine keelekursustel raskusi. Oma doktoritöös uurin keelekursustel kasutatavate rääkimisoskust õpetavate võtete seost rääkimisoskuse ja rääkimismotivatsiooni arenguga. Siinses artiklis annan ülevaate pilootuuringust, mille käigus koostasin uuringu jaoks vajalikke mõõdikuid andvad rakendused: rääkimismotivatsiooni küsimustiku ja rääkimispäeviku, rääkimisoskust mõõtva testi ja tunnivaatlustabeli rääkimisoskust õpetavate tunnitegevuste fikseerimiseks. Katsetasin neid mõõdikuid ühel Ida-Virumaal toimunud B1-taseme eesti keele kursusel. Tulemused näitavad valitud mõõdikute üldist sobivust põhiuuringu läbiviimiseks, kuid rääkimisoskust mõõtva testi hindamine ja rääkimisoskust fikseerivate tunnitegevuste klassifikatsioon vajab veel täiendamist.
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How to study the teaching of speaking skills? Pilot study on the example of a B1-level Estonian language course for adults
Many learners of Estonian as a second language find it difficult to acquire speaking skills. Speaking skills are important for coping and working in society, and on the basis of this, a person's language skills are also assessed. Achieving language proficiency at B1 level is especially important because it allows a person to cope independently in everyday life and in several positions. Therefore, the acquisition of speaking skills in language courses is important. In recent years, the need to teach Estonian has increased even more due to immigration. Teachers say they use a communicative approach in language lessons to develop their speaking skills, but what techniques they use in lessons need to be studied. Therefore, in my doctoral thesis, I will study the relationship between the techniques used in language courses that teach speaking skills and the development of speaking skills. In the article, I will give an overview of the pilot study that preceded the main study, during which I created a scale questionnaire and a speaking diary measuring speaking motivation, a test measuring speaking skills and a lesson observation table to record lesson activities that teach speaking skills, and a grading scale to assess speaking skills. I tested all the metrics at the beginning of a B1 level Estonian language course in Ida-Virumaa and at the end of a three-month (63 lessons) observation period, and the lesson observation table in every lesson observation, seven times in total. To test the grading scale, I tried to evaluate the recorded task performances of one of the participants. The results showed the overall suitability of the selected metrics for conducting the main study, but the classification of lesson activities that teach speaking skills still needs to be improved.
Abstract This article discusses a group of South Finnic languages and/or dialects that share common phonological features. These languages and dialects are Livonian, Mulgi South Estonian, Island North Estonian and Western North Estonian, all deriving from Proto-Finnic. In contemporary Finnic taxonomy, the first language to diverge from Proto-Finnic was South Estonian, followed by Livonian, and later by North Estonian and Votic. Nevertheless, all the mentioned languages have converged after their initial divergence, resulting in an areal grouping called South Finnic. The contribution of this article is to assess linguistic features shared by the mentioned languages and dialects and what their nature can reveal. I argue that the features point to a new understanding of Finnic taxonomy in that the addition of a narrower group of Southwest Finnic can be justified as a Finnic branch.
This article investigates the interrelationship of migration and language in the context of the migration experience of healthcare workers migrating from Hungary to Finland and Sweden and becoming speakers of Finnish or Swedish in the process. A nexus analytical approach is applied in studying the investment of the healthcare workers in learning a new language for work. The analysis is based on interviews made with individuals either participating in or facilitating labour migration. The findings show that the investment in learning a new language in a labour migration context is intertwined with the migration decision itself, and the migrants usually realise a return on this investment while becoming legitimate second language speakers and community members. Individual life histories, global recruitment practices, language policies and language ideologies influence the process. The communicative situations at the workplace play a crucial role in reconstructing professional identities in this context.
AbstractThe present article studies verbs that are used to conveychange-of-statein the Finnic languages: “to come”, “to go”, “to remain/stay”, “to get”, “will be”, “to make/do”, and “to be born/give birth”. These are polysemous core verbs, which can be expected to be integrated in constructions with (new) generalized grammatical meaning. As will be shown, in order to conveychange-of-statetypically they occur in constructions that either mark the goal and the source or leave both unmarked. In addition, change can be associated with experiential, existential, and possessive constructions, which also enable to shed more light on the development of the above-mentioned verbs, including the possible developmentchange-of-state→future. The article demonstrates that each Finnic language uses several verbs from the list presented above, but there are differences in what are the most commonly used ones and in what kind of constructions they occur. In some languages, there is a generalchange-of-stateverb, which also appears as a future copula if there is no competing future copula. In the case of Estonian, Finnish, and Livonian, the results of previous studies onchange-of-statepredicates were used; for the other Finnic languages, a separate data set was compiled using various collections of texts.
During the Middle Ages, rulers from different regions in Europe aspired to an idea of imperial hegemony over a territory. On the other hand, there were rulers who deliberately refused to be elected as emperors, although their reign showed some characteristics of imperial rule. This essay ask for the reasons why some rulers such as Otto I strove for an imperial agenda and how the expeditions of his margraves across Elbe were legitimized by contemporary writers. According to the idea of universal expansion including both Christians and pagans from all over the world, the Ottonian kingdom became an empire, an intrinsically Christian one, however, which followed the Carolingian model.
In the 18th century, the Livonian language in Salaca Parish became the subject of academic interest, and also persecution. This article examines the contradictory challenges posed by the Age of Enlightenment, primarily the exclusion of the Livonian language from public use that was carried out with the help of administrative and legal measures. The sources for the article include contemporary descriptions, as well as data related to the families that can be identified as being Livonians. The differing attitudes of the two largest manor administrators toward the Livonian peasants and their language is highlighted along with the ensuing consequences. There is also a description of the projects and undertakings that were impacted by the Enlightenment at the parish’s larger manors. To start, the article defines the borders of the Livonians’ linguistic island in the first half of the 18th century, and in conclusion, a comparison is provided of the language usage of the Livonians in this same area in the first half of the 19th century.
Kokkuvõte. Aldur Vunk: Seosed valgustusaja ja liivi keele püsimise vahel Salatsi kihelkonnas. Valgustusliikumise mõju Balti kubermangudes ei väljendunud kõikjal positiivsete arengute kaudu ja 18. sajandil ei suudetud ühiskonda kaasajastada tasakaalustatult, hävitamata elutervele kultuurile omast paljusust. Valgustusaeg koos samal ajal süvenenud pärisorjusega oli Salatsi liivi talupoegadele mitmeti väljakutsuv; võrreldes varasema ajaga sõltus nende kultuurilise ja keelelise omapära püsimine kohalikest mõisnikest ja nende heakskiidul ametisse pandud pastoritest. See polnud aga kaugeltki parim võimalus, sest koos uue mentaliteedi võidulepääsemisega oli suurenenud lõhe ka haritud ja valgustatud inimeste eneste vahel. Liivlaste kultuurilist emantsipatsiooni takistasid seisuslikud tõkked ja Salaca kihelkonna kaugus nii kubermangu- kui ka kreisikeskustest ei võimaldanud siia koonduda rohkematel haritlastel kui pastor ja mõisnike koduõpetajad. Liivlaste identiteedi väga oluline nõrgenemine valgustusaja kestel Salatsi kihelkonnas on tuvastatav nende asustusalana kirjeldatud piirkonna kiires kahanemises 18. sajandi teisel poolel ja 19. sajandi alguses. Ometi polnud Salatsi kihelkond valgustusajal vaimse elu orbiidilt kadunud ja täielikku pimedusse mattunud kolgas, kus valgustusideed oleks olnud täiesti tundmatud. Pigem suurenes sellel ajastul haritud inimeste iseteadlike suundumiste osakaal ja palju sõltus ka Salatsi kihelkonna väheste haritlaste huvidest. Samal ajal kui saksakeelsesse teadusperioodikasse jõudis teadmine akadeemilist huvi pakkuvast liivlaste kultuurist, algas selle väljenduste mahasurumine. Aastatel 1742–1778 kihelkonnakogudust teeninud pastor Johann Conrad Burchard saatis Peterburi Teaduste Akadeemia liikmele August Ludwig von Schlözerile liivi keele alase kaastöö ja jätkas selle keele uurimist Salatsi kihelkonnas. Tema järeltulija, pastor Ignatius Franz Hackel, võttis aga eesmärgiks liivi talupoegade iidse ja omapärase kultuuri hävitamise, mis ühiskonna poolt tema kätte antud volituste ja pika ametiaja (1778–1836) toel ka teoks sai. Lisaks pastoritele oli suur osakaal talupoegade elu suunamisel mõisnikel. 1738. aastal poolitatud Salatsi mõisa kahes pooles olid tingimused liivi kultuuri säilimisele erinevad. Salatsi kihelkonnas elanud liivlastest kasutas oma emakeelt kauem Svētciemsi mõisa kogukond. Seda mõisa pidasid 18. sajandil valdavalt kohalikud või samast piirkonnast pärit mõisnikud ja väljapaistvaim neist oli Riia literaatide suhtlusringkonda kuulunud kihelkonna sillakohtunik Friedrich Gustav von Dunten. 1769. aastal mõisa üle võtnud parun Dunten korraldas samal aastal kohalike talupoegade keele jäädvustamise Riia Toomkiriku ülempastori ja konsistooriumi koolijuhi Immanuel Justus von Esseni juures. Samal ajal Vecsalaca mõisas suurejoonelisi ja ajastule iseloomulikke kultuurimonumente püstitanud parun Friedrich Hermann von Fersen rõhutas küll oma majapidamise kuulumist antiikse ja germaani kultuuri mõjuvälja, kuid aitas ise kaasa seal veel elujõulise liivi kultuuri väljasuretamisele.
Märksõnad: liivlased, Salaca kihelkond, Vecsalaca, Svētciems, Ķirbiži, 18. sajand, liivi keel
Kubbõvõttõks. Aldur Vunk: Sidtõkst sieldõmāiga ja līvõ kīel pīlimiz vail Salāts mōgõrs. Sieldõmāiga likkimiz mȯj 18. āigastsadā Baltijs iz ūo set pozitīvi. Sieldõmāiga īdskubs vǟrgõdāigaks vȯļ Salāts mōaŗīntijizt pierāst lǟlam. Nänt kultūr ja kīel pīlimi tǟnkiz mȯiznikīst ja päpīst. Bet se võimi sugīd iz ūo amā paŗīmi, sīestõ põŗg kovāld rovzt eņtš vail kazīz jo sūrõks. Līvlizt identitēt 18. āigastsadā lopāndõks pūol ja 19. āigastsadā īrgandõksõs ei jo vōjlizõks, sīestõ jo piškizõks ei mō, kus ne jelīzt, ja Salāts immõrkouț vȯļ kougõn sidāmist. Salāts immõrkouț umīțigid iz ūo täužiņ pimdõ kūož, kus sieldõmāiga mõtkõd äb vȯlkst vȯnnõd tundtõbõd. Sīel īž āigal, ku saksā tieudlizt āigakērad sizzõl päzīzt tieutõd iļ līvõd kultūr, īrgiz ka līvõd kultūr mōzõ pīkstimi. Päp Johann Conrad Burchard sōtiz Pētõrburg Tieud Akadēmij nõtkõmõn August Ludwig von Schlözerõn eņtš tuņšlimiztīe iļ līvõ kīel ja jatkīz līvõ kīel tuņšlimiztīedõ Salāts immõrkouțš ka pierrõ. Bet täm tagāntuļļi, päp Ignatius Franz Hackel, īrgiz artõ līvõ kultūrõ nei ku set sȭitiz. 1738. āigasts Salāts mȯizõ sai jagdõt kōd jagūks. Sīe Pivākilā jags līvõ kēļ sai kȭlbatod amā kōgim. Mȯiznikā Friedrich Gustav von Dunten tigtiz līvõd kultūrõ. Bet nägțõbõks Vanāsalāts mȯizõ barōn Friedrich Hermann äbțiz artõ līvõd kultūrõ.
"Where does the child get those songs: Linguistic input and output under the microscope"
The article discusses the qualitative and functional peculiarities of caregiver speech and child speech, the importance of the way in which children are spoken to, and whether input language has an important role in speech development. Also, an overview is provided of the nature and essential features of input language, presenting the similarities and differences between input and output and describing the ways in which different factors affect the way in which children are interacted with, including child-directed speech.
As children acquire language in a speech community, with different social situations and with interlocutors whose language exhibits varying degrees of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic competence, child-directed speech is dynamic and changes as the child matures. The form of child-directed speech is considered to play an important role in children’s language development, and a number of linguistic features that appear during certain time periods in child-directed speech are also reflected in the child’s own speech. However, there are also linguistic features that, while present in adult speech, do not appear at all in child speech.
"Syntactic analysis of Estonian netspeak using Constraint Grammar"
The paper provides an overview of an attempt to adapt the Estonian Constraint Grammar rule set for netspeak. The rule set has been developed by Kaili Müürisep and Tiina Puolakainen for shallow and dependency parsing of Estonian literary language, and it has previously been adapted for shallow parsing of spoken Estonian by Kaili Müürisep and Heli Uibo.
First, in order to adapt the rules, a chatroom corpus was parsed with the existing rule set. The corpus was manually revised and based on the errors that were found, changes were made to the rule set. The changes regarded detection of clause boundaries and particle verbs, as well as assignment of syntactic tags and dependency relations. Extensive use of discourse particles and direct addresses, short sentence length, and small percentage of attributes among the syntactic functions used in text appeared to be the most distinctive features of netspeak, as well as the large amount of elliptical sentences from which, in addition to other syntactic functions, a predicate can be left out.
As a result of adapting the rule set, the results of both shallow and dependency parsing improved. The most error-prone syntactic functions were subjects, predicatives, and adverbials. In dependency parsing, the largest number of errors was made in determining the governors of adverbials.
"Communicative space and its modeling"
Communication between people can take various forms depending on a lot of circumstances – participants’ individual characteristics, their social roles, subject of conversation, etc. The paper introduces a work in progress on modelling one aspect of natural human communication – communicative space. Communicative space is a mental space where a communication participant places himself/herself with respect to other ones and where (s)he is ‘moving’ during a communication event. Communicative space can be characterized by different features, e.g., (social) closeness of a communication participant with the partner, collaboration, politeness, etc. These features of communication can be conveyed by language use as well as by different nonverbal means (body movement, facial expressions, etc.). The values +1, 0, and –1 are used for the coordinates in communicative space. Examples of human-human dialogues – both everyday and institutional – demonstrate how participants pass different points in communicative space during a conversation. The further aim is to include such a model of communicative space in an experimental system for modelling conversational agents in order to make interaction with the system more human-like.
Semantilised rollid väljendavad semantilisi suhteid entiteetide ja sündmuste vahel ning on keeleteaduses laialt kasutatav vahend lause predikaadi ja tema argumentide omavaheliste suhete selgitamiseks semantilisel tasandil. Sellegipoolest ei ole keeleteaduses välja kujunenud ühest arusaama sellest, kui palju ja millised semantilised rollid on keele kirjeldamisel vajalikud. Käesolevas artiklis tutvustatakse olulisemat semantiliste rollidega seotud problemaatikat. Artiklis antakse ülevaade semantiliste rollide ajaloost, enamkasutatavatest semantilistest rollidest, rollide hierarhilisusest ning rolle eristavatest olulistest joontest (kontroll, mõjutatus, elusus), rollide markeerimisest ja kuhjumisest eesti keele näidete varal.
Semantic roles as a linguistic tool. Semantic roles are widely used in linguistics to analyse and describe language and are most commonly understand as semantic concepts which show how participants and events are related. However, there is no general agreement about the number of semantic roles; the definitions of semantic roles vary from study to study likewise. In this paper we provide an overview of the history of semantic roles and also give a short list of main semantic roles. Our purpose is to highlight some key aspects of establishing semantic roles, such as narrow vs. wide definitions of semantic roles, the hierarchies of semantic roles, and the main features (namely, control, volitionality, and affectedness) that are related to the content of semantic roles. We also address an issue concerning expressing semantic roles, that is, how a particular semantic role may be lexicalised with different linguistic means and how semantic roles may be conflated.
This study is a construction-specific approach to subjecthood in Estonian. It has grown out of Croft’s (2001) view that due to the diversity of the syntactic roles’ distribution across constructions, there is a need for a shift in grammars to construction- specific syntactic roles. However, in order to compare different arguments, it is also necessary to employ a global cross-constructional subject category. This study treats subjecthood as a set of properties that is represented on arguments to a different degree. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of Estonian prototypical subjects and subject-like arguments (10 in total) from the viewpoint of a large number of morphosyntactic criteria (16). The study is an attempt to apply multivariate analysis on the arguments’ syntactic behaviour research. The paper claims that most Estonian subject-like arguments only show subjecthood properties to a limited degree. Supportive data is provided for the Hierarchy of Grammatical Relations Constructions.