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Estonian among the languages of europe Helle Metslang

Estonian among the languages of europe Helle Metslang International Conference on Finno-Ugric Languages Università di Bologna , 1.3.2018. Emakeele Selts ( Mother Tongue Society ). Was f ounded at the University of Tartu in 1920 J oined the Academy of Sciences in 1946

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Estonian among the languages of europe Helle Metslang

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  1. Estonian among thelanguages of europe Helle Metslang International Conference on Finno-Ugric Languages Università di Bologna, 1.3.2018

  2. Emakeele Selts (MotherTongueSociety ) • Was foundedat the University of Tartu in 1920 • Joinedthe Academy of Sciences in 1946 • Missiontopromotetheuse, teaching and researchoftheEstonianlanguagein Estonia and abroad • Mainactivities : • scholarly communication • popularization of linguistic knowledge • publication of research and language materials (yearbook, books, popularjournalOma Keel) • language management

  3. Outline • Estonian inmyths and facts • Estonian as a Finnic language • Estonian and common features of European languages • Estonian as a language of the Circum-Balticarea

  4. Estonian in myths: languagebeautycontests in Europe and Estonia A legend: onceupon a time Estonianwon the second prize after Italian at the beauty contest of Europeanlanguages with the sentence Sõidatasaülesilla ‘Ride slowly across the bridge’. In 2008 a contest of themosttypical and beautiful-soundingEstonian sentence, thewinner: Ema tuli koju ‘Mothercamehome’

  5. Is Estonian a difficult language? There is a myth that Estonian is a difficult languagetolearn. It is true thate.g. 14 casesorobjectcasealternationmakes Estonian different from the Indo-European languages, which learners are mostly familiar with. However, the main categories, lexicalization and grammaticalization processes, and the abundance of loan vocabulary blend Estonian into the European context. Categoriese.g.: number, case, tense, mood, voice, person; syntacticfunctions (subject, predicate, etc.) Vocabulary: borrowings (via German, RussianorEnglish) fromLatin: protsent (< pro centum), fookus (focus), punkt (punctum) fromItalian: karussell, kastan, klarnet, kuppel, salat, salong, valuuta (cf. carosello, castagna, clarinetto, cupola, insalata, salone, valuta)

  6. IsEstonian a small and disappearinglanguage? • Bythenumber of speakers (about 1 million), Estonian belongstothetop 6% of the world’s languages • Estonian istheofficiallanguage of theRepublic of Estonia (from 1919), protectedbytheconstitution, languagelaw and thedevelopmentplan of the Estonian language • Estonian isused in all spheres of public and privatelife • The Estonian language is among the • 200 national languages • 50 languages of higher education • 30 languages with language technology • 24 official languages of the European Union.

  7. The development of Estonian • Estonian evolvedinto an independent language betweenthe 13th-16th centuries: common changesinthe local tribal dialectsresultedintheformationofthecommonlanguage • Estonianwas influenced by various Germanic, Baltic and Slavonic languages. This is proved e.g. by multiple loan words. • German influenceinthe 13th-19th century(theupperclasswereGermans) • Standard Estonian started to take shape in the 16th–17th centuries, it was mostly developed by the German clergy

  8. Estonian as a Finniclanguage • Estonian belongs to the Finnicgroupof the Finno-Ugric language family • OtherFinniclanguages: Finnish, Livonian, Vepsian, Votian, Karelian, Izhorian

  9. Finno-Ugric and Samoyediclanguages

  10. SomeFinnicfeatures in Estonian 1 • Largenumber of cases (14 productive cases) • Gradealternation (tuba:toa:tuba ‘room’ N, G, P cases) • No articles (either definite or indefinite) • No grammatical gender either of nouns or personal pronouns. (As the pronoun tema can refer to both men and women (and even to a thing), an Estonian speaker does not face problems of political correctness as do those who speak Indo-European languages) • Possessiveconstructionwiththetheauxiliary ‘be’ • Perfect and pluperfectwiththeauxiliary ‘be’ (on elanud, oli elanud‘has/had lived’)

  11. SomeFinnicfeatures in Estonian2 • Alternation between total and partial forms • In objects: ostsin raamatu / raamatut‘I bought/was buying a book’ • In subjects: vanaemal on hallid juuksed / halle juukseid‘grandma has gray hair’ • In adverbials: olen siin töötanud aasta / aastaid‘I have worked here for a year/years’ • In nominaal predicates: ta on mu parim sõber / mu parimaid sõpru‘she is my best friend/one of my best friends' No accusative case – the object can be in the partitive, genitive or nominative case

  12. Finno-Ugric languages are case-rich (World Atlas ofLanguageStructures, map49: number of caseshttp://wals.info/chapter/49

  13. Estonian and common features of European languages • Geographically close languages share similar features (e.g. the perfect and pluperfect with the verb to be in Estonian, Livonian, Latvian and Lithuanian) • Regions with common linguistic features are called linguistic areas (German sprachbund), e.g. the Balkan linguistic area • Searches for European and Circum-Baltic language areas • Euroversals, SAE (Standard AverageEuropean) etc.

  14. Standard AverageEuropean (SAE) Benjamin Lee Whorf 1939. The concept arose from comparing the North American indigenous languages with European languages. “Since, with respect to the traits compared, there is little difference betweenEnglish, French, German, or otherEuropeanlanguages with the 'possible' (but doubtful) exception ofBalto-Slavic andnon-Indo-European, I have lumped these languages into one group called SAE, or "Standard Average European“.“ (Whorf 1956: 138)

  15. Standard AverageEuropean (SAE): features typical of European languages • Martin Haspelmath 1998, 2001: 12 typical structural features (concentrated in Europe, rareoutside of Europe) and some other possible common features • Common features likely emerged during the great period of migration at the beginning of the formation of the European cultural space. TheSAE linguistic area is also called the Charlemagnelinguistic area.

  16. SAE features(Haspelmath 2001) • 12 primarily morphosyntactic features, e.g. • definite and indefinite articles (thebook, abook) • Relative clauses with declinablerelative pronouns: I woke up a student who had nodded off • HAVE-perfect (hasdone)

  17. SAE linguistic area (Haspelmath 2001) • Measure of SAE membership: how many of the 9 SAE features are present in a given language. • SAE languages with 5-9 SAE features: Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Hungarian • The remaining languages, with no more than 2 of the common features, fall outside of SAE: Finnish, Estonian, Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Basque, Breton, Maltese, and others.

  18. Degrees of SAE membership(map fromHeine & Kuteva 2006)

  19. SAE features 1 Relative clauses follow the noun; the clause opens with a declinable relative pronoun (e.g. der/die/das/welcher/welche/welches;who, whose, whom) (+) Äratasin tudengi, kes oli tukkuma jäänud ‘I woke up a student who had nodded off’

  20. Therelativeclause (WALS, map 122) http://wals.info/chapter/122

  21. SAE features2 Comparative construction with a particle(Mother is younger thanfather) (+) Emaon nooremkuiisa‘Mother is younger than father’ There is also locativecomparative construction: Ema on isast(ELAT) noorem http://wals.info/feature/121

  22. Comparative construction(WALS, map121)

  23. SAE features 3 Definite and indefinite article(the, a) (-) cf. article-like use of E see ‘this’, üks ‘one’ Ma eijaksatänasedaajaluguőppida ‘Today I have no energy to study the history’ Ükstüdruktõisulleüheraamatu ‘A girl brought you a book’

  24. SAE features 4 Nominative experiencer prevails: I like, I need (-) Use of syntactic patterns with the nominative experiencer is becoming more frequent in Estonian Peetril(ADESS) on vajapuhkust Peeter(NOM)vajabpuhkust ‘Peeter needs some rest’

  25. SAE features5 HAVE-perfect(-) But possessivesyntactic structures with the impersonal / passive perfect are spreading. cf.ownership/possession: Mul on pilet I.ADEisticket ‘I have a ticket’ possessive perfect: Mul on pilet ostetud‘I have a ticket bought’;

  26. Estonian and the features of SAE 3 features of 12 are present in Estonian, another 5 show developments in Estonian in the direction of SAE. Estonian currently has: • relative clauseraamat, mida ma lugesin‘the book that I read’ • comparative constructionsuurem kuihärg ‘bigger than a bull’ Developing or expanding their usage spheres are the following: • articles: üksmees ‘a man’, seevanaema ‘the grandmother’ • nominative experiencer: ma vajanpuhkust ‘I need rest’ • possessive perfect: mul on töö tehtud‘I have the work done’ • passive: sa oled ülikooli vastu võetud‘you are accepted into the university’

  27. Language change and variation • Theconceptof SAE: • relies on staticdescriptions of languages • parallel forms and language variation are not taken into account • categorizationis discrete(the feature is either present or absent) • It is necessary to consider developments taking place within a language, parallel forms, dialects, sublanguages etc.

  28. Some typical developments in European languages(Heine & Kuteva 2006) • Emergence of articles • Emergence of the possessive perfect • Development of modal usages of the verbs ‘threaten’ and ‘promise’

  29. Possessive perfectin the Circum-Baltic area Estonian: Mul on pilet ostetud ‘I have a ticket bought’ Estonian Russian: U tebjabiletkuplen? ‘Have you bought a ticket?’ North Russian: U menjarukaporaneno ‘My hand is hurt’ (lit. ‘I have my hand hurt’) Votic: Silla on vetettubābuškaltüvätširjakāsa ‘You have taken a good letter from grandma’ Latvian: Viņam viss jaubijaizteikts ‘He had already said everything’

  30. Stages of possessive perfect development on the European “periphery” (HeineandNomachi 2010)

  31. ähvardama‘threaten’ • Changingfrom a lexical verb (someonethreatenssomeone) into a modalauxiliary verb (someeventthreatenstohappen, i.e. willprobablyhappen). • Thisdevelopmentoriginatedin 12th-century French, and hasspreadthroughoutEuropeviawrittenlanguage. (Heine & Kuteva 2006) • Fourstagesofdevelopment, all representedinEstonian

  32. Stagesofauxiliarizationof ‘ähvardama’ IKarl drohtseinemChef Karl ähvardab oma ülemust ‘Karl threatens his boss’ IIUnsdroht eine Katastrophe Meid ähvardabkatastroof‘A catastrophe threatens us’ IIIDas Hochwasserdroht die Altstadtzuüberschwemmen Suurvesiähvardabvanalinnaüleujutada‘High water threatens to flood the old town’ IV Mein Mann drohtkrankzuwerden Mu meesähvardabhaigeksjääda‘My husband threatens to fall ill’

  33. Stages of development of ‘threaten’ constructions in European languages (Heineja Nomachi 2010)

  34. Changeable periphery • The basic structure of Estonian (parts of speech, sentence structure, categories) resembles that of other European languages • The primary features of SAE are only modestly represented in Estonian and Finnish • Bothlanguages exhibit shifts in the direction of SAE and other developments taking place in European languages • The areal features reflect historical language contacts and long-term developments • Currentcontacts with geographically more distant languages, especially English, due largely to the internet.

  35. English-like structures emerging in Estonian HAVE-constructions withthe verbs omama ja evima, introduced by thelanguagereformerJohannes Aavik: Olen edukas vaidniikauakuiomanmõjukadsõpru.(BLOG) ‘I will be successful only as long as I have influential friends.’ Saatejuhtparakueievinudmingitkriitikameelt. (NEWS) ‘Unfortunately, the show host had no critical mind.’ • Progressive: EuroopaKomisjonon arutamas, kas kaotada 1- ja 2sendised eurorahadvõimitte(MegaDelfi) ‘The European Commission is discussing whether or not to eliminate 1- and 2-cent coins’

  36. Distance between Eurasian languages (by Michael Cysouw, on the basis of WALS data)

  37. Estonian as a Circum-Baltic language The languages spoken near the Baltic Sea share certain similarities, which could be due to: • related languages: Finnic, Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian), Germanic (Swedish, Danish, German), Slavic (Russian, Polish) • Long-term language contacts by both land and sea • Similar language-internal developments in various languages

  38. The Circum-Baltic language area 1 • Linguistic area? Rather acontactsuperpositionzone (Koptjevskaja-Tamm & Wälchli 2001) • Power and borders in the region have shifted throughout history and there has not been one single center of political control • Nor have the shared linguistic features converged in any one central area

  39. Object and subject case alternation Found in Finnic, Baltic, and Eastern Slavic languages. Mutual influence. Estlaual on raamat(NOM) / laual ei ole raamatut (PART) Finpöydällä on kirja(NOM) / pöydällä ei ole kirjaa(PART) Rusna stolekniga(NOM) / na stole net knigi(GEN) ‘Thereis a book / no book on thetable’ LitJisdavė man knygą(ACC) / Jisnedavė man knygos(GEN) EstTa andis mulle raamatu (GEN) / ei andnud mulle raamatut (PART) ‘He gave me a book/did not give me a book’

  40. Possessive construction • Locative construction with the verb ‘be’ in Finnic, Latvian, Russian, unlike the ‘have’ construction which is widespread in Europe. http://wals.info/feature/117A EstMul on uus auto FinMinullaon uusi auto RusU menjanovajamašina • ‘I have a new car’

  41. WALS map 117: possessiveconstructions

  42. Polar questions • Sentence-initial interrogative particle– some languages, e.g. Estonian, Livonian, Baltic languages. http://wals.info/feature/92A Est. Kas ta tuleb? Liv. Voi ta tulāb? Lith. Arjisateis? ‘Is he coming?’ • Verb-initial question – Estonian, Finnish, Germanic, Slavic languages. Probably of SAE origin. • Oled sa täna kodus?‘Are you at home today?’ http://wals.info/feature/116A

  43. WALS map116: polar questions

  44. WALS map 92: location of interrogative particle

  45. Verb form expressing evidentiality (directness/indirectness of information) Baltic languages, Estonian (reported speech), Livonian. Probably originated among the southern Finnic languages. Widespread in the Balkans and outside of Europe. http://wals.info/feature/78A E Homme olevat ilus ilm ‘It’s toldto be good weather tomorrow’

  46. WALS map78: expression of evidentiality

  47. Estonian in the Circum-Baltic area • Estonian exhibits most of the structural features widespread in the Circum-Baltic language area • Therefore, Estonian can be considered one of the central Circum-Baltic languages

  48. Where does Estonian belong: the static perspective • among Finnic languages – the same basic structure • among the central Circum-Baltic languages • on the periphery of SAE

  49. Where does Estonian belong: the dynamic perspective • Common developments with other European languages - convergence • Slightly closer to SAE than Finnish is • Globalization, the information age, and free movement of people serve to bring languages and linguistic changes together – linguistic areas can be reshaped

  50. Changeable periphery During the co-existence that spans over several millennia the Uralic and Indo-European languages around the Baltic Sea have converged while there has been divergence from their genetically related eastern languages. (Dahl 2008)

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