Lahktarindid suulises eesti keeles: uurimus infostruktuuri raamistikus

Käesolev doktoriväitekiri „Initial and final detachments in spoken Estonian: a study in the framework of Information Structuring“ käsitleb lahktarindeid eesti suulises keeles infostruktuuri raamistikus. Lahktarinditena (inglise keeles detachments, dislocations) vaadeldakse siin konstruktsioone, milles leksikaalne element esineb kas enne pealauset või pärast seda, kusjuures pealauses esineb leksikaalse elemendiga samaviiteline asesõna. Neid konstruktsioone peetakse spontaanses keelekasutuses universaalseteks, kuid nende esinemus ja funktsioonid on keeleti mõnevõrra erinevad. Lahktarindeid ei ole eesti keeles varem uuritud; üldiselt on neid keeleuurimustes seotud infostruktuuri mõistetega nagu teema ja postreema, st nad tõstavad esile infostruktuuri tasandil leksikaalses üksuses ühelt poolt teema, mille kohta pealauses (reema) midagi öeldakse ning teiselt poolt esinevad nad struktuurides, kus pealause ehk reema on lausungis esimesel kohal, millele järgneb leksikaalse üksusena postreema. Et infostruktuuri tasandist lähtuvaid uurimusi eesti keele kohta tehtud pole, antakse väitekirja esimestes peatükkides ülevaade valdkonna problemaatikast ning käesolevas töös olulistest lähenemistest. Väitekiri sisaldab ka ülevaadet enamikust (süntaksit käsitlevatest) uurimustest eesti keele kohta, milles kasutatakse infostruktuuri mõisteid. Korpuseanalüüsis vaadeldakse lähemalt ülalmainitud kaht tüüpi lahktarindeid, keskendudes peamiselt referendi informatsioonilisele staatusele, tarindite erinevatele funktsioonidele ja toimimisele diskursuse tasandil. Väitekirja tulemusena võib lahktarindite kohta väita järgmist: tegemist on suulises kõnes levinud struktuuridega, mis toetavad suulisele kõnele iseloomulikku info edastamist lühemate üksuste kaupa. Tarindites viidatavad referendid on enamasti kas vestluses juba esinenud või on tuletatavad vestluse üldisest raamistikust. Postreemat sisaldavates tarindites, kus leksikaalne referent tuleb alles lausungi lõpus, esineb rohkem ka eelneva sisuga seostamata referente. Lisaks vormilistele erinevustele ning nendest tulenevalt on nende kahe struktuuri puhul selgelt näha erinevaid strateegiaid referendi sissetoomise puhul ning selle käsitlemisel edaspidises diskursuses.The present thesis “Initial and final detachments in spoken Estonian: a study in the framework of Information Structuring” analyses detachment constructions (initial and final detachments) in spoken Estonian, in the framework of Information Structuring. Initial detachments are defined as structures where a detached lexical element precedes the main clause, which contains a coreferential pronoun; in final detachments, the referent is at first referred to by a pronoun in the main clause, followed by the lexical element in a detached element at the end of the utterance. These structures have been considered universals in spontaneous oral language, but their functions and degree of grammaticalization differ in various languages. Detached constructions have not been investigated before in Estonian. They have been associated to the notions of Theme and Post-rheme at the level of Information Structuring, i.e. initial detachment introduces an element that is considered as Theme at the informational level and final detachment serves to introduce the Post-rheme. Given that there are no studies dedicated to the level of Information Structuring as independent object of investigation, an overview about the main problems of this domain is provided in first chapters of the thesis, followed by a summary of studies (in syntax) about Estonian where the notions of Information Structuring framework have been used. The analysis of the corpus concentrates mainly on the informational status of the referent, different functions of these constructions and their functioning at the discourse level. The analysis revealed that detached constructions allow the information to be staged during the discourse building work; as concerns the informational status of the referents, it could be shown that they have mostly been mentioned before during the conversation or are present in the thematic frame of the discourse. Final detachments are also used in order to introduce unmentioned and new referents. Besides the formal differences, and stemming from them, the two constructions are clearly different as concerns the mechanisms of introduction of the referent and its treatment in the discourse

The nanosyntax of case

This dissertation proposes a new approach to case. It unifies its syntax, morphology and semantics in a simple, fine-grained and restrictive picture. One of the assumptions frequently made in works on case is that cases such as nominative and accusative are not primitive entities, but they are each composed of various features. The central hypothesis of this dissertation is that these features are universal, and each of them is its own terminal node in the syntactic tree. Individual cases thus correspond to phrasal constituents built out of these terminals. The idea that syntactic trees are built by Merge from individual atomic features is one of the core principles of a cartographic approach to syntax pursued by M. Starke: Nanosyntax. Hence “The nanosyntax of case.” I motivate the approach on the material of case syncretism. I propose a hypothesis according to which case syncretism across various languages obeys a single restrictive template. The template corresponds to a cross-linguistically fixed sequence of cases, in which only adjacent cases show syncretism. In order to derive this, I argue that case features are syntactic heads, ordered in a universal functional sequence. If this is so, it follows that these sub-morphemic features interact with core syntactic processes, such as movement. The prediction is borne out: the interaction of (phrasal) movement and the fine-grained syntactic representation derives a typological generalization concerning cross-linguistic variation in the amount of case marking (Blake’s hierarchy). Additional facts fall out from the picture: the role of functional prepositions, prepositional syncretism, case compounding, and preposition stacking. I further investigate in detail the spell out of these highly articulate structures. I follow Starke (2005) and propose that individual morphemes spell out phrasal constituents of varying size, and that their insertion is governed by the Superset Principle. I argue that phrasal spell out is both empirically required, and theoretically beneficial: it simplifies the overall architecture of grammar. In particular, there is no part left to play for a separate morphological structure. With the proposal in place, I observe that there are generalizations which connect the proposed representation and the DP external syntax. To account for this, I adopt the Peeling theory of movement (Starke 2005). The theory says that arguments are base-generated with a number of case projections on top of them, and they strand these projections when they move up in the tree. The theory is shown to capture the initial observations, as well as additional generalizations: Burzio’s generalization among them. The resulting theory does not introduce any domain specific tools to account for case: its representation corresponds to a binary syntactic structure, its computation corresponds to syntactic movement

Objekti käände varieerumine eesti keele da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioonides

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneProbleemi kirjeldus. Reeglid, mis kirjeldavad täis- ja osasihitise vastandust eesti keeles, kehtivad küllaltki järjekindlalt, kui sihitis kuulub finiitse verbivormi juurde, mitte aga siis, kui sihitis laiendab infiniitset verbivormi. Kui finiitlauses on keelekasutajal enamasti lihtne otsustada, kas sündmus on mõeldud kestva või lõpetatuna, ja sihitise kääne valitakse sellest tõlgendusest tulenevalt (vrd küpsetas õunakooki ja küpsetas õunakoogi), siis näiteks da-infinitiivi puhul on mõtestus palju hägusam: kas tahan küpsetada õunakooki või tahan küpsetada õunakoogi? Mõlemad variandid on võimalikud. See aga ei tähenda, et sihitise käände valik oleks juhuslik; isegi kui puudub selge reegel, mille järgi saab sobivaima käände valida, on igal lausel mõned olulised süntaktilis-semantilised tunnused, mis suunavad valikut, soodustades ühe või teise käände kasutust. Doktoritöö keskendub objekti käändevalikule da-infinitiivi puhul, mis on kõige laiema kasutusalaga infiniitne verbivorm eesti keeles. Uurimuse üks põhieesmärk oli välja selgitada da-infinitiivi konstruktsioonides esineva sihitise käände valikut mõjutavad tegurid ning nende omavahelised suhted, vaadeldes lauseid, milles sihitise käände seletamiseks ei piisa objekti vormivahelduse põhireeglitest. Lisaks oli eesmärgiks võrrelda erinevaid da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioone, et näha, kuivõrd sarnased on neis sihitise käänet mõjutavate tegurite kimbud: kas kõigis konstruktsioonides ilmnevad samad tendentsid? Tulemus ja kasutegur. Sihitise käände varieerumine da-infinitiiviga konstruktsioonides on tihedalt seotud sõnajärjega ning sellega, kas lauses kirjeldatakse korduvat või ühekordset sündmust; osasihitis on sagedasem korduvate sündmuste puhul ning siis, kui sihitis eelneb da-infinitiivile. Lisaks võivad mõju avaldada leksikaalsed elemendid, mis ei kuulu da-infinitiiviga fraasi (vrd näiteks verbe tahtma ja otsustama; tahtis osta autot on palju vastuvõetavam kui otsustas osta autot). Doktoritöö näitab, et tegeliku keelekasutuse selgitamiseks ei piisa „reeglitest“, tegemist on konstruktsioonidele omaste, sageli erinevate tendentsidega, kusjuures mõnes konstruktsioonis kasutatakse sihitise käändeid üsna ebajärjekindlalt. Sellise varieerumise seletamiseks tuleb keelekasutust vaadelda kui omavahel vastandlike motivatsioonide võistluse tulemust, kus on argumendid nii täis- kui ka osasihitise kasutamise poolt, kuid igas konkreetses lauses võib ainult üks kääne peale jääda. Uurimistulemused on huvipakkuvad rahvusvahelise keeleteaduse jaoks ning annavad olulist infot eesti keele uurimise, keeleõppe jm rakenduste jaoks.Research question. The rules describing the alternation between total and partial objects in Estonian do not apply with nearly the same regularity in da¬-infinitive constructions as they do in finite clauses. In finite clauses, it is generally easy for the speaker to decide whether he/she conceptualizes an event as continuous or completed, and to choose the appropriate object case accordingly (partial object for continuous activity, total object for completed events). With da-infinitives, however, things are much less clear: does tahan küpsetada koogi/kooki (‘I want to bake a cake’) mean “I want to bake a cake (and achieve the result)” or “I want to be engaged in the activity of baking a cake”? Both are possible. However, this does not mean that the choice of object case is random; even if there is no clear rule to follow, every sentence has some essential syntactic-semantic features which push the language user in the direction of either the partial or total object. One primary aim of the thesis was to identify the factors influencing the choice of object case in da-infinitive constructions and their relative importance, looking at sentences where the standard rules for object case do not provide a sufficient explanation. In addition, the thesis compares various da-infinitive constructions, to see how similar or different they are with respect to which factors influence object case: can the same patterns be observed in all da-infinitive constructions? Results and contribution of the thesis. Object case variation in da-infinitive constructions is closely tied to word order and whether the sentence describes a repeating or non-repeating situation; the partial object is more common in the case of repeating situations and OV word order (where the object precedes the infinitive form). Moreover, different constructions feature different lexical elements, which are not part of the non-finite clause but nevertheless can exert a substantial influence on the form of the object modifying the infinitive. The thesis demonstrates that the “rules” for object case are not sufficient to explain actual language usage, as in several da-infinitive constructions object case usage is quite inconsistent. To explain such variation, it is helpful to view language usage as the product of competing motivations, with some factors supporting the use of the partial object and others the total object. The research results will be of interest to the international linguistics community and can also be applied in the teaching of Estonian as a foreign language

Scalar Verb Classes

This monograph discusses scalar verb classes. It tests theories of linguistic form and meaning, arguments and thematic roles, using Estonian data. The analyses help to understand the aspectual structure of Estonian. In Estonian, transitive verbs fall into aspectual classes based on the type of case-marking of objects and adjuncts. The book relates the morphosyntactic frames of verbs to properties typically associated with adjectives and nouns: scalarity and boundedness. Verbs are divided according to how their aspect is composed. Some verbs lexicalize a scale, which can be bounded either lexically or compositionally. Aspectual composition involves the unification of features. Compositionally derived structures differ according to which of the aspectually relevant dimensions are bounded

Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case

The fine-grained morpho-syntactic and semantic variation displayed by partitive elements across European languages is far from being well-described, let alone well-understood. This volume focuses on Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case in European languages, their emergence and spread in diachrony, their acquisition by L2 speakers, and their syntax and interpretation in a cross-theoretical typological perspective