Review of Annika Mikkel’s doctoral thesis, Rütmilised lauselõpud 14. sajandi ladinakeelsetes ning itaalia rahvakeelsetes proosateostes (Rhythmic clausulae in the 14th-century Latin and Italian vernacular prose texts)

Non peer reviewe

What happens in language loss?

Besprechung Kehayov, Petar. 2017. The fate of mood and modality in language death. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 385 pp

Erzya chastushka – vanishing or changing oral tradition?

The current paper presents a short overview and selection of Erzya chastushkas that were recorded in Erzya villages during expeditions that were made in the 1990’s. Chastushkas are known from the 20th century folklore tradition of other Finno-Ugric peoples living in the European part of Russia as well and the first examples werepublished before the Second World War.   The publishing of the following data thus serves three aims. Firstly, it introduces a modern form of oral tradition that historically, in a way, fills the gap of several lost genres. Secondly, it presents chastushkas as a genre that was originally adopted from Russian culture but was transferred to the Erzya as it did among other groups. Thirdly, it seeks to promote the interest of folklorists towards living tradition of Finno-Ugric peoples

Canonical and non-canonical patterns in the adpositional phrase of Western Uralic : constraints of borrowing

Notions about adpositions and adpositional phrases (AdpP) reflect the ambiguous nature of this particular domain. While postpositions and prepositions are often dealt with as lexical categories, their syntactic context determines the grammatical relations of individual postpositions. In the diachronic development of individual adpositions, the phrasal unit of AdpP plays a crucial role either enhancing or diminishing the possibility of adopting new adpositions. In Uralic both the head and complement may be inflected, which increases the divergence of the adpositional system in comparison with most neighboring contact languages. This is illustratively seen in the bulk of adpositions in Finnic, Saamic and Mordvinic, which only exceptionally include borrowed lexemes. The focus of this article is bifold. Firstly, it briefly outlines the main structural types of AdpP, particularly in Western Uralic. Secondly, it discusses why loanwords only seldom occur in the adpositional system of languages that are strongly influenced by language contact and widespread bilingualism, such as contemporary Veps and Erzya.Peer reviewe

Morphological change and the influence of language contacts in Estonian

Estonian is an illustrative example of a modern language that was intensively influenced by morphological attrition and foreign interfernce during the last millennium. The most salient typological differences of Estonian with respect to northern Finnic languages such as Finnish, Karelian and Veps are based on the loss of several important suffixes, in particular those of certain grammatical cases. This article discusses the interliaison of morphological and contact-induced change in the evidence of Estonian inflectional case system, case syncretism and certain adverbial constructions. The main hypothesis is that diachronic changes often do not happen independently of one another and endogenous and contact-induced changes in Estonian affect the same functional domains. The conclusions of this article are mainly based on language-specific analysis and most of the data is drawn from Estonian. Nevertheless, there are certain parallels between case syncretism in Estonian, Vote and South-West Finnish dialects that will be used for comparative evidence. Convergent changes suggest that a particular morphological change does not inevitably have identical consequences even in genetically closely related languages.numbered, too, please let me know.Peer reviewe

Tiit-Rein Viitso 1938–2022

Non peer reviewe

Metre and meaning in two poems by Ilpo Tiihonen

Metre and meaning intertwine in manifold ways. The aim of this paper is to discuss the interplay between the metric and semantic structures in poetry in the light of the work of a Finnish poet, Ilpo Tiihonen. Throughout his career, which started in the 1970s, he has been one of the few Finnish contemporary poets to make constant use of metric structures and rhyme. The article also aims to shed some light on questions that arise when metrical poetry is translated from one language into another, in this case from Finnish into English

The history of historical earthquake research in Germany

The paper summarizes the history of collecting and evaluating information on earthquakes in Germany. A rich literature mentioning historical and contemporary earthquakes has existed since the 16th century. Early earthquake catalogues began to appear in the middle of the 16th century, some of which report earthquakes in Germany dating back to the 9th century. Modern seismological views were introduced in connection with intense philosophical analysis of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which was largely observed in Central Europe. The 19th century was characterized by a tremendous increase in detailed earthquake studies as well as earthquake compilations in the form of catalogues. The most comprehensive non-parametric catalogues were created in the middle of the 20th century, while the first digital parametric catalogues were published in the 1980s. This was also the time when critical studies on the re-interpretation of historical earthquakes began. Only in the 1990s was such analysis made in a systematic manner resulting in numerous publications and the current development of a modern earthquake catalogue

Eine Neubewertung des Erdbebens vom 3. September 1770 bei Alfhausen (Niedersachsen)

Am 3. September 1770 fand bei Alfhausen im westlichen Niedersachsen ein Erdbeben statt. In der wissenschaftlichen Literatur wird es erstmals von SIEBERG(1940) erwähnt. Eine erste Abschätzung seiner Maximalintensität erfolgte durch AHoRNERu. a. (1970) mit I = VII (MSK). Danach würde das Erdbeben von Alfhausen zu den stärksten nachweisbaren seismischen Ereignissen im Norddeutschen Tiefland gehören. SIEBERG,der Ausgangspunkt für bisherige Intensitätsabschätzungen ist, gibt über die Herkunft der Quellen, die seiner Information zugrunde liegen, keine Auskunft. MEIER& GRÜNTHALfanden ein zeitgenössisches Dokument, das kurze Zeit nach dem Ereignis vom 3. September 1770 niedergeschrieben und am 3. November 1770 in: "Nützlicher Beylagen zum Osnabrückischen Intelligenz Blate" veröffentlicht wurde. Der Autor unterzeichnete seinen Artikel mit den Initialen J. H. B. P. (P in Antiqua), die mit Hilfe des Niedersächsischen Staatsarchivs in Osnabrück als J. H. BUCK,evangelischer Pastor von Neuenkirchen, identifiziert werden konnten. Die Aufzeichnungen von BUCKenthalten eine recht genaue Beschreibung der makroseismischen Erscheinungen des Alfhausen-Ereignisses. Ihre Analyse erlaubt, eine Neubewertung dieses Erdbebens und ermöglicht, die Angaben von SIEBERG(1940) und die darauf fußenden nachfolgenden Abschätzungen zu überprüfen. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse werden mitgeteilt, der seismologische Befund in den regionalgeologischen Rahmen eingeordnet und die mögliche Ursache für das Beben kurz dargestellt