Grammatical case in Estonian

The aim of this thesis is to show that standard approaches to grammatical case fail to provide an explanatory account of such cases in Estonian. In Estonian, grammatical cases form a complex system of semantic contrasts, with the case-marking on nouns alternating with each other in certain constructions, even though the apparent grammatical functions of the noun phrases themselves are not changed. This thesis demonstrates that such alternations, and the differences in interpretation which they induce, are context dependent. This means that the semantic contrasts which the alternating grammatical cases express are available in some linguistic contexts and not in others, being dependent, among other factors, on the semantics of the casemarked noun and the semantics of the verb it occurs with. Hence, traditional approaches which treat grammatical case as markers of syntactic dependencies and account for associated semantic interpretations by matching cases directly to semantics not only fall short in predicting the distribution of cases in Estonian but also result in over-analysis due to the static nature of the theories which the standard approach to case marking comprises. On the basis of extensive data, it is argued that grammatical cases in Estonian have underspecified semantic content that is not truth-conditional, but inferential, i.e. it interacts with linguistic context and discourse. Inspired by the assumptions of Relevance Theory (Wilson & Sperber 1993, 2002, 2004) and Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al 2005), it is proposed that grammatical cases in Estonian provide procedural information: instead of taking cases to encode grammatical relations directly, and matching them to truth-conditional semantics, it is argued that it is more useful and explanatory to construe case marking in Estonian as providing information on how to process the case-marked expression and interpret it within an immediate discourse (or sentence). This means that grammatical cases in Estonian are seen to encode a heavily underspecified semantics which is enriched by pragmatic processes in context. In this way, certain problematic constructions in Estonian, such as transitive clauses in which the object is marked by either genitive or nominative, depending on number (often referred to as the accusative in the relevant literature, e.g. Ackerman & Moore 1999, 2001; Hiietam 2003, 2004) and constructions in which the nominative occurs on the object both with singular and plural nouns, are shown to have a unitary explanation

A corpus study of grammatical case forms in written and spoken Estonian: Frequency, distribution and grammatical role

In this paper, we present the results of a corpus study investigating the distribution of the three grammatical cases in Estonian (nominative, genitive, partitive) and the factors affecting the interpretation of syntactic role for nouns marked in these cases. Unlike previous studies, which have focussed on the properties of grammatical relations, we take the perspective of morphological case, and investigate the relative frequency of each case in both written and spoken corpora, according to the encoded grammatical roles, referential properties (animacy, number, countability) and syntactic context (word order, transitivity), as well as probing the differences according to register. We find that each case is prototypically, but not reliably, associated with a particular grammatical role, and that a cluster of features are available to assist speakers in identifying the function of a case-marked noun. Kokkuvõte. Merilin Miljan, Virve Vihman: Eesti keele grammatilised käänded kirjalikus ja suulises korpuses: sagedus, jaotumus ning süntaktilised rollid. Artiklis esitatakse tulemused korpusuuringust, mille eesmärgiks oli välja selgitada eesti keele grammatiliste käänete (nominatiiv, partitiiv, genitiiv) jaotumus ning tegurid, mis mõjutavad nende käänetega markeeritud nimisõnade süntaktiliste rollide tõlgendamist. Erinevalt varasematest töödest, mis keskenduvad grammatilistele suhetele ja (seejärel) nende käändetähistusele, lähtub selle uurimuse fookus eelkõige morfoloogiast, st käändest endast. N-ö käände perspektiivist vaatleme iga grammatilise käände esinemise sagedust kirjalikus ja suulises korpuses: milliseid süntaktilisi funktsioone see markeerib, markeeritava nimisõna omadusi (elusus, arv, loendatavus), süntaktilist konteksti (sõnajärg, transitiivsus) ning registri erinevusi. Leiame, et kuigi üldpildina eristub iga grammatilise käände puhul sagedaim süntaktiline põhiroll, toob detailsem analüüs välja nimisõna omaduste ja süntaktilise konteksti olulisuse nende rollide jaotumuses

Eesti viipekeele seisundikirjeldus

Kuna eesti viipekeel on Eesti territooriumil elavate kurtide seas tekkinud ning kasutatav loomulik keel, antakse käesoleva tööga lühiülevaade eesti viipekeele kasutajaskonnast ja selle kujunemisest

Acquisition of motion in L2 Estonian

This study focuses on the acquisition of Motion in Estonian by native English speakers. The aim was to determine how English learners of Estonian are influenced by their first language (L1) when describing Motion events in Estonian as their second language (L2). Prior studies have claimed that people develop certain ways of thinking for speaking when learning their first language which affect the acquisition of other languages (e.g. Slobin 1996, Pool, Pajusalu 2012 i.a.). In order to find out how native English speakers are influenced by their L1 when acquiring Motion in Estonian, an experiment was implemented on 22 participants (11 native English speakers and 11 native Estonian speakers) in which they were asked to write a short narrative in Estonian based on a picture book by Mayer (1969). The Motion events found in the narratives were analysed one by one. The findings suggest that L1 thinking patterns influence the intermediate learners more than the advanced or beginner learners, thus partly supporting the findings of Cadierno and Ruiz (2006) who reached a similar conclusion

External factors and the interference of L1 Estonian on L2 English pronunciation: An apparent-time study

This study focusses on external factors of second language learning (L2) and their effect on L2 sound production. The aim was to find out whether young adults whose first language (L1) is Estonian speak L2 English with less accent than older speakers of L1 Estonian. Prior studies have claimed that more exposure to the target language lessens the effect of L1 interference (internal factors) (e.g. Piske et al. 2001, Muñoz, Llanes 2014). An apparent-time study was imple- mented in order to test whether a change in learner setting (i.e. limited exposure to the target language vs. abundant exposure) shows any evidence which can be explained by such external factors. Data was elicited from the speech samples of 97 speakers of L1 Estonian and L1 interference effects were analysed sound by sound. The results show that the younger generation displays less L1 Estonian interference than the older generation. Both greater exposure to the target language and earlier age of L2 learning onset correlate with the ability to produce more sounds target-like

Data for "A corpus study of grammatical case forms in written and spoken Estonian: Frequency, distribution and grammatical role"

This dataset makes available the sample of clauses used in the study "A corpus study of grammatical case forms in written and spoken Estonian: Frequency, distribution and grammatical role". It includes 751 clauses from the fiction subcorpus of the University of Tartu’s Balanced Corpus of Written Estonian (cl.ut.ee/korpused) and 758 clauses from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian, maintained by the University of Tartu’s research group of Spoken Estonian (not publicly available at the time of publication). The spoken language selection derives from a subset of everyday (face-to-face and telephone) conversations. The dataset includes both the randomly selected clauses and manual coding, described in the paper

Grammatical case in Estonian

The aim of this thesis is to show that standard approaches to grammatical case fail to provide an explanatory account of such cases in Estonian. In Estonian, grammatical cases form a complex system of semantic contrasts, with the case-marking on nouns alternating with each other in certain constructions, even though the apparent grammatical functions of the noun phrases themselves are not changed. This thesis demonstrates that such alternations, and the differences in interpretation which they induce, are context dependent. This means that the semantic contrasts which the alternating grammatical cases express are available in some linguistic contexts and not in others, being dependent, among other factors, on the semantics of the casemarked noun and the semantics of the verb it occurs with. Hence, traditional approaches which treat grammatical case as markers of syntactic dependencies and account for associated semantic interpretations by matching cases directly to semantics not only fall short in predicting the distribution of cases in Estonian but also result in over-analysis due to the static nature of the theories which the standard approach to case marking comprises. On the basis of extensive data, it is argued that grammatical cases in Estonian have underspecified semantic content that is not truth-conditional, but inferential, i.e. it interacts with linguistic context and discourse. Inspired by the assumptions of Relevance Theory (Wilson & Sperber 1993, 2002, 2004) and Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al 2005), it is proposed that grammatical cases in Estonian provide procedural information: instead of taking cases to encode grammatical relations directly, and matching them to truth-conditional semantics, it is argued that it is more useful and explanatory to construe case marking in Estonian as providing information on how to process the case-marked expression and interpret it within an immediate discourse (or sentence). This means that grammatical cases in Estonian are seen to encode a heavily underspecified semantics which is enriched by pragmatic processes in context. In this way, certain problematic constructions in Estonian, such as transitive clauses in which the object is marked by either genitive or nominative, depending on number (often referred to as the accusative in the relevant literature, e.g. Ackerman & Moore 1999, 2001; Hiietam 2003, 2004) and constructions in which the nominative occurs on the object both with singular and plural nouns, are shown to have a unitary explanation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo