Non-Autonomous Accusative Case in Estonian*
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Saami and Scandinavians in the Viking
Jurij K. Kusmenko Sámi and Scandinavians in the Viking Age Introduction Though we do not know exactly when Scandinavians and Sámi contact started, it is clear that in the time of the formation of the Scandinavian heathen culture and of the Scandinavian languages the Scandinavians and the Sámi were neighbors. Archeologists and historians continue to argue about the place of the original southern boarder of the Sámi on the Scandinavian peninsula and about the place of the most narrow cultural contact, but nobody doubts that the cultural contact between the Sámi and the Scandinavians before and during the Viking Age was very close. Such close contact could not but have left traces in the Sámi culture and in the Sámi languages. This influence concerned not only material culture but even folklore and religion, especially in the area of the Southern Sámi. We find here even names of gods borrowed from the Scandinavian tradition. Swedish and Norwegian missionaries mentioned such Southern Sámi gods such as Radien (cf. norw., sw. rå, rådare) , Veralden Olmai (<Veraldar goð, Frey), Ruona (Rana) (< Rán), Horagalles (< Þórkarl), Ruotta (Rota). In Lule Sámi we find no Scandinavian gods but Scandinavian names of gods such as Storjunkare (big ruler) and Lilljunkare (small ruler). In the Sámi languages we find about three thousand loan words from the Scandinavian languages and many of them were borrowed in the common Scandinavian period (550-1050), that is before and during the Viking Age (Qvigstad 1893; Sammallahti 1998, 128-129). The known Swedish Lapponist Wiklund said in 1898 »[...] Lapska innehåller nämligen en mycket stor mängd låneord från de nordiska språken, av vilka låneord de äldsta ovillkorligen måste vara lånade redan i urnordisk tid, dvs under tiden före ca 700 år efter Kristus. -
Locality, Neutrality, and Contrast: a New Resolution to the Votic Paradox
Locality, neutrality, and contrast: A new resolution to the Votic paradox Daniel Currie Hall, Saint Mary’s University nels 48 • háskóli íslands • október 2017 Outline 1 Introduction 2 The paradox illustrated 3 Theoretical questions 4 The contrastive status of /i/ 5 Proposal: A new resolution to the paradox 6 Consequences 1 Introduction 1.1 The language Votic (also Vod, Votian; endonym Vaďďa tšeeli or Vađđa ceeli; iso-639 code vot): Finland • Uralic ▶ Finno-Ugric ▶ Finnic ▶ Votic Helsinki • Spoken in western Russia (four villages in Leningrad ࢫ Oblast; Kuznetsova et al. 2015: 135) Gulf of Finland ࢝ · St. Petersburg ·· ࢫ Villages with Votic speakers • “The total number of Votic speakers now could be6to Tallinn 10” (Heinsoo & Kuusk 2011: 172). • “At present, Votic is almost never used as a means of Estonia Russia communication” (Kuznetsova et al. 2015: 137). Figure 1: Location of Votic 1.2 The paradox The Votic paradox, identified by Blumenfeld & Toivonen (2016): • /i/ is transparent to vowel place harmony (as in Finnish). ☛ This suggests that /i/ is not specified for place. • But /i/ conditions a front allophone of /l/. ☛ This suggests that /i/ is specified for place. Blumenfeld & Toivonen’s solution: • Place is specified on /i/, but it is not contrastive. • Non-contrastive features are ‘weak,’ and sometimes ignored (Calabrese 1995; Nevins 2010; Rhodes 2010). • Harmony applies only to contrastive specifications. • /l/ allophony is sensitive to all specifications. My proposal: • Place is contrastive on /i/ in Votic… • …but it is marked by a different feature from the one that participates in vowel harmony. d. c. hall locality, neutrality, and contrast nels 48 2 The paradox illustrated 2.1 Harmony Front–back vowel pairs participate in place harmony, which propagates from left to right: (1) Front stem + elative /-ssA/ (Ahlqvist 1856; Ariste 1968) a. -
2 Numeric Control in Verse Constituent Structure 15 2.1 Introduction
Typological tendencies in verse and their cognitive grounding Varuṇ deCastro-Arrazola deCastro-Arrazola, V. 2018. Typological tendencies in verse and their cognitive grounding. Utrecht: LOT. © 2018, Varuṇ deCastro-Arrazola Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0) ISBN: 978-94-6093-284-7 NUR: 616 Cover illustration: Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Layout based on: LATEX class langscibook.cls developed by Timm Lichte, Stefan Müller, Sebastian Nordhoff & Felix Kopecky for the open-access linguistics pub- lisher Language Science Press (langsci-press.org). Published by: LOT Trans 10 phone: +31 30 253 6111 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Typological tendencies in verse and their cognitive grounding Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof.mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op donderdag 3 mei 2018 klokke 13:45 uur door Varuṇaśarman de Castro Arrazola geboren te Canberra in 1988 Promotores Prof.dr. Marc van Oostendorp (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) Prof.dr. Johan Rooryck (Universiteit Leiden) Promotiecommissie Prof.dr. Janet Grijzenhout (Universiteit Leiden) Prof.dr. Paula Fikkert (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) Prof.dr. Nigel Fabb (University of Strathclyde) The research for this book was carried out as part of the Horizon project 317- 70-010 Knowledge and culture, funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Indrari ikerketa berdin bizi baitugu Contents Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 On verse ................................ 1 1.2 Explaining verse ............................ 2 1.3 Outline of the dissertation ..................... -
Estonian Transitive Verbs and Object Case
ESTONIAN TRANSITIVE VERBS AND OBJECT CASE Anne Tamm University of Florence Proceedings of the LFG06 Conference Universität Konstanz Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (Editors) 2006 CSLI Publications http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ Abstract This article discusses the nature of Estonian aspect and case, proposing an analysis of Estonian verbal aspect, aspectual case, and clausal aspect. The focus is on the interaction of transitive telic verbs ( write, win ) and aspectual case at the level of the functional structure. The main discussion concerns the relationships between aspect and the object case alternation. The data set comprises Estonian transitive verbs with variable and invariant aspect and shows that clausal aspect ultimately depends on the object case. The objects of Estonian transitive verbs in active affirmative indicative clauses are marked with the partitive or the total case; the latter is also known as the accusative and the morphological genitive or nominative. The article presents a unification-based approach in LFG: the aspectual features of verbs and case are unified in the functional structure. The lexical entries for transitive verbs are provided with valued or unvalued aspectual features in the lexicon. If the verb fully determines sentential aspect, then the aspectual feature is valued in the functional specifications of the lexical entry of the verb; this is realized in the form of defining equations. If the aspect of the verb is variable, the entry’s functional specifications have the form of existential constraints. As sentential aspect is fully determined by the total case, the functional specifications of the lexical entry of the total case are in the form of defining equations. -
Verb-Second in Spoken and Written Estonian RESEARCH
Verb-second in spoken and written Estonian RESEARCH VIRVE-ANNELI VIHMAN GEORGE WALKDEN *Author affiliations can be found in the back matter of this article ABSTRACT CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Virve-Anneli Vihman This paper investigates clausal constituent order in Estonian, a language often University of Tartu, Ülikooli 18, described in the literature as exhibiting a verb-second “tendency”. We present a corpus- 50090 Tartu, Estonia based study of ordering in independent affirmative declarative clauses, drawing data [email protected] from both written and spoken corpora. Our results show that, while written Estonian is robustly a verb-second language along the same lines as the modern Germanic standard languages, spoken Estonian exhibits much more variation. Our findings lead KEYWORDS: us to suggest that spoken Estonian patterns with the recently-established class of Estonian; constituent order; “verb-third” languages, and that syntactic analyses developed to account for these clause structure; corpus languages can also account for our spoken Estonian data. analysis; verb-second TO CITE THIS ARTICLE: Vihman, Virve-Anneli and George Walkden. 2021. Verb-second in spoken and written Estonian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6(1): 15. 1–23. DOI: https://doi. org/10.5334/gjgl.1404 Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-149vj82jlrrbt2 1 INTRODUCTION Vihman and Walkden 2 Glossa: a journal of Verb-second (V2) constituent order, though a signature property of the Germanic languages, general linguistics DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.1404 is very rare outside the Indo-European family. In his overview article, Holmberg (2015) lists only Estonian and potentially Karitiana; to this we might add Khoekhoegowab (den Besten 2002) and Dinka (van Urk & Richards 2015). -
ESTONIAN LANGUAGE Kala on Puu Juures A Fish Is Near the Tree Literally: A Fish Is in the Root of a Tree
ESTONIAN LANGUAGE Kala on puu juures A fish is near the tree Literally: A fish is in the root of a tree ISBN 9985-9341-9-9 / Published by the Estonian Institute 2004 / Illustrations: Jaagup Roomet / Design: Aadam Kaarma LABOR Estonian Language Urmas Sutrop Estonian is used in the army... aviation... theatre The Estonian language The ancestors of the Estonians arrived at Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian are the the Baltic Sea 13 000 years ago when the best known of the Finno-Ugric languages; mainland glaciers of the last Ice Age had rather less known are the following retreated from the area now designated smaller languages of the same language as Estonia. The first settlers who followed group: South Estonian, Votian, Livonian, the reindeer herds came here from south, Izhorian, Vepsian, Karelian, Sami, Erzya, from Central Europe. Although the vocab- Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi, spoken ulary and grammar of the language used from Scandinavia to Siberia. by people in those days have changed beyond recognition, the mentality of the Estonian differs from its closest large tundra hunters of thousands of years ago related language, Finnish, at least as can be still perceived in modern Estonian. much as English differs from Frisian. The difference between Estonian and Hungar- The majority of European languages ian is about as significant as between belong to the Indo-European language German and Persian. group (e.g. Spanish, Polish, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Albanian, Romany, Greek or Along with Icelandic, Estonian is at Welsh). Of the ancient European langua- present one of the smallest languages in ges, once so widespread throughout the the world that fulfils all the functions continent, Basque in the Pyrenees, the necessary for an independent state to Finno-Ugric languages in the North and perform linguistically. -
Carnival 2009 on Line Version
Carnival 2009, vol. 11 Carnival Journal of the International Students of History Association on line version Colofon Editor in Chief Lia Hamminga, ISHA Nijmegen Editorial Board Volker Prott, ISHA Berlin Publisher International Students of History Association Printing Studio HS Internet d.o.o. Reisnerova 46a 31000 Osijek, Croatia Distribution ISHA Osijek Circulation: 150 copies Facts and opinions published in the papers express solely the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily present the opinions of the editorship nor the publisher. The authors are responsible for accuracy of bibliographical units and the Editorial Board can not be held responsible for potential mistakes or lacks. International Board 2008-2009: International Board 2009-2010: Marko Halonen, president Frerik Kampman, president Larissa Vanamo, secretary Elsa Mäki-Reinikka, secretary Zrinka Kolari ć, treasurer Marko Smokvina, treasurer Carnival is an international publication of the International Students of History Association (ISHA). ISHA is an international, academic, non-profit, independ- ent network of students and recent graduates interested in history and related sciences. ISHA seeks to create and coordinate various means of co-operation and exchange between students of history and students of other related sci- ences. For further information, please contact the ISHA International Board at: [email protected] Carnival XI (2009) Contents Editorial 3 A Word from the President 5 Turning Points in History The Debate on Turning Points Sven Mörsdorf: Turning Points: Interview with Prof. Dr. Christoph Kampmann 7 Tonaí Ó Roduibh: Turning Points: Final Conclusions 15 Turning Points in Cultural History Jordy Geerlings: Turning Points in Cultural History 26 Katharina Rein: I Will Never be Hungry Again. -
Grammatical Case in Estonian
Grammatical Case in Estonian Merilin Miljan A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh September 2008 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is of my own composition, and that it contains no material previously submitted for the award of any other degree. The work reported in this thesis has been executed by myself, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. Merilin Miljan ii Abstract 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 case- marked 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. -
Automatic Discovery of Adposition Typology
Automatic Discovery of Adposition Typology Rishiraj Saha Roy Rahul Katare∗ IIT Kharagpur IIT Kharagpur Kharagpur, India – 721302. Kharagpur, India – 721302. [email protected] [email protected] Niloy Ganguly Monojit Choudhury IIT Kharagpur Microsoft Research India Kharagpur, India – 721302. Bangalore, India – 560001. [email protected] [email protected] Abstract Natural languages (NL) can be classified as prepositional or postpositional based on the order of the noun phrase and the adposition. Categorizing a language by its adposition typology helps in addressing several challenges in linguistics and natural language processing (NLP). Understand- ing the adposition typologies for less-studied languages by manual analysis of large text corpora can be quite expensive, yet automatic discovery of the same has received very little attention till date. This research presents a simple unsupervised technique to automatically predict the adpo- sition typology for a language. Most of the function words of a language are adpositions, and we show that function words can be effectively separated from content words by leveraging differ- ences in their distributional properties in a corpus. Using this principle, we show that languages can be classified as prepositional or postpositional based on the rank correlations derived from entropies of word co-occurrence distributions. Our claims are substantiated through experiments on 23 languages from ten diverse families, 19 of which are correctly classified by our technique. 1 Introduction Adpositions form a subcategory of function words that combine with noun phrases to denote their se- mantic or grammatical relationships with verbs, and sometimes other noun phrases. NLs can be neatly divided into a few basic typologies based on the order of the noun phrase and its adposition. -
A New Resource for Finnic Languages: the Outcomes of the Ingrian Documentation Project
FEDOR ROZHANSKIY University of Tartu & Institute for Linguistic Studies RAS ELENA MARKUS University of Tartu & Institute of Linguistics RAS A new resource for Finnic languages: The outcomes of the Ingrian documentation project Abstract The report introduces a new digital resource on minor Finnic languages. This resource is the main outcome of the project “Documentation of Ingrian: collecting and analyzing fieldwork data and digitizing legacy materials” carried out by Fedor Rozhanskiy and Elena Markus at the University of Tartu in 2011–2013. The collected materials cover several minor Finnic languages with a special focus on varieties spoken in Western Ingria: the Soikkola, Lower Luga, and Heva dialects of Ingrian, the Lower Luga varieties of Votic, and Ingrian Finnish. The re source contains (a) legacy recordings of different genres made by previous researchers in 1968–2012; (b) new audio and video materials recorded mostly in 2011–2013 by the project partici pants; (c) transcriptions and translations into Russian and English synchronized with sound and video using the ELAN software. Altogether the resource presents 510 hours of audio recordings, 21 hours of video recordings, and 15 hours of ELAN annota tions. All media files in the resource are provided with detailed metadata specifying the place and time of the recording, sociolin guistic data about the speaker, the contents of the recording, and the access rights. The resource is available on the websites of the Endangered Languages Archive (London, UK) and the Archive of Estonian Dialects and Kindred Languages of the University of Tartu (Estonia). Multi lingual Finnic. Language contact and change. 303–326. -
The Grown-Up Siblings: History and Functions of Western Uralic *Kse
Rigina Ajanki University of Helsinki The grown-up siblings: history and functions of Western Uralic *kse In this paper, it is claimed that the case suffix *kse, known as translative, dates back to the Finnic-Mordvin proto language, where it functioned as a functive� It is illustrated using synchronic data from Finnic-Mordvin languages that the functions of *kse do not display an inherent feature of directionality ‘into’, or in other terms, lative� It is even possible that the suffix was neutral with respect to time stability, as it is in contemporary Erzya� Further, it is assumed that since the Northern Finnic languages have acquired a new stative case, the functive labelled essive *nA, formerly applied as an intralocal case, the functions of *kse have changed in these languages: *kse has become mainly the marker of a transformative, with an inherent feature of dynamicity� 1� Introduction 5�1� Translative with 2� Typological background: stative copula in Finnish: *kse as a functive similatives and functives 3� Translatives in the case systems 5�2� Finnish ditransitive of Finnic-Mordvin languages constructions displaying 3�1� The Finnish case translative-essive variation system revisited 5�3� Erzya and Finnish expressions 3�2� Functives as of order in translative non-verbal predicates 6� The developmental path 4� The emergence of *kse of translative *kse as a case suffix 7� The emergence of essive 5� The functions of *kse and its consequences for in contemporary the functions of *kse Finnic-Mordvin languages 1. Introduction The translative -
Testing the Robustness of Final Strictness in Verse Lines
Studia Metrica et Poetica 5.2, 2018, 55–76 Testing the robustness of final strictness in verse lines Varun deCastro-Arrazola*1 Abstract: In the field of metrics, it has long been observed that verse lines tend to be more regular or restricted towards the end (Arnold 1905). This has led to the Strict End Hypothesis [SEH], which proposes a general versification principle of universal scope (Hayes 1983). This paper argues that two main challenges hinder the substan- tiation of the SEH in a broad typological sample of unrelated verse corpora. First, the concept of strictness is too coarse and needs to be narrowed down to testable features or subcomponents. Second, explicit measures need to be developed which enable the systematic comparison of corpora, particularly when trying to capture potentially gradient features such as the relative faithfulness to a metrical template. This study showcases how to overcome these issues by analysing the entropy at different positions in the line for corpora in five languages (English, Dutch, Sanskrit, Estonian, Berber). Finally, I argue that, if the SEH is shown to be typologically robust, shared human cognitive features may provide a partial explanation for this puzzling asymmetry in verse lines. Keywords: final strictness; verse universals; verse typology; cognition Introduction The words used in verse are subject to a number of constraints which are absent in everyday speech. By analysing how songs and poems are structured we can observe, for instance, that the discourse is organised into lines of simi- lar length, that a pulse can be perceived by the regular alternation of strong and weak syllables, or that a number of adjacent lines end with exactly the same phonemes.