ESTONIAN LANGUAGE LINGUISTICA URALICA SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES /VO LU M E 1 ESTONIAN LANGUAGE Edited by Mati Erelt Estonian Academy Publishers Tallinn EESTI TEADUSTE AKADEEMIA ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES LINGUISTICA URALICA Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn, Eesti. Estonia Internet: http:/f www.kirj.ee/lu Tel. 6 440 745 E-mail: [email protected] Abstracted/indexed in: Bibliographie Linguistique. Linguistic Bibliography (Permanent International Committee of Linguists, Netherlands); MLA Directory of Periodicals (Modem Language Association, USA); LLBA. Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (Sociological Abstracts, USA); EBSCO Publishing Database; European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH). Editor in Chief Tiit-Rein Viitso Editor Väino Klaus Editorial Board: Eugen Helimski (Hamburg, Germany), Tuomas Huumo (Lieto, Finland), Läszlö Keresztes (Debrecen, Hungary), Irina Nikolaeva (London, United Kingdom), Karl Pajusalu (Tartu, Estonia), Tiit-Rein Viitso (Tartu, Estonia) Advisory Board: D. V. Cygankin (Saransk), J. A. Cypanov (Syktyvkar), I. G. Ivanov (Joškar-Ola), V. К. Kel'makov (Iževsk), Paul Kokla (Tallinn), Ago Künnap (Tartu), Lars- Gunnar Larsson (Uppsala), P. N. Lizanec (Užgorod), Käroly Redei (Wien), Huno Rätsep (Tartu), Seppo Suhonen (Hel­ sinki), Jaan Õispuu (Tallinn), P. M. Zaikov (Petrozavodsk). SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES / VOLUME 1 ESTONIAN LANGUAGE Edited by Mati Erelt Second Edition Tallinn 2007 First Edition 2003 ISSN 0868-4731 ISBN 978-9985-50-399-7 © E esti Teaduste Akadeemia Kirjastus Linguistica Uralica CONTENTS Preface 1 I. STRUCTURE OF THE ESTONIAN LANGUAGE Phonology, morphology and word formation (Tiit-Rein Viitso) 1. Alphabet 9 2. Phonology 10 3. Morphology 32 4. Word formation 68 Abbreviations 92 Bibliography 92 Syntax (Mati Erelt) 5. Syntax 93 A bbreviations 129 Bibliography 129 II. RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ESTONIAN LANGUAGE (Tiit-Rein Viitso) 1. Introduction: characteristic features of Estonian 130 2. The linguistic background of the Estonian language 131 3. Main trends in the phonetic and/or phonological development of Estonian 160 4. Stem types and alternations 196 5. Number 198 6. Case endings 201 7. Pronouns 210 8. Verbs 212 Abbreviations o f morphological categories 226 Bibliography 226 ESTONIAN DIALECTS (Karl Pajusalu) 1. On the concept of the Estonian dialect area 231 2. A brief survey of history and fields of Estonian dialectology 234 3. Data collections 237 4, Estonian dialect geography and synchronic classifications of dialects 239 5. Dialectometric studies 260 5 ESTONIAN LANGUAGE 6. Estonian sociodialectology 262 Bibliography 268 IV. WRITTEN ESTONIAN СHeli Laanekask and Tiiu Erelt) 273 Bibliography 336 V. COLLOQUIAL ESTONIAN (Leelo Keevallik) 1. Introduction 343 2. Lexicon 344 3. Phonology 353 4. Morphology 361 5. Syntax 367 6. Communication patterns 370 7 Summary 373 Transcription conventions 374 Glossing conventions 374 Bibliography 374 VI. STUDY OF ESTONIAN (Mati Erelt) 1. Description of Estonian in the 17th and 18th centuries 379 2. 19th-century Estophiles 380 3. Study of Estonian during the period of national awakening 380 4. Study of Estonian during the first half of the 20th century 381 5. Study of Estonian after the Second World War 383 Bibliography 390 Appendix 1. The historical territorial division o f Estonia 399 Appendix 2. Finnic dialects 401 Subject index 403 Index o f personal names 410 PREFACE The Estonian language belongs to the Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric lan­ guage family. Today there are about 1.1 million native speakers of Estonian. Most of them (about 0.94 million) live in the Republic of Estonia, the rest (about 0.16 million) are scattered outside Estonia, with larger communities in Russia, the USA, Canada, and Sweden. The Estonian language developed on the basis of the converging tribal dialects (or languages) that were spoken in the Estonian area - the North Estonian dialect or the Maa dialect and the South Estonian dialect or the Ugala dialect - possibly in the 13th-16th centuries. Standard Estonian started to develop in the 16th century. However, due to dialect differences at first Standard Estonian was not uniform but had two standard varieties - North Estonian or the Tallinn language and South Estonian or the Tartu language. Gradually Standard North Estonian started to predominate in the 18th century, especially after the publication of the North Estonian Bible in 1739. It gained the final victory over Standard South Estonian during the period of national awakening in the second half of the 19th century. The common standard lan­ guage gave rise to the common spoken variety of educated Estonians and later the entire Estonian nation; the local dialects started to decline. The standard language became uniform by means of the language re­ forms of the early 20th century. These reforms made it possible to use Esto­ nian in all of its functions, including the language of science and higher edu­ cation. Estonian was the official language of the Republic of Estonia in 1919— 1940 and regained this status once again in 1988. Its use is regulated by the Language Law. Typologically Estonian is an agglutinating language but more fusional and analytic than the languages belonging to the northern branch of the Finnic languages. Estonian has been influenced by a number of languages, in the early period of the standard language especially by German but later also by Finnish and Russian. English is a major influence for the present-day usage. The first descriptions of the Estonian language were published as early as in the 17th century. However, the scientific research of Estonian started at the beginning of the 19th century. The year 1803 witnessed the beginning of teach­ ing the Estonian language at the University of Tartu. National research into Estonian began at the end of the 19th century, during the period of national awakening. The first Estonian-language descriptions of Estonian were pub­ lished during this period. More purposeful and fruitful research into Estonian developed after the professorship of the Estonian language was set up at the University of Tartu in 1919. There are very few general surveys of the Estonian language for the inter­ national reader, and the existing ones were published a long time ago. The most recent and the best one is Introduction to Estonian Linguistics by Alo Raun and Andrus Saareste (Ural-Altaische Bibliothek XII. Wiesbaden, 1965). The present volume attempts to fill this gap and to provide a comprehensive account of the Estonian language to the international reader - its structure, origin and development, standard language, dialects, spoken language, and the study of Estonian. The authors include Tiit-Rein Viitso, Professor of Finnic languages; Karl Pajusalu, Professor of History and Dialects of the Estonian Language; Mati Erelt, Professor of the Estonian Language (all three work at the University of Tartu); Tiiu Erelt, Senior Researcher at the Institute of the Estonian Language; Heli Laanekask, Lecturer in Estonian at the University of Oulu, and Leelo Keevallik, Researcher at the University of Uppsala. Enn Veldi, Associate Professor at the University of Tartu, made a significant con­ tribution to this volume by translating a large part of the text into English. Mai Tiits, Researcher at the Institute of the Estonian Language, prepared the manuscript for publication. The writing and publication of this book was generously funded by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. The publication was addition­ ally funded by the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Tartu and the Department of English of Tallinn Pedagogical University. Tartu, June 2003 Mati Erelt STRUCTURE OF THE ESTONIAN LANGUAGE PHONOLOGY, MORPHOLOGY AND WORD FORMATION* Tiit-Rein Viitso 1. Alphabet The Estonian alphabet as used for writing words of the Estonian language includes the following letters: ABDEFGHI J KLMNOP RS Š ZŽTUVÕÄÖÜ abdefghij klmnopr sšzžt uvõäöü Note the aberrant position of the otherwise last letter of the Latin alphabet <z> and <ž>. The letters <f š z ž> occur only in late borrowings. Similarly, the letters <b d g> at the beginning of a word indicate that the word is a late borrowing. Both <b d g z ž> and <p t к s s> at the beginning of a word stand for strong voiceless consonants [p t k s s\l Elsewhere <b d g z ž> stand usually * The study was supported by grant no. 4643 of the Estonian Science Foundation. 1 Where needed the Finno-Ugric Phonetic Alphabet (FUPA) is used. In FUPA, special diacritics indicate relative duration of segments. Listed (with the vowel a) in order of increasing quantity, these are for vowels [ä a d a ä ä a] or undershort, full-short, half-long, underlong, full-long, overlong and extra long. These quantities can be approximately rendered by means of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as [a a a' a: ar a::] where [a:] stands both for underlong and full-long vowels. For consonants, the repertoire of relative durations is shorter. Listed (with the postvocalic alveolar stop o/t) in order of increasing quantity, these are \d 1t] in the word final position and [d it tt it] in the prevocalic position; the lists correspond to [d t’ t:] and [d tt tt 11] in IPA. In FUPA, the primary stress in a word is indicated by a raised period after the first vowel of the stressed syllable, the secondary stress by a colon after the first vowel of the corresponding syllable. As the main stress falls mostly on the initial syllable in Estonian, the primary stress is usually indicated only when falling on non-initial syllables. The phrase stress gives prominence to a word in view of greater intensity and/or higher pitch; the phrase stress is indicated by two raised periods. ESTONIAN LANGUAGE for voiceless weak consonants [в d g z z]\ e.g. kägudega [kä-GUDe:Ga] ‘with cuckoos’ Still in late borrowings before or after <p t к s b d g z ž>, the stop letters <b d g z ž> are pronounced as strong stops; e.g.