Johanna Laakso Estonian as a “man-made” language Virve Raag: The Effects of Planned language planning worldwide, and Change on Estonian Morphology. draws interesting parallels, for instance, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: between the roles of Johannes Aavik of Studia Uralica Upsaliensia 29. Estonia and Ferenc Kazinczy of Hun- Uppsala 1998. 156 p. gary in their respective language reform Raimo Raag: Från allmogemål till movements. What could have been nationalspråk: Språkvård och språk- elaborated further is the question of vari- politik i Estland från 1857 till 1999. ation and its role in language: the state- [Summary: From Peasant Idioms to ment, allegedly by William Labov, that a National Language. Language “what from a synchronic point of view Planning in Estonia from 1857 to is variation, is diachronically change in 1999.] Acta Universitatis Upsalien- progress” appears to be a little too sim- sis: Studia Multiethnica Upsaliensia plistic. The history of Estonian language 12. Uppsala 1999. 370 p. planning is surveyed along traditional lines, especially concerning the role of Besides being one of the three so-called influential personalities like Johannes major (or “well-known”) Uralic lan- Aavik (the leading language reformer guages, Estonian frequently figures in with radical and artistic ideas) and J. V. international linguistic fora as an exam- Veski (the leader of the more conserva- ple of a “highly planned ethnic lan- tive line in language planning), whose guage”. The Estonian language reform theoretical antagonism later gained a in the early 20th century and particu- secondary political interpretation as larly the ex nihilo coinages by Johannes well, with Aavik in exile and Veski re- Aavik (e.g. relv ‘weapon’, laup ‘fore- maining in Sovietised Estonia. (Bear- head’, mõrv ‘murder’) are readily men- ing this in mind, it is even more surpris- tioned, especially in connection with ing how many of the neologisms propa- lexical neologisms. The books reviewed gated by Aavik became firmly estab- here are clearly intended to place these lished in Standard Estonian.) The intro- often-cited details in a larger framework. duction also includes a survey of nor- In her doctoral thesis, Virve Raag in- mative dictionaries, as well as the highly vestigates non-lexical phenomena, es- relevant role of linguistic supervision pecially the effects of language plan- of printed publications – a principle ning on plural, illative and superlative firmly rooted in Soviet Estonia, where formation. Her husband, Raimo Raag, all books, even reprints of national clas- on the other hand, paints a vivid picture sics, were “edited” to comply with the of the social history of Modern Stand- prevailing standards of written Esto- ard Estonian as part of the Estonian na- nian. tional consciousness. The material used in Virve Raag’s Virve Raag’s book begins with a study is drawn from newspapers appear- lengthy introduction on general aspects. ing in Tallinn and Tartu, and grouped in She is obviously well versed in the his- three stages (before independence, 1887 tory and methodology of national(ist) and 1907; first period of independence, 378 Besprechungen 1923 and 1938; Soviet to Post-Soviet, formers as a shorter and more aesthetic 1961 and 1991). The selection of the alternative to a typically Estonian inno- samples seems well-founded. On the ba- vation, the plural formation in de (origi- sis of the samples, some key questions nally a reanalysed ending of the geni- in the development of Estonian tive plural; e.g. kõikides sõnades ‘id.’). morphosyntax are investigated. The use The analysis of illative forms in of analytic constructions (e.g. kiriku newspaper language involves a prob- sisse ‘into the church’, employing a lem of mutual compatibility. Are the postposition) has often been branded as possible alternative forms really syn- “German influence”, while synthetic in- onymous, or do they represent different flected forms (e.g. illative kirikusse id.) shades of meaning or typically different were perceived as “more native” and, contexts? At least one part of this ques- therefore, recommended by many lan- tion is investigated here: the alleged po- guage planners. Similarly, the synthetic sition of the (half-lexicalised?) short superlative (e.g. ilusaim ‘most beauti- illative forms. These illatives (e.g. tuppa ful’) was introduced on historical as well ‘into the room’, jalga ‘into the foot’) in as aesthetic grounds, with strong broth- concrete local expressions, as opposed erly support from more archaic Finnish to longer illatives (toasse, jalasse) in but very little from Estonian itself, where more general use, have been suggested the superlative was almost exclusively as constituting a new case in Estonian, expressed with analytic constructions the so-called aditive, which would be e.g. of the type kõige ilusam, lit. “more functionally distinct from the regular beautiful of all”. illative ending in -sse. A simple test But the synthetic inflected forms also administered to 77 Estonians indicates show competing variants: the allo- that the choice of illative allomorph is morphy of illatives (dialectally, lexically not functionally but, rather, phono- and phonotactically conditioned varia- tactically, morphotactically or lexically tion between the endings -sse, -hV and conditioned: it seems to depend strongly -de as well as the endingless or gemi- on the structure of the word stem. This nate illatives) was strictly regulated by is an interesting result, which should language planners, although the norms inspire further investigation: one more changed from time to time, with some- example to show the limits of intro- times heated discussion on certain prin- spective speculation in linguistics and ciples (concerning, for instance, the vi- its practical applications? ability of lexically determined norms: In comparison with the synthetic whether certain endings should be al- illative forms, the role of analytic con- lowed for certain words only). A simi- structions remains somewhat obscure. lar variation between competing in- Statistical graphs show a clear decline flected forms appears in the plural. Here in their use after the 1920s, but the ques- (in non-nominative cases) the more ar- tion of whether they are functionally chaic all-Finnic “vowel plurals” (forms completely identical to synthetic illatives showing the original plural marker i or appears to go unanswered. Of the dif- the reflex of the original stem vowel + ferent types of synthetic illative, there i, e.g. kõigis sõnus “all-PL-INE word- is a clear increase in short illatives until PL-INE” ‘in all words’) were strongly the 1930s (especially affecting the nu- recommended by many language re- merous nouns in -ne : -se- or -s : -se-), 379 Johanna Laakso followed by a slight increase in longer authoritative bodies to legitimate it. illatives ending in -sse. However, a more thorough linguistic Developments in the use of differ- analysis could reveal further reasons. ent plural forms are even more striking. The actual spread of innovations is of- From the state of being virtually non- ten determined by the interplay of stem existent in the (Northern-Estonian types, phonotactics and derivation based) standard language in the late 19th (“word architectonics”) rather than century (except for certain lexicalised purely inflectional factors; the relation- forms), vowel plurals have grown to ship of different subsystems of gram- dominate the plural inflection of certain mar and the probably subconscious word types (e.g. gradational nouns mechanisms involved in their interplay ending in -ik: forms like kirjanikele ‘to/ represent another area of considerable for (the) writers’ have practically ousted interest. A further question concerns the forms ending in de like kirjanikkudele). relationship of the written and spoken This apparent triumph of conscious in- languages as well as the reliability of tervention by language planning authori- material drawn from written sources ties, however, is not uncontroversial. The only. Because of the scarcity of previ- choice of plural formation strategy de- ous research and materials on spoken pends strongly on the stem type; this Standard Estonian, Virve Raag can, in brings the discussion on language plan- her concluding remarks, only make an ning back to the question of whether educated guess that the deliberate standards of linguistic correctness can changes in written Estonian are, at least be lexically determined. The synthetic to a certain extent, reflected in the spo- superlative, even more of a newcomer ken language as well. in Estonian, has enjoyed almost equal The purely linguistic side of Virve success. The graphs show a dramatic Raag’s book thus opens many perspec- increase between the 1920s and 1930s tives that deserve more extensive study (preceded by a slight but noticeable in the future. These, of course, include regularisation of kõige + comparative, questions pertaining to the status and as opposed to other possible analytic nature of variation (dialectal, individual, constructions). stylistic etc.). Other interesting ques- What is the moral of this success tions concern the reasons for linguistic story? Clearly, there were many factors change, the relationship between con- favouring a thoroughgoing language re- scious change and possible internal form in Estonia: rising national con- “drifts” (not to mention the role of the sciousness; appropriate paragons (above alleged typological changes in Estonian all, the example of Finland and Finnish,