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

Miljan, Merilin; Vihman, Virve

doi:10.12697/jeful.2023.14.3.01

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 24 publications

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“…aspect, quantitative specificity, number), analysed through transitivity parameters in Hiietam (2003). The extent of semantic and pragmatic effects has led Miljan (2009) to argue that partitive and genitive, too, constitute semantic rather than syntactic cases, although encoding underspecified rather than truth-conditional semantics.…”

Section: Canonical Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oblique complements in Estonian: A corpus perspective

Aigro¹,

Vihman

2023

J. Ling.

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This study focuses on Estonian verb-complement structures, which include oblique (non-canonically marked) complements marked in spatial cases. Not all approaches agree on whether canonical arguments and oblique complements have argument status of the same type, but they do mostly agree that the two types of complement markings are used by different types of verbs. First, oblique case is viewed as always indexing the original semantics of the case (direct semantics), that is osutama ‘point at’ selecting an allative (‘onto’) complement. Second, oblique case usage is seen as referring to a restricted set of syntactic relations (indirect semantics), that is Estonian allative and adessive being used for marking Experiencers. In any case, oblique complement verbs are viewed as more semantically restricted than canonical object verbs. This study tests these two hypotheses in a quantitative corpus approach. In a non-semantically extracted sample of verbs (n = 232), it compares the lexical-semantic transitivity of oblique and canonical complement verbs in order to investigate the degree to which indirect semantic effects differentiate between the two types of verbs. In addition, it outlines direct semantic effects between oblique case frames in terms of semantic roles. Finally, it investigates the way these patterns are related to the cases’ individual grammaticalisation degrees.

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Section: Canonical Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oblique complements in Estonian: A corpus perspective

Aigro¹,

Vihman

2023

J. Ling.

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Same yet different

Ivaska,

Tamm

2024

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The article compares the distributional differences in the use of the partitive object cases in Estonian and Finnish via multifactorial modeling in contrastive research using the European Parliament parallel text corpus. Based on previous contrastive research on Finnic, we expected the principles of object case marking to be similar for Estonian and Finnish (confirmed), and the partitive objects to be more numerous in Estonian than in Finnish (not confirmed, as countable objects with scalar verbs proved less likely to be partitive in Estonian). We hypothesized that multifactorial modeling in contrastive research design could help identify the causes for variation and unfold subtle differences between related language systems. Since preferences related to grammatical voice and constituent order revealed subtle differences between the systems, this hypothesis was confirmed.

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Adolescent Heritage Speakers: Morphosyntactic Divergence in Estonian Youth Language Usage in Sweden

Korkus,

Vihman

2024

Languages

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Heritage language (HL) research has investigated adults and children, while adolescents have garnered far less attention, despite adolescence being a crucial time in the development of idiolects and identities, and, hence, also for language maintenance. This study describes HL usage among Estonian-Swedish bilingual teenagers. Data were collected from 21 first- and second-generation Estonian heritage speakers (aged 12–17). Non-standard usage occurred in our corpus at low rates but was found across most speakers in certain areas of morphosyntax. We describe which factors drive such non-standard usage based on the example of two structures with more frequent non-standard occurrence: (1) object marking and (2) experiencer constructions with the verb meeldima ‘to like/please’. Around 6% of objects were marked in divergent ways. Speakers employed two strategies for marking non-standard objects: case omission (i.e., using nominative and/or unmarked forms) and substitution (i.e., using non-target-like marking). Non-standard forms occurred in 11% of experiencer constructions. Speakers diverged more with marking the nominative Stimulus than the dative-like Experiencer, although both occurred in standard and non-standard forms. The reported usage patterns can be explained through the combined effect of cross-linguistic influence, simplification, and input frequency. We also tested the relation between non-standard usage and the speaker’s sociolinguistic background, with mixed results. Considering the limited size and scope of the corpus, overall, the reported divergent usage patterns evidence the role of linguistic input and cross-linguistic effects.

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

Cited by 3 publications

References 24 publications

Oblique complements in Estonian: A corpus perspective

Oblique complements in Estonian: A corpus perspective

Same yet different

Adolescent Heritage Speakers: Morphosyntactic Divergence in Estonian Youth Language Usage in Sweden

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