English-Estonian code-copying in Estonian blogs

Abstract

Abstract. Th e article discusses English-language impact on Estonian in online blogs. Th e data comprise blog entries from 15 Estonian fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogs from 2012 to February 2016. Th e corpus consists of 283 post entries (141,480 words (tokens)). Th e research showed that there are far fewer selective copies than global copies, probably because selective copies appear at more advanced stages of acquisition. Global copies are usually copied due to semantic specifi city, for example fashion lexis (e.g. look, etc.). Th ey are also copied due to their importance at the discourse level, for example god, oh well, etc.Oft en the English something is done by someone and have-constructions are copied, as these are already habitualized in Estonian. Th ere is also evidence of semantic copying, which causes changes in content or usage of unusual expressions under English infl uence.Th ere are also mixed copies, where global copies are used as lexical cores in copied combinational patterns (e.g. Eng. 'epic' used to form an adjective). A mixed copy oft en represents a transitory stage between a global copy and a selective copy; this might be the case in this research, as there were more mixed copies than selective ones. Th is might be because selective copies appear at more advanced stages of acquisition.

Language Interaction in Emergent Grammars: Morphology and Word Order in Bilingual Children’s Code-Switching

“…Unfortunately, we lack objective data on the child-directed speech heard by the children in this study, and more generally, we lack comparable spoken data from adults bilingual in English and Estonian. Recent research has found some variability in the use of English and Estonian in computer-mediated communication (on Facebook, Igav 2013; in blogs, Kask 2016). Most of the studies to date, however, involve native Estonian speakers who make liberal use of L2 English in their writing.…”

To agree or not to agree? English adjectives in Estonian-English bilingual blogs and vlogs

“…Studies about English-Estonian language contact by Igav (2013), Roosileht (2013) and Vaba (2010) confirm that English adjectives are often used to signal attitudes, they convey strong emotions and are prominent on the pragmatic level. They are also more colourful and add expressiveness to the text (Kask 2016). For example, adjectives like badass and crappy are both colloquial adjectives, that convey strong emotions and may be a part of the blogger's/vlogger's personal style.…”

“…According to Verschik (2019), monological asynchronous genres (like blogs and vlogs) provide a window into these aspects in individual language use and multilingual repertoire. The data for this study comes from Estonian fashion and lifestyle blogs and vlogs, which have proved to be a setting with much English-Estonian language contact (Kask 2016, Ratt 2017, Roosileht 2013, and Verschik and Kask 2019. This study is qualitative.…”