Ranniku- ja kirdemurde endofoorsed pronoomenid
Endophoric Demonstrative and Third Person Pronouns in the Coastal and North-Eastern Dialects

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the referential properties of the endophoric pronouns sie, tämä and tä used in the Coastal and North-Eastern dialects of Estonian. The dialect pronouns are compared with the Estonian common language pronouns see, tema and ta. The aim of the analysis is to find out how these pronouns fill the functions of demonstrative and third person pronouns. In the differentiation of these categories I relied on the facts that, first, a demonstrative always occurs as an attributive adjective, and second, demonstratives and stressed third person pronouns refer to less accessible referents than do unstressed third person pronouns. The main differences between the pronouns used in dialects and in the common language are the following: 1) In the common language, only see occurs as an attributive adjective. In the dialects, we also find primarily sie in this position, but tämä is used here marginally as well; 2) The common language tema and ta make up the paradigms of stressed and unstressed third person pronouns. In the dialects, both tämä and tä are used to refer to animate referents in focus; 3) The Estonian common language see is mostly used as a demonstrative pronoun. The dialectal sie, on the other hand, is by far the most common unstressed third person pronoun. These dissimilarities seem to indicate that the Coastal and North-Eastern dialects are on an earlier level of grammaticalization of the primal demonstrative tämä into a third person pronoun.

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