Indefiniitpronoomenite "keegi" ja "miski" käändevormide varieerumine suulises keeles
Variation in the case forms of the indefinite pronouns keegi ‘someone’ and miski ‘something’ in spoken Estonian

Summary/Abstract: In the case forms of the indefinite pronouns keegi ‘someone’, miski ‘something’, kumbki ‘either’, and ükski ‘none’, the -gi/-ki can be placed after the case ending (e.g., kellelegi), before the case ending (e.g., kellegile), between two case endings (e.g., kellelegile) or before and after the case ending (e.g, kellegilegi) (Rull 1917, Saareste 1923). This variation has a strong dialectal background: forms with -gi/-ki after the case ending have historically been common only in Southern and Northeast Estonia (Saareste 1955: 16). In this article, I used data from Estonian Public Broadcasting’s Radio Corpus (Lippus et al. 2023a) and Estonian Podcast Corpus (Lippus et al. 2023b) to provide an overview of the extent of variation and to describe the factors influencing this variation. Results indicate that for keegi, -gi/-ki appears after (54.2%) and before or between two case endings (45,8%) at nearly equal frequencies, while for miski, the proportions are 85.3% and 14.7%, respectively. The primary factors influencing this variation for keegi were speech tempo, and for miski polarity.

• Details
• Contents