Sissejuhatavalt hernhuutlike lauluraamatute keelest
On the language of Estonian Moravian hymnals: Introductory remarks

Summary/Abstract: This article is a first attempt to analyze the Estonian language of the writings of the Moravian (Herrnhutian) movement, which brought about profound shifts in worldview and social life in Estonia. To this end, I compared the language of Moravian hymnals with that of non-Moravian ones. I juxtaposed five South Estonian and two North Estonian Moravian hymnals from the period 1741–1810 with the official Lutheran hymnals of the same era. From each book, a 5,000-word excerpt was examined for variation in the use of the most frequent linguistic elements. Most of the phonological, inflectional, lexical, and morphosyntactic variation observed can be attributed to dialectal background – that is, to the differing conventions of the South and North Estonian standard languages. Nevertheless, some deviations from this general pattern emerged. For example, in their expression of futurity, the South Estonian Moravian hymnals aligned more closely with the North Estonian tradition than with the South Estonian one, reducing the use of the saama-future construction and introducing the võtma-construction. In the first South Estonian Moravian hymnal, authored by Johann Christian Quandt, additional rare instances of North Estonian linguistic patterns were found. The hymnals with the most distinctive language were that of Matthias Friedrich Hasse (1747), compiled during the sifting period, and that of Christoph Michael Königseer (1759), who partially drew on Hasse’s material. These hymnals featured several times more diminutives than the others, as well as significantly less South Estonian vowel harmony. Hasse was also the only author to use a postmodifier in the elative case – an element that had already been rejected in the 17th century as a German influence. The only feature distinguishing Moravian books from other works was the plural form wellitse ‘brethren’. In earlier South Estonian sources, other forms had been used, the most recent being welle.

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