Sõnatähenduste normimisest eesti keelekorralduses verbi vabandama näitel
Standardization of meanings in Estonian corpus planning on the example of the verb vabandama

Summary/Abstract: Estonian corpus planning relies noticeably on traditions, not on up-to-date language research, which there is none. For example, in 1980 the Orthological Committee decided that the meanings of the words should not be standardized since they change rapidly, but the Dictionary of Standard Estonian (ÕS) published in 1999 still had some restrictions in the definitions and some of the meanings still continue to be inadvisable. The Language Committee of the Estonian Mother Tongue Society, active since 1993, expanded the meanings of some words, but merely a few words have been inspected. One of the words with a limited meaning is the verb vabandama with the suggested meanings ‘justify’ and ‘forgive’. The definition ‘apologise’ has been inadvisable for a long time only because in 1969 linguist Henn Saari classified this meaning as an incorrect translation from the Russian language. Nowadays it is possible to use text corpora for the studies of the actual (unrevised) use of language, which is considered to be the main subject of the usage-based theory. In this article I introduce the analytical results of the usage of the verb vabandama in different meanings. The results clearly demonstrate that the verb was widely used in the meaning of ‘apologise’ already in the second half of the 19th century. Following the example of the German verb sich entschuldigen, the reflexive form end vabandama was used. During the 20th century this usage intensified. In addition, the verb vabandama was increasingly used without a reflexive pronoun end. In the 1990s the verb vabandama was already used predominantly in the meaning of ‘apologise’. Now, in the 21st century, this verb is mostly used in its inadvisable sense. It is thus clear from the example of the verb vabandama that the suggested meanings (standardizations) in the Dictionary of Standard Estonian need an upgrade based on actual language usage (objective language standards) and research.

• Details
• Contents