We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The article explores whether the widespread belief that the folk name Mulks and the region name Mulgimaa derive from the Latvian word muļķis, muļķe ‘stupid, fool’ is based on evidence and possibly justified. Phonetic similarity between the words mulk and muļķis is evident indeed, but we lack convincing evidence that the word mulk is of Latvian origin. By tracing the emergence and use of the folk name Mulks, the authors explore its social, historical and cultural context. By combining contemporary fiction, polemics in media, memorates and other forms of oral tradition, sources on settlement and migration, it appears that the folk name Mulks was most probably used by people living in the district of Tartu to refer to migrants from the southern part of the districts of Pärnu and Viljandi who started, in the late 1850s and increasingly in the 1860s, to buy farms in perpetuity outside their own area of residence, most notably in the district of Tartu. The article considers the relationships between the farm name Mulgi, the migration of Mulks in the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the early use of the folk name Mulks in the Estonian cultural space. In the late 1850s and early 1860s several families from Halliste and other parishes, most notably from the manor Abja, migrated to Tartumaa and settled down in several different places all over the district. Part of them became tenants, some became proprietors by buying a farm from the landlord. Among the early inmigrants there were the former farm heads of two Mulgi farms in Abja, who were forced to leave their place due to demesne expansions. It is very probable that during their long searches for a new home (farm) they often had to answer the question „Where are you from?” by „We are from Mulgi”, since it was common in those days to tell which farm one came from rather than what one’s surname was (surnames were still a novelty in Estonia and seldom used, especially in oral communication). Migrants from more developed regions (nowadays known as Mulgimaa) were successful in their search for farmland and they managed to purchase c. 400 farms from the manorial lords in the district of Tartu until 1889. The occurrence of the folk name in the media and fiction of the late 1860s and early 1870s, referring to persons who bought the farms that had formerly been cultivated by Tartumaa peasants who were now evicted, lends support to the idea that the folk name and the process of buying peasant land in perpetuity were closely related. The success of the in-migrants must have irritated the locals, who started calling them Mulks, which was initially an abusive name.
More...
Review of: Kairi Tamuri. Basic emotions in read Estonian speech: acoustic analysis and modelling. (Dissertationes philologiae Estonicae Universitatis Tartuensis 39.) Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2017. 238 lk.
More...
Review of: Tiina Rüütmaa. Kontrastiivne ülevaade kõneviisisüsteemist ungari ja eesti kõrvallauses. Dissertationes philologiae uralicae Universitatis Tartuensis 13. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2014. 243 lk.
More...
Alustan sellest, et ma ei kirjutanud oma artiklit „Kolme häälikuvälte eksituse mehaanika” Karl Pajusalu kriitikuna ega kõnetaktivälte teooria eitajana, vaid tähelepanujuhtimisena: ka kõnetaktivälte teoorias tuleb võtta seisukoht, millisest fonoloogilisest nomenklatuurist kõnetakti silbid koosnevad ja missugused on (sõltuvus)suhted prominentse rõhulise ja rõhuta silbi vahel. Ma ei eita kõnetakti- ehk sõnavälte kontseptsiooni. Olen vist üks esimesi, kes ammendavuse taotlusega kirjeldas normatiivse eesti kirjakeele kõnetaktide võimalusi (väitekirjas 1971. aastal; trükis Hint 1973). Hiljemalt tollest ajast on kõnetakti tähtsus mulle otse veendumusena selge, veel enne kui mulle selgeks sai häälikuvälte teooria lootusetus.
More...
Review of: Eva Liina Asu, Pärtel Lippus, Karl Pajusalu, Pire Teras. Eesti keele hääldus. (Eesti keele varamu II.) Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2016. 287 lk.
More...
Review of: Helen Türk. Consonantal quantity systems in Estonian and Inari Saami . (Dissertationes linguisticae Universitatis Tartuensis 35.) Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2019. 148 lk
More...
Twentieth century political changes have resulted in alternative enregisterments (Agha 2007) of Albanian linguistic space. Although the Geg (North)-Tosk (South) split along the Central Albanian Shkumbin River is a fundamental principle of Albanian dialectology (Friedman 2005, 33), many non-linguists believe there is a tripartite dialectological division between North, Central, and South Albanian. The Central Albanian region lies geographically in the southern-most part of Geg territory and linguists classify it as a sub-dialect of Geg. In order to explain how and why the North-Center-South enregisterment has emerged alongside the North- South enregisterment, I analyze the way semiotic processes of differentiation (Irvine & Gal, 2000) operate in metalinguistic data from ethnographic fieldwork (interviews, map task, participant observation), social media, and academic discourses. These data demonstrate that nationstate formation processes, including language standardization and urbanization, contributed to the emergence of the North-Center-South enregisterment because these politics posited Central Albania as a modern, urban space and shifted the anchor metaphor (Gal 2005) of difference based on personhood to one based on space.
More...
After briefly presenting the various analytical and synthetic strategies of oblique case marking in Romanian, the article describes the genitive-dative inflected forms of definite animate feminine nouns. It further examines the formal variation of animate and inanimate feminine nouns ending in -e and -ă in the nominative-accusative case that make the definite genitive-dative in -ei/-ii, depending on several factors: (i) the phonological features of the noun ending (a diphthong or a hiatus); (ii) the normative prescriptions and actual usages; (iii) other limitations, like the absence of a plural form, which is normally taken as a basis for genitive-dative formation, or speakers’ lack of knowledge of the plural form. Examples of such nouns are: ciocârlie ‘skylark’ – ciocârlieiG-D, duduie ‘young lady’ – duduiiG-D, nașă ‘godmother’ – nașeiG-D, mamaie ‘granny’ – mamaieiG-D, vătuie ‘baby goat/rabbit’ – vătuieiG-D, găzdoaie ‘goodwife’ – găzdoaieiG-D. Special attention is paid to the feminine animate nouns in -că and -gă, which display oblique case variants in -căi, -chii, -cii or -găi, -ghii, -gii, respectively. The study shows a correlation between the semantic-referential feature [±animate] and the morphological structure of the oblique case of feminine nouns, which hints at the animacy hierarchy of nouns. Hence, feminine proper nouns (the highest in the animacy hierarchy) which end in -că/-gă form the genitive-dative in -căi/-găi, according to normative prescriptions, or in -chii/-ghii in the colloquial register (Floricica – Floricicăi/FloricichiiG-D, Olga – Olgăi/OlghiiG D). The same applies to some kinship nouns in substandard local varieties (mamacă ‘mother’ – mamacăi/mamachiiG-D). From these two types of animate feminine nouns, the genitive-dative endings -căi/-găi extended, in non-standard usages, to nouns situated lower in the animacy hierarchy: ethnonyms (americancă ‘American woman’ – americancăiG-D), names of professions (astrologă ‘astrologer’ – astrologăiG-D) and [animate], [‒human] nouns (maimuțică ‘little monkey’ – maimuțicăiG-D).
More...
The paper deals with Shtokavian organic languages in Croatia. The final l in the verb adjective active is analyzed.
More...
Our research question is whether the remarkable morphological diversity observed in dying Finnic languages occurs just on community level, or is it also characteristic of the usage of a single speaker. To answer this question we take a closer look at idiolect variation in a hitherto unexplored variety of Karelian, namely, the Kolvitsa dialect spoken in the Kola peninsula. Examining lexical, morphophonological and morphological variation we focus on the possible reasons behind the use of parallel forms. We observe that lexical variation is often conditioned by dialect geography, i.e. it depends on the origin of the (grand)parents of Kolvitsa residents from different regions of White Sea Karelia, whereas in the case of morpho(phono)logy the main factor behind choice and alternation is erosion of language structure.
More...
This research studies the perceptions the National Certificates Finnish raters (N = 44) have on L1 Finland-Swedish speakers’ (N = 9) Finnish oral proficiency. The article also examines how the correct or incorrect recognition of the speakers’ L1 affects the raters’ assessments and perceptions of oral language skills. The data comes from the project ‘Broken Finnish’: Accent perceptions in societal gatekeeping in which Finland-Swedish speakers form one of the researched groups. The article examines L1 recognition and the use of the analytical criteria for assessment, by means of quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The qualitative data consist of the raters’ written comments on the speakers’ assumed L1 and of the reasons they give for their assumptions. These are analysed with data driven content analysis. The raters struggled to recognise the Finland-Swedish speakers of Finnish, only 18 % were recognised correctly. For some reason women (N = 5) were recognised somewhat better than men (N = 4). What is interesting, in 27 % of the incorrect recognition cases the speakers were assumed to have Estonian as their L1. Both the correct Finland-Swedish as L1 and the incorrect Estonian as L1 recognition had an effect on the ratings. Correctly recognized Finland-Swedish speakers got higher marks in every criterion than the unrecognised group. There was a similar trend when the raters assumed the speaker to be Estonian, except for pronunciation, which gave the speakers in this group lower marks than the correctly recognised Finland-Swedish and the unrecognised groups. When the raters commented on the speakers’ production, they paid attention especially to pronunciation, fluency, grammar, and to some external features that are not mentioned in the National Certificates’ assessment criteria. When the raters assumed that the speakers had Estonian as L1, they often mentioned a foreign accent or intonation, especially a rising word intonation. In Finnish the intonation is falling, and this is the case in Finland-Swedish as well. However, rising intonation, similar to that of Estonian, occurs in some Finland-Swedish dialects. The raters heard other similarities with Estonian as well, for example a palatalised l-sound and an unvoiced d-sound. The raters described the speakers’ fluency very similarly in both groups; the speech was natural, easy to understand, and even native-like. Grammatical errors that occurred were perceived as small slips. However, these slips caught the raters’ attention, and they were utilized to make assumptions about the speakers’ L1, as both Finland-Swedish and Estonian. As a feature external to the assessment criteria, the raters commented on the content of the speech. In speech performances, there were references to cultural phenomena that led the raters to assume that the speakers were Estonian or Finland-Swedish. Both groups in our study are considered to be very good Finnish learners and generally they do very well in the National Certificates’ Finnish test. In addition, there are some similar features of how Finland-Swedish and Estonian L1 speakers speak Finnish, and therefore it is understandable that the raters mix up the two groups.
More...
The article summarizes the development of linguistic disciplines dealing with the sound aspects of speech and the Slovak language and the development of phonetic and phonological thinking in the context of the articles published in the previous ninety volumes of the Slovenská reč journal. Their authors have published several remarkable studies, professional informative contributions, discussions and polemical articles, but especially the results of their scientific research work. Among the dominant topics and discussed problems were orthoepic issues, composition, relationships and functioning of the elements of the segmental system and suprasegmental properties of speech, the functioning of quantity and its guidance by the rhythmic law, its cooperation with phonology, derivation and morphology in the context of orthography, as well as the implementation of modern research methods at the sound level of Slovak and the creation of its systemic character.
More...
This article discusses a study of written dialecticism, conducted in order to assess how the authorial grapholect conveys oral dialecticism and to analyse the spelling choices made by the author. The dialectal discourse used for this study consists of a number of Facebook posts published in a dialectal grapholect by a female informant. The first part of the article focuses on specific orthographic decisions made by the author-informant to convey the distinct features of her native Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Panevėžys. The second investigative section of the article examines the perception of a dialectal grapholect, looking closely at how ordinary language users read and understand texts written in it. The study shows that the dialectal grapholect used by the author-informant – a speaker of the Eastern Aukštaitian subdialect of Panevėžys – is relatively systematic. Her transcription is predominantly phonetic, with the morphological principle employed in cases of positional quantitative vowel changes, i.e., no variations in individual word forms were captured in the written materials. The author-informant utilises the grapheme inventory of the standard language, without inventing any new graphemes or borrowing them from the orthographic sets of other languages in order to reflect certain specific sounds of the Panevėžys subdialect. Stress retraction is one of the most common causes for ending reduction in the linguistic homeland of the author-informant. However, when neither the accent nor the consonant palatalization after dropping the vowel are marked in the written text, anyone reading it, especially speakers of other Lithuanian variants, may struggle to clearly identify the grammatical form recorded by the author-informant. This was also confirmed by the perceptual study conducted at the same time. The sociolinguistic portraits of its participants indicate that dialectal codes were more alien than familiar to them in terms of active usage, but that they have had opportunities to gain some perceptual experience in spoken dialectal codes. However, despite a relatively good holistic understanding of the authorial dialectal grapholect, the participants of this study were not able to translate it accurately into Standard Lithuanian. Variations in translating the transcribed dialect into the standard language indicate communicational limitations of written dialecticism. It is important to stress that this is not a critical evaluation of the authorial dialectal grapholect, as communicational limitation can have certain advantages, too. By distinguishing, a dialectal grapholect also designates. While it may be misunderstood or partially understood outside of the variant’s community, a dialectal grapholect functions (or can function) as a fully-fledged, even self-regulating, code within that community. However, this aspect of written dialecticism requires more in-depth research. The discussed case study provides certain insights into the role of an ordinary community member in preserving the vitality of their dialectal code. By making certain orthographic decisions, the author-informant “solidifies” the dialecticism of her native variant, with all its distinguishing and common features. But this does not necessarily confirm the vitality of the dialectal code in apparent time, despite the co-existence of certain dialectal and non-dialectal features in the same discourse fragment (spelling the way one pronounces but that pronunciation can vary). Either way, it is clear that local “conservation” (i.e., within the community or at least amongst some of its members) of dialectal features, differently to dialect dictionaries, can have an impact on the spread of those features. However, this subject would undoubtedly benefit from further large-scale studies.
More...
Phonotactic probability refers to the frequency with which phonological segments and sequences of phonological segments occur in words in a given language (Vitevitch – Luce, 2004). It has been shown that phonotactic probabilities of words are important in language processing and language acquisition (Jusczyk et al., 1994; Mattys – Jusczyk, 2001; Pitt – McQueen, 1998). For example, words with high phonotactic probability are processed faster by native speakers in same-different tasks (Luce – Large, 2001), and pseudowords with high phonotactic probability are judged as more word-like by adults (Vitevitch et al., 1997). In this paper we present a phonotactic calculator for Czech implemented as a Python script. The script relies on frequency data from three freely available corpora of Czech: SYN2015 and SYN2020, corpora of written Czech (Křen et al., 2015; 2020), and ORAL v1, a corpus of spoken Czech (Kopřivová et al., 2017). The steps of the calculation mirror those developed by Vitevitch and Luce (2004) for English, and the script can provide phonotactic (and additionally orthotactic) probability for any Czech word or pseudoword. The script can be downloaded at <https://phonocalc.github.io>.
More...
We investigate Chaucer’s use of interjections in Fragment III of the Canterbury Tales, which comprises “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, “The Friar’s Prologue and Tale”, and “The Summoner’s Prologue and Tale”. We discuss the problem of how to distinguish interjections from other word classes, and we distinguish primary interjections such as allas, buf, ey, fy, hayt, lo, weilawei and secondary interjections, such as hayl, look, now, peace, welcome, why. As a third group we also take corroborative phrases such as by God into consideration. We look at the frequency of the various interjections: Now, lo, nay as well as a, by God, and pardee are frequent and occur in all the tales of Fragment III; on the other end of the frequency scale there are buf, which is a hapax legomenon, and the rarely attested hayt. We describe the interjectional spectrum used in Fragment III based on their functions. Interjections can, for example, serve as indicators of emotions (allas, weilawei), as corroboratives (by God) and expletives (a devel weye), as discourse markers (now thanne), as response forms (nay, ye, yis), as polite speech act formulae (grant mercy, no fors), etc. The paper further offers an analysis of the phonology, morphology, verse meter and stress pattern. As can be said of the Middle English vocabulary more generally, the etymology of the interjections is mixed: some go back to Old English, especially weilawei, but many were borrowed from French (or ultimately from Latin), e.g., allas, ey, fy, pardee. Chaucer’s characters often use not just one, but two or three interjections in combination, e.g., Allas! and weylawey! or allas nay, nay, mainly probably for additional emphasis. We suggest that that the interjectional spectrum in Fragment III (1) expands on Biber et al’s. (1999) inserts and Culpeper & Kytö’s (2010) pragmatic noise; (2) undergoes change like words; and is indexical (3) of a multi-lingual social context (4) and of oral and literary conventions.
More...
The Travnik speech belongs to the Central Bosnian sub-dialect of the Ikavian-New Shtokavian (western) dialect. This dialect covers the area between the rivers Bosna and Verbas. Its characteristics are: ikavizam, šćakavizam, weaker residues of the old declension, but also compactness in the area of prosody. Majority of the speech of the newer Ikavian dialect has a stable four-accent system. There is scarce data on the Travnik speech at the end of 19th century. Most data is provided by nine questionnaires from the survey Questions in the Speech of Ordinary People. They are a part of the collection from 1897 at the National Museum in Sarajevo. The data from those questionnaires has not been comprehensively presented or processed so far. The questionnaires have 150 questions related to the phonetic-phonological, morphological, syntax and lexical characteristics of the speech and they were filled by literate people. The data from those questionnaires was used in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to determine the characteristics of the Travnik speech at the end of the 19th century at the phonetic-phonological levels. The data from those nine questionnaires filled in the Travnik region is precious for dialectology of the Central Bosnian region.
More...
Acquisition of language includes the occurrence of grammar, therefore it is strongly connected with the following language components: phonetics and phonology, morphology, semantics, lexicology, pragmatics and syntax. When the child produces its first word (1 – 1.5 year), this is the moment when its syntactic development begins. The sentences produced between the first and the second year are single-element expressions (so-called telegraph sentences of truncated structure (Jelaska 2007). About the age of two, the sentence is extended to become a two-element structure, while at the age of three the child already possesses a certain fund of words to which it can apply morphological rules and which it can arrange in more complex syntactic structures (Kuvač 2007). It is considered that the child extends its sentence by one word per year so that on the average, a seven-year-old child can produce a sentence of seven words (Pavličević-Franić 2005). The concept of the children’s language (Jakobson 1941, according to Bežen 2009) is a result of early language learning and it is a crucial issue of the language acquisition which does not end when the child enters school. Therefore, it is the aim of the research to determine the developmental features and their influence on acquisition of Croatian language syntax in early institutional teaching (from the age of 7 to the age of 12, i.e. from the 1st to the 6th grade of primary school). The corpus consists of written works of students (N = 174). The data will be analyzed by the method of content analysis and processed by the SPSS statistics software.
More...
Singing voice disorders are an important segment of vocal pathology, targeting a niche of professional and amateur singers of all musical genres. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of using the principles of vocal hygiene and the eclectic vocal therapy model by combining three resonant vocal techniques: humming, the method of disguised yawning and the chewing technique, in the corrective-recuperative vocal therapy program. The positive effects of the vocal therapy used in all five case studies were observed. If the initial assessment relates to altered vocal parameters, pain in the laryngeal muscles and a negative influence of vocal problems on quality of life, the final assessment found normalization of vocal parameters, decreased pain and improved the quality of life.
More...
The transfer of the paleosemantic analysis of Nicholas Marr into the field of literary science was largely carried out by Olga Freudenberg. This interiorisation of the approach leads to the development of several original theoretical constructs, dedicated to language and style, which we consider in this text sequentially: 1) the “anti-semiotic“ character of ancient metaphors; 2) the associated “self-antecedent“ of meanings; 3) qualitative seman¬tic “impersonality”; 4) phonetic-semantic complexity.
More...