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Adverbial Clauses With -ig and the “until-puzzle”

Author(s): Barbara Ürögdi / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2013

This paper is devoted to untangling some of the cross-linguistic puzzles that are associated with temporal adverbial clauses in general, and until-clauses in particular. After a brief introduction to the issues raised by the construction in Hungarian, the paper presents an overview of the complexities of until-clauses and prior attempts at analyzing these. Then, an account that was first proposed in MacDonald & Ürögdi (2009a;b; 2011) for English is presented, and it is argued that until-constructions do not require any of the special machinery that has been proposed to explain their behavior. The analysis outlined accounts for the properties of temporal adverbials formed with until and for without reference to auxiliary concepts like “expletive negation” and “stativizing negation”. After this detour into English, we return to Hungarian, where until-clauses present a more complex picture than they do in Germanic, and we see how even these data can be accounted for without special stipulations. Finally, the results are tied into the general picture of temporal and event relativization (cf. Haegeman & Ürögdi 2010a;b), providing support for an analysis of a well-defined class of subordinate clauses involving operator movement.

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Ahrensi õlgadel. Ahrensi ortograafia ajalooliselt ja tänapäeval

Author(s): Mati Hint / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 28/2018

In his grammars of Estonian (1843 and 1853), Eduard Ahrens (1803–1863), the pastor of Kuusalu, created a new orthography for the Estonian language. Ahrens intended to more adequately render the structure of short and long syllables in Estonian. Finnish orthography served as a model for Ahrens, thanks to the many similarities between the phonetic and morphophonemic (grade alternation) systems of both languages. Te most important difference between the phonetic systems of Finnish and Estonian is in the prosody of Estonian: it is possible to pronounce long stressed syllables with two distinctive syllable quantities (traditionally called the second and the third degree of quantity) without any change in the segmental structure of the syllable. This extra prosodic means of Estonian was not rendered in the orthography proposal made by Ahrens, because he concentrated on the segmental structure of syllables. This was a prescient decision, as it provided the new orthography with stability, and due to it this orthography has served the Estonian nation and the Estonian culture well since the 1870s. In the years 1840–1875 the foundations for the investigation of Estonian in accordance with the principles and theories of general linguistics were created (Fr. R. Faehlmann, Eduard Ahrens, Jakob Hurt, F. J. Wiedemann). Unfortunately, in the 1870–1880s a new theory of Estonian phonetics was formed (in 1879 Mihkel Veske created an original theory of the Estonian sound system; in 1884 Karl August Hermann used this new theory in his popular grammar of Estonian). In this theory the prosodic quantity of long syllables was interpreted as the quantity degrees of segmental sounds: both vowels and consonants were described as having three distinctive degrees of length (short, long, and overlong), and diphthongs and consonant clusters as having two distinctive degrees of length (long and overlong). Te phonetic system of Estonian was looked at as totally different from any other phonetic system. Ahrens’s orthography was reinterpreted in a way that required any sound in a stressed syllable to be determined to have one of three quantity degrees (short, long, overlong), and the diphthongs and consonant clusters to have long or overlong quantity. This view dominated in Estonian linguistics without any real opposition for about a hundred years (1880s–1980s). Te theory of three quantity degrees is totally incompatible with any phonemic theory. Despite it, up to now, the methods and rules for learning orthography are based on the false assumption that Ahrens’s orthography should be complemented with decisions about the quantity degree of any vowel or consonant or of so-called compound sound. This makes the rules for orthography schizophrenic, for in order to achieve the orthography as it is, a series of unnecessary steps must be taken. However, from the 1960s to the present day, the theory of three quantity degrees has lost ground step by step, and the views of Jakob Hurt and F. J. Wiedemann have made their way back to scientific discussion. In scientific discussion of Estonian phonetics and phonology, and in orthographic dictionaries, the theory of three quantity degrees in declarations has been abandoned, but in practice (A-B-C books, popular overviews of Estonian phonetics, the methods for teaching and learning orthography, some phonological interpretations) the treatment of Estonian as a language with a very peculiar phonological quantity system is still active.

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AKADEEMILISTE VÄLJENDITE VARAMU – KEELERESSURSS, MIS ON ABIKS KIRJUTAMA ÕPPIMISEL JA ÕPETAMISEL

Author(s): Anni Jürine / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 64/2018

The present paper gives an overview of the Academic Phrase Bank for Writing in Estonian. The phrase bank is a language resource that supports the thesis writing process. The phrase bank is primarily intended to be used as a pedagogical tool during the supervision process, the resource can also be used by students independently. The phrase bank is a publicly available resource (teadustekst.ut.ee) which includes approximately 750 expressions in Estonian. The expressions are organized according to their function (e.g. stating the aim, indicating a gap, introducing the method, making conclusions, etc.), which are in turn connected to the three major sections in the Estonian thesis (Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion).

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Akateemisen maahanmuuttajan suomen kielen taidon tarve työssä ja arjessa

Author(s): Markku Nikulin / Language(s): Finnish / Issue: 29/2019

The article deals with the importance of Finnish language proficiency for nonnative students and staff members in the academic life in Finland. During the last few decades, there has been a lot of discussion on the allegedly deteriorated position of Finnish at the universities and in the society in Finland. Correspondingly, as English seems to become a valid alternative for Finnish in the academic world, it is often assumed that Finnish is no longer needed at the university and the incomers need not learn Finnish. This article takes part in the discussion by representing views of non-native academic people on the matter. Te article is based on a survey data collected in 2015 at the University of Turku. The survey had three major aims: to find out to which extent Finnish is used by the non-native people at the university, to find out whether more Finnish teaching is needed (especially at the highest levels) and to find out what is the importance of Finnish language proficiency in the life of academic people who do not speak Finnish as their first language. Te results of the survey are interpreted against a theoretical background of theories dealing with personal wellbeing, integration and the importance of personal motivation for learning a language. According to the survey, most respondents think it is actually perfectly possible to live in Finland also by using English. However, 74% of the respondents who answered in Finnish thought that it is not possible to live well or to integrate into social and cultural life in Finland to the full without being able to speak Finnish. In addition, most of the respondent expressed a desire to learn more Finnish, as they were not satisfied with their proficiency in Finnish. Especially the staff members desired to have a higher proficiency in Finnish. According to the results, an improved proficiency in Finnish seems to be connected to better personal wellbeing and thus a greater degree of integration. Interestingly, the respondents did not find the difficulty of the Finnish language a major obstacle in learning Finnish, as the biggest obstacles named were the lack of time and suitable language courses. Te results point out the importance of language proficiency for integration also in the academic world and call for additional and more tailored Finnish courses at the universities – also at the highest levels of language proficiency.

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Ako hovorí slovenská mládež v Maďarsku a na Slovensku v súčasnosti? (Bilingválna reflexia)

Author(s): Mária Homišinová / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 1/2015

The intention of this paper is to present the empirical research results of the Slovak youth lingual-communication behavior in Slovakia and Hungary, whereas this research work was performed in both countries in the year 2010. Expressions of a spoken form of the Slovak language in surroundings were investigated, which is typical for the application of the written language as a form of a social contact in school – with friends, peers, and in family. The referential framework of this article consists of three analytical levels: 1. the analysis of the knowledge level of the Slovak and Hungarian language (in the case of the Slovak language, its lingual appearances are analyzed); 2. intergeneration relations of lingual communication; 3. the analysis of mutual contexts (the dependence on identification signs)

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Ako vníma materinský jazyk slovenská mládež v Maďarsku a na Slovensku? (Etnolingvistická reflexia)

Author(s): Mária Homišinová / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 2/2015

The intention of this paper is to present the empirical research results of the Slovak youth lingual-communication behavior in Slovakia and Hungary, whereas this research work was performed in both countries in the year 2010. Expressions of a spoken form of the Slovak language were investigated in surroundings which are typical for the application of the written language as a form of a social contact in school: with friends, peers, and in the family. The referential framework of this paper consists of three levels of analysis: 1. the analysis of communication skills in Slovak and Hungarian; 2. the analysis of the evaluation of life values; 3. the correlation of these parameters: language communication skills versus the perception of ethnic values (mother tongue).

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Alternatiivseid etümoloogiaid II

Author(s): Lembit Vaba / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 61/2015

The article presents alternative etymologies for the estonian words hangeldama ‘to traffic in, speculate’ and nurg : nuru ‘blicca bjoerkna’. In Estonian etymological literature, it is claimed that the German borrowing hangeldama ‘to buy up and sell at a profit, to traffic in, speculate’ (< German handeln ‘to trade’) has undergone a phonological replacement likely on the example of hankima ‘to procure, obtain’. However, the secondary -ng- in the place of the expected -nd- is observed in a number of other borrowings, which suggests that this is a widespread optional replacement. the article gives examples of this replacement in other borrowings, such as angel ‘part of the wheel and axle of an anchor, a well, or similar, around which the wheel and axle is rotated’ – andel(i) id., cf. Low German, Dutch handel ‘handhold’, German Hantel ‘handhold’ etc. the ng / nd variation appears in native stems with a particular phonological structure, with overlapping or very similar fields of meaning, e.g. kangla : kan´gla, kangli: kan´gli – kandla : kan´dla / kandle, kandli : kan´dli ‘armpit’ and others. the nk / ng : nt / nd variation is typical of onomatopoetic/descriptive stems with over- lapping or very similar fields of meaning, e.g. põngerjas – põnder / põnderjas / põnderlas ‘brat, small child’: põng(e)- and others. In Estonian etymological literature, it is claimed that the origin of the fish nurg : nuru ‘blicca bjoerkna’ is unclear. this name is quite widespread. Also recorded is the variant stem nurr, nurra- : nurrakala. Wiedemann’s dictionary also gives the variant nuuru-k[ala], which has not been recorded in later collections of dialect data. the article draws attention to the Latvian name ņura for the loach (Nemachilus barbatus), which Latvian fish name researcher Benita Laumane regards as a borrowing, from Estonian nurg. in many languages, the names for loaches include numerous variants deriving from the notion of “beard”, in reference to the barbels around the fish’s mouth. There is no doubt that the Latvian nura, of estonian origin, also has its roots in this idea, assuming an etymological connection between estonian nurg and the word family nurrud, nurru-, nurri-, nuru- and nuri/karvad ‘whiskers, moustache’. This Estonian word family derives from the German loan base Schnurr, which appears in e.g. the compound word Schnurrbart ‘whiskers, moustache’. German Schnurrbart also denotes the fish Enchelyopus cimbrius or Gadus cimbricus, belonging to the cod family. In the Latvian name ņura ‘loach’, the word-initial consonant cluster has been reduced to a single consonant, indicating that this is an indirect loan via Estonian, not a direct loan from German. This loanword is interesting, because it demonstrates that Estonian nurr / nurg could at some point have been used to refer to the loach or some other type of fish with “whiskers”. The article also draws attention to the fact that the -g in the variant nurg is non-etymological, having developed by way of proportional analogy, e.g. urg : uru = x : nuru. Non-etymological -g after r is found in Estonian in e.g. kiirg : kiira ‘crown (of the head); nape; frontal bone’, neerg ‘kidney’, suhkarg ‘dried bread, rusk’.

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Alternatiivseid etümoloogiaid III nuuter ja pess

Author(s): Lembit Vaba / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 62/2016

The article presents an alternative etymology for the words nuuter ‘cabbage root inflammation’ and pess ‘tree sponge, tinder’. The word nuutra ~ nuutri and nuutõrn(as) ~ nuudõrna, denoting a root disease in cabbage, is a dialect word restricted to southeastern Estonia. It has been documented in lexicographical sources beginning with Wiedemann’s dictionary. Osmo Nikkilä has conjectured that nuutra is a Scandinavian loanword; however, this is implausible simply due to the fact that the word is only found in southeastern Estonia, not elsewhere in the country. The loan base is more likely the Russian dialect word нутерь, нутир resp. нутр ‘(human or animal) internal organs; disease of internal organs; heart, core (of the fruit of a tree or plant)’, compare also the derivation нутрéц ‘(human or animal) cryptorchidism; hernia; parasitic intestinal worm; caterpillar, maggot, larva (in the fruit of a plant)’. The form nuudõrna and other similar forms recorded in addition to nuutra in the etomaa region, point to a repeated borrowing from a synonymous loan base, the Russian dialect word нутри́на́. The phonological substitution is unproblematic even if the у in the loan base is unstressed, since an initially unstressed vowel may lengthen when the word is borowed and the stress moves to the first syllable of the word. The word nuuter denoting a root disease in cabbage was introduced into the terminology of plant protection most likely in the late 1920s. The word pess, found in South Estonian-speaking regions (including language islands), along with its phonological variant päss, denotes primarily a birch sponge and/or the flammable material prepared from it, i.e. tinder. The past hundred years have seen several different scholarly opinions regarding the origin of pess ~ päss, but no convincing etymology has yet been found. The Finnish researcher Heikki Ojansuu has supposed that pess is a South Estonian word, the original form of which was *peksä, from which have derived päks, -e ‘egg-shaped bone tumor, ringbone (disease in horses)’, luu-päks ‘anklebone’ and päss, -a ‘thicker end, button etc.; thumb’, Estonian päkk: päka ‘boletus’ and päkk : päka ‘bump, protuberance (in the palm near the thumb, on the inner side of the front of the foot, on the hoof) etc.; thumb’. Andrus Saareste, however, believed that the word shares a root with the South Estonian verb pesmä. Julius Mägiste has repeated the claims of previous researchers regarding the possible common origin of pess and South Estonian pesmä, which in his opinion would confirm the expression tuld peksma ‘to strike fire’ recorded on Saaremaa. More recently, the etymology of pess has been discussed by the Finnish etymologist Eino Koponen, who considers the relationship with the verb pesmä implausible, because pess denotes tinder growing on trees, which has not yet been prepared for use in lighting a fire. A more believable etymological explanation, offering a better semantic justification for the name, is that the word is related to the Baltic pinti word family. The possible loan base of South Estonian pess is the Eastern Latvian pìesa2, piêsis ‘tinder’, the older Baltic equivalents of which are (Eastern) Lithuanian péntis as well as pìntis, pintìs, pintė ‘gnarls growing on rotting trees, fungus, tinder (Fomes); water-dwelling sponge (Spongia)’ and oPr pintys ‘tinder’. This Baltic word is related to the Lithuanian verb pìnti (pẽna ~ pìnti, pýnė), Latvian pît (pin, pina) ‘to plait, braid, interlace’. A Latvian etymology presupposes the replacement of a diphthong with a monophthong; there are indeed some plausible examples of this in words borrowed into South Estonian from Baltic/Latvian. The phonological variant päss, with the vowel ä, represents a secondary development which took place in the Estonian language context, under the influence of e.g. päss : pässa ‘thicker end, button etc’. Latvian pese, pesis etc is therefore a boomerang loan. The re-borrowing back into Latvian must have occurred rather early, which would explain the word’s wide distribution in northern Latvia and beyond its borders.

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ALTERNATIIVSEID ETÜMOLOOGIAID IV KORI : KORJA, MELEK(AS), RAHE(-) JA RIKKUMA

Author(s): Lembit Vaba / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 63/2017

The article presents new etymological interpretations of the words kori : korja ‘hearth’, melek(as) ‘stock pigeon’, rahe(-): rahejalg, kooljarahe ‘bier’ and rikkuma ‘to spoil, ruin, break, etc’. Kori : korja ‘hearth’ is a forgotten word in modern Estonian, which is known from northwestern Läänemaa as well as Hiiumaa. Nikolai Anderson suggested over a hundred years ago that kori belongs together with the Finnish word korju ‘bear’s (above-ground) winter lair’. Anderson’s comparison has been cited by Andrus Saareste as well as, with some hesitation, in Finnish etymological dictionaries. Julius Mägiste did not attempt to explain the word’s origin in his Estnisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Due to both phonetic and semantic considerations, an etymological link between Estonian kori : korja and Finnish korju is impossible. I suggest that kori : korja is a Baltic loan from the word family represented in modern Baltic languages by Lithuanian kùrti (kùria, kū́rė) ‘to heat up, start a fire etc’, ùžkura(s) ‘oven full of wood; widower’, užkurỹs ‘man who has married a widow and moved into her home; man living in his wife’s parents’ house’. This Baltic word family has equivalents with fire- and hearth-related meanings in other Indo-European languages, e.g. Old Russian курити ‘to start a fire, ignite’, Old English here ‘fireplace, hearth, small oven’ and the stem variant with a final dental consonant heorð ‘hearth, fireplace, home etc’. Kori : korja presumes a Baltic loan base with the stem i̯a-, *kuri̯a-, presumed original meaning ‘fire, fireplace’. Melek(as) ‘stock pigeon’ occurs sporadically in different parts of northern Estonia. This bird name has been seen as onomatopoetically motivated (Andrus Saareste, Mart Mäger, and with hesitation Alo Raun), a view which has been rejected by Julius Mägiste. Another suggestion is that melekas derives from a common Finnic-Mordvin stem, in which -l- may have developed from the affricate *č, cf. dialectal Finnish mettinen ‘turtle dove’, Erzya Mordvin m´eče, m´eča ‘dove’ (Y. H. Toivonen, Mikk Tooms), but Mägiste is skeptical of this explanation as well, and sees the word as more likely a contamination of mehikas ~ mehekas ‘wood dove’ + meltsas ‘green woodpecker, wood dove’. I argue that the explanation of the origin of the word melek(as) must take into account the observation of the Lithuanian linguist, who in the 1880s-1890s drew a parallel to the Lithuanian bird name meletà ‘Picus viridis, Dryocopus martius, Merops apiaster, Coracias garrulus; chatterbox, sweet-talking person’. Baltic *melatā ~ *meletā is etymologically related to the Balto-Slavic word family *mel- ‘to rub, grind; chatter’: Lithuanian málti ‘to grind; speak too much, blather, prattle’, dialectal Russian мелея́ ‘grinder; blabbermouth etc’, dialectal Belarusian мэ́ лю́х ‘lblabbermouth’. Phonetically, there is no reason not to accept the Baltic etymology. The final syllable *-tā of the Baltic loan base has been replaced by the very productive affix k(as), which appears in many bird names. (k)rae- in the compound words (k)raejalad, (k)raepuud ‘trestle table, stretcher, barrow’ derives from the Low German schrage ‘(transverse) stand (with two pairs of crossed legs) etc’ (Udo Uibo). According to older lexicography, Estonian has known the compound words kooljarahe and rahejalg ‘bier, coffin base’, which are not related to the aforementioned Low German loan base, because in Low German loans in Estonian, word-internal -g- is replaced by the partially voiced medial stop -g-, in some cases also -j-, but never -h-. Mägiste has presumed that rahe(-) is related to the Finnic word family rahi: Courland Livonian ra’i ‘chair’, dialectal Finnish rahi : rahin ‘bench with no backboard; stool etc’, Ingrian rahi ~ rähi ‘bench, stove-bench etc’, North Karelian rahi ‘bench’. I propose a Baltic etymology for the word rahi: < Baltic *krasi̯a-, cf. Lithuanian krãsė ‘chair, reclining chair, stool; low footstool; seat’, krasià ‘sofa-like wooden bench with backboard; (reclining) chair; standing/walking chair for a small child; footrest etc’. This Baltic stem has plausible etymological correspondences only in Eastern and Western Slavic languages, e.g. Russian крéсло́ ‘armchair, reclining chair, backrest in a sleigh’. An analogous substitution, i.e. Finnic h < Baltic *s, is e.g. Estonian lahja ‘lean, thin’, dialectal lahi, laih, Finnic laiha etc < Late Proto-Finnic *laiha < Early ProtoFinnnic *lajša < Baltic *laisa-. Estonian rahe ‘hail’ has conformed to other nouns ending in e. Rikkuma, in dialects also rikkima, rikma ‘to break, ruin, damage, smash, destroy; negatively influence someone; decay, deteriorate; (dialectally) go bad, become spoiled’ is a wide-ranging word family found in all Finnic languages: Finnic *rikkoi- < Early Proto-Finnnic *rikka. A Germanic etymology has been proposed for it (Christfrid Ganander 1787), which is rejected by etymological dictionaries of Finnic languages. Another rejected explanation is that of Lauri Hakulinen, who suggested that it is related to the word family rikka : rikan ‘dust, scrap, litter’. I propose a Baltic etymology for this Finnic verb stem, deriving from either 1. Baltic *rika-, on the successors of which are Lithuanian rìkti (riñka ~ reñka ~ rinksta, rìko) ‘to disintegrate, break into pieces, be crushed; to be wrong, confuse, err, act wrongly or imprecisely (e.g. when speaking or enumerating), stumble’, aprìkti ‘to confuse, mix up, garble; to be wrong, do something wrong etc’ or 2. Baltic *trika-, the successors of which are Lithuanian trìkti (triñka, trìko) ‘to be wrong, make a mistake, stumble, get stuck (when speaking, enumerating, etc), stutter; disintegrate; break, be ruined; to be ruined, go out of order (e.g. health); to prematurely give birth; to go crazy, lose one’s mind, rave; to get rabies (of dogs); to get angry; to get confused, puzzled; to engage in mischief, act strangely, impolitely; bother, disturb, annoy etc’. Phonetically, the German and Baltic loan bases are equally plausible, but semantically the Baltic explanation is a better fit. The core meaning of both the Baltic and Finnic word families is ‘to do material damage (i.e. break, ruin)’, from which (likely independently of one another) the other semantic lines have branched off.

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ALTERNATIIVSEID ETÜMOLOOGIAID V PERU, VAIBUMA, VELBAS, VIDEVIK, VISTAR JA VÄNGE

Author(s): Lembit Vaba / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 64/2018

The article presents new or clarified etymological interpretations of the words peru ‘easily startled, skittish, given to bolting (of a horse)’, vaibuma ‘to grow weaker, fade away, die’, velbas ‘sly, crafty (person)’, videvik ‘twilight’, vistar ‘pimple, pustule’ and vänge ‘disgusting, foul (taste)’. Julius Mägiste speculated that Estonian peru : peru ‘easily startled, skittish, given to bolting’ (of a horse); unruly, boisterous, recalcitrant (of a person=’, Votic pero ‘recalcitrant, cunning (of a horse)’, Ingrian pero(i) id. is a derivation with the diminutive suffix *-oi̯ from the noun *perä ‘rear, back part’, which has presumably been abstractified into an adjective from the compound word *peroi̯-he̮poi̯, to “refer to a horse that jolts backward or bolts”.

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An outline of an asymmetric two-component theory of aspect

Author(s): Boglárka Németh / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2012

The paper presents the bases of an asymmetric two-component model of aspect. The main theoretical conclusion of the study is that (grammatical) viewpoint aspect and situation aspect are not independent aspectual levels, since the former often modifies the input situation aspect of the phrase/sentence. As it is shown, besides the arguments and adjuncts of the predicate, viewpoint aspect is also an important factor in compositionally marking situation aspect. The aspectual framework put forward in the paper is verified and illustrated on the basis of the aspectual system of Hungarian and some examples taken from English linguistic data.

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Anadili Rusça Olanların Türkçe Sözlü Anlatımında Karşılaştıkları Sorunlar

Author(s): Hüseyin Polat / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 166/2015

Turkish and Russian are in the different language groups of families in terms of structure and origin. This brings about native Russians language to encounter difficulties in both written and oral language of Turkish. It is known that each language has its own characteristics especially in spoken language and it can vary from region to region, even can vary from person to person. In this study, mistakes of Russian native speakers in oral expressions of Turkish language are investigated. Research consists of the introduction, goals, methods, findings, reviews and results sections. In this search was carried in TOMER (Turkish Language Teaching Center) belong to Ankara University and Gazi University and in preparatory class in Turkey -Kirghiz University, the mistakes of Russian native speakers in Turkish language oral expression are determined. These errors were observed generally in articulation, emphasis, toning, Turkish grammar and negative transfer.

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ANALÜÜTILISED TULEVIKUTARINDId 17.–18. SAJANDI PÕHJAEESTI KIRJAKEELES

Author(s): Liina Pärismaa / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 64/2018

This article is part of a broader morphosyntactic study and deals with analytic saama ’get, become’, pidama ’must, have to’, tahtma ’want’ and võtma ’get’ constructions which express future tense in Old Written Estonian. This study also focuses on elucidation of the future forms used by the 17th century author Christoph Blume. The study is usage-based and relies on the framework of historical sociolinguistics. The material used in the study is comprised of 610 tagged examples from 17th and 18th century ecclesiastical and didactic texts, which are from the corpuses of Old Written Estonian and the Concordance of Estonian Bible Translations. It was found that the literary language reform influenced the more native and even use of future tense. Although abrupt changes in the expression of future tense occurred from the end of the 17th century, e.g. the usage proportion of the German-influenced saama future construction decreased considerably, although it never fully disappeared, early indications in that direction can also be seen in the middle of the 17th century in the texts of Blume.

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Anticipatory coarticulation in Hungarian V n C sequences

Author(s): Mária Gósy,András Beke,Robert Vago / Language(s): English / Issue: 2-3/2010

The duration of the vowel and the nasal was analyzed in the casual pronunciation of Hungarian words containing the sequence V n .C, where ‘.’ is a syllable boundary and C is a stop, affricate, fricative, or approximant. It was found that due to anticipatory coarticulation the duration of n is significantly shorter before fricatives and approximants than before stops and affricates.A teaching algorithm was used to distinguish between stops/affricates and fricatives/approximants in V n C sequences. We used an approach to the classification of C by means of the support vector machine (SVM) and the properties of Radial basis function (RBF) kernel (using MATLAB, version 7.0). The results show close to 95% correct responses for the stop/affricate vs. fricative/approximant distinction of C, as opposed to about 60% correct responses for the classification of the voicing feature of C.

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Apology routine formulae in Hungarian

Author(s): Malgorzata Suszczynska / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2005

This paper describes the forms and functions of Hungarian apology routine formulae (RF) used by Hungarian adults in a written Discourse Completion Test. Five apology RF types are identified, their choices being influenced by such factors as the offence type and its severity, the social role of the interlocutor and the offender's gender. Two main apology RF types, Ne haragudj `Don't be angry' and Elnézést `Excuse me' are shown to perform complementary communicative functions of restoring harmony in familiar vs. unfamiliar settings. Gender differences in the use of RF types present on various levels of analysis demonstrate that males and females choose different ways to restore social harmony and may attach importance to different aspects of the context.

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Areal Distribution of Veps ­Topographical Vocabulary

Author(s): Irma Ivanovna Mullonen,Nina Grigorievna Zaitseva / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

The paper is based on data provided by the Linguistic Atlas of the Veps Language, which is currently under preparation at the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences. It analyzes five linguistic maps representing the areas of some items of Veps topographical vocabulary which are etymologically closely related to the Finnic languages. Nowadays the vocabulary is rapidly disappearing due to the loss of the indigenous lifestyle and the mother tongue of the people. Therefore, our study includes not only proper lexical data, but also some place names as well as some items of the Veps lexical substrate observed in Russian dialects. This has helped us to more accurately define the historical areas of some Veps terms. Mapping has revealed many details of the lexemes areal distribution, obviously caused by ­different reasons from geographical to administrative and political ones. The study has established several etymological layers of words with topographic semantics. A few proper Veps terms (e.g. purde) are considered to be of special value as they show the ­lexical potential of the Veps language. Also, some lexemes of unclear etymology (uhring, poźe) were found, which might have existed in the pre-Veps substrate. The paper describes some possible ways to interpret their ­etymology.

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Argument Structure and Functional Projections in old Hungarian Verbal Gerunds

Author(s): Éva Dékány / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2014

This paper seeks to give a syntactic analysis of Old Hungarian verbal gerunds. I take the “mixed projection” approach to nominalizations (Bresnan 1997; Borsley & Kornfilt 2000; Alexiadou 2001, among others), whereby the extended vP is embedded under nominal functional categories. I argue that in the verbal part of the gerund there is solid evidence for AspP/PredP dominating VoiceP, but there is no conclusive evidence for a TP being projected. I suggest that the object of the gerundival verb may undergo scrambling to a position above negation, while the subject becomes a derived possessor on the surface. I propose that these gerunds do not contain a nominalizer (see Alexiadou 2005; Alexiadou et al. 2010b; 2011 for this possibility); the extended vP is embedded directly under the nominal functional head Poss.

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Aspectual triplets in Estonian

Author(s): Anne Tamm / Language(s): English,Estonian / Issue: 1/2018

Estonian has lexical perfective-imperfective ‘doublets’, as inmõõtma ‘measure’, välja mõõtma ‘measure (out)’. The ‘doublets’ render theEstonian lexical aspect similar to that of Germanic, e.g. Dutch meten ‘measure’and uitmeten ‘measure out’. Finnish uses object case alternation forthe expression of the opposition, e.g. mitata/mitoittaa ‘measure’. However,Estonian also has regular morphological means to express aspectual ‘triplets’,like Slavic, as in the Russian imperfective simplex merit’ ‘measure’, theperfective izmerit’ ‘measure (out)’ and the secondary imperfective izmerjat’,approximately ‘be measuring out’. The third member of the Estonian tripletemerges via combining the particle and the partitive object case.

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Automatic recognition of schwa variants in spontaneous Hungarian speech

Author(s): András Beke,György Szaszák / Language(s): English / Issue: 2-3/2010

This paper analyzes the nature of the process involved in optional vowel reduction in Hungarian, and the acoustic structure of schwa variants in spontaneous speech. The study focuses on the acoustic patterns of both the basic realizations of Hungarian vowels and their realizations as neutral vowels (schwas), as well as on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of algorithms for the recognition of both types of realizations from the speech waveform. The authors address the question whether schwas form a unified group of vowels or they show some dependence on the originally intended articulation of the vowel they stand for. The acoustic study uses a database consisting of over 4,000 utterances extracted from continuous speech, and recorded from 19 speakers. The authors propose methods for the recognition of neutral vowels depending on the various vowels they replace in spontaneous speech. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients are calculated and used for the training of Hidden Markov Models. The recognition system was trained on 2,500 utterances and then tested on 1,500 utterances. The results show that a neutral vowel can be detected in 72% of all occurrences. Stressed and unstressed syllables can be distinguished in 92% of all cases. Neutralized vowels do not form a unified group of phoneme realizations. The pronunciation of schwa heavily depends on the original articulation configuration of the intended vowel.

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Avalduste tekstistrateegiad

Author(s): Riina Reinsalu / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 62/2016

Professional and administrative communication requires the creation of different types of texts. While some of them merely serve the purpose of preserving information, others are intended to influence people’s actions. In this article, I will explore applications as a textual genre based on 19 applications presented to Sauga Municipality. My goal is to find out what kind of generic structure these applications have and by what linguistic means the applicants aim to direct the actions of those who receive them. Since the applicants are citizens and the receiver is a state authority, the analysis of textual strategies also sheds light on practices between citizens and local authorities as well as on possible power relations between them. The structural analysis of the applications reveals that they have a somewhat rigid generic structure stemming from the tradition of the genre, the particular communicative situation, and the relations between the applicants and the receiver. Applications, in general, are based on two obligatory moves (presenting background information and naming the desired action) and an optional move (expressing one’s point of view). In addition, in presenting the background information, we can distinguish between three steps: one can elaborate when and where the problem occurred, how the applicant is related to the problem, and what in fact is the problem. While the general structure of the analyzed applications is fairly standardized, some differences can be detected in the particular order of moves and steps. The choices of strategies in applications appear in certain textual patterns. The content of an application is usually either a request or wish and expressed as I request, I wish, and wish. In some rare cases, citizens also use propositions or orders in communicating with their local government. Since the application is in the applicant’s own best interest, a direct obligating or coercive approach is usually found inappropriate. The citizen’s demand or order would come across as harsh and as violating the traditions of the genre, and in doing so would create unnecessary opposition from state authorities and thereby undermine the communicative purpose of the application: influencing the receiver to perform the act desired by the applicant.

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