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Suomen ja viron kontrastiivinen tai kieliopillinen vertailu alkoi virallisesti vuonna 1982. Hankkeen alkuvaiheista on kertonut seikkaperäisesti alusta lähtien mukana ollut Hannu Remes Lähivertailuissa 25 vuonna 2015. Olin itsekin silloin alkuvuosina mukana, ja palaan muistoissani sitä edeltävään aikaan. Minut oli nimitetty Tampereen yliopiston suomen kielen professoriksi 1976. Valma Yli-Vakkuri oli silloin siellä suomen kielen lehtorina. Ehdotin 1970–80-lukujen taitteessa hänelle, että aloittaisimme suomen ja viron kielten kontrastiivisen vertailun yhdessä kaikkien muiden Suomen yliopistojen suomen kielen laitosten ja Viron Kielen ja Kirjallisuuden Instituutin sekä Tarton yliopiston viron kielen ja suomalaisugrilaisten kielten oppituolien kanssa.
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Motivation is considered the main factor of productivity in language study. The motivation of learning the second language is influenced on cultural context (the value of language learning, the faith in success etc) and on educational context (curriculum, teacher, learning activities, teaching materials, learning group). The both motivation factors affect the second language learner at the same time (these encourage the learners to study) but the demotivation factors (that push the learners away from learning) as well. The teachers who teach Estonian as the second language regard the low learning motivation the main problem connected with the language study. At the same time they cannot see their own role in rising learners motivation and prevent demotivation.The main aim of this research is to identify the main factors of demotivation in learning Estonian as the second language and study how the same factors have been perceived by the teachers of Estonian as the second language. To get answers to the questions of this research 20 semi-structured interviews were held among the 9-class students learning Estonian as the second language and four teachers of Estonian as the second language. The results were encoded and classified by demotivation factors. Analysing the students’ answers there appeared 16 demotivation factors, that were grouped into three larger groups: the factors connected with learning activities, factors connected with a teacher, and factors connected with a learning group. The demotivation factors connected with teachers in the students’ opinion are: teachers’ unfriendliness, teachers’ unfair attitude, not understanding of teacher’s explanations, fear, forcing, lack of teacher’s attention and teachers’ unsuitable teaching style. Then follows the demotivation connected with learning activities, where five main factors appeared: uninteresting topics, dullness of learning activities, difficulty of the learning, unnecessity of the learning subject and too capacious learning materials. There appeared four main factors that were connected with the group of learners: bad relationship between students, learners’ inactivity, disturbance in classes and the uneven level of students.
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Employing a questionnaire, we investigate how well the advanced learners of Finnish recognize different zero-person constructions and what kind of zero-person constructions the L2 speakers of Finnish find the most plausible. While doing so, we also experiment with different exercise types and explore how they could benefit the L2 research. The zero person often receives less attention than the passive voice in the L2 textbooks of Finnish, which may be due to the difficulty of approaching it because of the lack of specific structural features. In the L2 teaching of Finnish, this has led to the emphasizing of certain types of zero-person constructions, such as those containing a modal verb. However, since the zero person (and the zero subject) is a very frequent phenomenon in both everyday speech and in more formal language use, recognizing it and its contexts of use is essential also for the learner language. Our questionnaire makes use of a corpus study of spoken language data. Our results suggest that the interpretation of zero-person constructions is often difficult for the L2 learners of Finnish and that the interpretation is primarily affected by verb semantics and not by the other constituents nor their order in the clause.
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In the article, a monument of the Mari language of the 2nd half of the 19th century is subjected to graphophonetic, morphological and lexical analysis. The translator is unknown. The book was published after the formation of the Translation Commission of the Brotherhood of St. Gury. The text is dominated by language features of the Meadow Mari. The specific letters of the Mari language ӧ, ӱ, ҥ, which are included in the alphabet by the Translation Committee, are not always used consistently. The author has included lexical units from other dialects, so that the text could be understood by other Mari-speaking ethno-territorial groups. Synonymous words are given next to the main lexeme in brackets or at the bottom of the text in the links. The analyzed text shows that certain linguistic features are characteristic of the Eastern dialect of the Mari language.
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Prior to the present study, there had been no study that provided a complete overview of the linguistic developmental environment of native Estonian-speaking pre-schoolers (ages 5–7). In the study underlying this paper, data from 152 semi-structured interviews with mothers are used to describe and discuss the importance of the frequency of factors that characterize the linguistic environment in the family home. Two groups are compared on the basis of the mother’s level of education: those families where the mother has secondary (specialized) education and those where she has higher education. In both groups, differences in urban and rural environment were also observed. The article rests on the thesis that different developmental environments also result in different language environments, and that the evolution of the developmental environment over time – i.e. the choices that are made by the parents and the beliefs that are important with respect to the development of the child – are more broadly influenced by the family’s socioeconomic status. The study reveals that the mothers resident in rural areas spoke to their children more during the pre-linguistic period and also that the role of grandparents in their social network was more important; additionally, more books were read and more stories were told in these families. Parents in urban areas more often attended events outside the family home; thus, their children came into contact more frequently with other languages and they spent more time at kindergarten. The level of education attained by the mother lead to them holding different attitudes about the linguistic capabilities of their children. For parents with higher education, this meant that the children spent more time alone, spending less time in front of screens and had more contacts with foreign languages than the children of mothers with secondary (specialized) education. In the case of children with mothers that had secondary (specialized) education, the role of grandparents in their social network was more important; they spent more time at kindergarten and played more with other children and/or friends of their age than they did alone.
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Lithuanian and Finnish both have alternations in object marking involving the notion of partitivity. In Finnish, the case of the direct object of transitive verbs alternates between the accusative and the partitive. Partitive is the default case for the object of a transitive verb and a special feature is required for the assignment of the accusative. In Lithuanian, the case of the direct object of transitive verbs alternates between the accusative and the partitive genitive. Some functions of the Finnish partitive and the Lithuanian partitive genitive in object marking are identical, but some are markedly different. This paper offers an overview of the factors that have been discussed in the literature as affecting the use of partitive cases, and also a comparison of their relevance and relative ranking in Finnish and Lithuanian.
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The article deals with language associations related to weather phenomena. The article’s literature review provides an overview of previous research that has focused on meteorological phenomena and their relationship to emotional, linguistic and psychological matters. The literatutre section is followed by an overview of the study underlying the paper, in which 59 participants completed a weather-based stimulus questionnaire. The rest of the article presents the results of the study, namely that the vast majority of weather-related language associations were of syntagmatic type, whilst sound-based associations were not detected. Adjective associations also prevailed over nouns.
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Our Lexicon Has Gone “Viral.” The Vocabulary of the Health, Economic and Social Emergency at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health crisis which has radically changed our lives. Its impact goes far beyond the health sector, affecting all aspects of the society and of our lives, including our vocabulary. Since its outbreak it has led to thousands of newly coined words and expressions (neologisms) both in English and in other languages. This paper explores the linguistic impact of the pandemic on the Hungarian language compared to Italian and English and offers an overview of the most frequent or of the linguistically most interesting Hungarian neologisms and expressions related to Coronavirus (COVID-19). The analysis is performed on a trilingual glossary (Hungarian-Italian-English) created by the author and published on Lexonomy.eu. The glossary was compiled containing those common terms that are important for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. This study would suggest that the most frequently occurring word formation processes of the Hungarian neologisms related to the pandemic are compounding, syntagms, blending, derivation and semantic extension.
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Die auch als wissenschaftlich zu betrachtende Sammlung, Ordnung und Anwendung von Sprichwörtern blicken auch in Ungarn auf einige Jahrhunderte lange Vergangenheit zurück. János Baranyai Decsis Sprichwörtersammlung Adagiorum Graecolatinohungaricorum… (Bártfa 1598) befolgt die entwickeltesten Unterrichts- und Veröffentlichungsmethoden, die es in jener Zeit gab, nämlich Erasmus’ Bände mit lateinischen und griechischen Adagien. Im etwa 5000 (ungarische, lateinische und seltener griechische) Belege umfassenden Buch wird zwar keine ungarische Terminologie angeboten, auf dem Titelblatt kommt jedoch das Wort adagium und im lateinischen Vorwort die Benennungen proverbium und paræmiæ vor – ein Zeichen für die auch im internationalen Kontext uneinheitliche Verwendung von Termini. Im Fall des Ungarischen ist auch gegenwärtig nicht immer klar, was den Unterschied zwischen közmondás (Sprichwort) und szólás (Redensart), und sogar weiteren Bezeichnungen ausmacht. Die internationale Redensartenforschung (für die meistens der Ausdruck Parömiologie gebraucht wird) setzt das Wort Proverbium bzw. dessen Entsprechungen in der jeweiligen Nationalsprache als umfassenden Terminus ein. Interessanterweise haben Klassiker der internationalen Parömiologie wie B. J. Whiting, Archer Taylor und andere die vielerlei Bezeichnungen für Redensarten in den einzelnen Sprachen nicht aufgezählt, auch in Otto E. Molls internationaler Bibliographie wird die Problematik nicht eigens angesprochen.
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This paper is devoted to the analysis of the toponymic materials recorded in the indigenous territory of the ethnographic (dialect local) group of Sheshkums/Sheshkups of the Ob River and its peripheral territory. In the course of our study, the toponymic material collected by researchers in the Ket Ob region was generalised, and the linguistic analysis of the identified toponyms was carried out in accordance with the peculiarities of the Central and Southern dialects; the distribution areas of these peculiarities were outlined. All the toponyms in Selkup were correlated with their Russian names. In the course of the analysis of all toponymic materials, two tables and one map were compiled. The first table demonstrates the Central and Southern peculiarities reflected in the toponyms of the Sheshkums/Sheshkups of the river Ob and the toponyms recorded in neighbouring settlements included in the area peripheral to the settlement territory of the Sheshkums / Sheshkups. The second table shows the interrelation of toponyms recorded by linguists and ethnographers in Selkup and Russian (1952—2019). All the Selkup toponyms that were found were marked on the map using the principle of the presence of Central and Southern dialectological features in them. Having compared the official toponymic data and the materials collected from the old-timer Selkups and Russian fishermen, it was revealed that there are significant differences in the official names and the names used by locals. That is why a large number of toponyms did not enter the map.
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The study wishes to form complex diachronic view about the meaning development of the word taste: of the evolution of morphological, semantic issues blocked around it, of the methods of phraseologisation, of the meaning change formed this way, of their course of usage. Furthermore, the paper takes into consideration the lingual features deriving from the homonymous character of the word examined, the opportunities of the correlation between homonymy and polysemy. Between the derivatives of the threefold homonymous word taste, we can find several extinct, respectively tarnished meanings as well, certain derivations only occur as concrete inflected elements. Nowadays this triple homonym − both concerning usage and lexicography − is in fading and one of its meanings is confined to the level of dialects. We present the historical formation of the word family, the structural and semantic changes in the context of the literary records, respectively in a dialectal context.
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The aim of our study was to present the results of a research, which studied the affective space in Hungarian and Serbian language using Hungarian-Serbian early bilinguals, from a dimensional perspective. Osgood and colleagues developed the first version of the semantic differential scale in 1957, which measured three dimensions of affective meaning by using three factors: evaluation – potency – activity. Their work was followed by a great number of studies, which wanted to check the number of factors and their culture-independent nature, as well as the location of various emotional stimuli in the affective space. Today, there are several versions of the scale available, for example, the one using the visual SAM-scales or the connotative differential, which checks a slightly different factor combination. Our results support the boomerangshaped distribution of verbal emotional stimuli both in Hungarian and in Serbian, in early bilingual speakers.
More...Napjaink magyar nyelvének neologizmusairól
The paper analyses in a functional-cognitive framework the process of language change and language creativity, and related to this, the attitudes of language users within a typical field of present-day use of Hungarian, that of neologisms. In order to clarify the notion of neologism (which sometimes raises problems, cf. Minya 2003, 13) the talk builds on the following definition: “a neologism is a linguistic phenomenon with a novel structure, which in a given situation is attributed a new meaning and/or a novel style compared to the speaker’s and/or the hearer’s previous (or expected) experience, knowledge and expectations. The process of ascribing meaning and style is dynamic, and may vary along a scale depending on the above mentioned features, even within a particular language user” (Sólyom 2014a, 19). The paper analyses neologisms in the sense of this definition, with several aims: to explore neologisms with various grammatical structure in the internet’s “written-spoken” (Bódi 1998, 186) language (e.g. neologisms with the prefix be: becéloz, bedrágul, etc.; verbs derived from nouns, e.g. facebookol, szelfizik, etc.; compounds, e.g. gerillakertész, kattintásvadász, etc.; neologisms created by back-formation, e.g. árfolyamrögzít, kamubejelent, etc.; conversions, e.g. csúcs, zsír, etc.) as well as to analyse the semantic-pragmatic features of some hapax legomena (nonce words) from contemporary Hungarian literature. A further aim of the paper is to present the strategies of interpretation, the processes of meaning construal and the attitudes which have been investigated by the author for the past 10 years (cf. Sólyom 2013, 2014a, b). In this research, informants of different age groups answered questions contained in a questionnaire about neologisms. Such a survey was conducted among university students (already working teachers) in the autumn of 2015; consequently, the paper can provide some new results about language users’ processes of interpreting neologisms.
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Lexical associations contribute to understanding associations between words in the mental lexicon. By analysing a single lexeme, the present paper aims at revealing the workings of one segment of the mental lexicon in Hungarian and Serbian. It is often claimed that the more common features a lexeme has with its equivalent in another language, the more likely it is that the two will trigger the same reaction. This is shown using a concrete concept as an example: the organ of vision, more precisely the Hungarian lexeme denoting it and its Serbian equivalent. Since the analysis is based on contrasting lexemes of two genealogically and typologicaly different languages, the initial hypothesis is that the differences between the two languages will also be reflected in the associative meaning fields of the lexemes contrasted. The analysis is based on associative dictionaries of the two languages, namely the Encyclopedia of Hungarian Norms of Associations and the Associative dictionary of Serbian.
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Generative language theory has several models; in each one of them there is interaction between the syntactic form and structure of meaning. The models differ from each other among other things on determining which structure is interpreted by one of the grammar components: the semantic component. In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax deep structure gives the semantic component of a sentence; it is the deep structure which determines thematic relations. In the model developed in the 1970s, surface structure also has this role, while according to a newer conception only the surface structure is interpreted by the semantic component; namely, meaning has certain aspects which form the meaning of the sentence in the surface structure, (focus, coreference, presupposition). As the model was developed further, it became enriched by a new concept, the concept of the Logical Form, which is a partial representation of the meaning of a sentence. The principles of the theory of the 1980s, the theory of Government and Binding are included in partial theories, and some of these refer to meaning. The Structural Hungarian Syntax, which is theoretically based on the theory of government and binding, also includes rules relating to grammatical meaning.
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Attributives are among the most prominent stylistic devices in Zrinyi’s epic poem, The Siege of Sziget. In our paper we study constructions with attributes of qualification from the aspect of grammatical category and structure. Regarding grammatical category – next to adjectival attributes – attributive nouns are extremely powerful and of condensing nature, while participles as attributes have special stylistic effect; all three types are found in the corpus. Structurally there are three types of attributives: simple (containing one attribute), multiple and cumulative attributives. In the latter type the attributes in the structure can be co-ordinate, and in this case they semantically strengthen each other, or the sequence of attributes entwine and thus have the character of gradation. There are a number of attributes which function as a decorative element or are there for the sake of prose rhythm or rhyming, and they are often recurrent; they function as kind of permanent attributives, creating thus the typical “Zrinyi-attributes”. Synesthetic or metaphoric attributives also give a special atmosphere to this epic poem. Next to the stylistic function of the attributives semasiological aspects were also considered alongside the contextual issues of pictorialness, metaphoricalness and attributes, for example, attributive constructions built into similes.
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This paper considers 15 Yatvingian words suspected of being borrowed from a Finno-Ugric source. The hypothesis is rejected in the case of five lexical units, while two further proposals are considered uncertain. The following words are verified as Finno-Ugricisms: Yatv. aiga ‘end’ (← Balto-Finnic *akja ‘id.’); Yatv. ajki ‘time’ (← BF. *ajka ‘id.’); Yatv. fała ‘meat’ (← FU. *pala ‘bite; to eat’); Yatv. ławe ‘boat’ (← FU. *lajwa ‘boat, canoe’); Yatv. sini pl. ‘mushrooms’ (← BF. *sēne ‘mushroom’ < FU. *śänä ‘bracket fungus’); Yatv. tuolis ‘devil’ (← FU. *tule ‘fire’); Yatv. wa[g] ‘it is necessary’ (← BF. *wajakз ‘id.’); Yatv. wał ‘was’ (← FU. *wol- ‘was’).
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Four Estonian surnames with negative and four with positive connotation were researched using the genealogical method (2,416 name bearers) to study their development, changes and persistence until 1935 on an individual level and on a general level for analysis. General bestowal of surnames took place in Estonia in 1822–1835. Then it was a process aimed from up to down – name givers were mostly German landlords and clergymen. Many names with negative connotation were also bestowed, for instance in the present research Koer ‘dog’, Laisk ‘lazy’, Limukas ‘rainworm; snail’, Paks ‘fat’. Altogether 21 families had those names. Positive names (in this study Ilus ‘pretty’, Kuningas ‘king’, Tarkus ‘wisdom’, Truumees ‘faithful man’) appeared in 25 families. In some cases, the names also emerged after 1822–1835 as parallel names or in 1921 in Petseri county.Negative names were in 75% of the researched cases the bestowed to lower peasant classes (farmhands and cottagers) and to smaller families or single persons (average 4.3 initial name bearers). Positive names were usually bestowed to higher peasant classes (farmers, schoolteachers, 75% of the researched cases) and to larger groups of people (11.9 average initial name bearers). In only 10% of the researched cases the negative name still exists today, as opposed to 52% of the positive names.The most important factors in surname extinction were as follows (in order of substance).1. Small amount of initial name bearers – 100% of researched names with one initial bearer became extinct (88% within fifty years) regardless of the connotation.2. Later demographical reasons – higher class families had more children until the demographic transition which in Estonia took place around the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. This enabled positive names (as these were being given to higher class families) to spread more as the first half century was important for a surname to start spreading. A negative name was not a reason for poor fertility performance, but the latter was caused by lower social status, which was more often connected with negative names.3. Name changes – 33% of all negative names underwent extinction through name change, mostly before the end of the 19th century. A few positive names also experienced name change. Of the now-extinct names, 47% of negative and 75% of positive names became extinct for demographic reasons. Thus, name change was the reason for the extinction of 37% of negative names, while for positive names the only major cause of extinction was demographic.4. Individual reasons. Some families had higher than average child mortality rates even in higher classes. In small families, many factors that did not affect bigger families could be fatal to surname spread, like a larger number of daughters or generations of men facing World War I and II (fathers and sons), also place of living (smaller infant and child mortality in state estates) and again social status (higher classes had more options to avoid the 80%-fatal military service until 1874).In the 1920s and 1930s a campaign of Estonianizing surnames took place. This also opened the possibility of changing ill-sounding names. No names from the present research became completely extinct during that campaign, but in one case 27 bearers of the name Laisk ‘lazy’ changed their name together in 1922 to Laaneväli ‘forest plain’. Only one member of the family (the widowed mother of some name changers) did not change her name and died in 1941 as the last name bearer.
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The article discusses key concepts in the field of education – formal, informal and nonformal learning – and focuses on the latter. We identify the features of the concept of nonformal learning in the language use of practitioners and analyse how the main characteristics of nonformal learning and its varying terminology are expressed. Six focus group interviews carried out with practitioners who represented the fields of adult education, youth work, culture, well-being, economy, and environmental education comprised the material for analysis.Qualitative content analysis revealed the learner’s role in goal setting, his or her inner motivation and autonomy, variative learning environments and processes, the supportive role of the supervisor and the orientation of the learning process to the development of the learner as important characteristics of nonformal learning. Although all of these characteristics can be seen in other types of learning, in the case of nonformal learning the focus on the development and the responsibility of the learner and the practical nature of the learning was highlighted. In addition, it appeared that both nonformal and formal learning have clear commonalities and defining them through opposition is not justified.As nonformal learning can take place in school and formal learning outside of it, the Estonian equivalent of formal learning as school learning is misleading in its meaning. The equivalent for non-formal learning – free learning (‘vabaõpe’) – reflects voluntariness and freedom as an important characteristic of nonformal learning and is not associated with other types of learning. In the case of informal learning, experiential learning should be preferred over incidental learning (‘juhuõpe’), as informal learning is based on experiences, not on chance.The identified characteristics raise the question of whether the set of concepts that has been in place for the last 50 years is still appropriate today or whether the boundaries of formal and nonformal learning have become blurred, thus eliminating the need to distinguish them as different types of learning. This also reflects the need for additional studies.
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