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There is still no good etymology for the Estonian-Votic terms for malt – Est. linnas, usu. pl linnased, Vot. linnaz, linnahzõt. The etymologies offered this far are based on occasional juxtapositions without sufficient semantic motivation, thus raising more questions than providing answers. The main Finnic brewing terms are Germanic (Scandinavian) loanwords, while Est. õlu ‘beer’ etc. is either of Germanic or Baltic origin. This article considers the possible Baltic (Balto-Slavic) origin of the Estonian-Votic malt name, seeing the donor form in the Balto-Slavic stem variant *linda- (*lindā) ~ *ln̥da- (< I.E. lendh-), some of whose Baltic descendants are Lith. lį̇̃sti (< *lind-ti; leñda, liñdo) ‘to crawl, move slowly, drag (on); germinate, sprout etc.’, Latv. lìst (lìen ~ lìed, lìda) ‘crawl, creep, move slowly; squeeze in; appeal (to), please; cut, mow; sprout, germinate etc.’, OPru. lindan (accsg) ‘valley’, Rus. ляда ’assarted field or grassland; a plot of woods or bush assigned for slash and burn; virgin land; fallow land overgrown with grass or brushwood; low grass; bush, young woodland etc.’, (O)Cz. lado ‘overgrown, fallow, bad land’, Pol. lada ‘virgin land’ etc. (Slav. *lęd-). The presumed meaning of the Baltic (Balto-Slavic) source word is ‘germ, sprout (of a plant or grain)’. The borrowing must have adapted to the nouns with inflectional suffix -kse: *linta- > *linδa-kse-. The above etymological suggestion is supported by some (East) Slavic malt names analogously associated with germination such as Rus. dial. рóща ‘growth force; germ, sprout; greenery; shoot, runner; young mixed forest; germinated barley, malt’, рости́ло ‘rye malt’, BRus. рόшча ‘shoot, plant, germinated grains, growth in length’. Those Slavic malt names have semantic Finnic parallels such as Vot. itü ‘germ; malt’, Fin. dial. itu ‘germ’: itujauhot ‘malt’, Ingr. iDü ‘malt’, Olon. idy ‘germinated grains before drying’ etc., Lud. id́u: id́ud́auhod pl ‘malt flour’, Veps. idu, id́u: idujouh.
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Review of: Kihnu sõnaraamat. Koostanud Reene Leas, Reti Könninge, Silvi Murulauk, Ellen Niit. Toimetanud Karl Pajusalu, Jüri Viikberg. Kihnu Kultuuri Instituut, Eesti Keele Instituut, Tartu Ülikooli eesti ja üldkeeleteaduse instituut. Kihnu– Pärnu–Tallinn–Tartu: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2016. 652 lk.
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Review of: Valter Lang. Läänemeresoome tulemised. (Muinasaja teadus 28.) Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2018. 320 lk.
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Review of: Benita Laumane. Zvejasrīku nosaukumi Latvijas piekrastē. Liepāja: Liepājas Universitāte, Kurzemes Humanitārais institūts, 2019. 507 lk.
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Review of: Dr. Bertram. Balti visandid. Värvikaid lugusid 19. sajandi Eesti- ja Liivimaalt. Saksa keelest tõlkinud, kommentaarid ja järelsõna Pille Toompere. [Püünsi:] Kirjastus Bertram, 2022. 359 lk.
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The author of the contribution deals – on the occasion of the approaching 10th anniversary of the takeover in the Czech Committee of Slavists in 2003 as a star-ting point of the institutional crisis in international Slavonic studies – with the International Committee of Slavists and with the forms and methods of its activity. He presents a set of proposals to bring a necessary change concerning the special commissions, the participation of young researchers, the system of management etc.
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The study investigated the accuracy of non-word production by bilingual and monolingual children. The participants (125 children in total) belonged to two groups of bilingual children with different language repertoires and one group of monolingual Lithuanians. The analysis revealed that the overall performance of both bilingual groups was better than in the monolingual group. The bilingual children demonstrated more accurate and statistically significant results in repeating longer and structurally more complex non-words. The findings of this study suggest that the bilinguals being acquainted with two phonological systems had a greater experience with diverse phonology, which ensured a more precise performance of the task.
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This article focuses on English use in the example of Estonian-speaking YouTubers. Altogether, we analysed videos from eight content creators, each well-known among high-school-aged viewers who post regular videos in Estonian. The dataset consists of videos (or video excerpts) in which we look into the proportional share of English words or phrases and explore potential functions of code-switching. The results show that while all eight YouTubers use English in multiple videos, the usage frequencies differ significantly and reflect individual differences. English emerged in platformspecific contexts where the words were directly related to content creation (26% of all code-switching cases). Occasionally, the speakers referred to English pop culture phenomena (16%), expressed emotions (12%) and used loanwords or other (embedded) elements (6%). For numerous cases (23%), it was hard to determine why they preferred using an English word or phrase instead of its Estonian equivalent.
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The article presents the results of a questionnaire-based study of the most commonly used home language, the choice of language in relation to other languages in different communicative situations and linguistic attitudes towards Polish, Lithuanian and English languages based on the survey analyzing responses of student groups of grades 3–8 in two schools with the Polish language of instruction. Research data in relation to the age groups was analyzed regarding aspects such as the dominant language in communication with family and friends, the choice of language preference over other languages, i.e. in which language students choose to watch movies, search for information on the Internet, read books, write SMS and communicate on social networks. Students’ language attitudes were studied in terms of language learning motivation, social value and personal relationship with the language. In some aspects, the research results were compared with the data of the study of students’ linguistic attitudes and language dominance in everyday use conducted a few years ago in schools with the Lithuanian language of instruction focused on the same age groups. Research data on language dominance show that the majority of students communicate in Polish at home, although for some of them Polish is not the only language used in the family. Out of all the students who participated in the study, 42% indicated that they speak Polish at home, more than a third of students specified that they usually communicate in several languages in the family, out of which the largest part (25%) speak in Polish and Russian and 26% of students indicated that they communicate in Russian at home. Less than a tenth of students, in addition to Polish and Russian, noted that they often use Lithuanian in their home environment. Research data on the choice of language in relation to other languages in different communicative situations revealed that two languages – Polish and Russian – predominate, and Russian is especially strongly used when searching for information on the Internet and watching movies. Reading is the type of activity where Polish and Lithuanian languages prevail. The results of the research demonstrate the high status of the Lithuanian language’s social value, as students believe that it is important to know the Lithuanian language in order to achieve both social and professional life objectives. The results of the study show a statistically significant positive correlation between motivation to learn the Lithuanian language and liking Lithuanian lessons (Pearson coefficient 0,729). English is considered a prestigious language and the results show the highest motivation to learn it, in comparison to Polish and Lithuanian languages. The results of the study revealed that students feel a strong connection with the Polish language of instruction as part of their identity. A third of the students consider Lithuanian their own language and approximately the same number do not have an opinion or disagree. The conducted exploratory research covers several municipal schools and, therefore, does not make general conclusions about the linguistic preferences and language dominance of students in the majority of schools with the Polish language of instruction. The study shows trends regarding language choice, valuation of Polish, Lithuanian and English languages and learning motivation.
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The article analyses, how the types of subordination are described in the works on Lithuanian syntax, during the Soviet occupation, during the years between the middle of the 20th century ant the end of eighties. The investigation opens with the Grammar of the Lithuanian language (1945) by Juozas Žiugžda and ends with the manual for higher schools Syntax of the Lithuanian language (1988) by Vytautas Sirtautas and Česys Grenda. Initially, under conditions of occupation school grammar continued the traditions of syntax of independent Lithuania and distinguished only two variants of subordination – agreement and government. This tradition was continued in the works of the ideologue of the occupation regime Juozas Žiugžda. It was only when Pranas Gailiūnas came to Žiugždaʼs help that the three-variant model of subordination, which had already been adopted in scientific works from Russian linguistics, was applied to the school. Bronius Kalinauskas, a lecturer at the Pedagogical Institute, transferred the three-variant Russian syntax model to Lithuanian in the 1960s and early 1970s. Pranas Gailiūnas took over this model from him (or directly from the Russian linguistics) and applied it to secondary, and Jonas Balkevičius – to high school. In Kalinauskasʼ works we also find many differences in the types of subordination (full and partial agreement, strong and weak government, full and partial adjunction), that are most likely taken over from Russian linguistics. Their analysis in later works of Lithuanian syntax has largely defined the field of consideration in this area of grammar. Subordinate syntactic relations were described in works on syntax of two directions during the considered period: as one of the characteristics of the parts of sentence (Žiugžda, Sirtautas), and as the structural basis of word groups (Kalinauskas, Balkevičius, Labutis and Valeckienė). Only in the Grammar of the Lithuanian language, edited by Vytautas Ambrazas (1985), was more clearly turned in the direction of merging both directions. Throughout the considered period, syntactic relations were not distinguished from semantic relations (this is especially obvious when defining the relation of government). And only at the very end of the period (in the article of Vytautas Ambrazas) did these shortcomings of the description of syntactic relations begin to be realized, and an attempt was made to clearly distinguish between syntactic and semantic units. However, the syntactic level of analysis continues to be confused with the morphological (expression) level (agreeing in gender, person, number; governed inflections), both of which are considered as surface levels of language. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century agreement was perceived as the alignment of morphological forms, rather than semantics or syntax. Later, it became known as a variant of a syntactic subordination, without delving into the semantic relationships that this connection conveys. In essence, this multifaceted concept, first merging semantics and morphology, later on – and syntax, has survived throughout the twentieth century and in part continues to this day. Government in independent Lithuania was defined as a semantic relationship, and in the first decades after the war it was generally perceived in a similar way. Nevertheless the semantic (later on and syntactic) nature of the relationship was fused to its morphological expression. At the early period of occupation, agreement and government were associated with the study of word groups, as they made the basis for their structure. Adjunction (šliejimas) in Lithuanian linguistics was singled out as a semantic (later on and as a syntactic) relationship of words that is not expressed by means of morphology. So it was based on surface expression (or not-expression, exactly) only and didnʼt have any distinct syntactic content. The article analyses, how the types of subordination are described in the works on Lithuanian syntax during the years of Soviet occupation – approximately between the middle of the 20th century ant the end of eighties. The investigation opens with the Grammar of the Lithuanian language (1945) by Juozas Žiugžda and ends with teaching aid for higher schools Syntax of the Lithuanian language (1988) by Vytautas Sirtautas and Česys Grenda. Initially, under conditions of occupation school grammar continued the traditions of syntax of independent Lithuania and distinguished only two variants of subordination – agreement and government. This tradition was continued in the works of the ideologue of the occupation regime Juozas Žiugžda. It was only when Pranas Gailiūnas came to help for Žiugžda that the three-variant model of subordination, which had already been adopted in scientific works from Russian linguistics, was applied.
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The 2020’s kicked off with a number of new challenges for the human kind: the COVID-19 pandemic and the war that Russia started in Ukraine. These global events of the past three years have affected the way we use language as well: a democratic society needs to talk about what is happening and have everything explained and be informed about it; besides, language has responded to these developments rather vigorously. The pandemic has divided the society in two based on how the people approach the virus: its believers and its deniers. With the advent of vaccines the society split even further into two irreconcilable camps: those who supported the vaccines and those who were against them. Language saw an influx of new words, emotional expressiveness and verbal aggression were on a rise, and two polar linguistic tools, euphemisms and dysphemisms, were being used to describe the opposing factions. The COVID pandemic was not over yet when, in February of 2022, the world was shaken by yet another tragedy as Russia invaded Ukraine. The brutality of the war and the fierce resistance on the part of the Ukrainians triggered the use of euphemisms, and politically tinted dysphemisms in particular, which had existed at the passive level of the vocabulary for a long time (following the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of independence in Latvia and in Lithuania). The empirical material of this article shows that one side tries to call a spade a spade without avoiding the use of various dysphemisms, while the other does it selectively, using lies and misinformation, using both euphemisms and dysphemisms in great abundance, attempting to force everyone to use them at the beginning of the war. However, in the democratic world, as well as in Ukraine, Russia‘s official euphemistic style of speech has been met with ridicule, leading to the creation of new euphemisms and dysphemisms. During situations of physical aggression, both sides also use verbal aggression and irony. Thus, the usage of political euphemisms and dysphemisms will not see any sort of decline, especially in a state of war. The euphemisms and dysphemisms featured in the article are used to designate said events – the pandemic and the war in Ukraine – in the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Russian languages. A juxtaposition of the specific euphemisms and dysphemisms has established that some of them are common in both discourses: that of the pandemic and of the war (for example, Voldemort: ‘something that others are afraid to call by its real name’, putinistai // putleristai // vatnikai: ‘users and disseminators of Russian propaganda’). Only with the discourse of COVID-19, the universal dysphemism is covidiot, which is widely used to describe any person who, during the pandemic, behaves differently than the person using this dysphemism acts or thinks. However, used dysphemically, lexemes fascists, Nazis are considered universal only in the discourse of the war in Ukraine, because the two warring sides apply them and derivatives and compounds thereof (e.g., Ukrofascists, Nazi regime vs. Fascists, ruscists) with reference to one another. In the discourse of the pandemic, derivatives and compounds with these lexemes (e.g. Latvian covidfašistu banda ‘covid-fascist gang’) were applied only to government representatives and persons supporting the official line of the state (the alleged ‘dictatorship’). Various new words (situational dysphemisms) have also been created to describe the realities of both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A comparison of material from the three languages highlights both the universal nature of the reviewed language phenomena, and the possibility of their adoption.
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The article describes general characteristics of linguistic personality of bilingual students (Russian-Estonian bilingualism), who get their education in the Estonian language. As the number of such students in Estonia has been increasing, the problem of their research has been recognized as being of great importance. The data for the article was received through written and oral questionnaire and allow tracing specific social agents for a bilingual student’s linguistic personality formation. By dint of the questionnaire biography data, ethnical and linguistic self-definition, spheres of the languages application, self-definition for the languages acquisition, appraisal for the process of Russian language teaching in the schools given by the students has become apparent.In general, the respondents positively estimated the decision to study in an Estonian-medium school made by their parents, they also see their classmates’ and teachers’ attitude as good; however, most of them think that their level of skills in the Russian language (sometimes in Estonian as well) is insufficient.Students of different regions in Estonia were questioned, which allows getting a general idea of the matter. The collected material affords to elicit bottlenecks in teaching Russian to such students, to predict and take into account their educational needs while compiling teaching materials.
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The present study assesses the alleged informality of academic texts written by Estonian learners of English, which to date has yet to be empirically tested. It relies on the purpose-built Tartu Corpus of Estonian Learner English and applies Multidimensional Analysis (MDA) to situate the Estonian EFL learner texts relative to other spoken and written registers and L1 English university writing. In addition, the study describes the linguistic features characteristic of Estonian EFL learners’ writing in higher education. The MDA indicates that although there are some differences between learner and L1 English university writing, the two data samples are similar and align on several dimensions with the written register of academic prose. At the same time, the differences between learner production and L1 English professional writing imply that Estonian students of English would benefit from more explicit instructions to raise their language and register awareness in terms of academic writing in English.
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This study deals with mediated receptive multilingualism in comprehension of Finnish by Russian-dominant upper secondary school students in Estonia. The objective of the experiment is to analyse whether students with Russian as L1 and Estonian as L2, with no prior knowledge of Finnish, can understand Finnish utilizing their command of Estonian. The research in this field can enhance understanding of the processes in acquiring a foreign language without direct exposure to it. The linguistic experiment that was compiled to assist the objective of the research consisted of a test written in Finnish and a questionnaire. The respondents had to take the test and then fill in the questionnaire that aided to interpret the results. The outcome of the study indicated that the students excellently tackled the tasks of the experiment on understanding texts in Finnish. The students’ L2 (Estonian) played a key role in understanding the Finnish texts. Likewise, the results of the experiment demonstrated that the understanding of a foreign text can be influenced not only by early-acquired languages, but also by other factors, such as frequent traveling to a country where the language is spoken, the internet, advertising and intuition.
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This text attempts to establish the origin of a name in Slavic languages. The main etymological hypotheses are summarized and arranged according to their degree of probability.
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The article analyses the forms of financial support collected for protestant missions in Prussian Lithuania in the first half of the 19th century. It investigates the role of mission supporter, inspector of Bachmann Manor near Klaipėda (the former Memel) and member of the Moravian Church Wilhelm Andreas Rhenius in gathering donations for missions in southeast India. Lithuanian periodical publication Nuſidawimai apie Ewangelios Praſiplatinima tarp Ʒydu ir Pagonu (editor Johann Ferdinand Kelch, published from 1832) is also discussed. The paper examines the translation of Ernst Friedrich Ball’s sermon Tēkel, tai yr: Swēre tawę Swàrcʒeis ir perlèngwą ißrądo (Königsberg, 1843) by Evangelical Lutheran priest, future professor at the University of Königsberg and author of the Lithuanian grammar Friedrich Kurschat (Frydrichas Kuršaitis).
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