Estonian - a language in European periphery

Helle Metslang Firenze, April 2010 1

Euroversals, Europemes, SAE (Standard Average European), etc.

Two approaches:  linguistic properties found in most or all the European languages (and uncommon elsewhere)  linguistic properties found in most or all the European languages (but may be found in other languages too) 2

Standard Average European

 B.L. Whorf (the concept of SAE developed by comparing Native American languages with the well-known European languages) 3

Standard Average European: specific features of European languages

 M. Haspelmath 1998, 2001: list of typical structural features (they occur in most European languages but are usually missing elsewhere) 4

Nucleus. core, and periphery of SAE (Haspelmath 1998)

5

SAE features (Haspelmath 2001)

 12 major SAE features from different parts of language structure, e.g.  Definite and indefinite articles   Relative clauses with relative pronouns ‘have’-perfect  Some further likely SAE features, e.g.

 Verb fronting in polar interrogatives  Comitative-instructive syncretism 6

SAE-Sprachbund(Haspelmath 2001)

   Degree of membership in SAE is a matter of degree. Number of features of nine SAE features present in a language:      9 – German, French (core of SAE) 8 – Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Albanian...

7 – English 6 – Swedish, Norwegian, Czech… 5 – Hungarian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Lithuanian… SAE languages with 5 Greek, Hungarian –9 features: Romance, Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic languages, Albanian, The remainig languages have 2 or less features (Basque, Welsh, Estonian, Finnish…) 7

Problems

 The approach is based on the static description of standard / written languages  Alternative constructions are ignored  Discrete categorization (the language has or has not the property)  Cross-linguistic structural equivalences are not always clear-cut (Heine & Kuteva 2006) 8

Dynamic typology

 “… cross-linguistic classification of grammatical categories according to salient structural properties, which can be related in a principled way to the evolution of these categories.” (Heine & Kuteva 2006)  Ongoing grammaticalization processes, replication of structures, etc.

9

Developments towards SAE in Europe’s periphery (Heine & Kuteva 2006)

 Basque: contacts with Romance languages, contact-induced grammaticalizations, incl. SAE-features, not mentioned in Haspelmath 2001: indefinite article, ‘have’-perfect, relative clauses with pronoun  Slavic minorities in central Europe (Sorbian, Slovincian, Kashubian): contacts with German, developments of articles, ‘have’ perfect, passive construction 10

Developments towards SAE : Estonian and Finnish (Metslang 2009)

 Both languages have 3 (not 2) SAE-features of 12  Developments in the direction of SAE-like features (Estonian 5, Finnish 4) Main contact languages in the course of history:   Estonian: German varieties, Russian, Finnish, Latvian, English Finnish: Swedish, Estonian, English 11

SAE features (Haspelmath 2001)

1) Definite and indefinite article (-), cf. article-like use of E

see

‘this’,

üks

Finnish, too,

se

functions as an article

Ma ei jaksa täna seda ajalugu

ő

ppida ‘

Today I have no energy to study

the

history’ ‘one’; in

Üks tüdruk tõ

i sulle ühe raamatu ‘

A

girl brought you

a

book’ 12

SAE features 2

2) Relative clauses follow the noun; the clause opens with a declinable relative pronoun (e.g. (

der/die/das/welcher/welche/welches; who, whose, whom

) (+) E

raamat, mida

(P)

ma lugesin

F

kirja, jota

(P)

luin

‘the book

that

I read’ 13

WALS map 123: relativization of obliques

14

SAE features 3

3)

have

-perfect (-) Estonian and Finnish have the

olema

perfect (‘

be

perfect’). Nevertheless, possessive syntactic structures with the impersonal / passive perfect are spreading in Estonian E

Mul on õpitud

I-AD is learn:IMPS:PTCP ‘I’m done with my homework’ Cf. possessive: F

Olen Mul on õpik

‘I have a textbook’

lukenut läksyni

be:1SG read:PTCP homework:1SG 15

SAE features 4

4) Nominative experiencer prevails (-). Use of syntactic patterns with the nominative experiencer is becoming more frequent in Estonian

Peeter

(NOM)

armastab teatrit Peetrile

(ALLAT)

meeldib teater

‘Peeter likes the theatre’

Peeter

(NOM)

vajab puhkust Peetril

(ADESS)

on vaja puhkust

‘Peeter needs some rest’ 16

SAE features 5

5) Participial passive (-) is spreading in Estonian.

E F

Te olete külla kutsutud

‘You

have been invited

puukirkoista,jotka ovat

koristellut

(ISK) to visit us’

sisältä leikkauksin

'from wooden churches that

are decorated

inside with woodcuts' 17

SAE features 6

6) Prevalence of anti-causative (intransitive) verb derivation over causative derivation ( ) It’s true that causative derivation is more common in Estonian and also in Finnish E intransitive

loobuma

s

ööma

‘to give up’ ‘to eat’

jätkuma

‘to continue’

> >

< transitive

loovutama söötma

‘to surrender sth’ ‘to feed’

jätkama

‘to continue sth’ F

luopua peseytyä ‘

to wash oneself

’ > < luovuttaa pestä ‘

to wash

’

18

SAE features 7

7) Dative external possessors (

Die Mutter wäscht dem Kind die Haare

‘Mother is washing the hair of her child’) (-) Three ways to express the possessor: 1) dative (

Die Mutter wäscht dem Kind die Haare

), 2) locative, 3) NP-internal (English).

Estonian: locative, NP

Ema peseb lapsel

(AD)

juukseid

/

lapse

‘Mother is washing the hair

of her child

’)

Tüdrukul

(AD)

suri vanaisa

‘The

girl’s

grandpa died’ (G)

juukseid

Finnish: NP, ablative

Äiti pesee lapsen

(G)

Tytöltä

(ABL)

hiuksia kuoli isoäiti

19

SAE features 8

8) Negative indefinite pronouns and lack of verbal negation (

Niemand kommt, nobody comes

) (-) Two form types: 1) V + NI (

Niemand kommt

), 2) NV + NI Estonian, Finnish NV + NI E (

Mitte) keegi ei

F

Kukaan ei

nobody NEG

tule tule

come 20

SAE features 9

9) Comparative constructions with a particle (+) Types of the comparative construction: 1) locative (‘bigger from / to / at X‘), 2) the exceed comparative (‘Y is bigger exceeding X‘), 3) the conjoining comparative (‘Y is big, Y is little‘), 4) the particle comparative (bigger than X).

Estonian: particle, locative

Ema on noorem kui isa Ema on isast

(EL)

noorem

‘Mother is younger

than

father‘ Finnish: particle, partitive (

Äiti on nuorempi kuin isä.

Äiti on isää

(P)

nuorempi

21

SAE features 10

10) relative-based equative constructions (-):

so groβ wie ein Elefant nii suur kui elevant

‘as big as an elephant’

niin iso kuin norsu

22

SAE features 11

11) Subject person affixes as strict agreement markers (-). The verb has personal forms and the subject is obligatory:

du kommst, wir kommen

It does not occur in Estonian and Finnish: E

tuled, ei tule

F

tulet, et tule

‘you come, you don’t come’ 23

SAE features 12

12) Intensifier-reflexive differentiation (-): different pronouns used as intensifiers (G

selbst

, R

sam

) and reflexives (G

sich

, R

sebja

) E intensifier

ise; enda

(declinable, G

enda

, P

ennast etc.) Minister ise

(N) tuleb ‘The minister

himself

will come’

Oodatakse ministrit ennast

‘The minister

himself

(P) is expected to come’ reflexive

enda, iseenda Minister kiitis ennast / iseennast

(P) ‘The minister praised

himself

’ 24

SAE features 13

F intensifier

itse

,

itse

+PSx (declinable)

Ministeri itse tulee Odotetaan

ministeria itseään

reflexive

itse

+PSx

Ministeri kehui

itseään

25

Some further likely SAE features 1

Because of insufficient data Haspelmath did not include on his list, for example,  AND-coordination (

vs

WITH-coordination) E

isa ja ema

, F

isä ja äiti

‘father and mother’ also WITH-coordination: E

isa emaga,

F

isä äidin kanssa

‘father with mother’ 26

Some further likely SAE features 2

 Verb fronting in polar interrogatives (inversion) E

Tuled sa koju?

‘Will you come home?’ interrogative particle:

Kas sa tuled koju?

F particle:

Tuletko kotiin?

Spoken language reveals also inversion:

Tulet

sä kotiin?

 Comparative marking of adjectives ( E

suure-m

, F

suure-mpi

‘bigger’ ) 27

Some further likely SAE features 3

 Comitative-instrumental syncretism Comitative: E

jalutab lapsega

(COM) with the child’, in pencil’

kirjutab pliiatsiga

’is walking (COM) ‘writes Syncretism is absent in Finnish:

kävelee lapsen

kanssa

(POSTP),

kirjoittaa kynällä

(AD)  Suppletive second ordinal numeral: E

kaks – teine

, F

kaksi

–

toinen

‚ zwei – zweite‘ (vgl.

two – second

) 28

Some typical European developments (Heine & Kuteva 2006)

 Development of articles  Development of possessive perfects  From comitative to instrumental  Grammaticalization of the verbs

threaten promise

to modals and 29

Estonian: ähvardama ‘threaten’

All four stages of the development into modal verbs

stage 3:

G

Das Hochwasser droht die Altstadt zu

überschwemmen

E

Suurvesi ähvardab vanalinna üle ujutada

‘The flood

threatens to flood

the old city’

stage 4:

G E

Mein Mann droht krank zu werden Mu mees ähvardab haigeks jääda

‘My husband

is likely to fall ill’

30

Estonian: tõotama ‘promise’, stage 3

Järjekordseks katsumuseks tõotab kujuneda tänavu detsembris toimuv WTO ministrite kohtumine Singapuris

(NEWS) ‘The meeting of WTO ministers in Singapur in December this year

promises to become

another ordeal’ 31

Estonian: tõotama ‘promise’, stage 4

Kui koera esikäpa kõrgus on vähemalt pool turja kõrgusest ning käpad ja rind 1-2 kuu vanuselt on hästi tugevad, tõotab sellisest kutsikast keskmisest suurem koer kasvada

(NEWS) ‘If the height of the front paw of a dog is at least half of the height of the withers and the chest is very strong at the age of 1-2 months, this kind of puppy

promises to grow

into a larger than average dog’ 32

Finnish: uhata ‘threaten’

stage 3 F

USA:n ja E-Korean vapaakauppasopimus

uhkaa kariutua

(HS) ‘The treaty of free commerce between the USA and South-Korea

threatens to fall through

’ No evidence of the auxiliarization of ‘promise’ 33

An interim conclusion concerning European-like features and developments in Estonian and Finnish: noun  Nominal categories  Development of articles  Comparative marking of adjectives  Comitative-instructive syncretism (E)  Nominal syntax  Comparative constructions with a particle  Equative constructions  Intensifier-reflexive differentiation (partially)  And-coordination 34

European-like features in Estonian and Finnish: the verb



Verbal categories

 Auxiliarization of ‘threaten’ and ‘promise’ 

Verbal syntax

 Development of the possessive perfect (E)  Spread of the participial passive 35

European-like features in Estonian and Finnish: syntax, lexicon

 Syntax  Spread of the nominative experiencer  Verb-initial interrogatives  Relative clauses  Lexicon  Suppletive ordinals 36

Changeable periphery

The main characteristics of SAE are represented modestly in both Estonian and Finnish; at the same time both languages, especially Estonian, reveal some shifts towards European features. 37

Estonian in comparison with other European languages

  WALS features about which there is Estonian data: to what extent are the same values represented in other languages?

Following Ö. Dahl (2008) who measured typological distance from the perspective of Finnish (142 maps, comparisons with 222 languages)  The study is not confined to specifically European values 38

Languages that are typologically close to Finnish (Ö. Dahl)

Typological distance between two languages: how many of the 142 WALS features are represented in these languages?

Close languages include:  Slavic and Baltic languages spoken in the Circum-Baltic area   Genetically related languages Probably some accidentally close languages (e.g. Armenian) 39

Comparison of Estonian with other European languages on the basis of WALS     Mini-study: 40 maps, comparisons with 10 languages The languages represent more or less central SAE languages and non-SAE languages; Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages SAE status – the figure that shows how many features out of nine of SAE are represented in the language (less than 5 means outside SAE) Distance from Estonian – the figure that shows how many out of 40 features of WALS reveal values that are different from Estonian 40

Estonian in comparison with other European languages on the basis of WALS Language Finnish SAE status 2 or less Language group Finno-Ugric Distance 8 Russian Hungarian Spanish 5 5 8 Slavic Romance 16 Finno-Ugric 16 20 English 7 Germanic 21 41

Estonian in comparison with other European languages on the basis of WALS Language French SAE status 9 Language group Romance Distance 22 Gaelic Greek German 2 or less 7 9 Celtic 23 IE separate branch Germanic 24 27 Dutch 8 Germanic 27 42

Estonian in comparison with other European languages on the basis of WALS 5  Genetically related and geographically close languages share some common features  All over Europe languages have rather similar structures   Nuclear SAE languages are more distant; less central and peripheral languages are closer to Estonian Although Estonian has a lot of German influences, the basics of their structures are relatively distant 43

Some common features between Estonian and other European languages on the basis of WALS: phonetics and grammar  Trochaic rhythm (7 languages of 10)  Strongly suffixing (and not prefixing) morphology (9)  Encoding of nominal plurality with suffix (8)  Tense-aspect suffixes (8)  Negative particle (9) 44

Some common features between Estonian and other European languages on the basis of WALS: word order and lexis  SV (7)  Demonstrative-noun (9)   Numeral-noun (10) Noun – relative clause (9)  Initial adverbial subordinator in clause (10)   Ordinal numerals: first, second, three-rd (8) ‘tea’ derived from Min Nan Chinese

te

45

WALS map 138: tea

46

Typological profile of West-European languages (Dahl 2008)  Values of WALS parameters that are overwhelmingly represented in Western Europe in comparison with the rest of the world. Ranking of languages according to conformity to the typological profile of Western Europe: German, French, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Latvian, Irish, Finnish, Georgian 47

Typological profile of West-European languages and Estonian 1

Some features of the profile:  The perfect is based on the possessive construction (Estonian reveals some development in that direction)   Polar questions with special word order (they exist in Estonian) Both negative and affirmative verbs forms are used with negative indefinite pronouns 48

   

Typological profile of West-European languages and Estonian 2

Overlap between situational and epistemical modal marking (occurs in Finnish and Estonian, e.g.

Sa võid koju minna

‘you may go home’

, Ma võin eksida

‘I may be wrong’) Few first ordinals are suppletive (F, E) Object relativization with pronoun (F, E) Subject relativization with pronoun (F, E) 49

Changeable periphery 2

 The selection of features is always limited in comparison with the richness of the language system – 12 SAE features, 47 Estonian features in WALS, as well as all 142 WALS features constitute a selection; the picture could be different when the selection is expanded.

50

Changeable periphery 3

 The basic structure of Estonian (parts of speech, syntax, categories) is similar to other European languages.

 The main typological peculiarity of Estonian, as well as Finnish and Hungarian, is the large number of cases.

51

WALS map 49: number of cases

52

Changeable periphery 3

Estonian, similarly to Finnish, belongs to the periphery with regard to the European languages; both those features that are unique in Europe and other features of the European languages are less represented in those languages. At the same time they share some features and developments with the other European languages.

53

Changeable periphery 4

During the co-existence that spans over several millennia the Uralic and Indo-European languages around the Baltic Sea have converged while there has been divergence from their genetically related eastern languages. (Dahl 2008) 54

References 1

Dahl, Östen 2008,

Kuinka eksoottinen suomen kieli on? Virittäjä 4: 545–559.

Erelt, Mati 1996,

Relative words in Estonian relative clauses - Erelt, Mati (ed.), Estonian: Typological Studies I. (Publications of the Department of Estonian of the University of Tartu 4.) Tartu: Tartu University Press, 9 –23.

Erelt, Mati & Helle Metslang 2006,

patterns Estonian clause — from Finno-Ugric to SAE. – Linguistica Uralica 2006, nr. 4, 254 –266

Haspelmath, Martin 1998,

How young is standard average European? in:

Linguistic Sciences

, 20.3: 272  287.

55

References 2

Haspelmath, Martin 2001,

The European linguistic area: Standard Average European, in: Haspelmath, Martin; König, Ekkehard; Oesterreicher, König & Raible, Wolfgang (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook. Vol. 2. (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikations wissenschaft, 20.2.) New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1492 – 1510

Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania 2006,

7.

The changing languages of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lindström, Liina & Tragel, Ilona 2007

, Eesti keele impersonaali ja seisundipassiivi vahekorrast adessiivargumendi kasutuse põhjal. – Keel ja Kirjandus 56

References 3

Metslang, Helle 2009

, Estonian grammar between Finnic and SAE: some comparisons. – Linguistic Typology and Universals (STUF) 1/2, 2009: 49−71.

Märtson, Hellemari 2009,

Verbi

tõotama

abiverbistumisest eesti kirjakeeles viimase sajandi jooksul. Bachelor thesis. University of Tartu

Pajusalu, Renate 1997,

Is there an article in (spoken) Estonian? – Estonian: typological studies II. Ed. by Mati Erelt. (Tartu Ülikooli eesti keele õppetooli toimetised 8.) Tartu: 146-177.

57

References 4

WALS =

Haspelmath, Martin; Dryer, Matthew, Gil, David; Comrie, Bernhard

(eds.)

2005

, The World atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University press. [http//www.wals.info] 58