Keywords: polysemy, grammaticalization, construction, verb saama ’to get’, written Estonian
In the present article an overview is given of the development of the grammatical functions of the Estonian polysemous and polyfunctional verb saama ’get; can, become’. The article is a follow-up to an overview of the lexical usages of the same verb (Habicht, Tragel 2014). saama is an old Estonian verb with a long history of grammaticalization from a lexical motion verb to a modal auxiliary and to an auxiliary verb used in future constructions. The verb saama is frequent both in early and modern written Estonian, in particular due to the various grammatical functions expressed by saama-constructions. The Estonian saama-constructions…

Keywords: exile, Edward Said, Andrei Ivanov, exception, Giorgio Agamben, Russian Estonian literature, transnational literature
Andrei Ivanov is one of the most interesting authors of contemporary Estonian literature, but he has not been easy to pigeonhole, both in terms of his personality and oeuvre. His texts written in Russian, but doggedly addressing vital issues of local culture, are often experienced as a challenge to the self-identity of Estonian literature and culture. The article investigates the role of Ivanov and his oeuvre in Estonian literature with the help of the concept of „exception”. The analysis of different identitarian categories, both on the institutional…

Keywords: Irma Truupõld, Estonian children’s literature, Estonian women’s literature, Soviet occupation
Irma Truupõld (1903–1980) began publishing short stories and poetry for both children and adults at the age of twenty. Four of her children’s books came out in print in the mid-1930s: Rohelise Päikese Maa (The Land of the Green Sun), Öömori okas­linn (The Needle City of Öömori), Aadi esimene armastus (Aadi’s First Love) and Kuidas jõuluvana leidis endale ameti (How Father Christmas Found His Profession). Of these, the first two are held in the highest regard and have remained her most popular works. Unfortunately, Truupõld’s literary career was cut short by the Soviet occupation and the establishment of…

Keywords: history of Finno-Ugric studies, lexis, Finnic languages, Vepsian, Karelian
Otto Wilhelm Masing wrote in 1821 to Johann Heinrich Rosenplänter, that in a tavern he had met with Karelians from Olonets province. Masing presented in his letter two three-word sentences and six particular words by the old spelling system: hüwa ’good’, koer ’dog’, kolen ’(I) die’, kuma ’godfather; good mate’, minna ’I’, mursja ’bride’ (in fact ’young married woman’ and other meanings), om ’is’, penni ’dog’, surm ’death’, täempä ’today’, waat ’here’, waits ’knife’.
It is possible that Masing has noticed at least some Vepsian words but very scantily. This proofs lack…

Keywords: transgressive literature, scandal, lawsuit, contemporary Estonian literature, pornography, parody, grotesque, horror vacui
In his short story „Untitled 12”, ambivalent Estonian author and journalist Kaur Kender describes sex addiction in a middle-aged man, which supported by the need for control leads to a growing succession of acts of violence, torture and murder. Kender has received a criminal charge for his detailed and violent descriptions of sexual intercourse between the man and children. From the literary point of view, Kender uses the language of pornography in its whole richness, yet not with an aim of stimulating the sexual instinct, but rather to criticise…

Keywords: perspectivism, animism, Finno-Ugric mythology, cosmology, hetero­nomy
Perspectivism is a philosophical category that has recently been transposed to cultural anthropology. It is based on a Nietzschean idea that there is no pure reason or absolute spirituality but „only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’” (On the Genealogy of Morality, III, 12). Viveiros de Castro has identified perspectivism as a multinaturalism, opposing this concept to the dominant form of multiculturalism: the core of multinaturalism is the idea that „a perspective is not a representation” and „every existent can be thought of as thinking” (Cannibal Metaphysics). Therefore a perspectivist way of thinking…

Keywords: language choice, language shift, census, mixed methods, Russian speakers, Estonia
The programming period of „Development Plan of the Estonian language 2011–2017” will end soon. It is high time for an interim evaluation of the status quo of Estonian but also for setting new strategic targets. Puur et al. (2016) have taken up the task by providing an overview of native languages spoken in Estonia, the competence of Estonian as a second language, and the processes of language shift over the last 25 years. While they might be right that the analytic potential of the census data has not been exhausted yet, this…

Keywords: communication, fieldwork, letters, Siberian Estonians
The majority of Estonian settlements in Siberia were founded in the last decade of the 19th century and in the early 20th century by Estonian emigrants in search of their own land. Settlements that were established yet earlier were made up of people deported to Siberia by the Russian Tsar.
In the article I analyse the letters sent to me from Estonian villages in Siberia following my folkloristic fieldwork in the region in 1991–2010. In the late 20th century and the early 21st century, exhanging letters with Estonians in Siberia had an important function both for me and my correspondents.…

Keywords: spoken Estonian, everyday dialogue, questions, social action, wh-questions, conversation analysis
The purpose of the article is to research the social actions of wh-questions in Estonian everyday conversations and find out whether there is a connection between the form of the question and the social action. Wh-questions are formed with question words (mis ‘what’, kuidas ‘how’, kes ‘who’ etc.) and the question does not contain an answer. The material consists of 271 extracts collected from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian of the University of Tartu. The extracts were analysed using the methodology of conversation analysis.
There were four social actionsperformed by the wh-questions analysed: Request for information (144), Rhetorical question (65),…

Keywords: exegesis, etymology, Goethe, Lotman, memory, translation
Here we define „philology” as a discipline studying how reality is transformed into text and vice versa. The question of philology is wording, while its object encompasses everything accessible to verbal reference.
Philology belongs to Culture, not to Civilisation. Civilisation consists of knowledge and skills, answering the question „How to do/make it?” Culture consists of norms, orders and prohibitions, of do’s and don’ts, answering in the end the question „How to understand it?” Civilisation is developed by sciences, Culture is developed by the humanities. Philology belongs to the humanities, perhaps even, considering its function of…

Keywords: transgressive literature, contemporary Estonian literature, transgression, postmodernism, event, abject, scandal, carnival, graphic description, reflexivity
 
Transgressive poetics is a genre-appropriate selection of devices to describe deviant behaviour and phenomena regulated by prohibitions. The article presents a two-level approach starting from the theoretical framework of transgressive literature, which is subsequently filled in with examples of transgression found in contemporary Estonian literature. At first, the general concept of transgression is discussed based on Georges Bataille, which is followed by the description of a transgressive work of literature as an event formatted by provocation and scandal. The transgressive nature of the conditions and phenomena…