Category
Topic
Year
A local cure for the global hangover
Valdur Mikita. Metsik lingvistika. Sosinaid kartulikummardajate külast. Grenader, 2008. 128 lk.
Valdur Mikita. Lingvistiline mets. Tsibihärblase paradigma. Teadvuse kiirendi. Grenader, 2013. 240 lk.
Valdur Mikita. Lindvistika ehk Metsa see lingvistika. Välgi metsad, 2015. 240 lk.
Valdur Mikita. Lingvistiline mets. Tsibihärblase paradigma. Teadvuse kiirendi. Grenader, 2013. 240 lk.
Valdur Mikita. Lindvistika ehk Metsa see lingvistika. Välgi metsad, 2015. 240 lk.
On peripheral causativity
Causation is generally defined through its valency-increasing property to bring an additional causer argument onto a basic clause, restricting the focus of research on the verbal predicates and the core sentence. This study argues for the inclusion of the forms belonging outside the core sentence to the scope of linguistic causation. The article discusses the subordinate structures or adjuncts that have a causative relationship to the matrix sentence within the conceptual semantics framework. A two-way causative relationship between the matrix sentence and the adjunct structure is proposed: (i) the adjunct structure causes the situation in the matrix sentence (the beacuse…
Illness and yearning
The article addresses the relationships of literature and disease on the example of the life and activities of Lilli Suburg (1841–1923).
The life and creative activity of Suburg was affected, on the one hand, by a peculiarity of her appearance, notably, a scar left after a congenital tumor had been removed from her face, due to which she would wear a kerchief over her jaw throughout her life. On the other hand, for many years she suffered from hemorrhages forcing her to bed for long periods, incapacitated to help out her parents with farmwork. That affliction, however, gave Suburg a chance…
The life and creative activity of Suburg was affected, on the one hand, by a peculiarity of her appearance, notably, a scar left after a congenital tumor had been removed from her face, due to which she would wear a kerchief over her jaw throughout her life. On the other hand, for many years she suffered from hemorrhages forcing her to bed for long periods, incapacitated to help out her parents with farmwork. That affliction, however, gave Suburg a chance…
Sly Ain and the Old Heathen
The article discusses the inspiring literary commentary published by mentor Ain Kaalep alias O. Muusapoeg ‘lit. O. Son of the Muses’ in the 1960s editions of the magazine Noorus („Youth”), which was officially addressed to the Communist youth of the Estonian SSR. It highlights the rhetoric of irony cleverly hidden between the lines, which could be regarded as critical counterpropaganda. On the one hand, the writings carried an important mission of educating the rising generation in classic literature, Estonian as well as world and from the Antique to the exuberant current literature, trying to fulfil the deficiency in aesthetic knowledge…
Official patriotism or national thinking?
The article examines the pragmatics of the Crimean War based texts by Friedrich Nikolai Russow and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, who were both figures of the early stage of the Estonian National Awakening. The texts analysed include Tallinna koddaniko ramat omma söbbradele male („A book from a citizen of Tallinn to his friends in the country”, 1854–1857) and the short poem Söalaul Eestima tüttarlastele („A war song to Estonian girls”, 1854) by Russow, to which F. R. Kreutzwald responded with his poem Sõda („War”, 1854). Although both authors glorify the Tzar and the double-headed eagle, they hardly deserve to be called…
Russia as experienced by Johannes Barbarus
The position of Johannes Vares-Barbarus (1890–1946) in Estonian history and culture is contradictory. On the one hand, he was a remarkable doctor of the name of Vares, on the other hand, a poet named Barbarus, whose modernistic poems were not always appreciated. Moreover, the reception of his works has been complicated by his actions in the 1940s, when he was one of the leading figures in the Sovietization of Estonia. His left-wing views are hardly overlooked whenever himself or his works are discussed. His poetry having received so much more attention than the rest of his works, this article analyzes…
Olema + Vmine constructions in Estonian dialects
In most of the available descriptions of Estonian, action nominals regularly derived from verbs via mine-suffixation have been classified among nouns, thus being typically addressed from their word class perspective, with the main focus on intraphrasal aspects. However, according to some studies of literary Estonian, certain semantic properties as well as the syntactic distribution of action nominals suggest describing them via the constructions in which they appear. This article investigates one of such hitherto little discussed constructions, namely, a combination of a finite verb olema ‘tobe’ and an action nominal in the nominative or partitive case, based on spontaneous dialect…
‘Bare life’ in camp memoirs and in the prose of Jaan Oks
The article compares the prose oeuvre of Jaan Oks with certain death camp memoirs with a documentary background, based on the concept of ‘bare life’ borrowed from the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. The hypothesis is that Jaan Oks’s short stories of village life keep consistently outlining the contours of bare life. Bare life means a life emptied from normal human desire for happiness and for a future. The article compares the peasants depicted in Oks’s short stories with the camp residents called ‘Muselmänner’, who had given up fighting for their lives, thus finding themselves halfway between life and death. In…
The Estonian language in the winds of immigration (II)
The article addresses the influences of migration on the size of the major language groups in Estonia, the linguistic composition of the population, and the use of Estonian as a second language from the end of the 1980s to 2011, based on the last three censuses.
As for different language groups, demographic and linguistic change has affected them to a different extent. The most marked decrease can be observed in smaller language groups, which is due to language shift. In Estonia the language changed to by minor language groups is mostly Russian, and this process has not ceased since the restoration…
As for different language groups, demographic and linguistic change has affected them to a different extent. The most marked decrease can be observed in smaller language groups, which is due to language shift. In Estonia the language changed to by minor language groups is mostly Russian, and this process has not ceased since the restoration…
Images of afterlife in traditional texts
The article addresses the afterlife images occurring in memorates. The focus is on the extent to which such experiential descriptions contain elements of traditional legends and what is genre specific in the ways and functions of imagining afterlife. It is found that although first-person narratives of personal experience do contain elements of traditional folk beliefs and legends, they hardly ever dominate, which is due to the difference in the communicative functions of the two genres. The conclusion of the study is that in memorates the choice of motifs depends on the theme of the narrative complex as well as on…