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Madli of Muhu
The legend of Madli of Muhu was introduced to public at large in the 1930s as a result of the activities of Jakob Laul, who taught school in Saaremaa. Madli was an old woman who had escaped to Saaremaa from a small island called Muhu. She was known as a healer who led a secluded life in the woods, living on alms and on whatever nature had to offer. Due to her untraditional lifestyle she was also reputed to be a werewolf.
Madli was told to have lived in a tree. The pine associated with her name was still there in…
Madli was told to have lived in a tree. The pine associated with her name was still there in…
Estonian settlement names of German origin
Many German loan words have been adopted into the Estonian general vocabulary, and they may occur in toponyms as well. Toponyms derived from borrowed vocabulary are not discussed in this work. Contemporary settlement names are examined to find out which of them are actually German in origin and how they have been converted into Estonian. The focus is on names that are based directly either on a German family name or a German common noun.
Loan names can be divided into two main groups. The first type – adapted names – is in turn subdivided into complete adaptions, epexegetic adaptions and…
Loan names can be divided into two main groups. The first type – adapted names – is in turn subdivided into complete adaptions, epexegetic adaptions and…
The need for homeland 25 years later
Ever since the 19th century Estonian literature has been strongly connected with the Estonian nationalist myth, which helped to create and keep national identity. The latter continued to be the main task of Estonian literature during Soviet occupation (1940–1991).
The poet Sven Kivisildnik (b. 1964) has so far had a reputation of rather an ignorer of the nationalist myth. In the early 1990s Kivisildnik made a name for himself as a radical reformer of poetry as well as a scandalist. The frequent denials of earlier Estonian classics in his oeuvre actually led to the greatest scandal in the literary life of…
The poet Sven Kivisildnik (b. 1964) has so far had a reputation of rather an ignorer of the nationalist myth. In the early 1990s Kivisildnik made a name for himself as a radical reformer of poetry as well as a scandalist. The frequent denials of earlier Estonian classics in his oeuvre actually led to the greatest scandal in the literary life of…
Estonian word formation and syntax
The article analyses the relations between word formation and phrase formation. More or less clear parallels between the two have been found in compound structures. The main focus is derivation, but as Estonian compounding and derivation belong to the same continuum in more than one sense there is also some discussion of synthetic compounds. The relations of Estonian word formation and syntax are discussed from three aspects. First, it is studied how syntactic principles are reflected in word internal structure, i.e. what the relations are between lexical integrity and phrase structure. Second, a closer look is taken at such word…
Inferential approach to the core cases in Estonian
This paper presents an overview of the following arguments in Estonian, which were originally published in Cann & Miljan (2012) and Miljan & Cann (2013): 1) case-marking should not be treated as the passive realisation of other morpho-syntactic properties of a construction but as independently bringing information to a clause; 2) this different view of case entails that precise functions of case-marked expressions may be determined by the interaction of the case marking, the meaning of the host noun, the semantics of any predicate of which it is an argument and other contextually given factors; more specifically; 3) the partitive…
Pain and game in the Lithuanian novel of the teens of the 21st century
A survey is given of the Lithuanian novel of the past five years. Side by side with poetry, which the Lithuanians are traditionally famous for, their recent prose has considerably advanced for diversity. A growing awareness of the importance of book marketing must have increased reader interest in home-grown prose.
The literary image of the capital of Lithuania has gained some new strata. The action of the family novel Silva Rerum (2008–2011) by Kristina Sabaliauskaitė takes place in the 17st–18st-centry Vilnius. Andrius Tapinas in his novel Vilko valanda („The Hour of the Wolf”, 2013) has invented a steampunk Vilnius reminiscent of…
The literary image of the capital of Lithuania has gained some new strata. The action of the family novel Silva Rerum (2008–2011) by Kristina Sabaliauskaitė takes place in the 17st–18st-centry Vilnius. Andrius Tapinas in his novel Vilko valanda („The Hour of the Wolf”, 2013) has invented a steampunk Vilnius reminiscent of…
Religious fasts and feasts in the representations of Seto culture
The integration of the (orthodox) Setos into the Republic of Estonia established in 1918 soon revealed some conflicts due to cultural differences. The modernized Estonians tended to patronize their „lesser brothers” and to reform their culture and lifestyle, which was considered old-fashioned and reactionary. There was a change in attitude towards Seto religious practices in Estonia, namely, their traditional fasts became a public health issue, their food offerings were discussed in relation to economy and their celebration of church holidays all of a sudden belonged to the discourse of crime and alcoholism. The economic benefits or harms of Seto religious…
A short guide to Latvian prose
The article gives a brief overview of the developments in 21st-century Latvian prose and takes a closer look at nine authors. In comparison with the roaring nineties the Latvian prose has stabilized over the recent decade. Every author has found their own poetic voice and those different poetics coexist in peace, without revealing any too clear divisions.
In this bland context, Aivars Kļavis comes up with a surprise, as his extensive historical tetralogy Viņpus vārtiem („On the Other Side of the Gates”) demonstrates quite a liberal attitude to the traditional conception of Latvian history. The three parts of Gundega Repše’s Smagais…
In this bland context, Aivars Kļavis comes up with a surprise, as his extensive historical tetralogy Viņpus vārtiem („On the Other Side of the Gates”) demonstrates quite a liberal attitude to the traditional conception of Latvian history. The three parts of Gundega Repše’s Smagais…
Once more on Pandivere and its name
Toponymy has points of contact with several other disciplines, first and foremost with linguistics, history and geography. Based on those three, the article attempts to dissipate the doubts of Taavi Pae about Paul Ariste’s etymology of Pandivere, which associates the name with the Mordvin noun panda ‘hill’. The name of Pandivere is obviously quite old, but not so much for the heights, which have been named after a manor, which in turn has got its name from a village.
From a linguistic point of view the initial component Pand(i)- may be associated with the Estonian noun põndak ‘hillock’. The word family…
From a linguistic point of view the initial component Pand(i)- may be associated with the Estonian noun põndak ‘hillock’. The word family…
Translational dissonances in the totalitarian monologue
Translation analysis is an effective way to refine our historical understanding of the totalitarian phenomenon. As our research into the communicative meaning of translation during the Soviet period in Estonia has shown, dichotomous oppositions such as ‘official culture’ vs ‘counter-culture’ fail to explain the dissonances that translations can introduce into the totalitarian monologue. The approach we have developed and applied to our case study is based on an exploration of different layers of translation’s historicity: starting from an analysis of systemic continuities such as censorship or state control of book production, and diachronic discontinuities like changes in the statistical figures…
Spoken Võro in real time
The article gives an overview of the variation of the passive past participle markers in spoken Võro. In standard written Võro, two markers are possible: –t is used in the singular and –tU(q) marks the plural. However, the actual spoken language reveals some differences in the use of the markers. It seems that the paradigms of the singular and plural have lost their original designation as both markers are used to mark singular forms. The article aims to reveal a possible language change by analysing the data that has been collected in two different time periods – in 1991 and…
The trace of Ado Grenzstein in the theory of ternary quantity oppositions of Estonian sounds
It is common knowledge that the theory of ternary quantity degrees of Estonian sounds was created by Mihkel Veske (1843–1890) and first published in his book about Estonian phonetics in 1879. However, Ado Grenzstein (1849–1916), an outstanding man of letters of the late 19th century, had published an article with a number of linguistic suggestions, including an idea of three contrasting lengths of Estonian sounds, both vowels and consonants, in the newspaper Postimees at the end of 1876. The argumentation and even the examples presented by Grenzstein are astonishingly similar to those of Veske published a few years later without…
Spoken subtitles – if, how, for whom and why?
The article describes a system for automatic reading and broadcasting subtitles, based on synthetic speech files generated from TV subtitle files and transmitted to the television ether through a separate audio channel. Owing to the recent progress in the development of speech technology (speech synthesis and speech recognition) and the growing popularity of digital television, people with special linguistic needs such as those suffering from visual or reading impairments, can access various services connected with mass media. The software solution of spoken subtitles consists of two logical components, namely, an interface of automatic reading and voice editing and another interface…
Itinerant kings and ludent kings
This article introduces the concept of itinerant kingship, which is a relatively universal phenomenon in pre-modern societies where several relatively large territorial units were united under one political power, however, without extensive bureaucracy. Therefore this power was forced to regularly visit the subordinate territories in order to collect taxes, exercise judicial power and maintain political subordination. The political power under question did not necessarily have to be a king nor even a sovereign, it could be anyone exercising power over distant enough territories that needed the personal presence of the ruler to control them. Examples of such a system include…