Virve Vihman - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Virve Vihman

Eest Raken Uhin Aastaraam, 2010

Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Uhingu Aastaraamat, 2010

Ülevaade. Artikli eesmärgiks on võrrelda Eestis elavate eestlaste ja venelaste suhtluskäitumist. ... more Ülevaade. Artikli eesmärgiks on võrrelda Eestis elavate eestlaste ja venelaste suhtluskäitumist. Materjal põhineb sotsiolingvistilistel üliõpilaste küsitlustel. Eelkõige keskendutakse sina/teie valikule, kuid vaadeldakse ka muid suhtluse aspekte, näiteks suhtluskäitumise erinevuste teadvustamist ja kolmanda isiku nimetamisvormi valikut.

Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 2015

Nordlyd, 2003

This paper presents arguments for recognizing a middle voice in Estonian. The claim that the sema... more This paper presents arguments for recognizing a middle voice in Estonian. The claim that the semantics of middle-marked verbs differs in a substantial way from the semantics of other intransitive constructions leads to the examination of the discourse pragmatics of these constructions, and the relationship between discourse patterns and their valency and argument properties. Various topicality measures show that the argument participant in middle clauses lies between that of the sole participant (S) in intransitive clauses and the O of active transitive clauses. The results regarding the discourse behaviour of middle arguments constitute new evidence for the view that middle constructions differ from ordinary intransitive verbs, despite structural similarities, and mark a unique range on the scale of transitivity exhibited by verbs in Estonian.

Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 2011

... YI] koll[krl:] clink (glasses) 1; 3.0 [kTl] koll[kriCi] clink 11 1; 3.4 [3&amp;amp;#x... more ... YI] koll[krl:] clink (glasses) 1; 3.0 [kTl] koll[kriCi] clink 11 1; 3.4 [3&amp;amp;#x27;bi (:)], belly (button)[&amp;amp;#x27;belibA ... 4.22 [kyti] voti[Vjyti] key 1; 4.22 [kiiz] cheese[tjia] 9 1; 4.24 [Jiv],[sipa] slipper[&amp;amp;#x27;shpa-] 10 1; 4.24 [Jiu],[ks&amp;amp;#x27; su] kiisu[kilzu] kitty 11 1; 4.25 [til] birdie[Wi] 12 1; 4.25 [nin],[nAnd], [nAnt],[nina] lind[lind ...

It is commonly assumed that there exists a correlation between the salience/accessibility of a re... more It is commonly assumed that there exists a correlation between the salience/accessibility of a referent and the expressions used to refer to it, such that the most reduced referring expressions (e.g. pronouns) are used for the most accessible referents, and fuller expressions (e.g. full NPs) for less accessible referents (e.g. ). Positing such a correlation brings up the question of what makes a referent a good candidate for subsequent reference with a reduced anaphoric form. A number of factors have been put forth in the literature, and in this paper we focus on two properties of the antecedent that have been claimed to influence reference resolution, namely grammatical role and word order. We address these issues from the perspective of Estonian, a highly inflected, flexible word order language with canonical SVO order and two kinds of third person anaphors available for singular, human referents: (1) the gender-neutral pronoun ta 's/he' and (2) the demonstrative see 'this'.

Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu aastaraamat. Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics, 2010

Linguistics, 2014

This paper examines the phenomenon of lability in Estonian. We describe the types of lability fou... more This paper examines the phenomenon of lability in Estonian. We describe the types of lability found in our database and the distribution of verbs according to formal (derivational) and semantic verb classes, and we propose an explanation for the spread of lability in the Estonian verbal lexicon. Estonian displays a wealth of labile verbs, compared with Finnish, for instance, a closely related language which uses similar (derivational and morphosyntactic) valency changing devices. We argue that Estonian lability has been co-conditioned by the following factors: a) intensive contact with German, a language rich in labile verbs, b) fluctuations in the productivity and regularity of the valency-decreasing derivation in the recent history of Estonian, c) the phonetic merger of different derivational suffixes leading to misinterpretation of the valency patterns of their derivatives, and d) form-driven analogy. In relation to the last factor we introduce the notion of “clustered lability,” which designates the expansion of the labile pattern over verbs sharing the same root.

Intercultural Pragmatics, 2000

Title Forms of address across languages: Formal and informal second person pronoun usage among Es... more Title Forms of address across languages: Formal and informal second person pronoun usage among Estonia's linguistic communities Author(s) Pajusalu, Renate Citation Pajusalu , R , Pajusalu , K , Klaas , B & Vihman , V 2010 , ' Forms of address across languages: Formal and ...

… of the 22nd Scandinavian Conference of …, 2006

This paper examines the code-switching of verbs in the speech of two children bilingual in Estoni... more This paper examines the code-switching of verbs in the speech of two children bilingual in Estonian and English (aged 3 to 7). Verbs typically have lower rates of code-switching than nouns, due to their central role in argument structure, lower semantic specificity, and greater morphological complexity. The data examined here show various types of morphological mixing, and include examples which violate the prediction from the literature that only finite verbs bear inflectional morphology from the other language, suggesting that children do not adhere to the same constraints as adults when code-switching.

In this paper, we tackle the twin issues of obligatoriness of semantic arguments and variation in... more In this paper, we tackle the twin issues of obligatoriness of semantic arguments and variation in their expression through a study of Estonian constructions denoting need. The variation under investigation consists in the choice of case-marking, between adessive and allative case, as well as the option to omit the oblique argument. We extracted and coded 'need'-constructions from spoken and written corpora and used non-parametric classification methods for analysis. We found high rates of oblique experiencer omission in these constructions (nearly 60% across corpora). The most important predictors of overt expression of the experiencer in our models were participant-internal modality and the presence of nominal complements, meaning that both semantic and syntactic factors are relevant. The choice between two overt cases is affected by person, complement type, and referential distance. Topical experiencer arguments do not show the subject-like tendency to be omitted more often, but they are more likely to be marked with adessive case, suggesting that adessive is more grammaticalised as a structural, non-nominative, argument-marking case than the more semantic allative case. Our findings show that oblique, semantic arguments may be frequently omitted, and both semantic and syntactic factors may affect variation in case-marking.

Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the …, Jan 1, 2004

... The impersonal argument referent is always human, and has a strong implication of a dynamic a... more ... The impersonal argument referent is always human, and has a strong implication of a dynamic and agentive actor, usually associated with a plural or generic participant (Rajandi 1999, Vihman 2004, Blevins 2003, Pihlak 1993; cf., on Finnish, Shore 1988 and Manninen &amp;amp; ...

Transactions of the philological society, Jan 1, 2002

This paper examines a derivational verbal ax in Estonian, traditionally called a marker of detran... more This paper examines a derivational verbal ax in Estonian, traditionally called a marker of detransitivisation or re¯exivisation. The paper argues that this ax is a middle marker, and that Estonian middle semantics generally ®ts into the domain of the middle voice as described in . The account using the middle has greater explanatory power for certain characteristics of these verbs. However, the middle must be de®ned in terms of what stands in opposition to it in a particular language, and the choices the language provides for describing an event. In Estonian, the middle contrasts primarily with the intransitive and transitive poles, rather than with the re¯exive.

Proceedings of the 2002 TAAL Postgraduate …, Jan 1, 2002

Proceedings of the 2001 TAAL Postgraduate …, Jan 1, 2001

Demoting the agent: passive, middle and …, Jan 1, 2006

Page 121. Invisible arguments* Effects of demotion in Estonian and Finnish Elsi Kaiser and Virve-... more Page 121. Invisible arguments* Effects of demotion in Estonian and Finnish Elsi Kaiser and Virve-Anneli Vihman This paper investigates the syntactic, semantic and discourse-level properties of the implicit argument in two constructions ...

Theories of voice based on a model of passivisation such as that exhibited by English tend to cha... more Theories of voice based on a model of passivisation such as that exhibited by English tend to characterise valency modification as primarily a syntactic phenomenon which preserves propositional content, involving the mapping of underlying semantic roles to non-canonical syntactic argument positions. This dissertation finds such an approach insufficient to account for the observed phenomena in the more complex domain of voice in Estonian. The thesis provides a description of voice in Estonian, through an in-depth study of four valencyreducing constructions: the impersonal, personal passive, generic apersonal, and anticausative. These all involve semantic and lexical-level changes to the argument structure of a predicate. In order to arrive at a satisfactory theoretical account of voice in Estonian, the analysis must consider semantic and pragmatic information alongside the realignment of syntactic rules linking argument places with grammatical functions.