On 6 September at 14:15 Ann Siiman will defend her doctoral thesis "Form usage variation of the partitive and illative case and reasons for it" („Vormikasutuse varieerumine ning selle põhjused osastava ja sisseütleva käände näitel“). Defend will be held on Estonian.
Supervisor:
Associate Professor Külli Habicht, prof Martin Ehala ja PhD Aki-Juhani Kyröläinen
Opponent:
Prof Klaus Laalo (PhD, University of Tampere).
Summary:
The aim of this thesis is to describe what kind of allomorphs of the partitive and illative case are preferred in modern Estonian and what are the reasons for those preferences. For this purpose, corpus data was used to compare the parallel forms. Both the cases, where both variants are correct by the Estonian literary standard, as well as the cases, where only one variant is considered correct, were examined.
Regarding the partitive, then it is concluded that the vocal ending is more often preferred. For example, the singular vocal is preferred over the t-ending (e.g., jaanuari rather than jaanuarit ‘January’), the plural vocal is preferred to the sid-ending (e.g. aegu rather than aegasid ‘time’), the vocal is preferred to the id-ending (e.g. eestlasi instead of eestlaseid ‘Estonian’). Only in the kõne-type singular t-ending is the used more (e.g. jumet rather than jume ‘complexion’) and in the soolane-type plural id-ending (e.g. vaeseid instead of vaesi ‘poor’). It turns out that the plural partitive sid-ending is used with less frequent words, e.g. esseesid instead of esseid ‘essay’. In the variation of plural partitive si- and sid-ending, the si-ending is preferred in very few cases, e.g. the slang word kallasi rather than kallasid ‘darling’.
Usage of the singular illative form reveals that the short illative forms are more often used. In general, the long illative is preferred with third-degree words without gradation (e.g. bussipeatusesse instead of bussipeatusse ‘bus stop’), third-degree ne- and s-ending words (e.g. ajaloolisesse rather than ajaloolisse ‘historical’), government structures (e.g. loosse suhtuma insead of lukku suhtuma ‘to relate to a story ’) and proper names (e.g. Tartusse instead of Tartu). The short illative is more often preferred with third-degree words with gradation (e.g. aeda rather than aiasse ‘garden’), first- and second-degree ne- and s-ending words (e.g. 20liikmelisse instead of 20liikmelisesse ‘20-member’), multi-word expressions (e.g. meelde tulema rather than meelesse tulema ‘to remind’) and in common noun place and state phrases, as well as body part words (e.g. koju rather than kodusse ‘home’).
In addition to describing form usage of the partitive and illative, the dissertation provides reasons for their usage variation and discusses different methods and data collection principles for studying Estonian morphology