The neutral word order in Estonian is
subject–verb–object (SVO). However, as one would expect from an
agglutinative language, the word order is quite free and non-neutral word order can be used to stress some parts of the sentence or in poetic texts, as in
Finnish grammar. For example, consider the sentence '
which means ‘(a/the) man killed (a/the) bear’ and uses the neutral SVO word order. The sentence can be rephrased using OVS word order as '—a normal Estonian sentence that could be more precisely translated as ‘it was (a/the) man who killed the bear’, i. e., the speaker emphasizes that the killer was a man, probably assuming the listener knows that a bear was killed. The other four word orders ('
, ', '
, ') are also possible in certain contexts, especially if more words are added to the three-word sentences. The following data (4–24, 50–72) are sourced from (Tauli, 1983) and (Erelt, 2009) at the
University of Tartu. Sometimes the forms of verbs, nouns and adjectives in the sentence are not enough to determine the subject and object, e. g. '
(‘the men killed the bears’) or ' (‘father killed the bear’)—in the first sentence because in plural, the nominative case is used in Estonian both for subject and telic object, and in the second sentence because in singular, the nominative, genitive and partitive forms of the word '
are the same, as well as those of the word ' (unlike the word '
which has different forms: sg. nom. ', sg. gen. '
, sg. part. '). In such sentences, word order is the only thing that distinguishes the subject and the object: the listener presumes that the former noun ('
, ') is the subject and the latter ('
, ') is the object. In such situations, the speaker cannot interchange the subject and the object for emphasis (unless it is obvious from the context which noun is the subject).
Basic clause patterns There are two basic patterns of clauses in Estonian: normal and inverted clauses (cf. also Erelt 2003, 2005a). In a normal clause the basic word order is SVX (subject – verb – nonsubject). The subject is unmarked, that is, it stands in the nominative, and the verb usually agrees with the subject in person and number. An inverted clause has the word order XVS. The clause opens not with the subject but with an adverbial or oblique, experiential clauses with an object in exceptional cases. If there is a subject-NP in the clause, it is usually indefinite. If the subject-NP is a mass noun or a count noun in the plural, quantitative indefiniteness may be optionally marked by the partitive. (5,7) In the (non-contrastive) negative clause the use of the partitive is obligatory, (e.g. ex. 8). In clauses without a nominative subject the verb is always in the 3rd person singular. In the inverted clause ‘be’ is the most common verb. The main types of inverted clauses include existential, possessive, experiential clauses, clauses of state and source-marking resultative clauses. In existential clauses, as in (4)–(8), the clause-initial constituent is an adverbial of location (or time), and the clause performs a presentative function. In possessive clauses the possessor is expressed as a locative phrase. The latter is represented by the nominal in the adessive case (9). {{interlinear|number=(4) {{interlinear|number=(5) {{interlinear|number=(6) {{interlinear|number=(7) {{interlinear|number=(8) The
possessor is typically animate, as in (9), but it may be also inanimate, as in '
‘The car has four wheels’. Estonian makes no distinction in the expression of permanent and temporal possession. Occasionally, possessive constructions may be formed according to the model of normal clauses, that is, encoding the possessor as the subject and using a special verb, such as , ‘have’ (10). The frequency of the construction is on the increase. The pattern of the normal clause is also used to form the belong-possession, using the -verb and the genitive possessor together with the pronoun ' ‘one’s own’ (11) or the special -verb ‘belong’ (12). Experiential clauses can be formed according to the pattern of possessive clauses, so that the experiencer is expressed by the clause-initial oblique in the adessive, and the ‘possessed’ state is expressed by the subject-NP, as in (13). This kind of state can be expressed also by the predicate adjective (14). {{interlinear|number=(9) {{interlinear|number=(10) {{interlinear|number=(11) {{interlinear|number=(12) {{interlinear|number=(13) {{interlinear|number=(14) The inverted clause pattern is also used in the case of some experiential verbs. In the case of some of them (e.g. ‘like’) the experiencer has to be encoded as the allative oblique (15), in others ( ‘take an interest in’, ‘amaze’, etc.) as the direct object in the partitive case (16). Most experiential verbs take a nominative experiencer, that is, the normal clause pattern, as in (17). In clauses of “state” the clause-initial adverbial of location or time is optional. The predicate may be nominal, as in (18, 19), or verbal (20). The “source-marking resultative clause” (Erelt 2005b) is a marginal type of the resultative clause, where not the resultant state (goal) is marked, as in the normal resultative clause (22), but an entity that changes its state (21). {{interlinear|number=(15) {{interlinear|number=(16) {{interlinear|number=(17) {{interlinear|number=(18) {{interlinear|number=(19) {{interlinear|number=(20) {{interlinear|number=(21) {{interlinear|number=(22)
Case marking {{interlinear|number=(23) {{interlinear|number=(24) The Estonian language has no secondary or
indirect object. A direct object can be in the partitive (partial object) (23), or in the genitive or nominative (total object) (24). In the affirmative clause the total object refers to definite quantity and the clause expresses a perfective activity. If at least one of the conditions is not met, the partitive is used, for example, clause (23) denotes an imperfective activity; the clause '
‘He drank some water and then started to eat’ denotes a perfective activity but an indefinite quantity. In the negative clause only the partial object can be used, e.g. ' ‘The father didn’t take the child to school’. Some verbs, such as the verbs of cognition, only take the partial object also in the affirmative, e.g. '''' ‘Father loves children’. The total object in Estonian does not express the perfective aspect as strongly as in the Finnish language, and for this reason perfective adverbs are often used along with it. The total object is predominantly in the genitive. The nominative is used if the object is in the plural as in (24) or if there is (normally) no subject in the clause, and the object happens to be the most central argument in the clause, i.e. if the verb is in the imperative mood, e.g. ‘Take the child to school!’, impersonal, e.g. ‘The child is taken to school’, or the da-infinitive (except cases where the da-infinitive acts also as the object), e.g. '''' ‘The father’s task was to take the child to school’ Measure adverbials behave similarly to the object in that they occur in the nominative/genitive or the partitive roughly under similar circumstances, e.g. '
[nom] ' [gen] '
‘He skied five kilometres / one kilometre’ – ' [part] '
‘He didn’t ski not a single kilometre’; ' [nom] '
/ [gen] ‘I waited for half an hour / an hour’ – ' [part] '''' ‘I didn’t wait even a minute’.
Word order in the clause The basic word order in the normal clause is SVX, and in the inverted clause it is XVS. The word order is flexible, that is, pragmatic order variants are allowed in addition to the basic order. However, one can observe the following trends in the location of the verb. In non-negated declarative main clauses the finite verb tends to retain the second position in all the thematic variants (50–51) (cf.
Tael 1990, Ehala 2006). The verb can be located at the end of the clause in negative clauses if the clause does not begin with the subject (52), in questions (53), and in some subordinate clauses (54). The positioning of the verb at the beginning of the clause and the resulting inversion can mark a speech act function (55)–(58) or can be used in narrative texts rendering past activities, e.g. (59) (cf. Lindström 2001b). {{interlinear|number=(50) {{interlinear|number=(51) {{interlinear|number=(52) {{interlinear|number=(53) {{interlinear|number=(54) {{interlinear|number=(55) {{interlinear|number=(56) {{interlinear|number=(57) {{interlinear|number=(58) {{interlinear|number=(59)
Interrogatives Polar questions are formed by means of the clause-initial interrogative particles (60) or (in negative clauses, as in [61]), verb fronting (62), or rising intonation (63). In spoken language questions can be formed also by the clause-final particle , which developed from the disjunctive conjunction (64) (cf. Lindström 2001a). Questions begin with an interrogative word (interrogative pro-forms or '
(yes/no-question), ' (yes-question), ''
(no-question)), followed by the SVO word order (in spoken language, interrogative words are sometimes left out, but instead there is either a change in intonation or VSO word order); answers: /
(yes), '' (no). An adjective precedes the noun it modifies. An adverb of time precedes an adverb of place. Content questions are formed by means of interrogative pronouns and pro-adverbs, which are positioned at the beginning of the sentence (64, 65)(WH-fronting): {{interlinear|number=(60) {{interlinear|number=(61) {{interlinear|number=(62) {{interlinear|number=(63) {{interlinear|number=(64) {{interlinear|number=(65) {{interlinear|number=(66)
Negation Clausal negation in Estonian is expressed by means of the negative particle , which usually precedes the verb, e.g. (67). The particle is historically the 3sg form of the previous negative auxiliary. Standard clausal negation is asymmetric, that is, the structure of the negative construction differs from the affirmative not only by the presence of the negative particle but in various other ways, too, first and foremost by the non-finiteness of the main verb (Miestamo 2000). In Estonian the main verb does not carry inflections of the person and the number appearing in the connegative form in the present and in the past participle in the past (see example [67]). The other secondary modifications of standard negation include changes in case marking and word order. In a negative clause direct objects appear only in the partitive case. In the case of the inverted type of clause the same applies to the subject (cf. 2). The connegative form of the verb may be located at the end of the clause in negative clauses (cf. 6). In the imperative and the jussive prohibition is expressed by the partially inflected negative auxiliary (2sg), (2pl), (1pl), (3sg/pl) together with the imperative form of the main verb (68). Unlike the negative particle , the auxiliary verb may be separated from the main verb by other words (69). In the case of constituent negation the scope of negation is marked by emphasis and optionally by the negative particle (70, 71). The particle is placed immediately before the negated constituents, whereas the verb is optionally (but in the case of negated indefinites obligatorily) also in the negative form. The particle is also used to express negation within an infinitive clause (72). DINF:da-infinitive NEGV:connegative {{interlinear|number=(67) On DO Fronting: {{interlinear|number=(68) {{interlinear|number=(69) Constituent negation: {{interlinear|number=(70) {{interlinear|number=(71) {{interlinear|number=(72)
Modifiers See
Adjectival Agreement.
Conjunctions • '''' (but) • '''' (that) • '''' (and) • '''' (whether) • '''' (if) • '''' (as) • '''' (because) • '''' (or) ==References==