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The departure points of the project are based on the prescriptions of "The Estonian Language Development Strategy 2004-2010" (elaborated by the Estonian Language Council and approved by the Government of the Republic of Estonia), with a particular attention to Part 4 "Estonian language research and corpora" and on Part 7 "Estonian and other languages". The main purposes of the project are as follows: 1) investigation of Estonian as spoken by non-Estonians; 2) analysis of correlation between language use and social factors in various text types; 3) further development in language change research. The project is closely linked to the previous activities of Estonian linguists at TPU, especially to the project no. 0132493s03 "The analysis, modeling and control of the development of the Estonian linguistic environment", supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Estonia (the principle investigator is Prof. Martin Ehala). In order to predict development tendencies of the Estonian language, both theoretical and applied research is needed. For that purpose in addition to literary language and dialects corpora the following databases are essential: 1) code-switching, Estonian-Russian interlanguage, and child language corpora; 2) internet-based bilingual dictionaries (lexicons) and 3) appropriate language technology (software). The acquisition of the Estonian language is still very poorly investigated. The interlanguage corpora would help to create a real picture of Estonian as L2 acquisition. Code-switching corpora would contribute to the systematic view on multilingual communication, its strategies, and several types of variation (regional,generational, sociopragmatical variation). The mentioned corpora could be a source for other researchers. Child language corpora could be potentially useful also for speech therapist, psychologists, sociologists etc. Post-graduate students whose dissertation topic is code-switching or child language are invited to participate in the project. |