Krista Kerge
Tallinn University, IELC, Faculty Member
- Professor emeritus, a former professor of Applied Linguistics in Tallinn University school of Humanities. Mainly publ... moreProfessor emeritus, a former professor of Applied Linguistics in Tallinn University school of Humanities. Mainly published on linguistic varieties, such as legal language, original and translated fiction, journalism, etc.edit
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In the era of globalisation and simultaneous grouping, multilingualism has become a norm. In their job or studies, most of educated Estonians have to mediate information from one or more foreign languages. At the same time, several... more
In the era of globalisation and simultaneous grouping, multilingualism has become a norm. In their job or studies, most of educated Estonians have to mediate information from one or more foreign languages. At the same time, several difficulties arise: (1) these people are not familiar with theoretical issues of translation; (2) they may be faced with a lack of suitable special terms in the target language; (3) for marking the same concept, several parallel scientific paradigms and groups characteristic of the era may use different 114 signifiers, and the other way around: the same lexical units may mark different notions. The article mediates empirical findings of editing (and retranslating) CEFR (2001) and PISA 2009 (2008) terminology; some more general conclusions may address practitioners of every-day translating, some others point to problems to be solved on the higher level of society.Keywordsmultilingualism, LSP, English, Estonian, translatio
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During 1997–2001 an Estonian text-to-speech synthesizer was developed. The implementation of text-to-speech synthesis, however, is still subject to limitations, due to the monotony and poor coherence of the output speech. Its improvement... more
During 1997–2001 an Estonian text-to-speech synthesizer was developed. The implementation of text-to-speech synthesis, however, is still subject to limitations, due to the monotony and poor coherence of the output speech. Its improvement was started with the general interrogative sentences of kas-particle. They were found to feature, characteristically three base contours, which were modelled. For the purpose of verification how the rules of modeling of the base-tone apply with respect to randomly selected general interrogative sentences, a perception test was carried out. A group of people produced an estimate on 5-point Likert-scale to a random sample of general interrogative sentences, read both by synthesizer and man. Estimated were three aspects: 1) intelligibility; 2) acceptability of sentence stresses; 3) cogency. The sentences of poor rating were subjected to a further syntactic study. Resulting from research, a larger corpus sample will be studied and rules of synthesis of ...
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Loomulike eesti keele kasutusmudelite käsitluses (vt Kerge, Uusen, Põlda 2014, Pajupuu, Kerge, Meister, Asu, Alp 2010) ei peeta ideaaliks normitud keelekasutust, nagu seda valdavad peamiselt keeletoimetajad, vaid tavalist haritud... more
Loomulike eesti keele kasutusmudelite käsitluses (vt Kerge, Uusen, Põlda 2014, Pajupuu, Kerge, Meister, Asu, Alp 2010) ei peeta ideaaliks normitud keelekasutust, nagu seda valdavad peamiselt keeletoimetajad, vaid tavalist haritud standardkeelt, nagu seda asjalikes olukohastes žanrites kasutavad haritud mittefiloloogid – nimetagem sellist haritud keelt etaloniks, mille poole püüelda. Et parandada nii kirjutamise õpetamist kui ka kirjutusoskuse hindamist, on artiklis jälgitud, kuidas saavutavad haritud täiskasvanule omase sõnavara eesti (emakeelsed) õpilased ja eesti keelt omandavad muu emakeelega täiskasvanud.Õpilaste L1 sõnavara on uuritud 5., 7., 9. ja 11. klassi õpilaste katsekirjutistes, teise keele omandajate sõnavara aga tasemeeksamite sellistes kirjutistes, mis on hinnatud taotletava A2-, B1-, B2-, and C1-taseme vääriliseks. Kõigi rühmade kirjutiste üldise ja keeruka sõnavara ulatust ja variatiivsust on võrreldud haritlaskirjutiste korpuse näitajatega, kasutades kahe valim...
Text-type determines the linguistic and paralinguistic means for conveying the message. The present study investigates how to discriminate between text-types and which types should be focused on in language teaching. One of the... more
Text-type determines the linguistic and paralinguistic means for conveying the message. The present study investigates how to discriminate between text-types and which types should be focused on in language teaching. One of the distinctive features of text-type is text formality, determinable from its part-of-speech structure. Our formality analysis concerns 28 oral and written texts. The results indicate that written texts are more formal than oral ones, and monologues more formal than dialogues. The results are applicable in FLT as well as in language technology for automatic identification of text types.
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Kust jookseb rakenduslingvistika ja muu lingvistika piir? Maineka rakenduslingvistika käsiraamatusarja (HAL, 9 köidet) koostajad ütlevad, et tänapäevane edukusnõudele allutatud teadus (science under the pressure to succeed) ongi suu resti... more
Kust jookseb rakenduslingvistika ja muu lingvistika piir? Maineka rakenduslingvistika käsiraamatusarja (HAL, 9 köidet) koostajad ütlevad, et tänapäevane edukusnõudele allutatud teadus (science under the pressure to succeed) ongi suu resti rakenduslik, sest rakendusväljund on üha sagedamini teaduse hindamise ja rahasta mise põhikriteeriumeid. Nad küsivad, kas lingvistika üldse enam rakenduse-täiendit vajabki: keeleteaduse keskmesse on tõusnud või isegi tema peavooluks saanud tegeliku elu teo ree tilised ja empiirilised probleemid, mille puhul keel on põhiteema. Nii peetakse õigemaks öelda, et lingvistika on teooria rakendusala, teoreetiliselt rakenduslik (theoretically applied) valdkond ühiskonna mitut laadi probleemide lahendamiseks (Knapp, Antos 2008: vii-ix).1 Kogu viidatud käsiraamat näitab sedasama mitme ala eriteadlaste silma läbi. Kuidas paistavad keeleasjad aga eesti inimesele, kes defineerib end rakenduslingvistina? Mis tundub kirjandusest oluline ja mida see kogemuse toel ütleb?
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In the framework of the Natural Models approach to learning Estonian (see Kerge, Uusen, Põlda 2014; Pajupuu et al. 2010), examples of highly educated non-philologist native adult speech and writing, rather than ideal edited standard... more
In the framework of the Natural Models approach to learning Estonian (see Kerge, Uusen, Põlda 2014; Pajupuu et al. 2010), examples of highly educated non-philologist native adult speech and writing, rather than ideal edited standard language use, are considered the benchmarks to be striven for . To improve both teaching and assessing writing, the vocabulary parameters of creative writings of Estonian L1 students from grades 5, 7, 9, and 11 and the vocabulary parameters of writings of L2 writers with certię ed A2-, B1-, B2-, and C1-level proficiencies are compared to this benchmark. It is found that, although most adults must have more experience than young students, even at the C1-level, the L2 lexicon of L2 writers is strikingly poorer than the lexicon of native educated adults or even upper secondary students.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, Second Language Acquisition, Languages and Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Language Testing, and 15 moreVocabulary, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Writing, First Language Acquisition, Vocabulary Acquisition, Second language vocabulary acquisition, CEFR, Lexicon, Lexical Richness, C, L, B, A, Vocabulary Range, and Lexical Sophistication
For the synthetic speech to be acceptable to human ear, it is to feature the intonation, rhythm and accents sounding natural. The main objective of this work was to identify statistical models, basing on the read-aloud texts, which would... more
For the synthetic speech to be acceptable to human ear, it is to feature the intonation, rhythm and accents sounding natural. The main objective of this work was to identify statistical models, basing on the read-aloud texts, which would help render natural the output speech in Estonian of the text-to-speech synthesizer. An attempt was made to find out, on the basis of one-to-one correspondence of the speech and the underlying text, whether and to what extent the prosodic parsing of speech is related to syntax and morphology. By regression analysis, values essential for predicting the fundamental frequency and sentence stress were elucidated. An effort to detect the links between speech parsing and breaks was undertaken.
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Text-type determines the linguistic and paralinguistic means for convey-ing the message. The present study investigates how to discriminate between text-types and which types should be focused on in language teaching. One of the... more
Text-type determines the linguistic and paralinguistic means for convey-ing the message. The present study investigates how to discriminate between text-types and which types should be focused on in language teaching. One of the distinctive features of text-type is text formality, determinable from its part-of-speech structure. Our formality analysis concerns 28 oral and written texts. The results indicate that written texts are more formal than oral ones, and monologues more formal than dialogues. The results are applicable in FLT as well as in language technology for automatic identification of text-types.
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Lexical richness is a marker of natural language use and a characteristic of the vocabulary range. Using the Uber index, we measured the lexical richness of the vocabulary of L1 and L2 users with higher education in two oral and one... more
Lexical richness is a marker of natural language use and a characteristic of the vocabulary range. Using the Uber index, we measured the lexical richness of the vocabulary of L1 and L2 users with higher education in two oral and one written genre. Although L2 users had passed a C1 level exam, being fluent in speech and writing, the lexical richness of the two groups varied considerably: L1 vocabulary was richer in dialogues, monologues, and especially in essays. The comparison of the vocabulary of L1 and L2 speakers with the so-called elementary vocabulary (3000 most frequent words) showed that the share of the elementary vocabulary for L1 users was relatively large: 64% in speech and 56% in written texts as compared to the L2 users’ 53% vs 64.5%. Poorer vocabulary of L2 speakers and a different use as compared to L1 speakers is not an obstacle to being fluent in speech and writing.
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During 1997–2001 an Estonian text-to-speech synthesizer was developed. The implementation of text-to-speech synthesis, however, is still subject to limitations, due to the monotony and poor coherence of the output speech. Its improvement... more
During 1997–2001 an Estonian text-to-speech synthesizer was developed. The implementation of text-to-speech synthesis, however, is still subject to limitations, due to the monotony and poor coherence of the output speech. Its improvement was started with the general interrogative sentences of kas -particle. They were found to feature, characteristically three base contours, which were modelled. For the purpose of verification how the rules of modelling of the base-tone apply with respect to randomly selected general interrogative sentences, a perception test was carried out. A group of people produced an estimate on 5-point Likert-scale to a random sample of general interrogative sentences, read both by synthesizer and man. Estimated were three aspects: 1) intelligibility; 2) acceptability of sentence stresses; 3) cogency. The sentences of poor rating were subjected to a further syntactic study. Resulting from research, a larger corpus sample will be studied and rules of synthesis o...
Research Interests:
In order to learn how vocabulary changes with progress in language proficiency and which characteristics of the lexical proficiency should be taken into consideration when assessing writing, we studied creative writings collected at... more
In order to learn how vocabulary changes with progress in language proficiency and which characteristics of the lexical proficiency should be taken into consideration when assessing writing, we studied creative writings collected at official exams of Estonian as a second language (L2) on levels A2, B1, B2 and C1. For each level, we took for analysis 16 works from examinees who spoke Russian as their mother tongue and who had passed the writing assessment with a score of at least 70%. Vocabulary range was measured by comparing the words used with the frequency dictionary, resulting in a lexical frequency profile (LFP). Lexical diversity was measured via Guiraud’s index (G) and the diversity of the sophisticated vocabulary via Advanced Guiraud (AG). The lexical sophistication (LS) and lexical density of the texts (LD) were calculated, as well. A two sample t test was used to find the distinguishing characteristics of proficiency levels. For each level, all of the characteristics were ...
Reference: Kerge, Krista (2016). Word-formation in the individual European languages: Estonian. In: Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe. Ed. by Müller, Peter O.; Ohnheiser, Ingeborg; Olsen, Susan; Rainer,... more
Reference: Kerge, Krista (2016). Word-formation in the individual European languages: Estonian. In: Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe. Ed. by Müller, Peter O.; Ohnheiser, Ingeborg; Olsen, Susan; Rainer, Franz. Vol. 5 (pp 3228–3259). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
Gives the overview of the Estonian word-formation system. All examples are translated (English).
Gives the overview of the Estonian word-formation system. All examples are translated (English).
ABSTRACT In order to develop the C1 assessment standard, we measured the following aspects of educated L1 and L2 dialogue in Estonian: (1) temporal characteristics; (2) syntactic complexity; (3) lexical richness; (4) vocabulary range; (5)... more
ABSTRACT In order to develop the C1 assessment standard, we measured the following aspects of educated L1 and L2 dialogue in Estonian: (1) temporal characteristics; (2) syntactic complexity; (3) lexical richness; (4) vocabulary range; (5) formality; (6) strength and level of disturbing foreign accent. Despite differences in (1)-(3) and a large proportion of elementary vocabulary (4), L2 was given high scores. We conclude that it is more important to assess genre-dependent formality than other characteristics. RESUMEN Para desarrollar el estándar de evaluación C1 medimos los siguientes aspectos del diálogo educado L1 y L2 en estonio: (1) características temporales; (2) complejidad sintáctica; (3) riqueza léxica; (4) nivel de vocabulario; (5) formalidad; (6) fuerza y grado del acento extranjero. No obstante las diferencias notadas en los aspectos (1)-(3) y una gran proporción de vocabulario elemental (4), L2 recibió altas calificaciones. En conclusión, es más importante evaluar la for...
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One of the problems in testing the proficiency of Estonian as a first or second language is that high-stake exams are assessed against the standards of the written language. Given this, we set out to describe the features of the actual... more
One of the problems in testing the proficiency of Estonian as a first or second language is that high-stake exams are assessed against the standards of the written language. Given this, we set out to describe the features of the actual use of educated language in different types of text. The goal was to develop L1 and L2 teaching and testing through models of educated language use which a language learner can approach step by step. To achieve this goal we compared the following features of educated use of Estonian as L1 and L2 in different situations: (1) lexical richness and vocabulary range; (2) contextuality and formality of the text; (3) syntactic complicacy; (4) temporal characteristics of the dialogue; (5) strength and disruptiveness of the foreign accent; (6) sentence intonation. The results show that educated language use is mainly genre-dependent. This moves the focus of language learning onto texts of specific genres and confirms the suitability of an action-based approach centred on genres in L1 and L2 teaching and testing, and the need for regular assessor training.