Võro demonstratives: changing or disappearing?

Abstract

The paper deals with the changes occurring in the system of demonstratives and personal pronouns in the Võro language, the present-day variety of the South Estonian Võru dialect. In the Võro language the third person pronoun is timä/tä and there are three demonstrative pronouns (sjoo~seo, taa, and tuu) and three series of demonstrative adverbs (siin:siia:siit; taha:tan:tast; sinna:seal:sealt) are in use. The data for the study come from the newspaper Uma Leht (2012–2014) and mini-series produced by Estonian Public Broadcasting in 2011. The data show that the former addressee-centered system of South Estonian demonstratives has disappeared. At the same time, the language has retained all of the pronouns, although their frequency and context of use differs in the written and the spoken data.