A book about Johannes Aavik's language reform

[Antoine Chalvin]

Dear Uralists,

I'm glad to announce the imminent release of my book about Johannes Aavik
ant the Estonian language reform, "Johannes Aavik et la rénovation de la
langue estonienne" (334 pages), published in Paris by L'Harmattan and the
Association for the Development of Finno-Ugric Studies (ADEFO). You will
find below a brief presentation in English and, in the attached files, the
table of contents and the pre-order form.

With best regards,

Antoine Chalvin

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Johannes Aavik et la rénovation de la langue estonienne
by Antoine Chalvin.

Paris: ADEFO/L'Harmattan, 2010. 334 p.
ISBN: 978-2-296-12065-5.
Price: 29,50 euros (pre-order: 22 euros)

During the first decades of the 20th century, Estonia was the scene of a
singular enterprise of language planning. Launched in 1912 by linguist and
translator Johannes Aavik (1880-1973), the "language renovation" movement
(keeleuuendus) set out to beautify and enrich the Estonian language,
particularly with a view to its literary use. Applying mainly aesthetic and
often very subjective considerations, Aavik introduced and propagated, until
the Second World War, a number of radical innovations relating to
orthography, phonetics, morphology and syntax, as well as thousands of new
words formed using a wide variety of methods, from derivation and borrowing
to arbitrary combinations of phonemes. This movement, which made its mark on
Estonian cultural life between the two World Wars, enjoyed wide support from
speakers and significantly changed the appearance of written Estonian. Such
success is all the more amazing because keeleuuendus didn¹t benefit from any
official support and even defined itself as being in opposition to language
standardisation authorities. This book by Antoine Chalvin is the first
thorough and systematic review of the subject. It presents the history and
programme of the renovation movement and studies the process of diffusion of
innovations in order to explain the paradoxical success of the enterprise.

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