Temporal Relations in the Predicate and the Grammatical System of Estonian and Finnish

Dissertatsioonis on toodud 8 varem erinevates keeleajakirjades avaldatud artiklit, kus võrreldakse eesti ja soome keele grammatikat.

The thesis consists of eight articles that have been published in linguistic journals and volumes. In the articles, the main characteristics of tense and related matters in Estonian and Finnish, and the grammatical systems of both languages in general are analyzed and compared. The paper conforms to the field of theoretically-oriented contrastive linguistics. The theoretical background of the paper is formed by the Reichenbachian theory of tense and temporality, typology of tense and aspect, the theory of grammaticalization, and the theory of iconicity. The basic assumption of the paper is that a comparison of the same category in two related languages presupposes a comparative knowledge about the principles and tendencies acting in the languages.