Browsing by Subject "yhdyslause"

This study focuses on the conjunctions in the speech of two Estonian pupils that are learning Finnish as a second language in preparatory education. Conjunctions are used to mark syntactic and semantic relations between different linguistic elements. The use of conjunctions is a sign of language development because they make creating different relationships between phrases, clauses and sentences possible. Conjunctions can for example create complex sentences by connecting clauses. This study approaches complex sentences from a semantic perspective. This study is a case study that has two pupils attending Finnish preparatory education as its informants. The research data consists of videomaterial and their transcripts of six lessons from the preparatory education. Earlier research on second language learning and its theories and grammatical descriptions of conjunctions and complex sentences as well as their semantic relations are used as the theoretical background. The study shows that the pupils learn some frequent conjunctions during their year in the preparatory education. First conjunctions that emerged in the language were ja (and) and että (that) that appeared during the fall semester, and were followed by kun (as, when, while), mutta (but), jos (if) and tai (or) in the spring semester. Conjunctions ja, että and kun were used to create complex sentences, whereas mutta, jos and tai were only used as clause-initial particles marking the relationship between the utterance and the earlier conversation. Complex sentences were markedly more frequent in the spring semester. The conjunction use of the two informants was remarkably different. Conjunctions of one of the pupils increased faster and reached higher numbers than the other pupil’s conjunctions. The data shows an increase in conjunctions and complex sentences in the speech of both of the pupils but there is a notable difference between the pupils.