Languages in development - Tapa blanda

The volume comprises a selection of papers presented at the conference on language development titled 'Estonian in Europe', held in Tallinn in March 2001 to open the European Year of Languages 2001 in Estonia. The main aim of the conference was to discuss the processes and developments in progress in both Estonian and other languages at the turn of the millennium, and factors influencing various languages. The papers are divided into three sections according to their content: Language and society - the increasing importance of languages and their implementation in functional domains in current Europe, with special attention to the condition of and outlook for the languages spoken on the shores of the Baltic Sea; Language and technology - the current situation, development prospects, and requirements of language technology; Language and structure - problems of orthography and pronunciation, word formation, lexicology, syntax, semantics, language acquisition. The editors of the volume are Helle Metslang (Professor of Estonian at the Tallinn Pedagogical University) and Mart Rannut (Associate Professor of Estonian as Second Language at the Tallinn Pedagogical University). Among their previous publications are Temporal relations in the predicate and the grammatical system of Estonian and Finnish (H. Metslang, 1994) and Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination (ed. by T. Skutnabb-Kangas and R. Phillipson in collaboration with M. Rannut, 1994).