People

Piia Taremaa is a research fellow at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu. She defended her PhD thesis in linguistics at the University of Tartu in 2017. Situating herself in the framework of cognitive linguistics, her research interests include semantics, morphosyntax and constructional variation. She has a particular interest in the expression of space and motion, and she is also interested in reference, spoken language perception and academic writing. In her studies, she applies corpus and experimental methods, and combines quantitative research methods with qualitative ones.

Ann Veismann is a lecturer in Estonian language and general linguistics. Her background lies in cognitive and functional linguistics. Her main research interest is the semantics and usage of grams (adpositions, particles) and more broadly the interconnections between grammar and semantics. She has also been interested in time and space vocabulary in Estonian, conceptual metaphor theory and spatial frames of reference. In addition to qualitative and quantitative corpus studies she is keen on experimental semantics (e.g. forced choice tasks and acceptability ratings).

Len is a master’s student and research assistant at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics. Len has been involved in the KirKe project since its preliminary stages in 2021, when the project’s activities began with the support of a one-year bridging grant from the Estonian Research Council. Len collects and annotates corpus data, conducts experiments, assists with technical matters, and participates in discussions. Areas of interest include usage-based linguistics, as well as experimental and corpus methods.

Kärolin is a master’s student at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures, specialising in the English language. She has been involved with the KirKe project since April 2024 where she mainly annotates corpus data. Her research focuses on phonetics and studying the pronunciation of Estonian learners of English. 

Annaliis is a master’s student of Estonian and General Linguistics at the University of Tartu and has been involved in the KirKe project since 2024. So far, she has primarily worked on annotating corpus data. Annaliis is interested in semantics and pragmatics, that is, how people create meaning through language in different situations.

Triin is a doctoral student in linguistics. Her thesis focuses on the intensification of adjectives – combinations such as ‘very beautiful’, ‘really nice’, ‘relatively good’, ‘a bit sad’. As part of the KirKe project, she also analyses intensification. Her background is primarily in corpus-based research.

Kim is currently a bachelor’s student studying Estonian and Finno-Ugric linguistics. She is interested in everything from morphology to semantics, and for this project, she has primarily been annotating metaphors. Kim has been working on the KirKe project since spring 2024.

Nele Ots is currently a lecturer at the Institute of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Stuttgart, where she teaches advanced courses on English phonology, including intonation and the phonetics and phonology of English varieties. She also has teaching experience in the psycholinguistic study of language, covering topics such as reading and sentence comprehension, working memory, and language production.
Her research focuses on the cognitive processes underlying sentence planning, with a particular emphasis on intonation and flexible word-order languages. Nele is passionate about spontaneously spoken speech, which she investigates using acoustic analysis and psycholinguistic research methods such as eye tracking.

Johanna is a doctoral student at the Insitute of Estonian and General Linguistics. She made significant contributions to the project until August 2024. Johanna is now actively exploring new and exciting linguistic paths, working as the linguistics editor for the journal Keel ja Kirjandus. Her research focuses on the neoclassical prefixes (e.g., mega-, pseudo-, anti-) in the Estonian language.