User:Gootube2000/Valter Tauli

Valter Evald Tauli (Born Valter Evald Poissman before the mandatory estonization of surnames in the 1930s) was an Estonian linguist who specializes in language planning and urailc languages, especially Estonian.

Tauli studied Estonian, literature and Finno-ugric languages at the Univerity of Tartu and was an active gym instructor in Tallinn. In 1944 he fled to Sweden. In 1956 he wrote his graduate thesis Phonological tendencies in Estonian at the Lund University. Afterwards, he taught as a docent of the Estonian Language at Uppsala University until 1973.

In 1968, Tauli published an important work about language planning: Introduction to a Theory of Language Planning, which focused on corpus planning. Tauli regarded language foremost as a tool for communication which can be modified and bettered. With that attitude, he followed the Estonian linguist Johannes Aavik, who proposed many more or less artistically made neologisms, which afterwards became poplular in Estonian. According to Tauli, the principles of language planning, which he presents, are equally as applicable to the corpus planning of ethnic languages as to the creation, evaluation, and bettering of conlangs. The difference is only gradual. He showed that nearly all, out of the list of principles of language propositions by Tauli, corresponded to some of the "conversational maxims" which according to Paul Grice describes how humans interact in a successful conversation.

Tauli also wrote a two-volume grammar of Estonian, of which there exists Estonian and English editions.

Works
(only some selected)


 * Structural tendencies in Uralic languages, By Gruyter Mouton, 1966
 * Introduction to a Theory of Language Planning in the series Studia philologiae Scandinavicae Upsaliensia, 0081-6809; 6. Univ. Uppsala, 1968
 * "A theory of language planning" in Joshua A. Fishman (red.) Advances in Language Planning in the series Contributions to the Sociology of Language, 99-0103363-2; 5; The Hague, p. 49-68, 1974
 * Eesti grammatika (2 vol.) Inst. för finsk-ugriska språk, Univ. Uppsala, 1972-1980
 * Standard Estonian Grammar (2 vol.), in the series Studia Uralica et Altaica Upsaliensia, 0081-7015, Univ. Uppsala, 1973-1983