Team

Virve-Anneli Vihman, TeKE Principle Investigator

Associate Professor of Psycholinguistics, Senior Research Fellow in Estonian Language

Virve’s research focuses on language acquisition, bilingualism and language variation. She is interested in how language is actually used and how it changes. As the TeKE project leader, she is excited to collect and analyse data on young people’s language in Estonia.

E-mail: virve.vihman@ut.ee; tel.: +372 5349 6820.

Aive Mandel, TeKE project coordinator

Aive supports the TeKE project in numerous ways, liaises with schools and students and is always ready to answer any project-related questions.

E-mail: aive.mandel@ut.ee; tel.: +372 514 9942.

Kadri Koreinik

Senior Research Fellow in the Sociology of Language

Kadri is interested in multilingualism and language policy on the broadest level, including the choices and decisions people make concerning language. She is interested in the ways in which people shape their linguistic repertoire and how young – and old – people use the elements of languages in their speech.

Liina Lindström

Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Estonian Language

Liina’s interests are in the structure of Estonian and variation in speakers’ usage. She has investigated these topics in dialect usage, contemporary standard and spoken language. She is interested in Internet language and how it may affect the future of Estonian, and how to characterise youth language usage.

Kristiina Praakli

Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics

Kristiina’s research focuses on multilingual communication, code-switching and language variation. She also investigates questions concerning the organisation of teaching and learning Estonian as a Second Language. In the TeKE project she is primarily interested in the types of usage and functions of English in the language of Estonian teens.

Mari Aigro

PhD student, Junior Research Fellow of Academic Writing and Rhetoric

Mari investigates morphosyntax, using quantitative corpus and experimental methods to explore what case-marking can tell us about syntax and phrase structure. In the TeKE project, she is mostly interested in what syntactic structure is specific to young people’s usage.

Maarja-Liisa Pilvik

PhD student, Junior Research Fellow in Applied Dialectology

Maarja-Liisa has investigated variation in language use in various registers of Estonian, making use of quantitative analytical methods. In the TeKE project, she is mostly interested in changes in frequent linguistic constructions.

Annika Pant

Language Variety Specialist

Annika is interested in language variation and Estonian dialects. In this project, she is fascinated by how young people actually use language and whether and how regional differences affect their language usage.

Svea Tarkin

Masters student

Svea has researched Estonian as a Second Language, specifically how native Chinese speakers acquire Estonian. She has always been interested in the unique ways young people use language and language change. Being part of the TeKE project and its organisation is a new and useful experience.