A GoLD MEDAL update

As you might know, the MEDAL project also involved a collaborative research component.
Our project may have come to an end, but our research collaborations will continue.
Here are the latest updates on the three research projects.

Project 1: The separability of  vocabulary, morphology and syntax in English and Estonian acquisition

In this project, we were interested in whether grammar and vocabulary are acquired as two separate systems (cf. Pinker 1999) or as one integrated system (cf. Goldberg 1997). This issue gets even more complicated when adding in a morphologically rich language such as Estonian. While parent report checklists (CDIs) have grouped English morphology together with syntax, our results show that in Estonian morphological acquisition actually shows a stronger correlation to vocabulary than to syntax.

See more on OSF: preregistration and supplementary data.

Conference talks:

  1. Rowland, C., Donnelly, S., Urm, A., Taremaa, P., Vaks, A., Tulviste, T., Chuprina, A., Jordanoska, I., Vihman, V. The relationship between lexicon, morphology and syntax in English and Estonian. Invited talk at the inauguration event of the Centre for Language Brain and Learning, Tromso, Norway, October 2024. C-LaBL | UiT . Note no abstract required.
  2. Rowland, C., Donnelly, S., Urm, A., Taremaa, P., Vaks, A., Tulviste, T., Chuprina, A., Jordanoska, I., Vihman, V. The relationship between lexicon, morphology and syntax in English and Estonian. Presented at the 16th International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL). Prague, July 2024. IASCL 2024 International Congress of the Study of Child Language – July 15-19, 2022 | Prague, Czech Republic
  3. Vaks, A., Urm, A., Donnelly, S., Taremaa, P., Tulviste, T., Vihman, V., Rowland, C. The relationship between lexicon, morphology and syntax in English and Estonian. Presented at MEDAL Final Conference “New Challenges, Novel Approaches”, 9 Oct. 2025, Univ. of Tartu.
  4. Vihman, V., Rowland, C., Donnelly, S., Urm, A., Taremaa, P., Vaks, A., Tulviste, T., Chuprina, A., Jordanoska, I. & Kidd, E., The relationship between lexicon, morphology and syntax in English and Estonian. Presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (bu.edu) Boston, USA, 9 November 2024.

Project 2: Cross-linguistic variables of subject expression in subject-omission languages

In this project, we were interested in how and why redundancy in language happens. As a case study for redundancy, we took subject expression. In languages in which person and number are encoded in the verbal morphology, pronouns are ‘redundant’. However, speakers of these languages use them anyway. Comparing Estonian and Russian spoken corpus data with Finnish and Polish subtitle data, we found that the extent in which subjects are expressed varies greatly across language and genre. The least amount of expressed pronominal subjects occurred in Finnish subtitle data, and the most in Estonian spoken data. A major factor for pronominal subject expression was reference switch, but there were also some language-specific factors, such as Estonian having a preference for expressed pronouns in embedded context. A follow-up study will involve understudied languages Pite Saami and Macedonian.

See more at OSF repository.

Conference talks:

  1. Aigro, M., Taremaa, P., Pilvik, M.-L., Lõo, K., Mackiewicz, J., Chuprina, A., Milin, P., Vihman, V.-A., Divjak, D. Native-like eye movements: Investigating L1 and L2 processing of pronominal subjects in Estonian. Presented at MEDAL Final Conference “New Challenges, Novel Approaches”, 9 Oct. 2025, University of Tartu.
  2. Basile, R., Pilvik, M.-L., Aigro, M., Taremaa, P., Chuprina, A., Mackiewicz, J., Divjak, D., Vihman, V.-A., Lindström, L. 2024. Ensimmäisen ja toisen persoonan ilmaiseminen suomenkielisessä tekstityskorpuksessa [‘First and second person expression in Finnish subtitle corpora’]. Presented at ‘Grammatikat lüpsmas / Kielioppia lypsämässä’ Finnish-Estonian grammar conference, 18 May, Prague, Charles University. https://fin.ff.cuni.cz/cs/veda-a-vyzkum/kielioppia-lypsamassa-grammatikat-lupsmas/ 
  3. Divjak, D., Mackiewicz, J., Chuprina, A., Milin, P. Redundancy in person marking: Investigation of subject pronoun expression in Polish and Russian using a multifactorial design. SCLA. Krakow 13-15 November 2024 
  4. Divjak, D. & Milin, P. Top-down wisdom versus bottom-up noise: can data (ever) replace linguistic expertise? Keynote talk delivered at SLE 2025, Bordeaux (27 Aug. 2025).
  5. Jordanoska, I. When does the pro drop? A case study of pro-drop in Macedonian. Presented at MEDAL Final Conference “New Challenges, Novel Approaches”, 9 Oct. 2025, University of Tartu.
  6. Mackiewicz, J., Divjak, D., Milin, P. Redundancy in Language: Exploring the Dynamics of Person Encoding Across Language Families. Presented at WoProc 2024 (Belgrade, July 2024) 
  7. Mackiewicz, J., Vihman, V., Milin, P. Beyond typology: Individual differences in second language learning and academic achievement among Russian-speaking university students in Estonia. Presented at MEDAL Final Conference “New Challenges, Novel Approaches”, 10 Oct. 2025, University of Tartu.
  8. Mackiewicz, J. Academic achievement among Russian-L1 learners of Estonian, in relation to language proficiency. Invited Talk (University of Warwick, November, 2025). 
  9. Pilvik, M.-L., Aigro, M., Taremaa, P., Vihman, V.-A., Lindström, L. 2024. Asesõnalise subjekti väljajätt suulises eesti keeles [‘Pronominal subject omission in spoken Estonian’]. Presented at the 1st Estonian Humanities Conference (Eesti humanitaarteaduste aastakonverents, EHAK) 11 April, Tallinn. https://ehak.ee/programm/
  10. Pilvik, M.-L., Aigro, M., Taremaa, P., Chuprina, A., Mackiewicz, J., Divjak, D., Vihman, V.-A., Lindström, L. Redundancy in person marking: Subject pronoun expression in a cross-linguistic, multifactorial design. Presented at the Societas Linguistica Europaea 57th Annual Meeting, Helsinki, August 2024.
  11. Wilbur, J. Subject omission in Pite Saami. Presented at MEDAL Final Conference “New Challenges, Novel Approaches”, 10 Oct. 2025, University of Tartu.

Project 3: Gesture and prosody in Estonian and Turkish and neural correlates of multimodal negation

In this project, we compared the use of co-speech gestures in Turkish and Estonian, two languages that use verbal morphology to mark negation, but that differ in the fact that Turkish negation also has a prosodic component, while Estonian does not. Corpus and EEG findings highlight distinct contributions of prosody and gesture to negation processing: 1) Negation is linguistically demanding, and gestures can help reduce this cognitive load, supporting prior findings that gestures enhance speech processing (e.g., Hintz et al., 2023); 2) Use of prosodic cues in Turkish is modulated by the availability of compensatory means (e.g., Zora et al., 2025). When both are present, listeners can rely more on morphological information than on prosody. The facilitatory effect of prosody surfaces when it co-occurs with gesture, indexing the significance of multimodal integration.
 

Conference talks:

  1. Lippus, P., Asu, E.L., Pilvik, M.-L., Lindström, L., Sengul Yildiz, S., Zora, H., Özyürek, A. Multimodal Negation: Gesture and Prosody in Estonian and Turkish. Presented at MEDAL Final Conference “New Challenges, Novel Approaches”, 9 Oct. 2025, University of Tartu.
  2. Lippus, P., Asu, E. L., Pilvik, M.-L., Lindström, L. 2024. Alignment of prosodic prominence and gesture in marking of negation in Estonian: first insights from a multimodal study. Presented at the 36th Finnic Phonetics Symposium. 25-26 April, Tallinn, Mektory Innovation and Business Centre. https://cs.ttu.ee/events/fp2024/  https://cs.ttu.ee/events/fp2024/FP2024_abstract_book.pdf
  3. Lippus, P., Asu, E. L., Pilvik, M.-L., Lindström, L. 2025. Alignment of prosodic prominence and gesture in marking of negation in Estonian: further insights from a multimodal study. Presented at the 37th Finnic Phonetics Symposium. 2025, 24 Apr. 2025, University of Turku, Finland. https://sites.utu.fi/fp2025/
  4. Lippus, P., Asu, E. L., Pilvik, M.-L., Lindström, L. 2025. Alignment of gestures in the marking of negation in Estonian, 10th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies, 9 July 2025, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. https://www.isgs10.nl/
  5. Lippus, P., Asu, E.L. 2025. A preliminary study of the timing of co-speech head and eyebrow gestures in Estonian. International Conference on Multimodality 12ICOM, 30 Oct. 2025, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. https://sites.google.com/rug.nl/12icom
  6. Lippus, P., Asu, E.L. 2025. The alignment of co-speech gestures with prominence in Estonian: a preliminary analysis. Congressus XIV Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum, 20 Aug. 2025, University of Tartu, Estonia. https://cifu14.ut.ee/
  7. Lippus, P., Asu, E.L. 2025. The link between eyebrow raises and pitch accents in Estonian: preliminary results from an EMA study. Fonetik 2025, Linnæus University, 21 May 2025, Växjö, Sweden.