ABSTRACT
Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian are members of the Finno-Ugric family of languages. However, Estonian and Finnish on the one hand, and Hungarian on the other, are in many respects radically different from each other in phonology, syntax, morphology, and lexicon. The lack of homogeneity does not preclude the making of interesting crosslinguistic comparisons between the languages of this group. Gradation is a phenomenon particular to Estonian and Finnish, and is intimately linked with the system of quantity or duration. Estonian and Finnish share some features with Hungarian, particularly in the vowel system. Of particular interest to the child language researcher are two phonological alternations which are among the main characteristic features of the three languages under study, namely quantity, and vowel harmony. The Estonian picture suggests a different motivation for the preference of use of the adessive and allative nominal cases with people.
