From Conversation to Proverbs: Estonian ikka- and iks-constructions

The article provides an overview of the use of the Estonian particleikka ‘sure, still’ in spoken Estonian and makes an attempt to explain why this particle is so common in proverbs and South Estonian folk songs. Etymologically, ikka is associated with a temporal meaning and stems from the word iga ‘time, lifetime, full time’. In contemporary Estonian ikka refers to the typicality and recurrence of an action, but it also points to an interruption in the continuity of an action after which the previous situation is restored. As such it marks(re-)validity in fixed expressions and folklore; however, it could also serve as a means of showing continuity of narrative discourse. The article focuses on the occurrence of ikka in contemporary spoken language and proverbs (both in the database and in the contemporary media language) and on a special usage of the expletive iks/ ks in Setu/Seto South Estonian folk songs. In folklore, as well in contemporary informal speech, the use of ikka is motivated both by lexical meaning on the syntactic level and the general structure of discourse.