Sõnavalaga

Sõnavalaga is a term used in Estonian linguistics and education to refer to the lexical layer of language—the repertoire of words and fixed expressions that speakers use. It encompasses lexemes, derivation, inflection, compounds, collocations, sense relations, and semantic fields.

The concept describes how language is organized at the word level, as opposed to grammar or syntax, and includes word formation, polysemy, collocations, registers, and usage contexts. The term appears in discussions of vocabulary acquisition, lexicography, corpus linguistics, and related fields, where emphasis is placed on the form, meaning, and usage of individual words and word combinations.

In language education, a sõnavalaga approach emphasizes vocabulary development, frequent exposure to lexical chunks, and instruction that highlights collocations and phrases rather than isolated grammar rules. It is associated with communicative language outcomes, reading comprehension, and the ability to produce natural-sounding speech and writing.

In dictionaries and corpora, the lexical layer guides entries, sense distinctions, lemma forms, frequency data, and collocational information. In natural language processing, the lexical component underpins tokenization, lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging, word sense disambiguation, and lexicon-based features used in various applications.

The term does not denote a single fixed theory; usage varies among researchers and institutions. It is best understood as a descriptive label for the word-level component of language in Estonian academic discourse.