Vertailevuudelle

Vertailevuudelle is a term used in linguistic methodology to denote the property or process of achieving comparability across data sets or analyses. It serves as a conceptual tool in discussions of cross-linguistic data and annotation, describing the extent to which results from different languages, corpora, or annotations can be meaningfully juxtaposed and interpreted. The word is formed from Estonian roots connected to the verb ver tailema (to compare), with nominalization and an allative suffix that conveys a sense of “to comparability” or “for comparability.” It has appeared in a modest body of Estonian-language methodological discourse on cross-linguistic data.

In research, vertailevuudelle is not a fixed statistical measure but a guiding concept used to frame decisions about data collection, preprocessing, and analysis. Researchers examine factors such as annotation schemes, tokenization, genre, and sampling to maximise comparability. Practically, evaluating vertailevuudelle may involve aligning annotation schemas across corpora, normalizing frequency units, or selecting features that are robust to linguistic variation. For example, before cross-language frequency comparisons, investigators assess the vertailevuudelle of the available corpora to determine whether the data can be validly compared.

Limitations include a lack of universal standardization and the risk of overgeneralization. The concept is sensitive to theoretical assumptions about what constitutes a meaningful comparison and may vary across subfields. See also cross-linguistic comparison, data normalization, methodological validity, and corpus alignment.