väljendumist

Väljendumist is an Estonian linguistic term referring to the act or process of expressing thoughts, meanings, or intentions through language. In English it can be translated as utterance or expression. The word is formed from the verb väljendada, meaning to express, with a nominalizing suffix to denote the act itself.

In linguistic analysis väljendumist denotes the concrete realization of meaning in speech or text at a given moment and place. It includes choices at several levels: vocabulary (lexical selection), syntax (sentence structure), morphology, and prosody (intonation and rhythm) in spoken language. The concept is used to distinguish the act of expressing from the underlying content (meaning) and from the final written or spoken form.

Väljendumist is relevant in fields such as pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language acquisition, where researchers study how context, goals, and speaker identity influence how something is expressed. It also matters in communication theory for understanding how utterances can perform actions within a communicative act, such as promising, questioning, or apologizing.

Related terms in Estonian include väljendus (expression), väljendamine (expressing), and väljendusviis (expressive form). The precise interpretation of väljendumist can vary by theoretical framework, but it generally refers to the observable output of linguistic expression in spoken or written form. For more detail, consult Estonian linguistics resources on speech, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.