The plan to publish a new edition of "Estonian Grammar" ("Eesti grammatika") was initiated by Professor Emeritus Helle Metslang of the University of Tartu a decade ago, in 2014.

Now, a complete work in print brings together the different levels of language in five main chapters. Pronunciation, word change, and word formation, as well as written and oral syntax, are covered.

"It is more for people who already know something about the grammatical structure of the language. On the other hand, there is a new part that wasn't there before: the introduction," Metslang pointed out. The introduction explains the structure of the language, the basic concepts, and the place of the new grammar in the series of previous grammar. "If you read the introduction, maybe even a person who is not so well prepared can get some kind of grounding and move on," the professor said.

The new grammar book is the third in a series of descriptive grammars of the Estonian language. The first of its kind was published by Ferdinand Johann Wiedemann in 1875. The next two-volume descriptive treatise, "The Estonian Language Grammar" ("Eesti keele grammatika"), was published more than 100 years later, in the 1990s.

"The previous grammar did not have a separate section on phonetics and phonology, which deals with the smallest units in the structure of language that distinguish meaning," Pire Teras, an associate professor of Estonian phonetics and author of the new part, said.

The phonology chapter is made up of four sub-topics: "[There is the vowel system and the consonant system. There is word prosody, which we worked on with Pärtel Lippus, and there is intonation, which we worked on with Eva-Liina Asu," Teras said.

Külli Habicht, an associate professor of Estonian language at the University of Tartu who has been working on the chapter on word modification, said that the new grammar describes all the inversions and reversals in Estonian as model paradigms. Although the same approach was used in the old Latin grammar, the authors of the new work were guided by modern usage.

The official book presentation will take place on February 27 at the University of Tartu, in the library of the Institute of Estonian and general linguistics. At the same time, a retrospective book display titled "Estonian Grammar Literature Through the Ages" will be also on display.

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