Ensimmäiset suomenkieliset väitöskirjat julkaistiin humanistisilta aloilta 1850-luvulla, lääketieteestä 1860-luvulla mutta muilta aloilta aikaisintaan 1880- ja 1890-luvuilla. Eri alojen esikoistöitä ...on tuotu esiin tämän katsauksen pohjana olevissa oppihistoriallisissa yleisesityksissä (kuten The History of Learning and Science in Finland 1828–1918 -sarjan niteissä) ja erillistutkimuksissa. Näissä ei kuitenkaan ole hahmoteltu, miten eri tieteenalojen välille hahmottuva kronologia heijastaa väitöskirjaa edeltävää kunkin alan julkaisutoimintaa, ennen kaikkea sitä, millaisia tieto- tai oppikirjoiksi katsottavia alan julkaisuja oli jo olemassa ja kuinka riittäviä kirjakielen sanastolliset resurssit olivat tällaisten laadintaan. Historian alan julkaisutoiminta käynnistyi muita varhemmin, koska tätä voitiin harrastaa pitkälti kielessä jo vanhastaan olleen sanaston pohjalta, kun taas luonnontieteitä varten piti ensin luoda suomenkielinen terminologia. Katsauksen lopuksi tarkastellaan vielä kokoavasti, millaiset syyt saivat katsauksessa tarkasteltujen alojen ensimmäisten suomenkielisten väitöskirjojen tekijät laatimaan opinnäytteensä suomeksi, vaikka tämä saattoi johtaa vaikeuksiin eikä läheskään aina edes onnistunut.
Martti Rapola (1891–1972) conducted research on Finnish dialects and Old Literary Finnish throughout his long career. It was not until 1933, however, that he published his first study on 19th-century ...Finnish, after the publication of his influential book Suomen kirjakielen kehitys (‘The Development of the Finnish Literary Language’). In the late 1930s, Rapola began collecting material for what would develop into a word collection of 19th-century Finnish based on word meaning. This collection is the focus of this article.
The nearly extinct Votian language - spoken in Western Ingria and belonging to the Baltic-Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages - has surprisingly many exceptions to its palato-velar vowel ...harmony. In addition to nine suffixes with o, there are also nine suffixes with a in otherwise front vocalic words, as well as two suffixes with invariable e or O. The harmonic variation between these form groups is, however, considerable. Some suffixes, such as ikko-derivative and ssaa-terminative have no front vocalic variants, while the derivatives lain and too have in most cases adapted to the harmony, and the plural genitive has become more frequent in its non-harmonic forms fee, d'd'ee. The lack of non-initial o is a feature inherited from Proto-Finnic, but in Votian it is also supported by the fact that adaptation to the harmony would have led to too many instances of allomorphy, because the k occurring in most non-harmonic suffixes would have developed into ts before front vowels. The credibility of this hypothesis is supported by the fact that the harmony vacillates most in form groups where k does not occur, because in these form groups - as well as in late loans from other Baltic-Finnic-languages - adaptation to the harmony has not been blocked by the morphological consequences of the k> is change. Only the terminative ssaa has remained unaffected by adaptation because of its synchronically transparent origin from an independent word. Later enclitic development, palatalization, paradidmatic cohesion and stress features have been of lesser importance to the development of Votian vowel harmony, which has as a whole been strongly influenced by diverse language contacts with Izhorian, Finnish, Estonian and Russian.
The morphology of Old Literary Finnish was almost exclusively based on western Finnish dialects. Eastern Finnish forms were not introduced widely to literary Finnish until the beginning of Early ...Modern Finnish (ca. 1810-1870/80), when the orthography also began to be modernised. This resulted in a linguistic debate known as 'the battle of the dialects' (ca. 1820-1845). The dialectal forms causing controversy included the inessive case ending -ssA (compared with the -sA of western Finnish dialects & earlier literary Finnish), the allative case ending -llen (cf. -lle), the abessive case ending -ttA (cf. -tA), the personal ending of the first person plural -mmA (cf. -mme), the second person plural -ttA (cf. -tte) & the third person plural in imperfect & conditional forms, -vAt (cf. -t). The writer describes how the above-mentioned forms were introduced to Early Modern Finnish & how they spread or fell out of use by the beginning of the period of Modern Finnish. The writer uses the same primary data as in his earlier study on the graphemic development of Early Modern Finnish, ie., the nine editions of Jakob Johan Malmberg's Finnish translation of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, together with his other works, & also relies on more extensive secondary data. Specifically, the religious works published in 1844-1848, 1860 & 1870 are taken to consideration in addition to the works published in 1809-1843. Though Jakob Johan Malmberg came from the area of eastern (Savo) dialects, the impact of these dialects on the language of the first edition of his translation of The Pilgrim's Progress, published in 1809, is not very marked. It is seen only in the more than sporadic use of the allative form -llen & in the rather extensive use of the second person plural forms with -ttA, both of these receding in favor of -lle & -tte by the time of the eighth edition in 1863. The inessive case ending with -ssA was adopted in the seventh edition in 1857, & the abessive case ending with -ttA in the ninth edition in 1879. In his other works, Malmberg used the new -ssA ending in works published in the 1830s in particular, while in the third person plural forms there remained considerable variation. The first & second person plural forms ending in -A were in frequent use in only one work published in the 1830s, while the -llen allative was extensively used at that time. Juteini had already introduced the inessive -ssA & the imperfect & conditional with -vAt to literary Finnish in the 1810s, & the new forms spread quickly to the secular literature of the 1820s. This was because these forms were typical not only of eastern but of certain western Finnish dialects, too. In religious language both inessive endings were common in the 1830s, & the old -sA ending started finally to fall out of use in the mid-1840s. It took somewhat longer for the -vAt imperfect & conditional to become popular, especially in religious literature. The more systematic use of the first & second person plural forms with final A, as well as the allative case with final n, became visible only in eastern Finnish literature of the 1820s & 1830s, & already started to fall out of use in the 1840s. The abessive case with -ttA was adopted into literary Finnish from the northern dialects as late as the 1830s. It became common in secular literature in the 1840s, but in religious literature there was still considerable variation at the end of that decade. In new religious works published in 1860 the present-day variants of all the above-mentioned forms had already been accepted, although the -tA abessive was still used in some works even in 1870, & the last remnants of the -llen allative were slow to disappear, especially in poetry, where even the imperfect & conditional forms with -t were still occasionally used. As a rule, the new forms took longer to appear in reprints than in first editions. Biblical language in particular was slow to develop. The -ssA inessive was accepted in 1852-1853, & the imperfect & conditional with -vAt in 1862, but the -ttA abessive did not reach the Bible until 1896-1897, & in some editions as late as 1911. Adapted from the source document