Finnish Dialects Research Articles

Identifying the dialectal background of American Finnish speakers using a supervised machine-learning model

Abstract This study presents results of two experiments using supervised machine-learning models to examine individual Finnish speakers’ dialectal backgrounds. Data come from interviews conducted with heritage speakers of Finnish in northern Wisconsin and are compared to data from the Finnish Dialect Syntax Archive. The models were constructed and then, following successful validation testing, used to identify the dialectal background of five individual American Finnish speakers. Results showed individual variation in dialectal backgrounds and some correlation to speakers’ likely language input. Our approach offers a new methodological tool for examining speakers’ dialectal backgrounds in situations of language contact.

Språkdokumentasjon innen fennistikken og kvensk

The study of the Finnish language – called Fennistics – was focused on collecting Finnish dialect material from very early on. During the 19th century interest in studying dialects was governed by the idea that dialects could be used to develop modern written Finnish. However, gradually the study of dialects also became an area of study in its own right. Collecting material on Kven dialects belonged to the larger project of Fennistic materials collection from the very beginning. Therefore, many Kven dialect materials can be found in Finnish dialect archives. The documentation which resulted from dialect collections gathered via the field of Fennistics have been used in the process of revitalizing Kven. In this article, language documentation is defined to be an activity which also includes traditional dialectology. By contrast, documentary linguistics is a field of linguistics established in the 1990s which focuses on revitalizing endangered languages. The difference between language documentation in the Fennistic tradition and documentation of endangered languages in the field of documentary linguistics today is also discussed.

Soveltavan kielitieteilijän sormenjälkiä etsimässä

This section introduces the collective volume that honours the memory of our esteemed colleague Kirsti Siitonen who contributed to the study of Finnish language on various branches. She was a pioneer especially in Finnish L2 research but also studied Finnish dialects and pronoun variation. The collective volume introduces new studies that build on Siitonen’s work. In this introduction we reflect what kind of resemblances the research topics presented in this volume have to each other and to Siitonen’s studies. Siitonen often approached the variation between L1 and L2 and in different dialects by investigating a certain structure. The result is a many-sided collection that aims at crossing boundaries between disciplines.

Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) in the Folk Taxonomy of the Germanic and Finno-Permic Languages

This article deals with folk names (phytonyms) that denote common yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) in two Germanic (English, German) and three Finno-Permic languages (Finnish including Ingrian Finnish dialects, Karelian and Komi). The author analyses the motivations of these folk names and identifies some of the nominative characteristics which the names of this plant can be based upon. Some names belonging to the Germanic languages are also viewed in the diachronic perspective. The research employs the descriptive, contrastive, and comparative methods. The material mainly draws from the following sources: Dictionary of English Plant Names (J. Britten, R. Holland), Die Deutschen Volksnamen der Pflanzen (G. Pritzel, C. Jessen), Wörterbuch der Deutschen Pflanzennamen (H. Marzell), Suomalaiset kasvinnimet (P. Suhonen), Finnish Folk Plant Vocabulary (Formation and Functioning) (Yu. E. Koppaleva), and Komi-Russian Botanical Dictionary (A. N. Rakin). It is established that the names of yarrow are motivated by the following characteristics: form; usage in folk medicine; habitat; effect produced by the plant; usage by animals as food; folk beliefs and customs; colour; features of structure. The author concludes that the images of yarrow in the five languages considered mostly correspond with each other. This can be explained by the common view on the plant among the speakers of these languages. The names belonging to both language groups contain the following characteristics: form; usage in folk medicine; effect produced by the plant; folk beliefs and customs; colour. The Finno-Permic languages alone note the habitat and features of structure and only the Germanic languages note usage by animals as food. In addition, the article contains observations as to how frequently these nominative characteristics occur in the names of yarrow in the five languages studied. The author also describes some difficulties that can arise during the analysis and classification of this material.

NOTES ON THE LIISSILÄ INGRIAN FINNISH DIALECT

The article focuses on some peculiarities of the Ingrian Finnish dialect spoken in the former Lutheran parish of Liissilä in Central Ingria.Two main pecularities of the Liissilä dialect are the imperative 2Sg -kai and a special group of verb type with the -oi stem ending. Most of the isoglosses, which were previously proposed as typical of the Äyrämöinen dialect, are currently absent in the Liissilä dialect. The dialect of Liissilä partially preserves two old pecularities of the Äyrämöinen dialect, namely nouns ending in - ее and verbs ending in - oi. On the other hand, there are quite a lot of areal isoglosses, which are common in local dialects of both Savakko (Inkere, Venjoki) and Äyrämöinen (Liissilä, Tuutari) parishes. These isoglosses include tarttu ‘potato’, potra ‘beautiful’, hirvitä ‘to be afraid’, the presence of the diphthong in the 3Sg imperfect form, the 1Pl affix -mma , the vowel ö in the verb pölästyy ‘to be scared’, the present stem niäe- of the verb nähhä ‘to see’ and some others. In the Linguistic Atlas of the Baltic-Finnish Languages the dialect zones of the Finnish language, including such units as the “South-Eastern Southern dialect” or the “dialect of Northern Khyame” are classified as “Evremeysky dialect”, “Savaksky dialect” and “dialect of Narvusi” in the territory of Ingria.

Language maintenance through corpus planning – the case of Kven

ABSTRACTThe Kven language that is spoken in northernmost Norway was officially recognized as a language in 2005. The history of the language community dates back to the sixteenth century according to tax books. There is still an ongoing discussion among certain language users, whether Kven is in fact a language or one of the Finnish dialects. The language planning of Kven has started in 2007 by determining the orthography and choosing principles for the standardization. This article discusses the history of the process that led to the recognition of Kven as a language and reviews the progress of the language standardization until the present. The principles of language planning are reviewed through document analysis – earlier literature, minutes or summaries and participant observation of the language board’s meetings, and expert interviews – and analysed according to Lars S. Vikør’s language planning model. Some of the preferred features seem to follow the language planning ideology of the Norwegian standards – Bokmål and Nynorsk – in terms of allowance of variation and parallel forms as well as dialectal diversity.

Фитонимы финно-угорских языков, мотивированные формой частей растений, и их соответствия в английском языке: сравнительный анализ

The article is devoted to the comparison of plant names of the Finno-Ugric and English languages. The basis for the analysis are the plant names of the Finnish language and Karelian dialects, including the characteristic of the form of any part of the plant. The comparison of these plant names with the names of the same plants in the English language is made. The article analyzes the names of 8 plants, such as bindweed (Convolvulus L.), reedmace (Typha L.), club moss (Lycopodium clavatum L.), marigold (Calendula L.), garlic (Allium sativum L.), couch grass (Elytrigia Desv.), fern (fam. Polypodiaceae), fuchsia (Fuchsia L.). In each case, information about the motivation of the plant names is given and nominative features that determine the names are pointed out. According to the presented material, Finno-Ugric and English plant names can be motivated by the form of stems, inflorescences, fruits, shoots, leaves and flowers of plants. Attention is also paid to the etymology of the analyzed lexical units. The author considers the plant names of the English language in the dynamic aspect, indicating the names of the plants in Old, Middle and Modern English. On the basis of the material presented in the paper, conclusions are made about the similarity and difference in the nomination of the same natural objects in typologically different languages.

Mocking fakeness

AbstractPhonetic resources, like dialects and accents, are used in ethnic humour to build up a recognisable character that pokes fun at the stereotypes associated with a particular identity, sometimes with critical and political undertones. In this article, we examine the manipulation of one such resource, aspiration, used in performing and mocking one such clichéd character, called thefake Sámi.This character has a contested history in Finnish tourism and marketing practices, and is embedded in a long-standing debate about who can use emblems of Sámi identity for economic purposes. Adopting a sociophonetic language regard and folk linguistics approaches (Preston 2010;Niedzielski & Preston 2003) we explore how “fakeness” is constructed phonetically by the actors performing “Fake Sámi” in an indigenous Sámi television comedy show during a period of intense political debate in Finland over the legal definition of the category of indigenous Sámi. By analysing the use of hyperbolic aspiration of a prominent feature of Lappish Finnish dialect, the non-initial syllable /h/-sound, we show how the fakeness is performed by evoking linguistic stereotypes of a Finnish Lappish dialect and a Finnish English accent by a deliberate misuse of aspiration: aspirating when standard phonemes in speech should not be aspirated and not aspirating when phonemes should be aspirated. We argue that this kind of deliberate ambivalence and misuse of phonetic resources is a phonetic resource for reflexive postmodern identity performances.

Applying Population Genetic Approaches within Languages

The adoption of evolutionary approaches to study language change as a type of non-biological evolution has gained increasing interest and introduced a variety of quantitative tools to linguistics. The focus has thus far mainly been on language families, or ‘linguistic macroevolution,’ and taken the shape of linguistic phylogenetics. Here we explore whether evolutionary methods could be applicable for studying intra-lingual variation (‘linguistic microevolution’) by testing a population genetic clustering method for analyzing the ‘population structure’ of Finnish dialects. We compare the results with traditional dialect divisions established in the literature and with K-medoids clustering, which is free from biological assumptions. The results are encouragingly similar to each other and agree with traditional views, suggesting that population genetic tools could be a useful addition to the dialectological toolkit. We also show how the results of the model-based clustering could serve as a basis for further study.

Logophoricity in Eastern Vidzeme

Eastern Vidzeme is an important, hitherto neglected, area for the study of logophoricity in the Circum-Baltic languages. This paper shows, on the one hand, that logophoricity in Latvian is not restricted to Latgalian dialects, but is almost fully consistent in the writings of the novelist Andrievs Niedra (1871–1942) originating from Tirza, and on the other hand, that Leivu Estonian, a moribund South Estonian language island in Northeastern Vidzeme between Gulbene and Alūksne, is the only Estonian variety having developed a logophoric pronoun.
 Given the high diversity of logophoricity in Latvian, it is important to study idiolects with large corpora, and written language deserves more study. Like Finnish dialects and Leivu Estonian, Niedra’s idiolect uses logophoric pronouns even for marking the report addressee in questions. Unlike in the Latgalian tales discussed by Nau (2006), logophoricity can be extended beyond the domain of report to thought. A distinction between allophoric (frame and report speaker are different) and autophoric reports (frame and report speaker are the same) is introduced. It is argued that logophoric pronouns are a non-deictic and noncoreference-based strategy to mark reports, that their function is not primarily reference tracking, and that logophoric pronouns in Latvian are constructionalized rather than grammaticalized.

A typological perspective on negation in Finnish dialects

This paper looks at negation in Finnish dialects from a typological perspective. The focus is on standard negation, i.e. the negation of declarative verbal main clauses. The dialectal variation that Finnish shows in its negative construction is examined in the light of current typological knowledge of the expression of negation. Developmental trends connected to the micro-typological variation are also discussed, Finnish dialects are compared with related and neighbouring languages, and relevant theoretical and methodological issues relating to the meeting point of typology and dialectology are addressed.

Strategies of language revitalization in Scandinavia

During the course of some decades, especially since the 1960s, minorities in Scandinavia have experienced important changes in their life, changes that have influenced considerably their identities and language choices. Unfortunately, linguistic assimilation has already taken place in the case of many minority groups, but, on the other hand, there are still local communities which have maintained their mother tongue. The situation of the Tornedalians (Finnish population living in the valley of the Tornio river in Sweden) and the Kvens (Finnish population in Norway) is very little known, because, due to the assimilation policy practised by the Swedish and the Norwegian government, respectively, they have been considered as non-existing minorities up to the near past. Both the Tornedalians and the Kvens have lived for centuries outside the area where primarily Finnish dialects have been used. They have not been acquainted with standard Finnish in Finland, and if that is to be considered the norm, then, by that standard, their own languages could always be judged the lesser. This frustration persists without end, until such time the Tornedalian and the Kven language came to be accepted as independent from Finnish. In this study I would like to present some of the most important sociolinguistic factors which have influenced the development of the Tornedalian and the Kven minority identity and the rise of the status of their language.

Multivariate Analysis of Finnish Dialect Data An Overview of Lexical Variation

During the process of writing a comprehensive dictionary of Finnish dialects, a large set of maps describing the regional distribution of the dialect words have been compiled in electronic form. In this article, we set out to analyse this corpus of data in order to gain new insight on the variation of Finnish dialects. We use a wide range of multivariate data analysis methods, including principal components analysis, independent components analysis, clustering, and multidimensional scaling. We explain how to preprocess the data to overcome the problem of uneven sampling caused by the way the data has been collected. We discuss the results obtained by these methods and compare them to the traditional view of Finnish dialect groups.

The Language Question and National Conflict in Soviet Karelia in the 1920’s

Elsewhere in this issue of Ab Imperio, I discuss the establishment of the Karelian Labour Commune (KTK) in mid-1920 and the conflict which followed between ethnic Karelian officials and the Finnish emigres on whose initiative the autonomous territory had been founded and to whom Lenin had entrusted its leadership.1 A particular point of contention was the language question. The Karelians believed that the language of local administration and education in Karelian-populated districts should be Karelian (although at this time a written language did not exist, and the spoken tongue was differentiated into several distinct sub-groups, some of which were closer to eastern Finnish dialects, but others of which had been strongly influenced by Russian). The Red Finns were equally resolute that Standard Finnish should be used. In their opinion, the Karelian vernacular was in any case merely a Finnish dialect (perhaps its ur-dialect), just as the Karelians were merely ethnic Finns who had missed out on several centuries of economic and cultural development within the borders of

Defining an Ecological Niche: The Use of 'Dialect' or 'Language'

A definitional issue ('language' or 'dialect') became an important element for language planning in the Torne Valley in Sweden where Meänkieli, a former Finnish dialect, was recognised by the Swedish state as a minority language. Dialects are not usually acknowledged and are viewed as being outside a language ecology, and are not planned in the same way as languages are. The recognition of Meänkieli as a language rather than a dialect in the Swedish minority languages legislation is an important language-planning decision with the potential to affect the whole linguistic ecology of the Torne Valley.

Finnish dialect atlas for quantitative studies*

Before we can do quantitative studies of large volumes of dialect material (such as Embleton & Wheeler, 1996, on English), it is necessary to have machine‐readable sources of data. For Finnish dialects, the principal source of data is an out‐of‐print dialect atlas (Kettunen, 1940), which we are now putting into machine‐readable form. To ease the chore of data entry, we have developed custom‐made PC‐based programs. Through a process of redundant data entry, we plan to minimize keying errors, and produce a statistically sound estimate of the number of remaining errors. Other issues we consider include: translation of the elaborate typography, generality of the data formats, intellectual property rights, and availability of original data sources. We hope that this work will provide a base not only for our work but also for other quantitative studies and computer‐based applications of this body of data.

Generative linguistics: A historical perspective By Frederick J. Newmeyer (review)

900 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 73, NUMBER 4 (1997) section we learn about optimality theory, and in syntax the minimalist program is introduced. This is a book that is definitely up to date. Both of these research paradigms are presented in enough detail so that their appeal to the general linguistic audience is obvious. The tone of the book is remarkable and consistent throughout. The author remains an excited proponent of all topics, eager to share her knowledge and discoveries with the reader. She adopts a friendly, chatty tone. The book is written very much in the first person ; at the end of the book one almost feels as if one knows the author. All of these features work successfully, I think, to engage the reader in the somewhat daunting task of assimilating all of the material in the book. As a teacher, I like the many fresh examples, many of which come from Italian and Japanese, but also from American Sign Language . I think these and others from other unfamiliar languages will also engage students. The cross-referencing is prolific, and the indexes are just what a student would want. The first contains languages, the second contains new terminology (even distinctive features), and the third a subject index. With these extensive indexes and cross referencing , the reader is less disturbed by the minimalist table of contents—five chapter titles, the bibliography , and indexes. The care with which this sizable volume has been put together and overseen is impressive : I found only one typo in the entire book. I don't think this book should be limited solely to a classroom textbook. It could also serve as something of a reference. Chapters are amply referenced so that students can follow up on topics that pique their interest . Furthermore, its ample size guarantees that there will always be something to come back to. [G. Tucker Childs, Portland State University.] Möglichkeiten und Mechanismen kontaktbewegten Sprachwandels unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Finnischen. By Nicole Nau. (Edition Linguistik 8.) Munich & Newcastle: Lincom Europa, 1995. Pp. 216. DM 47.00, $36.20. In this Ph.D. thesis, Nau gives an overview of language change. Many theories abound in this area, and N does not offer a theory of her own but rather applies current theories to Finnish. Not only does she adduce examples from Standard Finnish but also from Colloquial Finnish and from Finnish dialects which have been more influenced by other languages . In addition, N uses plenty of examples from other (mostly European) languages. The book contains eight chapters of which the first four are introductory chapters. After a short introduction (1-3), Ch. 2, 'Theorien, Thesen, Modelle zum Sprachwandel' (4-30), discusses relevant theories of language change and grammaticalization. Ch. 3, 'Vom Sprachkontakt zur Sprachmischung' (31-47), does the same for language contact. It also contains a short history of the Finnish language. Finally, Ch. 4, 'Klassifikation von Entlehnungen und Untersuchungsmethoden ' (48-55), examines which elements are typically borrowed. The next three chapters form the core of the book. Ch. 5, 'Vom Lexicon in die Grammatik' (56-93), deals with borrowings and their effect on Finnish. N gives us examples from phonology (borrowing of phonemes such as voiced stops, syllable structure, vowel harmony in borrowings, and stress) and morphology (ways of borrowing of derivational morphology ). In addition, N treats the incorporation of suffixes denoting femininity in nouns denoting female animals and professions and the effects these suffixes have on the rules of Finnish phonology and morphology. Ch. 6, 'Zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik: Inhalts - und Funktionswörter' (94-122), is the most interesting chapter. It deals in detail with the development of auxiliaries, comparison, and the article. Section 6.2 deals with the development of future expressions in Finnish. N sketches the different ways ofexpressing the future since the first written Finnish documents. Section 6.3 deals with four ways to express the superlative in Finnish and the adjacent Uralic languages: a suffix, which goes back to an older Uralic suffix, an analytic construction with a form denoting 'all', a construction with an article, and a construction borrowed from Russian. Languages which have the latter construction (Karelian, Veps, and Vot) have borrowed m some form...

From a small Swedish town to a Finnish city

ABSTRACTThe development of language conditions in Helsinki makes it possible to observe many processes of sociolinguistic interest. By European standards, the beginning itself is exceptional. Helsinki was originally founded in the middle of a Swedish-speaking area, which means that it lacked all natural connections with any basis of Finnish dialect from which urban colloquial language and standard spoken Finnish might have emerged. However, throughout the 20th century Helsinki has been the most important Finnish-speaking city, and its colloquial Finnish has served as a model for the evolution of colloquial Finnish throughout the country. One may well wonder how colloquial Helsinki Finnish came into existence in the course of only a few decades and consolidated its position as the model for everyday Finnish.

Ingria and Ingrian Finns in focus

Abstract Ingria is the name of the territory along the coast of the Gulf of Finland between St. Petersburg and the Narva River, which is the border between Russia and Estonia. Between 1617 and 1721 the Ingrian area belonged to Sweden and during that period a number of Finnish‐speaking people settled there from Savo and from Ayrapaa on the Karelian Isthmus. These Ingrian Finns, speakers of the Savakko and Ayramoinen dialects, were the main inhabitants of the territory until the Stalin period and World War II, when persecution, starvation and war dispersed them to different parts of the world. This article presents a general survey of the history of the Ingrian Finns, the development of linguistic conditions and Ingrian Studies. This is followed by a presentation of Ingrian Finnish dialect research. On the basis of morphological analysis of interviews with Ingrian Finns in Canada, Sweden, Finland and Russia, an attempt is made to ascertain how Ingrian Finnish dialects have been preserved or changed in diffe...

A Finnic holy word and its subsequent history

This article concentrates on a specific ancient holy word in Finnish and its subsequent development, hiisi. In the Finnish language region hiisi appears as an element in place names in over 230 villages established by the end of the thirteenth century, and at least a majority of these must have existed since prehistoric times. In Finland as well as in Estonia it is possible to demonstrate an earlier sacral function in places which contain hiisi as a component of their name, partly with the help of archeological discoveries, and partly with the help of oral folk tradition. It is particularly among the earliest settlement areas of Southwest Finland, Satakunta and Häme that hiisi features in the names of sacrificial sites or trees, in other words in the same areas where it features in the names of burial grounds. Names in which the hiisi element precedes a word meaning a lake, pond, or other water formation, occur particularly in the eastern Finnish dialect regions, as well as in the regions of Karelian, Olonets, Lydian, and Vepsian. In addition to its factual meaning of cult place, the Finnish word hiisi has come to denote a supernatural entity both in terms of its reference to a place and in terms of its reference to a being.