Uralic Languages Research Articles

INTERNET-CORPORA FOR FINNO-UGRIC LANGUAGES OF RUSSIA

Digital language corpora have long become one of the most important tools in linguistic research; a new methodological approach, known as corpus linguistics, has been based on corpora. While comprehensive corpora exist for the major European Uralic languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian), the smaller Uralic languages of Russia did not have comparable resources until recently. In this paper, I present digital corpora recently developed for the largest Uralic languages of Russia: Udmurt, Komi-Zyrian, Meadow Mari, Erzya and Moksha. The corpora comprise digital texts available on the internet, which were collected and processed by the author. Two corpora were created for each language: a social media corpus and a non-social-media (“main”) corpus. Both kinds of texts were automatically morphologically analyzed; the social media texts were additionally filtered and anonymized. I will outline the development process of these corpora, as well as present their features and possible applications. All corpora described in the paper are equipped with a web-based user interface and are publicly available at http://volgakama.web-corpora.net/.

Mongolian Vowel Harmony in a Eurasian Context

Abstract The paper discusses the controversy that has arisen concerning the origin and nature of vowel harmony in Mongolian, as well as in a number of other Eurasian languages. In contrast to the conventional understanding according to which Proto-Mongolic had a palatal-velar harmony of the same type as is attested in the Turkic and Uralic languages, it has been claimed recently that the harmony was actually of the tongue root type, involving, in particular, tongue root retraction in the pronunciation of certain vowels. However, while tongue root harmony is indeed prevalent in many modern Mongolic languages, including standard Mongolian, there are several arguments that can be made in support of the conventional reconstruction. There are serious reasons to assume that Mongolic has undergone a process of vowel rotation, which has turned the originally palatal-velar harmony to tongue root harmony. In this process the originally horizontally organized harmonic pairs have become verticalized. A typical result of the verticalization has been the rapid reduction of the original vowel paradigm as well as the development of new palatal vowels to complement the losses.

INDO-EUROPEAN PROTO-BASES IN UKRAINIAN FISHING WORDS

The significant achievements of comparative linguists in reconstruction of Indo-European common language have seriously brought us closer to understanding of prehistoric peoples cultural and material life peculiarities. Nowadays cognitive linguistics approaches may be beneficial for enlarging the reconstruction compound and its meaning specification. Ancient fishing words are kept in Ukrainian dialects. Abstract denotation with general action meaning лапавка ‘hand fishing’ derives from *lар’а with a concrete meaning (V. Illich-Svitych’s assumption) ‘flat part of arm, leg’ (= ‘palm, foot’), kept by Nostratic Hamito-Semitic, Indo-European, Uralic languages. Fish name мень according to one of the assumption is a relic of a Nostratic word *meni ‘fish as a class of subjects,in generalʼ, which might have appeared 15000–11000 b. c. Proto-Slavonic fish name *ǫgrь ‘eelʼ derives from Indo-European root *angw(h)i- ʻeel, amphibian, fishʼ. Taking into account this root`s denotative relation to Lithuanian angis ʻsnakeʼ and Prussian angіs ʻthe sameʼ, it may be assumed that in the period of Balto-Slavonic language unity the meaning eel (*ǫgrь) ʻsnake-like body fishʼ had already been established, with the equal meaning to the modern one.There is an assumption that one of Ukrainian dialect fishing name ліпень ‘graylingʼ derives from some Indo-European substratum in the Carpathian area with the primordial root *lip- : *lеp- : *lěp- (compare *lipati, *lepnǫti, *lěpiti) *ond-).Hence the onomasiologic nature of fish names of the period of Indo-European unity is hidden in the way of our ancestors would come to terms with their environment, particularly in hand fishing, visual and touching senses, inseparable from this action. Visually-based denotations have a sema of ‘snake alikness, resemblanceʼ touching-based ones – ‘adhesivnessʼ. The majority of fishing tools and some fish names are integrated within a sema of convexity.

Y-chromosomal connection between Hungarians and geographically distant populations of the Ural Mountain region and West Siberia

Hungarians who live in Central Europe today are one of the westernmost Uralic speakers. Despite of the proposed Volga-Ural/West Siberian roots of the Hungarian language, the present-day Hungarian gene pool is highly similar to that of the surrounding Indo-European speaking populations. However, a limited portion of specific Y-chromosomal lineages from haplogroup N, sometimes associated with the spread of Uralic languages, link modern Hungarians with populations living close to the Ural Mountain range on the border of Europe and Asia. Here we investigate the paternal genetic connection between these spatially separated populations. We reconstruct the phylogeny of N3a4-Z1936 clade by using 33 high-coverage Y-chromosomal sequences and estimate the coalescent times of its sub-clades. We genotype close to 5000 samples from 46 Eurasian populations to show the presence of N3a4-B539 lineages among Hungarians and in the populations from Ural Mountain region, including Ob-Ugric-speakers from West Siberia who are geographically distant but linguistically closest to Hungarians. This sub-clade splits from its sister-branch N3a4-B535, frequent today among Northeast European Uralic speakers, 4000–5000 ya, which is in the time-frame of the proposed divergence of Ugric languages.

The Arrival of Siberian Ancestry Connecting the Eastern Baltic to Uralic Speakers further East

In this study, we compare the genetic ancestry of individuals from two as yet genetically unstudied cultural traditions in Estonia in the context of available modern and ancient datasets: 15 from the Late Bronze Age stone-cist graves (1200-400 BC) (EstBA) and 6 from the Pre-Roman Iron Age tarand cemeteries (800/500 BC-50 AD) (EstIA). We also included 5 Pre-Roman to Roman Iron Age Ingrian (500 BC-450 AD) (IngIA) and 7 Middle Age Estonian (1200-1600 AD) (EstMA) individuals to build a dataset for studying the demographic history of the northern parts of the Eastern Baltic from the earliest layer of Mesolithic to modern times. Our findings are consistent with EstBA receiving gene flow from regions with strong Western hunter-gatherer (WHG) affinities and EstIA from populations related to modern Siberians. The latter inference is in accordance with Y chromosome (chrY) distributions in present day populations of the Eastern Baltic, as well as patterns of autosomal variation in the majority of the westernmost Uralic speakers [1-5]. This ancestry reached the coasts ofthe Baltic Sea no later than the mid-first millenniumBC; i.e., in the same time window as thediversification of west Uralic (Finnic) languages [6]. Furthermore, phenotypic traits often associated with modern Northern Europeans, like light eyes, hair, and skin, as well as lactose tolerance, can be traced back to the Bronze Age in the Eastern Baltic. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Finding Sami Cognates with a Character-Based NMT Approach

We approach the problem of expanding the set of cognate relations with a sequence-to-sequence NMT model. The language pair of interest, Skolt Sami and North Sami, has too limited a set of parallel data for an NMT model as such. We solve this problem on the one hand, by training the model with North Sami cognates with other Uralic languages and, on the other, by generating more synthetic training data with an SMT model. The cognates found using our method are made publicly available in the Online Dictionary of Uralic Languages.

Participial systems in Uralic languages: an overview

This paper is an intragenetic typological study of participial systems in Uralic languages, a family demonstrating a significant degree of variation in this domain. The classification of participial forms is based primarily on two parameters, participial orientation, or relativizing capacity, and tense-aspect-modality (TAM). The sample comprises ten languages, and the data comes from descriptive studies as well as from native speakers and language experts. The study shows that participial systems in Uralic languages fall into three major groups, namely languages with inherently oriented participles, languages with contextually oriented participles, and languages featuring a combination of these participial types. The geographical distribution of participial systems shows strong areal tendencies resulting from language contact. For several centuries, western Uralic languages (e.g. Finnish and Hungarian) have been influenced by Slavic, Germanic and Baltic varieties, while eastern Uralic languages (e.g. Tundra Nenets and Khanty) historically form a linguistic area with northern Eurasian languages, such as Turkic and Yeniseian. As a result, the western varieties belong to the Standard Average European type with respect to participial properties, while the eastern ones make use of prenominal participial relative clauses, which are a well-known areal feature in North Asia. It is also noteworthy that Uralic languages do not show any clear matter borrowing in participial forms, so it is rather the pattern that is transmitted via contact.Аннотация. Ксения Шагал: Системы причастий в уральских языках: предварительный обзор. Данная статья представляет собой внутригенетическое типологическое исследование систем причастий в уральской языковой семье, которая отличается заметным разнообразием в этой области. Предлагаемая классификация причастных форм основана на двух основных параметрах: ориентации причастий и их видо-временных характеристиках. Изучаемая выборка включает в себя десять языков. Данные были получены в ходе работы с языковыми описаниями и носителями отдельных языков. Исследование показывает, что системы причастий в уральских языках делятся на три основных типа: системы причастий с внутренней ориентацией, системы причастий с контекстной ориентацией, а также системы, содержащие оба типа причастных форм. В географическом распространении различных систем прослеживаются четкие ареальные тенденции, являющиеся результатом языковых контактов. На протяжении нескольких веков западные уральские языки (например, финский и венгерский) испытывали влияние славянских, германских и балтийских языков, а восточные представители уральской семьи (например, тундровый ненецкий и хантыйский) исторически входят в один языковой ареал с тюркскими и енисейскими языками, распространенными в Сибири. В результате в отношении причастий западные уральские языки можно считать языками среднеевропейского стандарта (Standard Average European), восточные же активно используют преноминальные причастные обороты, характерные для языков Сибири и Дальнего Востока. Примечательно также, что уральские языки не заимствуют сегментного материала для образования причастий, так что рассматриваемая ситуация представляет собой пример заимствования модели (pattern-borrowing), а не формы (matter-borrowing).Ключевые слова: Уральские языки, причастия, относительные предложения, языковые контакты, ареальная лингвистикаKokkuvõte. Ksenia Shagal: Ülevaade partitsiibisüsteemidest Uurali keeltes. Siinne artikkel on intrageneetiline tüpoloogiline uurimus partitsiibisüsteemidest Uurali keeltes – keelkonnas, mis näitab vastavas domeenis olulist varieeruvust. Partitsiibivormide klassifikatsioon põhineb peamiselt kahel parameetril: partitsiibi orientatsioon või relativiseerimise võimalus ja aeg-aspekt-modaalsus (tense-aspect-modality, TAM). Valim koosneb kümnest keelest, andmestik pärineb deskriptiivsetest uurimustest kui ka emakeelsetelt kõnelejatelt ja keele ekspertidelt. Uurimusest selgub, et Uurali keelte partitsiibisüsteemid võib jagada kolme peamisesse gruppi: sisemiselt orienteeritud partitsiipidega keeled, kontekstuaalselt orienteeritud partitsiipidega keeled ja nende kahe kombinatsiooni kasutavad keeled. Partitsiibisüsteemide piirkondlik jaotumus näitab tugevaid areaalseid tendentse, mis tulenevad keelekontaktidest. Sajandeid on Lääne-Uurali keeled (nt soome ja ungari) olnud mõjutatud slaavi, germaani ja balti keelekujudest, kuid Ida-Uurali keeled (nt tundraneenetsi ja handi) on ajalooliselt moodustanud keelelise areaali Põhja-Euraasia keeltega, nagu turgi ja jenissei. Selle tulemusena kuuluvad partitsiipseid omadusi ilmutavad läänepoolsed keelekujud Euroopa keskmise standardi (Standard Average European, SAE) hulka, idapoolsed keeled aga kasutavad prenominaalseid relatiivlaused, mis on tuntud areaalne joon Põhja-Aasias. On tähelepanuvääre, et Uurali keeltes esinevad partitsiibivormid ei näita selgeid märke vormiainese laenamisest, mis viitab sellele, et kontakti tulemusel kantakse üle pigem struktuurimall.Märksõnad: Uurali keeled, partitsiibid, relatiivlaused, keelekontakt, areaalne keeleteadus

On the relationship between typology and the description of Uralic languages

Language typologists are dependent on data provided by descriptive linguists working on individual languages, who, in turn, benefit from typologists’ results, which give them new insights into the properties of their respective languages. The article addresses the relationship between typology and Uralic descriptive linguistics. The state of description of Uralic languages is examined by surveying the availability of descriptive sources on Uralic languages in the Glottolog database, which is widely used by typologists. Ways in which Uralic studies and language typology can be brought closer to each other for the benefit of both fields are discussed giving a number of recommendations for writing typologically-oriented grammars of (Uralic) languages. Finally, the use of typologically informed questionnaires in language description is briefly addressed.Аннотация. Матти Миестамо: О взаимоотношении типологической и описательной лингвистики в контексте уральских языков. Лингвисты, занимающиеся типологией, зависят от данных, предоставляемых лингвистами, работающими с конкретными языками. Последние, в свою очередь, используют результаты работы типологов, что позволяет им по-новому взглянуть на материал соответствующего языка. В статье рассматриваются взаимоотношения между типологией и описательной лингвистикой в контексте уральских языков. Положение дел в описании уральских языков оценивается на основе наличия материалов по этим языкам в базе данных Glottolog, широко используемой типологами. В статье обсуждаются способы сближения типологического и описательного подходов в изучении уральских языков, что способствует развитию обоих направлений. В статье даются рекомендации по написанию типологически ориентированных грамматик (уральских) языков. Кроме того, кратко обсуждается использование типологических анкет для описания языков.Ключевые слова: дескриптивная грамматика, описание языков, документация языков, лингвистическая типология, анкеты, уральские языкиKokkuvõte. Matti Miestamo: Tüpoloogia ja Uurali keelte kirjeldamise vahelisest suhtest. Keeletüpoloogid sõltuvad andmetest, mis pärinevad üksikkeeltega tegelevatelt deskriptiivses raamistikus töötavatelt keeleteadlastelt. Viimased aga saavad omakorda kasu tüpoloogide töö tulemustest, mis avavad uusi vaatenurki vastavate keelte omaduste kohta. Siinne artikkel käsitleb tüpoloogia ja deskriptiivse Uurali keeleteaduse vahelist suhet. Uurali keelte kirjeldamise seisu uuritakse analüüsides Uurali keeli puudutavate deskriptiivsete allikate kättesaadavust Glottologi andmebaasis, mida tüpoloogid laialdaselt kasutavad. Arutletakse viiside üle, mis aitaksid vastastikkuse kasu eesmärgil lähendada Uurali keelte uurimist ja keeletüpoloogiat, näiteks antakse mitmeid soovitusi tüpoloogilise suunitlusega (Uurali keelte) grammatikate kirjutamiseks. Lõpuks käsitletakse ka tüpoloogilise suunitlusega küsitluskavade kasutamist keelte kirjeldamisel.Märksõnad: deskriptiivne grammatika, keelekirjeldus, keelte dokumenteerimine, keeletüpoloogia, kirjastamine, küsitluskavad, Uurali keeled

Typology of Uralic languages: current views and new perspectives. Introduction to the special issue of ESUKA – JEFUL

In our introduction to the volume, we address the history and current developments in Uralic studies, with particular attention to the evolution of grammar-writing since the very first Uralic grammars until today, and summarize some of the most interesting Uralic phenomena from a typological point of view. In Section 2 we show that, even though Uralic studies can boast a remarkable number of linguistic studies and a rich production of descriptive grammars, the published grammars often lack in comparability (as they use different terms to describe the same phenomena), international reach and they often are not typologically informed. Therefore, we advocate for a stronger cooperation between typology and Uralic studies. In Section 3 we present the papers included in this special edition of ESUKA, a selection of typologically-informed, data-driven and terminologically consistent studies of different phenomena in a number of Uralic languages. Finally, in Section 4 we present a short overview of some typologically relevant features in Uralic languages.Аннотация. Типология уральских языков: современное состояние и новые перспективы. Во вступительной статье к данному тому обсуждается история и современное состояние уралистики. Основное внимание уделяется эволюции грамматических описаний от первых грамматик уральских языков до настоящего времени. В Разделе 2 показано, что уральским языкам посвящено немало лингвистических трудов и, в частности, грамматических описаний. Однако существующие грамматики в большинстве своем обнаруживают такие недостатки, как слабая сопоставимость (в том числе терминологическая), недоступность для широкого круга лингвистов (прежде всего, из-за языка грамматики) и отсутствие типологической ориентированности. Становится очевидной насущная потребность в более тесном взаимодействии типологии и уралистики. В Разделе 3 предлагается обзор статей, вошедших в данный том. Эти статьи обсуждают различные явления в уральских языках, но их объединяет типологически ориентированный подход, акцент на используемых данных и терминологическая последовательность. В Разделе 4 дается краткий обзор типологических признаков, релевантных для интрагенетической типологии уральской семьи.Ключевые слова: уралистика, типологические признаки, грамматическое описаниеKokkuvõte. Uurali keelte tüpoloogia: nüüdisaegsed vaated ja uued vaatenurgad. Sissejuhatus. Väljaande sissejuhatuses käsitleme uralistika ajalugu ja praegusi arenguid, keskendudes eelkõige grammatikakirjutuse arengule alates esimestest uurali grammatikatest kuni tänapäevani ja võttes kokku tüpoloogilisest vaatepunktist mõned kõige huvitavamad nähtused uurali keeltes. Sissejuhatuse teises peatükis näitame, et kuigi uurali keeltest leidub märkimisväärne arv keeleteaduslikke uurimusi ja suur hulk deskriptiivseid grammatikaid, puudub avaldatud grammatikates sageli võrreldavuse tasand (väljaannetes kasutatakse sama nähtuse kirjeldamiseks erinevaid termineid), rahvusvaheline mõõde ning tüpoloogiline informatsioon. Seetõttu toetame tugevama koostöö arendamist tüpoloogia ja uurali uuringute vahel. Kolmandas peatükis esitleme käesoleva ESUKA eriväljaande artikleid, mis on valik tüpoloogilise informatsiooniga, andmepõhiseid ja terminoloogiliselt järjepidevaid uurimusi uurali keeltest. Viimases, neljandas peatükis anname lühiülevaate mõnedest vastavatest tüpoloogilistest omadustest uurali keeltes.Märksõnad: uralistika, tüpoloogilised jooned, grammatikakirjutus

Towards a phonological typology of Uralic languages

The paper focuses on phonological similarities between Uralic languages. The study is based on a dataset which includes 33 word-prosodic and segmental features of 28 Uralic languages or main dialects, including all traditional subgroups of the language family. In statistical analysis clustering and dimension reduction techniques such as multidimensional scaling are applied. This methodology enables to explore distinctive subgroups of languages as well as calculate distances between languages and language groups. As a result we present a quantitative phonological typology. The main division appears between western and central-eastern phonological types of the Uralic languages. The detected phonological subgroups coincide with the traditional ones, i.e. Finnic, Saami, Mordvin, Mari, Permic, Hungarian, Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic. The Hungarian subgroup (Standard Hungarian, Csángó Hungarian) and the Ob-Ugric subgroup (Northern Mansi, Eastern Mansi, Northern Khanty, Eastern Khanty) are internally stable. However, their interrelation and relationship with other groups is ambiguous; according to our results, Hungarian is typologically closer to the Western Uralic language groups (i.e. Finnic and Saami), whereas Ob-Ugric languages form a distinct branch of Central-Eastern Uralic. In general, the results reveal a significant influence of multiple areal connections on the phonological formation of Uralic languages.Аннотация. Карл Паюсалу, Кристел Уйбоаэд, Петер Помози, Эндре Немет и Тибор Фехер: К фонологической типологии уральских языков. В статье рассматриваются фонологические сходства между уральскими языками. Исследование основывается на выборке данных, которая включает 33 просодических и сегментных признака, которые применяются к 28 уральским языкам или их основным диалектам. Эта выборка покрывает все традиционно выделяемые группы уральской семьи. Для статистической обработки данных используются методы кластерного анализа и многомерного шкалирования. Такой подход позволяет исследовать выявленные подгруппы языков и рассчитывать расстояния между языками и языковыми группами. Результатом анализа является квантитативная фонологическая типология. Основная граница разделяет западный и центрально-восточный типы уральских языков. Выявленные фонологические подгруппы языков совпадают с традиционными: прибалтийско-финская, саамская, мордовская, марийская, пермская, венгерская, обско-угорская и самодийская. Венгерская подгруппа (стандартный венгерский и чангошский диалект) и обско-угорская подгруппа (северный мансийский, восточный мансийский, северный хантыйский, восточный хантыйский) демонстрируют внутреннюю стабильность. Однако их собственные взаимоотношения и отношение к другим подгруппам неоднозначны: наши результаты показывают, что венгерский язык типологически ближе к западно-уральской группе (т. е. прибалтийско-финским и саамским языкам), тогда как обско-угорские языки оказываются четко выделяемой ветвью центрально-восточных уральских языков. В целом, результаты раскрывают существенное влияние разнообразных ареальных связей на становление фонологии уральских языков.Ключевые слова: уральские языки, прауральский язык, фонология, типология, просодия слова, лингвистические ареалыKokkuvõte. Karl Pajusalu, Kristel Uiboaed, Péter Pomozi, Endre Németh ja Tibor Fehér: Uurali keelte fonoloogilisest tüpoloogiast. Artikkel keskendub uurali keelte fonoloogiliste sarnasuste võrdlemisele. Analüüsitav andmestik hõlmab 33 sõnaprosoodilist ja segmentaalset tunnusjoont 28-st uurali keelest või põhimurdest, mille hulgas on keeli kõigist traditsioonilistest allrühmadest. Statistilises uuringus rakendatakse klasteranalüüsi ja multidimensionaalsest skaleerimist. Nii eristatakse olulised allrühmad ja arvutatakse kaugused keelte ja keelerühmade vahel, saades uurali keelte kvantitatiivse fonoloogilise tüpoloogia. Esmane lahknemine ilmneb geograafiliselt läänepoolsete ning kesk- ja idapoolsete uurali keelte vahel. Nende sees tulevad esile traditsioonilised allrühmad: läänemeresoome, saami, mordva, mari, permi, ungari, obiugri ja samojeedi. Ungari (ungari kirjakeel, csángó) ja obiugri (põhjamansi, idamansi, põhjahandi, idahandi) on sisemiselt stabiilsed, kuid suhe nende kahe rühma vahel on ambivalentne. Meie tulemuste põhjal on ungari tüpoloogiliselt lähedasem läänepoolsetele uurali keeltele (st läänemeresoomele ja saamile), obiugri keeled moodustavad aga eraldi allrühma kesk- ja idauurali keelte hulgas. Saadud tulemused näitavad areaalsete kontaktide tähtsust uurali keelte fonoloogilise eripära kujunemises.Märksõnad: uurali keeled, proto-uurali, fonoloogia, tüpoloogia, sõna prosoodia, keeleareaalid

Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe

European population history has been shaped by migrations of people, and their subsequent admixture. Recently, ancient DNA has brought new insights into European migration events linked to the advent of agriculture, and possibly to the spread of Indo-European languages. However, little is known about the ancient population history of north-eastern Europe, in particular about populations speaking Uralic languages, such as Finns and Saami. Here we analyse ancient genomic data from 11 individuals from Finland and north-western Russia. We show that the genetic makeup of northern Europe was shaped by migrations from Siberia that began at least 3500 years ago. This Siberian ancestry was subsequently admixed into many modern populations in the region, particularly into populations speaking Uralic languages today. Additionally, we show that ancestors of modern Saami inhabited a larger territory during the Iron Age, which adds to the historical and linguistic information about the population history of Finland.

Soome-ugri misjon: Eesti kristlaste hõimutöö Venemaal

Faith-Based Finno-Ugric Outreach: Estonian Christian Missionaries among Kindred Peoples in Russia This article provides an initial overview of the role of Christianity in the Finno-Ugric movement and the instrumentalisation of Finno-Ugric identity. It analyses the mission activity conducted by Estonians (and Finns to some extent) among speakers of Finno-Ugric (Uralic) languages in Russia. Above all, the writings of missionaries are used as the source – primarily mission publications published in Estonia. The background is the author’s fieldwork conducted among Nenets reindeer herders, who have been influenced by Russian and Ukrainian Protestant missionaries, and the Udmurt people living on the far side of the Kama, the latter being untouched by mission work. In both communities, religion and language inherited from forebears have a noteworthy role, even though the younger generation is becoming equally bilingual (the Russian language often dominates) and fewer and fewer young people take part in the non-Christian rituals passed down by their ancestors. The first half of the article gives an overview of how the church’s outreach directed at peoples who speak Finno-Ugric languages (hõimumisjon and hõimutöö are Estonian terms used) developed and the ideology behind it. The second half focuses on the activities of Estonian and Finnish missionaries in Russia. The author looks at the reception that the Erzya and Moksha Mordvins, Mari, Udmurts and Zyrian Komis have given the missionaries and also examines Protestant relations with the Russian Orthodox Church and representatives of local native religions. Whereas the collapse of the Soviet Union saw extensive missionary activity in Russia, Protestants from Estonia and Finland (mainly Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and Pentecostals) set out to actively spread the gospel among Finno-Ugric peoples living in Russia. As Estonians and Finns are often accepted as ‘kin’, missionaries see this as a ‘niche provided by God’, which should be utilised. The goal for the missionaries is to create a Christian community where the kindred brothers and sisters become religious brethren. In spite of accusations to the contrary, they consider their endeavour something that will save Finno-Ugric cultures and languages, proceeding from the attempt to bring eastern ‘kindred peoples’ closer to the Protestant world and the world of the Estonians and Finns and the possibility of redemption. Protestant Estonian and Finnish missionaries portray themselves as preservers of the local languages. In practice, however, their activities are quite conflicting. On one hand, the need to make religious texts available in native languages is stressed, and they participate in organising translation of Christian texts and promote the local mission in the indigenous languages. On the other hand, the primary language used for outreach is not the local language but Russian, as Russian proficiency is predominant among Finno-Ugrians (although not always on a par with that of Russians). As the primary objective is to convert as many people as possible to Christianity, it is not of primary importance for missionaries to learn the local language. Due to conflicting values and practical choices, few native-language congregations are created. Estonian and Finnish Protestants style themselves as preservers of local cultures. The role model is that of Estonian and Finnish Christian popular cultures where the role of ‘paganism’ is under control and the elements of national culture tend to be integrated into a cultural whole. Missionaries cultivate an image of culture as something that can be dressed, sung, eaten, but not as something that relates to the house guardian spirits or the souls of ancestors, communicating with whom is a factor underlying the creation of a major part of the visible culture. To sum up, the author asserts that Christianisation as a culture-changing force has all the more powerful an effect if cultural changes are resisted.

From possessive suffix to affective demonstrative suffix in Hungarian: a grammaticalization analysis

The non-possessive uses of possessive morphology in Uralic languages have been a topic of intense debate (Fraurud 2001; Nikolaeva 2003; Gerland 2014; Janda 2015; E. Kiss and Tanczos to appear). In this paper, I focus on a special use of the poss.3sg suffix in Hungarian constructions such as a hulyeje (the stupid-poss.3sg): lit. ‘its stupid’, meaning ‘that total idiot’. My main claim is that this suffix is an affective demonstrative suffix (Lakoff 1974; Liberman 2008; Potts and Schwarz 2010), and that it has developed as a result of grammaticalization from a full-fledged possessive construction of the form a vilag hulyeje (the world stupid-poss.3sg): lit. ‘the world’s stupid’, meaning: ‘the biggest idiot in the world’. I will show that this gradual process can be reconstructed fairly accurately using historical and contemporary corpora. I also claim that this grammaticalization pathway is very natural as it is based on a set-element relationship which is often expressed by possessive constructions cross-linguistically. I also identify two parameters which facilitate this grammaticalization process: the availability of (silent) pro possessors and the lack of gender agreement on the possessive suffix. Since Uralic languages in general have these parameters, I will argue that this grammaticalization pathway should at least be considered as one of the possible sources of the demonstrative (and definiteness marking) uses of poss.3sg suffixes in Uralic languages. Finally, my results are also an important contribution to the debate on whether demonstratives can be derived from other functional elements through grammaticalization (Plank 1979; Traugott 1982; Himmelmann 1997).

Genes reveal traces of common recent demographic history for most of the Uralic-speaking populations

BackgroundThe genetic origins of Uralic speakers from across a vast territory in the temperate zone of North Eurasia have remained elusive. Previous studies have shown contrasting proportions of Eastern and Western Eurasian ancestry in their mitochondrial and Y chromosomal gene pools. While the maternal lineages reflect by and large the geographic background of a given Uralic-speaking population, the frequency of Y chromosomes of Eastern Eurasian origin is distinctively high among European Uralic speakers. The autosomal variation of Uralic speakers, however, has not yet been studied comprehensively.ResultsHere, we present a genome-wide analysis of 15 Uralic-speaking populations which cover all main groups of the linguistic family. We show that contemporary Uralic speakers are genetically very similar to their local geographical neighbours. However, when studying relationships among geographically distant populations, we find that most of the Uralic speakers and some of their neighbours share a genetic component of possibly Siberian origin. Additionally, we show that most Uralic speakers share significantly more genomic segments identity-by-descent with each other than with geographically equidistant speakers of other languages. We find that correlated genome-wide genetic and lexical distances among Uralic speakers suggest co-dispersion of genes and languages. Yet, we do not find long-range genetic ties between Estonians and Hungarians with their linguistic sisters that would distinguish them from their non-Uralic-speaking neighbours.ConclusionsWe show that most Uralic speakers share a distinct ancestry component of likely Siberian origin, which suggests that the spread of Uralic languages involved at least some demic component.

Ethnofuturism and Place-Making

The article examines the Tornedalian author Bengt Pohjanen’s construction of Meänmaa [literally ‘Our land’] through an analysis of a selection of texts in which the concept “Meänmaa” is used. Meänmaa refers to the border area between Sweden and Finland in the Torne Valley. The making of Meänmaa is related to ethnofuturism, an aesthetic program launched in Estonia in the 1980s. Its aim is to strengthen threatened Uralic cultures and languages. The conclusion presented is that ethnofuturism provides a framework for present-day identityformation and the making of a specific place called Meänmaa against the backdrop of a history of assimilationist policies and marginalisation.

High-frequency contrastive grammar features of the Uralic languages

High-frequency contrastive grammar features of the Uralic languages

The Person–Case Constraint and the Inverse Agreement Constraint are manifestations of the same Inverse Topicality Constraint

AbstractThis paper first claims that the Inverse Agreement Constraint and the Person–Case Constraint attested in overlapping sets of Uralic languages are manifestations of the same Inverse Topicality Constraint, requiring that the structural hierarchy of topicalized constituents correspond to the ranking of their referents in the Animacy/Topicality Hierarchy. Then it argues that it is the hypothesized Inverse Topicality Constraint that also underlies the Person– Case Constraints restricting the cooccurrence of clitics in ditransitive and ergative–absolutive constructions across languages. It is shown that alternative analyses of the Person–Case Constraint, e.g., those deriving it from the mechanism of multiple Agree, cannot account for the whole range of data attested.

Transcribe.mari-language.com

The aim of this paper is to introduce my efforts to create server-sided (i.e., platform independent web-based, from a user’s perspective) automatic transcription and transliteration software for Uralic and non-Uralic languages of Russia. For ten literary standards — Meadow Mari, Hill Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya, Moksha, Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash — an operational interface can be found at transcribe.mari-language.com and the source code at source.mari-language.com, published under a Creative Commons license. This paper details many of the fine aspects of writing systems used for (Meadow) Mari that I had to take into consideration when creating transcription mechanisms for that language.

Digital vitality of Uralic languages

We investigate the digital vitality of Uralic languages and dialects, and discuss how existing approaches to language revitalization relate to this model.

Modèles d’évolution et d’échanges entre langues : notes sur quelques débats récents concernant la famille ouralienne

Cet article concerne les modèles d’évolution des langues et leur application au cadre ouralien. Nous présentons dans un premier temps le modèle le plus connu, à savoir le modèle arborescent, si populaire aujourd’hui encore. Nous rappelons certaines limites de ce modèle et examinons plusieurs propositions alternatives, visant à promouvoir la notion d’échanges « horizontaux » entre langues, c’est-à-dire des échanges multidirectionnels, faits d’emprunts et d’influences croisées entre langues en contact. Dans la seconde partie, nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement aux langues sames, pour lesquelles le modèle généalogique classique sous forme d’arbre ne semble pas pertinent. Nous montrons que la prise en compte de différents types d’informations (lexicales, phonétiques, morphologiques) est nécessaire et permet d’obtenir une modélisation à la fois plus complexe et plus exacte de la réalité.