ThEA

Theoretical and experimental approaches to dialectal variation and contact-induced change: a case study of Tundra Nenets

Due to an intense language contact situation reported in Northern Siberia an ongoing Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) > Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) - or rather a Subject-Verb-X phrase(*) (SVX(*)) - syntactic change is observed in the area. The aim of our project is twofold. We seek traces of a hypothetical syntatcic change in Tundra Nenets (Northern Samoyedic, Uralic) whereby the language undergoes a word order change from OV to VX*. In addition, we describe and analyse the syntax and prosody of genuine and echo questions. This serves as a good basis of investigating language change since various marking strategies of questions employed by languages show correlations – to a certain extent – with the basic/dominant word order.

We focus on two speech communities: one is spoken on the Yamal Peninsula by traditional reindeer herders, while the other is spoken in the capital of the Taymyr Peninsula (in Dudinka) by people who settled down in the city. The two varieties used in these communities are exposed to different external and internal influences.

Our project started in 2018, and it is funded by the National Research Development and Innovation Office of Hungary (NKFIH).

Map of the examined Tundra Nenets dialectal groups (created by: Zoltán Gulyás)

Participants

Nikolett Mus

Nikolett Mus is the principal investigator of the project currently working in the Research Centre for Linguistics in Hungary. Besides the coordination of the project, she works on the syntax of interrogative clauses in Tundra Nenets. She is the main contact person of the project.

mus[at]nytud.hu

Katalin Mády

Katalin Mády is a researcher at the Research Centre for Linguistics in Hungary. As part of her work in the project, she investigates the prosody of interrogative clauses in Tundra Nenets.

mady[at]nytud.hu

Réka Metzger

Réka Metzger is working as a computational linguist in the project. She contributes to the Tundra Nenets corpus, database and linguistic analysis tools in the project.

metzger.reka[at]gmail.com

Péter Rebrus

Péter Rebrus works at the Research Centre for Linguistics in Hungary. He works on phonological and morphological aspects of Tundra Nenets.

rebrus[at]nytud.hu

Uwe Reichel

Uwe Reichel will train and apply grapheme-phoneme conversion and forced signal-text alignment of the recorded and text-transcribed data. Further he will extract a large set of prosodic features in order to address intonation and speech rhythm aspects

Further Contributors

  • Ferenc Gulyás: web design
  • Zoltán Gulyás: map design, cartography

Talks

  • 2022
    • Mus Nikolett. Lexikai szófajváltás tundrai nyenyec nyelvjárásokban: kérdő határozószó kialakulása kérdő ige(név)ből. Nyelvelmélet és diakrónia 5., Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, 2022. november 16–17.
    • Mus, Nikolett. A syntactic change in Tundra Nenets: from a wh-verb to a wh-adverb. Workshop on Samoyedic Languages and Culture, Hamburg, 8–9 September 2022
    • Mády, Katalin & Mus, Nikolett. On the function of the high tone in Tundra Nenets. Workshop on Samoyedic Languages and Culture, Hamburg, 8–9 September 2022
    • Mus, Nikolett. A postverbal non-finite complement clause in Tundra Nenets. Syntax of Uralic languages 4 (SOUL 4), Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics (online), 14–16 June 2022
  • 2021
    • É.Kiss, Katalin & Mus, Nikolett. The Reflexive Cycle. Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis 14 (SinFonIJA 14), Novi Sad, Serbia (online), 22–24 September 2021
    • Mády, Katalin & Mus, Nikolett. The syntax and prosody of content questions in Tundra Nenets. VIII International Conference on Samoyedic Studies, Tomsk State Pedagogical University (online), 17–18 September 2021 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett & Surányi, Balázs. The syntax of postverbal phrases in Tundra Nenets. VIII International Conference on Samoyedic Studies, Tomsk State Pedagogical University (online), 17–18 September 2021
    • Mus, Nikolett & Surányi, Balázs. Post-verbal phrases and their correlates in Tundra Nenets. Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium (Olinco 5), online, 10–12 June 2021
    • Hegedűs, Veronika & Mus, Nikolett & Surányi, Balázs. Tense, agreement and copula drop in Tundra Nenets copular clauses. Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium (Olinco 5), online, 10–12 June 2021
    • Mus, Nikolett & Metzger, Réka. Archiving Tundra Nenets materials: towards designing a balanced Tundra Nenets corpus. 7th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (online), 4–7 March 2021 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett – Metzger, Réka. Toward a corpus of Tundra Nenets: stages and challenges in building a corpus. 4th Workshop on Computational Methods for Endangered Languages, online, 2–3 March 2021 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. Word order constraints in the Tundra Nenets wh-question. Siberian Life 2021, Hamburg (online), 4–5 February 2021 (pdf)
  • 2020
    • Mus, Nikolett. Elements at the right periphery in an OV language: a syntactic orphan in Tundra Nenets, Potsdam Linguistics Syntax and Semantics Colloquium (online), 14 July 2020 (pdf)
  • 2019
    • Mus, Nikolett, & Däbritz, Chris Lasse. Posztverbális összetevők észak-szibériai SOV/SVX nyelvek-ben [Postverbal constituents in SOV/SVX languages of North Siberia], Nyelvelmélet és diakrónia 4. PPKE, Budapest, 21–22 November 2019 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. On the syntax of Tundra Nenets content questions, New results in the syntax of Uralic languages, Budapest, 22 October 2019 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. The role of information structure in Tundra Nenets content questions, The Uralic and Altaic Languages, Tomsk, 12–13 October 2019 (pdf)
    • Däbritz, Chris Lasse, & Mus, Nikolett. The discourse function of the postverbal constituentsin SOV/SVO languages of Northern Siberia, 13th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Pavia, 4–6 September 2019 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. The correlation of syntactic position and semantic function of wh-phrases in Tundra Nenets multiple questions. 3rd Budapest Linguistics Conference, Budapest, 6–8 June 2019 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. Szórendi megszorítások a tundrai nyenyec kiegészítendő kérdésben [Word order constraints in the Tundra Nenets content question]. Diskurzus ünnepi konfigurációban. Műhelykonferencia É. Kiss Katalin köszöntésére, Budapest, 28 May 2019 (pdf)
    • Mády, Katalin & Metzger, Réka & Mus, Nikolett & Rebrus, Péter & Reichel, Uwe. The syntax and prosody of Tundra Nenets interrogatives. Workshop on Uralic Prosody, Helsinki, 21 March 2019 (pdf)
  • 2018
    • Mus, Nikolett. Kérdő ige az északi szamojéd nyelvekben [The interrogative verb in the Northern Samoyedic languages]. Magyar Nyelvtudományi Társaság, Budapest, 13 November 2018 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. The Northern Samoyedic interrogative verbs. 7th International Conference on Samoyed Studies, Tartu, 26–27 October 2018 (pdf)
    • Mus, Nikolett. Theoretical and experimental approaches to dialectal variation and contact-induced change: a case study of Tundra Nenets. Linguistic diversity, minority languages and digital research infrastructures, Hamburg, 20–21 September 2018 (pdf)

    Publications

    • Mus, Nikolett. 2022. The syntax of multiple wh-questions in Tundra Nenets. In Valentin Gusev, Anna Urmanchieva, Aleksandr Anikin (Eds.) Siberica et Uralica: In memoriam Eugen Helimski. Studia uralo-altaica 56:127–138.
    • Mus, Nikolett. 2022. On the semantic distribution of copular verbs in Tundra Nenets. In Erkkilä, Riku, Toivo EH Qiu, and Timo Leisiö. Hämeenmaalta Jamalille. Kirja Tapani Salmiselle 07.04. 2022 Тапани’ĕ’’эмня падвы падар’’. 243–253.
    • É. Kiss, Katalin & Mus, Nikolett. 2022. The reflexive cycle. From reflexive to personal pronoun in Uralic. Journal of Uralic Linguistics 1:1: 43–66.
    • Mus, Nikolett & Metzger, Réka. 2021. A tundrai nyenyec (egynyelvű) korpusz munkálatai: kihívások, módszerek, eredmények. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 117: 123–144.
    • Mus, Nikolett & Metzger, Réka 2021. Toward a Corpus of Tundra Nenets: Stages and Challenges in Building a Corpus. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational Methods for Endangered Languages Vol.2 (Resource Papers and Extended Abstracts), 2021.
    • Mus, Nikolett 2020. The North Samoyedic interrogative verb meaning 'say what'. ESUKA – JEFUL 2020, 11–2: 119–136.
    • Mus, Nikolett 2020. Szórendi megszorítások a tundrai nyenyec kiegészítendő kérdésben In Kenesei, István (főszerk.); Dékány, Éva; Halm, Tamás; Surányi, Balázs (szerk.) Általános nyelvészeti tanulmányok XXXII. : Újabb eredmények a grammatikaelmélet, nyelvtörténet és uralisztika köréből, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 405–418.
    • Mus, Nikolett 2018. The interrogative verb in Tundra Nenets. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen: 137–150.
    • Mus, Nikolett 2018. A tundrai nyenyec 'mit mond' jelentésű kérdő ige. In Kenesei, István; Bakró-Nagy, Marianne (szerk.) Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok XXX.: Uralisztikai tanulmányok, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 191–205.

    Events

    Contact

    If you have any questions or comments, please contact us.

    E-mail

    mus.nikolett[at]gmail.com
    musn[at]nytud.hu

    Main

    Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics
    Benczúr utca 33.
    1068 Budapest

    Postal address

    P.O. Box 360
    H-1394 Budapest

    Call

    (+36-1) 342-9372