In a recent issue of the Journal of Language Evolution, Syrjänen et al. (2021) investigate the suitability of computing Cummins and McInerney’s (2011) TIGER rates for estimating the tree-likeness of linguistic datasets compiled for phylogenetic reconstruction. The authors test the TIGER rates on a diverse sample of simulated data, which by and lar…[Read more]

Onomatopoeia and descriptivity have been accepted as etymological explanations in Uralic linguistics, especially in cases when other kinds of explanations have not been found. In addition, these terms are often mentioned in etymological dictionaries, but no clear explanation has been provided as to what these concepts really are about and how…[Read more]

A presentation on sound symbolism in Uralic languages. A short look at research history in Uralic linguistics and future research questions.

This MA thesis examines the history of the non-initial-syllable labial vowels in Finnic and Saami languages. Etymologically connected vocabulary as presented in the etymological dictionary SSA is analyzed in the light of state-of-the-art knowledge. The result is that 37 word-pairs can credibly be reconstructed to a common Saami-Finnic stage with a…[Read more]

Report of a field trip to Vuokkiniemi (Republic of Karelia, Russian Federation) in 2004, and the language sociological questionnaire conducted there.

BA thesis dealing with the geographical distribution and the historical background of the dialectal Finnish adverb form poisaˣ ‘away’.

Reflections on different possibilities of reconstruction of the Saami and Finnic labial vowel stems in a Proto-Uralic stage.

Preliminary analysis of the Finnic deverbal nouns in -O, -U and the relationship between the suffix vowel and the stem vowel of the base verb, using data from Finnish and South Estonian.

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]