Call for abstracts

Phenomena related to areal linguistics and language contact have been recognized by linguists for at least over a century. While areal linguistics was found with the discovery of the Balkan linguistic area (early studies include Kopitar 1829 and Trubetzkoy 1928), quite some more recently discovered linguistic areas include Uralic languages. Among these are the Circum-Baltic area (Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1992, baltischer Sprachbund in Jakobson 1931[1971]: 137) comprising Estonian, Finnish, Livonian and some other Finnic languages, as well as numerous Indo-European languages (Baltic, Germanic, Slavic and Indo-Arian), and the Volga-Kama area (since Beke 1914–1915) comprising Uralic languages Moksha and Erzya Mordvin, Meadow and Hill Mari and Udmurt, as well the Turkic languages Tatar, Chuvash and Bashkir.  

Over time, exploration of linguistic areas has expanded significantly, evolving into a theoretical field of its own known as areal linguistics. Areal linguistics emerged originally as an explanatory model of similarities across languages that is complementary to the explanations provided by the Historical-Comparative Method, i.e., explanations of the similarities as deriving from common inheritance, and to typology, i.e., to the typological explanations based on universals (since Trubetzkoy 1923, 1928; Jakobson 1931). Thus, in qualitative studies on language areas, the standard is to rely solely on those features that are universally dispreferred or at least not found “in the majority of world’s languages” (Haspelmath 2001: 1493). Foundational works in this discipline include Weinreich (1953) and Thomason and Kaufman (1988), more recent overviews are found, e.g., in Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2010), Hickey (2010), van Gijn (2020), van Gijn  & Wahlström (2023), Grant (2020). Sinnemäki et al. (2024) is a study based on a worldwide sample of contact situations.

Areal linguistics faces a set of methodological challenges such as distinguishing contact influences from inheritance, especially when related languages are in contact (see Bowern 2013), and determining what constitutes sufficient proof for postulating a sprachbund.

Research on specific contact-induced phenomena spans various research areas from phonology (Grant et al. 2020), morphology (Gardani 2020) and syntax (Ross 2020) to contact-induced grammaticalization (Heine & Kuteva 2005), PAT vs. MAT borrowing (Sakel 2007) as well as change in the frequency of already existing forms or constructions (Heine & Kuteva 2005: 45, cf. also Mougeon et al.’s 2005 notion of covert transfer), and sociolinguistic dimension of language contact, including multilingualism patterns and practices (Muysken 2010; Trudgill 2011).  

The goal of this conference is to combine language-specific, qualitative and typological, quantitative approaches to areal linguistics and language contact with the focus on Uralic languages and their contact languages. Uralic languages are particularly promising here since different languages of this family have been part of several different linguistic areas (Helimski 2003; Laakso 2010). For example, Finnic languages have been in contact with Indo-European (Indo-Aryan (Roma), Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic) languages in the Circum-Baltic area (Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001; Ernštreits & Kļava 2014; Metslang et al. 2022). By contrast, the Uralic languages of the Volga-Kama area have experienced significant influence from Turkic languages and, more recently, Russian (Johanson 2000; Agyagási 2012). Hungarian has been influenced by Slavic, Germanic, and Romance (Thomason 2005). In Western Siberia, Samoyedic languages have been in contact with a Turkic language Dolgan (Khanina 2021).

A complex issue for Uralic languages is disentangling contact and inheritance, as most Finno-Ugric languages have, or until recently had, contacts with related languages (Laakso 2010; Lehtinen et al. 2014). This complexity is especially pronounced within the Finnic group (Laakso 2010; Kehayov 2017: 76–78; Markus & Rozhanskiy 2013). Intensive contacts have also occurred between Finnic languages and Saami, and between different varieties of Mansi and Khanty (Honti 1998: 352). Comparative Uralic linguistics has a strong tradition of research on lexical and morphological borrowings (Aikio 2009; Koivulehto 2001; Fedotov 1990; Wichmann 1903). De Heer et al. (2024) provide a quantitative typological perspective on loanwords. 

Qualitative areal studies of grammar include works by Norvik et al. (2022a) on Livonian polar questions, Mazzitelli (2017) on predicative possession in Circum-Baltic languages and Grünthal (2019) on canonical and non-canonical patterns in the adpositional phrases of Western Uralic. Bradley et al. (2022) have examined causatives in the Volga-Kama region, while Manzelli (2015) has focused on negation in the same area. 

Quantitative studies on grammatical phenomena include research by Bradley & Pischlöger (2021), who estimated the degree of grammaticalization of Turkic-origin serial verb constructions in Mari and Udmurt by considering their compatibility with newer borrowings from Russian. Kehayov (2017) has studied the expression of modality in moribund minor Finnic languages. 

New databases, such as those by Havas et al. (2023) and Norvik et al. (2022b), may also be useful for studying language contact within the Uralic family, especially when supplemented by data from other languages.

We would like to further promote these and other possible approaches to language contact in the context of Uralic languages and their neighboring languages. We encourage submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following questions: 

• typological approaches to language contact and areal linguistics of Uralic

• corpus-based studies of specific contact phenomena between Uralic and non-Uralic languages

• at the same time, we are very much interested in qualitative research on important topics in language contact including but not limited to contact-induced grammaticalization and disentangling common inheritance from parallel and contact-induced developments within Uralic

• the sociolinguistic dimensions of language contact in Uralic

• interdisciplinary approaches to understanding language contacts of Uralic languages
  
  

References

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