10. Okt 2023
Ksenia Shagal
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Institut für Finnougristik/Uralistik
"Uralic linguistics meets large-scale typology"
Abstract: The Uralic languages are a language family that includes around 40 languages spoken over a vast territory from Scandinavia to Eastern Siberia. Due to their broad geographical distribution and complex contact history, they show remarkable typological diversity on various linguistic levels. Within the family, this diversity has been studied extensively, especially from the historical perspective. However, worldwide cross-linguistic studies have mostly neglected the Uralic languages with the exception of large state languages, such as Hungarian and Finnish.
Within the last two years, two comprehensive databases have been published, in which Uralic languages are finally well represented. Grambank (2023) is a global typological database that covers over 2400 languages, while Uratyp (2022) focuses specifically on the Uralic languages and offers a more fine-grained analysis. In my talk, I will discuss some new insights in the study of Uralic languages that these new databases can offer. In particular, I will show how quantitative data can support – or challenge – our earlier observations, and what limitations they might have.