Finnic Languages

Finnish grammars customarily present a case system of fifteen morphological cases. While other cases are fully productive and can be formed from all nouns, the so-called accusative in -t has only seven forms, based on the six personal pronouns and the corresponding interrogative pronoun kuka 'who'. Based on data drawn from a large corpus of modern written Finnish as used on the online social networking website Suomi24, and accompanied by the results obtained from a questionnaire survey with native-speaking university students, this paper shows that the Finnish personal pronouns can also function as heads of complex nominal phrases. Not unlike nouns, personal pronouns can have adjectival and demonstrative modifiers. The most novel perspectives to the Finnish nominal phrase and object marking are provided by phrases in which the pronominal head is in the accusative, and its modifiers only partially agree with it in the nominative or genitive.

Ingrian is a lesser studied language in comparison to other Finnic languages. The first and so far the last scientific research that presents the inflectional types of nouns and verbs of Ingrian dates back to the 19th century. The thesis describes the inflectional system of a nearly extinct language – the Soikkola dialect of the Ingrian language by identifying the inflectional types of nouns and verbs and presenting exemplary paradigms. The linguistic data collected by the author during fieldtrips supplements the previous treatments of the Ingrian morphology. In Ingrian, a bulk of stems and inflectional suffixes vary. Such variation has not emerged itself as an indication of linguistic complexity, rather, it results from the quondam structure and phonological composition of the word as a whole. The research gives an overview of the grammatical categories of nouns and verbs of the Soikkola dialect. It describes the structures of words necessary for the expression of specific grammatical meanings: what kind of changes in stems are necessary, what kind of inflectional suffixes are used and what are the various attachment conditions in the case of words with different structures. The inflectional types of nouns and verbs are identified by using sub-classifications based on different classificatory basis. The question which word forms can be derived from one another is also explained. Gradation is one of the traditional classificatory basis when describing the inflectional systems of the Finnic languages. The extent of gradation, however, varies from language to language. In the Soikkola dialect of Ingrian the consonant alternation does not only concern the gradation of stops at the boundary of the syllable with the primary stress. Next to North Estonian, South Estonian and Livonian, the Soikkola Ingrian is one of the most complicated and peculiar languages for its various instances of gemination and strengthening and their co-occurrence within the paradigm. In addition to stem-internal consonant alternation, there are also other regular alternations that influence the variation of stems and inflectional suffixes; when combined, they result in a fairly great number of inflectional types: 179 noun types and 113 verb types.

Эта в некоторой степени провокационная статья направлена на развенчание мифа о том, что известные исследователи финно-угорских языков при помощи фонетической транскрипции аккуратно передавали особенности звучащей речи. В статье представлено небольшое исследование, сделанное на основе опубликованных текстов водских плачей. Примечательность этого материала состоит в том, что в нем содержатся плачи, записанные примерно в одно и то же время, на одну и ту же тематику от одного и того же носителя языка, но разными исследователями. Какие результаты получились, вы узнаете из этой небольшой статьи.
This paper discusses the use of folklore collections for linguistic research in minor unwritten languages. In particular, we examine the case of the Votic language. As with many other minor languages, the earliest texts in Votic date from the middle of the 19th century, and mostly come from folklore materials. The focus of our research is the influence of a particular collector on the system of transcription. In this paper, we investigate variation in the spelling of forms, and show that there is an apparent correlation between different ways of transcribing the same forms and the individual researchers responsible for the transcription. It is clear that the written form of Votic folklore texts cannot be fully relied upon for the analysis of Votic phonetics and phonology.

An introduction to the Lutsi (Ludza Estonian) language, which includes a grammatical sketch of Lutsi, example sentences, examples of connected speech, a Latvian-Lutsi-Latgalian topical dictionary (~600 words), descriptions of the history of the Lutsi speech community and the last villages where Lutsi was spoken in daily life in the 20th century, archival and new photos of these communities, transcriptions of the last fragments of Lutsi still remembered by descendants in 2020. This book is written in Latvian and uses the new standardized orthography developed by the author for writing all of the Lutsi text in the book. Lutsi is one of the language island varieties of South Estonian, which was spoken and developed independently for at least three centuries in several dozen villages around Ludza in eastern Latvia (Latgale). Publishers: University of Latvia Livonian Institute and the Ludza City Main Library.

Это второе издание водской грамматики, на этот раз выполненное в электронном виде (первое издание было выпущено в 2011 году). Книга посвящена водскому языку — одному из языков прибалтийско-финской группы, последние носители которого живут на территории Кингисеппского района Ленинградской области. В первой части книги представлен ряд современных водских текстов, сопровождающихся фонетической, а также стандартизованной записью (в основу которой положена фонологическая транскрипция), строкой морфологического анализа (глоссинга), словарем к текстам (глоссарием) и грамматическими индексами. Вторая часть книги содержит грамматическое описание, основанное на материале двух водских говоров — кракольского и песоцко-лужицкого, с указанием их различий. Описание включает в себя такие разделы, как фонетика и фонология, морфонология, морфология и синтаксис, и ориентировано на синхронный уровень описания языка. Представленная в грамматике система морфологического синтеза форм позволяет получить полную парадигму любой лексемы, содержащейся в словаре к текстам. В третьей части книги содержится библиография по водскому языку, в которую включены работы начиная с XIX века и до нынешнего времени, написанные как российскими, так и зарубежными исследователями.

Näin heti aluksi haluaisin kyseenalaistaa Turhan tiedon kirjan konseptin: en usko, että kukaan meistä tosissaan itse pitää mitään tänne kirjoittamaansa turhana tietona. Sen sijaan moni muu ennen kaikkea tieteen ulkopuolinen taho epäilemättä katsoo koko kirjamme "kaiken maailman dosenttien" hö pötykseksi. Oma kontribuutioni menee tässä suhteessa vielä askeleen pidem mälle, sillä sen arvon on kyseenalaistanut lisäksi jopa oman tieteenhaarani sisällä erään aikakauskirjan kaksi anonyymiä lausunnonantajaa. Tarkalleen ottaen he eivät kumpikaan sentään hylänneet käsikirjoitustani, mutta yhtä kaikki vaativat niin kohtuuttomia muokkauksia, ettei itseään kunnioitta van tutkijan ollut niihin mahdollista suostua. 1 Niinpä julkaisen tässä ja nyt

This volume gathers together articles dealing with Finnic minority languages and language contacts. The first part presents topics focusing on phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, syntax as well as lexical relations. The second part of the book consists of non-peer-reviewed reports on archived and digital Finnic minority language materials as well as two field trip reports to Finnic-speaking or formerly Finnic-speaking areas. This collection is based on the work carried out during the project “Language change in multilingual Finnic”, funded by the Kone Foundation. Most articles are based on presentations given at a symposium organized at the XII International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies in Oulu in August 2015.

It is argued that Proto-Celtic *mokku- ‘pig’, *sukko- ‘sow’ and *turko- ‘wild boar’ are borrowings from Proto-Fennic. Similarly, Latvian cūka ‘pig’ (unrelated to Lith. kiaũlė ‘pig’) must be borrowed from PFc. *tsuka ‘pig’ (> Fi. sika, Kar. čugu; and, as a loan, N Saami dial . sohki ‘id .’), while *pork̑o- ‘piglet’, conventionally reconstucted for PIE, is identified as an Altaic newcomer to the NW IE area . Other Northern European terms can be assigned an Indo-European origin: Welsh cranan ‘wild sow’ and OIr. cráin ‘sow’ have cognates in Germanic (OLFr. chranni-chaltia ‘pig’s den’) and Baltic (Lith. šer̃nas ‘wild boar’), while Fi. karjas ‘wild boar’ is borrowed from an otherwise unattested PGmc. *garjaz corresponding to Gk. χοι̃ρος, Alb. derr, from PIE *g̑ʰor-i̯o-s. The lessons to be drawn are significant both culturally and linguistically: the prominent role of boars in Celtic and Germanic mythology must have been preceded by a centre of cultural gravity further to the north.

U5a1b1 & U4a in India? Who knew? Fatyanovo like K2a5 in Jammu & Kashmir?  Online YouTube Dna-test results of Turkmen individuals show a range of 3% Baltic (MyAncestry) to 5.8% Baltic (MyHeritage) & three Kazakh individuals had 6.5%, 9.4%, and 18.4% Baltic. A Kyrgyz had 9.3% Baltic. An Afghan Pashtun was 4.1% Baltic, while a Pakistani was 5.1% Baltic. (all 6 results from MyHeritage). Isn't THAT a daisy! 
RISE493 had a lot (28%) of Baltic adna, like RISE505, who was 38% Baltic, as was Sintashta RISE395 (w/ Eurogenes K13). Fatyanovo Z283 & Z93, LWb antigen / LW*07 alelle in the Hindu Kush region of Central Asia, & Srubna-Alakul R1a-Z280 w/ MtDna HV0a - exactly like coastal Latvian Kivutkalns#19? Samogitian U5a1b1 in Kyrgyzstan? Fatyanovo & Samogitian H6a1a in Srubnaya? What does it mean? It means -  " Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is going bye-bye! " वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्

A verbal root *ret- "run" is found ONLY in Celtic. So exactly how did a Central European Proto-Celtic *rotos ( wheel ) term get transferred to Proto-Vedic Sintashta in the Urals, along with twin spiral [ Unetice type ] solar pendants? This ain't rocket-science.

Participation of Baltic & Uralic Language speakers in the ethnogenesis of Vedic / Avestan culture and language - is supported by specific material artifacts ( pottery & twin spiral "spectacle" solar pendants ) and traceable loanwords like a Proto-Celtic > Baltic "Ratas". Population DNA test results now imply it, too.

Possible trace early East Baltic ( re: Ratas ) & Uralic ( re: Soma ) loanwords in old Indo-Iranian ( < Fedorovo & Alakul' cultures ) have shifted from the unthinkable, to highly probable. Black Swans? Coincidence left the room with Elvis.

Links to related resources will open in a new window. Best viewed with two double espressos & an open mind. The Baltic in Vedic? Viskas gerai. CO2 is now at 424.30 ppm. We're foked.

The accumulation of information and tendencies in the study of loanwords: The research history of Baltic loans in Proto-Finnic

The old layer of vocabulary of Baltic origin in Finnic, or the Baltic loans in Proto-Finnic, was described by Vilhelm Thomsen in his monographs from 1869 and 1890. Altogether over one thousand Finnic words have been associated with this layer of loans in various sources. My research material consists of the etymologies correct or rejected posited for these words and the discussion thereof in printed sources between 1869 and 2009.
I define the concept of Baltic loan etymologies in Proto-Finnic via their hypernyms. The definition of an etymology draws borders with other etymologies of the same word and etymologies of other similar words. A loan etymology must consist of two parts, equation and claim of origin. The definition of these loans as Baltic distinguishes them from Pre-Baltic loans, while their definition as Proto-Finnic distinguishes them from later loans of Baltic origin.
The work includes an appendix consisting of a broad research-historical table in which the rows contain the posited origin of each word considered in the literature to be of Baltic origin. The columns consist of etymologies and the claims made to support them, grouped based on their argument types.
I categorize the posited origins based on the novelty and Baltic-ness of the etymologies they contain. The posited origins make up the reception history of each etymology: based on them, an etymology can be defined as generally accepted, questionable, generally rejected or unresearched at each moment of its reception history. The reception history of Baltic etymologies and their various alternative explanations demonstrates that loan explanations increased in popularity in the beginning of the period under consideration, decreased after the 1920s and have been on the increase once again since the 1970s. I list all Baltic loan etymologies in groups according to their conceptualization as of 2009.
The arguments used in loan etymologies are related to form, meaning, source language, distribution and the existence of layers of loans. By examining the historical development and usage context of each argument type, I bring to light very well founded research data and the accumulation thereof. The largest number of sustainable arguments has come from the Neogrammarian school of the 1890s and from structuralism beginning in the 1970s. By applying these paradigms, I identify dozens of generally accepted and questionable Baltic etymologies that should be rejected, as well as several rejected ones that should be accepted.

Janeś Kristoff, independent researcher and student of east Slavic languages Quechua languages are spoken in large area of the Andes, originally descending from language used by most people who were a part of the Incan Empire. Quechua was the language used to communicate across the empire and it evolved into its present day dialects after spreading through the Andes and was learned by speakers of older languages. This causes some of the dialect differences in Quechua today. The royalty of the Incan empire spoke a different language. This language is sometimes thought to be Puquina, but more likely is that Puquina is a dialect of the royal language. Puquina is extinct, but some of this Paracas language seems to have survived in Kallawaya, a secret language used in shamanism. Very little remains of Puquina but here is small word comparison. This information taken from wikipedia.

The author pursues an improved diachronic phonological understanding of reconstructed pre-documentary Scandinavian language, with more in-depth consideration given to its vowel history, its eastern vernaculars and the lexical traces of contact with Finnic. Some of the main findings, notably those concerning the umlauts and the history of contrast in the vowel system, have implications for earlier Germanic vowel history beyond the study of Scandinavian. 
These are the English language portions of the summarising chapter of a compilation thesis.

It is well-known that in the Finnic languages there is group of Uralic word-roots which appear to have undergone an unexplained vowel shift in the first and second syllables: e.g., Finnish sarvi : sarve- ‘antler’ (< Proto-Uralic *śorwa) and talvi : talve- ‘winter’ (< Proto-Uralic *tälwä). These words have been referred to as ‘secondary e-stems’, as the shape of their cognates outside Finnic suggests a proto-form with the stem vowel *a or *ä. This paper proposes a solution which provides a regular phonological account of the development of this class of word-roots. The solution involves the revision of certain aspects in the theory of historical vocalism of Saami and Mordvin.

This paper is the second part in a series of studies that present additions to the corpus of etymological comparisons between the Uralic languages, drawing data from all the major branches of the language family. It includes both previously unnoticed cognates that can be added to already established Uralic cognate sets, as well as a few completely new reconstructions of Uralic word roots. In this second part new Uralic etymologies for the following Finnish words are discussed: aita ’fence’ (< PU *ajta), ammottaa ’gape open’ (< PU *ammV- ’yawn’), kaiho ’longing, yearning’ (< PU *kajšV ’illness’), katkera ’bitter’, katku ’burnt smell’, katketa ’break in two’ (< PU *kačka- ’bite’), korpi ’dense forest, wildwood’ (< PU *korpi), ohut ’thin’ (< PU *wokši), puhjeta ’burst; open (of flowers)’, putkahtaa ’emerge, come up, pop up’ (< PU *pučki ’hollow stalk, tube’), and sato ’harvest, crops’, sataa ’yield harvest’ (< PU *čača- ’grow’). The principles of reconstruction and the citation of lexical material are explained in the first paper of the series (Luobbal Sámmol Sámmol Ánte (Aikio) 2013).

The paper presents a comprehensive reappraisal of the origins of the so-called s-cases in Saami, Finnic, Mordvin and Mari. According to the received view, the element *-s- that is present in most of the basic local case markers in these languages originates in the so-called *s-lative whose origin has remained unknown. As the dominant theory suffers from various methodological shortcomings, alternative proposals have also been presented yet largely ignored. As the first functionally and typologically substantiated hypothesis on the issue, the paper proposes that the s-cases originate in Proto-Uralic postpositional phrases. Confronting the daunting task of identifying cognates of the s-cases elsewhere, it is proposed that they can be related to at least the Samoyed local cases with the element *-ntə-.

Dating and locating the ancient contacts between Baltic and Finnic is a crucial question when searching for the origins of the Finnic languages. Evidence gained from linguistic palaeontology seems to place Proto-Uralic in the Volga-Kama Basin, some 2000 kilometres east of the Baltic, in a region where the Uralic Mari and Udmurt languages are still spoken today (see Toivonen 1952 for a well-detailed study of the fi eld and Häkkinen 2009 for a somewhat revised view). However, there is no clear linguistic or archaeological evidence to tell us when Proto-Uralic broke down into its different daughter languages and when one of these, Proto-Finnic, had left this eastern area and spread to the shores of the Baltic Sea. In order to reconstruct the process and its different stages we require information that can be provided by the Baltic loanwords. As the Baltic loanwords are not attested in the more eastern Uralic branches, with the exception of a relatively few lexical items in Mordvinic (cf. van Pareren 2008 and Grünthal, this volume, for a recent detailed overview of the question), we must assume that the contacts took place when Finnic already was an independent branch within the Uralic language family or was at least in the process of breaking off. The contacts cannot be located far away from where the Baltic languages are or have been spoken. The area in which the Baltic languages were spoken was prehistorically much wider than it is today, since the major hydro-nyms of a vast area between Moscow and the mouth of the Vistula are of Baltic origin (Toporov – Trubačev 1962). The Volga-Kama Basin lies still too far east to be included in a list of possible contact locations. Instead, we could look for the contact area somewhere between Estonia in the west and the surroundings of Moscow in the east, a zone with evidence of Uralic settlement in the north and Baltic on the south side. Since present-day Finland lies quite far away from this zone, the discussion regarding the areal dimension of the contacts has concentrated on whether to include Finland in the contact area or not, and this question has chronological implications. There have been two main concurrent hypotheses concerning the assumed contacts in the territory of present-day Finland, fi rstly, the alleged migration of the Finnish settlement and, secondly, its continuity on the northern side of the Gulf of Finland. In addition, some other models have also been proposed. Here we shall discuss these theories and their strong and weak points.

The present study investigates the use and development of demonstratives that follow head word, postposed demonstratives, which are characteristic of eastern Finnic and North Russian dialects. Some previous studies regard these postposed demonstratives as definite articles, while other recent studies identify additional functions related to information structure and discourse. Given that postposed demonstratives are not a feature common to all East Slavic languages, several studies propose that this characteristic feature of North Russian could have resulted from language contact with the Uralic-speaking population who adopted Russian as their second language, particularly Finnic speakers.

The main goal of the present study is to answer three research questions:
1) How do postposed demonstratives function as grammatical markers?
2) What does the development of demonstratives tell us about the history of Finnic and Slavic languages?
3) Do postposed demonstratives result from a Finnic substratum in North Russian dialects?

For this purpose, the present study examines spoken language data comprising thirteen Finnic and two North Russian varieties which have been in contact during the latest millennium, as well as Novgorod birch bark documents from the 11th–15th centuries. The typological analysis identifies properties and functions of postposed demonstratives from various perspectives: word order, host attachment, syntactic and pragmatic functions. The analysis also combines results with geographical data, which shows the correlation between the speaking areas and linguistic similarities among varieties.

The results achieved in the present study justify the following conclusions. First, postposed demonstratives function as grammatical markers with a basic function to organise information structure. At the same time, the properties of information-structural uses as topic and focus markers have secondarily extended to contexts of use in which postposed demonstratives co-occur with definite referents, and are used to code the speaker’s evaluation. The functional extension is particularly common in North Russian dialects and adjacent Finnic varieties in the east. Second, the development of demonstrative systems from Proto-Finnic to modern Finnic languages is influenced by later contacts among Finnic sub-branches that share areal features. Based on these isoglosses, the Finnic demonstrative system can be classified into four groups: 1) western Finnic (Livonian, South Estonian, and North Estonian), 2) central Finnic (Votic and Ingrian), 3) Karelian Finnic (Olonets Karelian and Northern Lude), and 4) eastern Finnic (Southern Lude and Veps). Third, the postposed demonstrative “-to” and its variants in North Russian dialects do not result from the Finnic substratum, but from the adstratum. Through mutual reinforcement with the Veps demonstrative “se”, the indeclinable “-to” inherited from the Central dialect of Middle Russian has developed further properties to inflect and co-occur more often with definite referents. Such a developed pragmatic use later also spread to Lude and Olonets Karelian.


Настоящая работа исследует развитие и употребление характерного для восточных прибалтийско-финских и севернорусских диалектов типа указательных местоимений, так называемых постпозитивных демонстративов, отличающихся позицией после определяемого слова. В ранней научной литературе постпозитивные демонстративы считались определёнными артиклями, тогда как дальнейшие исследования позволили установить функции, связанные с актуальным членением и дискурсом. Так как постпозитивные демонстративы не встречаются в других восточнославянских языках, предлагалось объяснить их наличие в севернорусских диалектах контактным влиянием прибалтийско-финских языков.

Основные задачи работы заключаются в следующих вопросах:
1) Какими грамматическими функциями обладают постпозитивные демонстративы в исследуемых языках?
2) Что можно сказать об истории исследуемых языков в свете данных о развитии демонстративов?
3) Связано ли происхождение постпозитивных демонстративов в севернорусских диалектах с прибалтийско-финским субстратом?

Материалом для исследования послужили речевые корпусы тринадцати прибалтийско-финских и двух севернорусских вариантов, а также новгородские берестяные грамоты XI–XV веков. В работе анализируются с типологической точки зрения такие характеристики постпозитивных демонстративов, как линейный порядок, тип связи с определяемым словом, синтаксические и прагматические функции. Результаты типологического анализа связываются с географическими данными с тем, чтобы проследить взаимосвязанность географической близости и языковых сходств между исследуемыми вариантами.

Результаты настоящей работы следующие. Во-первых, основная грамматическая функция постпозитивных демонстративов связана с актуальным членением предложения, однако в севернорусских диалектах и соседних восточных прибалтийско-финских вариантах наблюдаются и вторичные функции, сочетающийся с определённым референтом и употребляющийся как маркеры оценки говорящего. Во-вторых, развитие праприбалтийско-финской системы демонстративов в языках-потомках усложнялось контактами между отдельными прибалтийско-финскими языками, приобретавшими общие ареальные черты. На основе наблюдавшихся изоглосс предлагается классификация прибалтийско-финских систем демонстративов на четыре группы: 1) западную (ливский, южноэстонский, северноэстонский), 2) центральную (водский, ижорский), 3) карельскую (олонецкий, севернолюдиковский) и 4) восточную (южнолюдиковский, вепсский). В-третьих, постпозитивный демонстратив «-то» и связанные с ним формы в севернорусских диалектах не являются результатом прибалтийско-финского субстрата, а скорее адстрата. Под взаимным влиянием вепсского демонстратива «se» и унаследованного из центрального диалекта среднерусского языка неизменяемого местоимения «-то» последнее постепенно приобрело формы склонения, а также начало чаще сочетаться с определённым референтом. Такая же прагматическая функция впоследствии распространилась и на людиковский и олонецкий языки.

This draft has been submitted to a journal, but I would welcome any comments on it. It deals with the etymologies of some terms for coastal and island geography in Finnic and Saami, focusing on (supposed) substrate vocabulary but also some other terms. I'm very happy with some of my suggestions, whereas with others I'm a bit on thin ice. As said, comments welcome.

Itämerensuomalaisissa kielissä on tunnetusti ainakin 200-300 kantasuomen aikaista lainasanaa balttilaisista kielistä. Myös balttilaisesta kielikunnasta on etsitty iältään vastaavia itämerensuomalaisia tai laajemmin uralilaisia lainoja. Artikkeli käsittelee kriittisesti esitettyjä 56 uralilaista lainaetymologiaa, jotka osoittautuvat riittämättömästi perustelluiksi. Vain liettuan šeškas, latvian sesks-sanaa on syytä tutkia edelleen mahdollisena uralilaisena lainana, mutta siltäkään ei puutu vaihtoehtoisia selityksiä.

This paper explores the periodisation of pre-documentary Scandinavian language and its synchronisation with
that of Finnic, the era in focus being the first millennium CE. Stratification of loanwords is discussed both as a means to
refine periodisation and as an aim in itself. The problems as concerns the latter half of the first millennium are highlighted.
The account is built on dissertation research defended in September 2018.

Here I propose a whole new loanword layer for the West Uralic branches (Mordvin, Finnic, and Saami). I label this layer Para-Slavic, because it shows some shared developments with Slavic proper, although it also shows independent developments.

In the current article, a critical analysis is conducted of the corpus of proposed Finnic-Saamic etymological cognates showing second-syllable labial vowels in both language groups. The data is taken from the etymological dictionary Suomen sanojen alkuperä (SSA, 1992–2000) and assessed in the light of current research on Uralic sound history and language contacts. The analysis reveals that more than half of the cognate pairs previously suggested by SSA cannot be regarded as actual cognates including their stem vowels, but should instead be viewed as the results of loan contacts and parallel developments. There are, however, a dozen cognate pairs with sound correspondences undeniably showing inheritance from a common protolanguage and thus suggesting that the development of second-syllable labial vowels may have originated in a common Finno-Saamic protolanguage, even if their wider adoption in the phonological and morphological systems of these languages did not take place until later.

The Finnic languages have an ancient loanword stock from Baltic, as proven already by Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869. Still, the period and location of the prehistoric contacts have not been satisfactorily established. A list of 202 old Baltic loanwords into Proto-Finnic has been presented by Seppo Suhonen in 1988. There are, however, 299 more Baltic etymologies suggested up to 1988 that Suhonen hasn't included in his list. This article aims to analyze whether some of these forgotten or abandoned etymologies might prove correct in the light of recent research in the field of historical lexicology. The analysis consists of three parts: distribution and alternative explanations; phonology; and semantics. 121 out of 282 analyzed etymologies failed the test. Most of the remaining 161 also seem problematic, but several of them will certainly be accepted after a thorough etymologic analysis in the future.

Although it has long been recognized that the family tree model is too simplistic to  account for historical connections between languages, most computational studies of language history have concentrated on tree-building methods. Here, we employ computational network methods to assess the utility of network models in comparison with tree models in studying the subgrouping of Uralic languages. We also compare basic vocabulary data with words that are more easily borrowed and replaced crosslinguistically (less basic vocabulary) in order to find out how secondary connections affect computational analyses of this language family. In general, the networks support a treelike pattern of diversification, but also provide information about conflicting connections underlying some of the ambiguous divergences in the trees. These are seen as reflections of unclear divergence patterns (either in ancestral protolanguages or between languages closely related at present), which pose problems for a tree model. The networks also show that the relationships of closely related present-day languages are more complex than what the tree models suggest. When comparing less basic with basic vocabulary, we can detect the effect of borrowing between different branches (horizontal transfer) mostly between and within the Finnic and Saami subgroups. We argue that the trees obtained with basic vocabulary provide the primary pattern of the divergence of a language family, whereas networks, especially those constructed with less basic vocabulary, add reality to the picture by showing the effect of more complicated developments affecting the connections between the languages.

Tämä kirjoitus käsittelee Suomen väestöhistoriallisen muinaisuuden tutkimuksen historiaa ja nykytilaa. Tarkastelemme aihetta arkeologian ja historiallis-vertailevan kielitieteen keskinäisenä vuoropuheluna, koska nämä ovat keskeiset esihistoriallisten prosessien jälkiä nykyajassa jäljittävät tieteenalat. Nykyisin niiden rinnalle on tulossa väestögenetiikka, mutta koska tämä nuori tiede kehittyy nopeasti ja sen tulokset tuntuvat muuttuvan vielä lähes päivittäin, emme käsittele sen piirissä esitettyjä tuloksia ja tulkintoja. Lisäksi sen tutkimushistoria on vielä kovin lyhyt ja muistuttaa kielitieteen ja arkeologian tilaa 1800-luvun lopulla. Vaikuttavia tuloksia kyllä on, mutta tutkimuksellisia aukkoja on vielä enemmän. Kielitieteen ja arkeologian tutkimus- historia ei kannusta tekemään laajoja johtopäätöksiä suppeasta aineistosta.

This paper presents a comprehensive reappraisal of the origins of the Mari lative case marker -(e)š. According to the received view, the suffix -(e)š originates in a Proto-Finno-Volgaic *s-lative, ultimate origin of which has not been explained. As the traditional theory of the origins of the so-called s-cases in Saami, Finnic, Mordvin and Mari suffers from various methodological shortcomings, alternative proposals have been presented, but the Mari lative continues to lack a plausible explanation. At the same time, the Finnic and Mordvin translatives in *-ksi are nowadays related to the Northern Samoyed predestinative in *-tə̑. This paper aims to present a functionally and phonologically sound theory of the origin of the Mari lative case marker -(e)š by relating the suffix to translatives and derivations in *-ksi, acknowledging that the hypothesis is not new, but actually predates the prevailing theory of the 20th century. At the same time, the paper presents the first familywide overview of the possible descendants *-ksi, a suffix that may have functioned as a case marker already in Proto-Uralic.

"Origin of the Baltic-Finnic long vowels". Master's thesis, May 2018. The online version posted here includes some corrections in the bibliography.

English summary: https://protouralic.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/the-origin-of-the-finnic-long-vowels-an-outline/

Three hypotheses on the origin of locative predicative possession in the Russian language (u menjá jestь X) have been presented. The first hypothesis claims that the construction is of old Slavic origin, the second claims Finno-Ugric substrate influence, whilst the third suggests contact-induced change. To evaluate these hypotheses, all types of predicative possession occurring in 865 items of the Novgorod birch barks from the 11 th -15 th century are used as data of this work and are then compared to corresponding constructions in Finnic languages. This paper introduces the research history of the contacts between Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages, especially in the area of morphosyntax. All types of predicative possession in modern Russian and Finnic languages are reviewed as a basis for understanding the Novgorod Slavic data. The main focus is on three constructions: 1) u + genitive, 2) habeo -verb (im ti) and

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.
    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.

This paper examines sound substitutions in Finnic loan words from Proto- and Ancient Scandinavian. Correlations are studied between Finnish/Estonian ai, äi, ei, and õi and eastern-Scandinavian descendants of the Proto-Scandinavian diphthong ai, which developed over ɛi into the Old Swedish ē. On the basis of the observed correlations, substitution practices and their chronologies are reconstructed. A further aim of the paper is to seek independent evidence for the quality of the diphthong during different stages of eastern Scandinavian development. This subject is intertwined through chronology with the borrowing of Finnish napakaira meaning
'bradawl, auger', namely with determining the form of the Scandinavian loan original *naƀaǥaiza- > Old-Icelandic nafarr (in particular *[z] > [r]) at the time of borrowing.
It is shown that within a material of some 80 potentially borrowed pre-Viking Age Proto-Finnic stems there is not a single ascertained case where a descendant of this Scandinavian diphthong would have been substituted by *ei, whereas the very few possible cases of *äi cannot be judged to testify to a fronted quality in the original. Substitution practices using back stems, which were subject to Finnic palatal vowel harmony, persisted for a surprisingly long time. In parallel with the principal ɑi → *ɑi substitution, one with *ëi ~ [ɤ̞i] is used in 2–4 ascertained cases. This substitution may testifiy to some variation or modification of the Proto-Scandinavian diphthong.