Photo: Varpu Heiskanen, University of Eastern Finland
Kielipankki – The Language Bank of Finland is a service for researchers using language resources. Doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland Ilja Moshnikov tells us about his ongoing research in which he makes use of the Kielipankki resources The Corpus of Border Karelian and the Digital Morphology Archives (DMA).
I am Ilja Moshnikov, doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. At the moment I am working at the Karelian Institute on the Joensuu campus. I am coming from Russian Karelia, the small village of Uutjärvi in Aunus. I studied the languages of Karelian and Finnish at the University of Petrozavodsk/ Petrozavodsk State University where I graduated in 2010. Later in 2014 I graduated from the University of Eastern Finland majoring in the Finnish language. Besides my research work for the dissertation, I am interested in the current use of the Karelian language today, especially its use in the digital environments, and also the Karelian Wikipedia. My mother tongue is Livvi-Karelian and also Russian.
The topic of my doctoral research is the Border Karelian dialects. These dialects were spoken in the Border Karelia in Finland before the World War II. Linguistically, Border Karelian dialects are part of the Karelian language. It is estimated that there are between 5.000 and 10.000 speakers of Karelian in Finland, most of them with a Border Karelian background. In my research project I focus on, from the perspective of language contact and variation studies, to what extent Finnish and two dialects of Karelian (Proper Karelian and Livvi-Karelian) are mixed in the Border Karelian dialects. My case study is on the variation in the II Participle -NUT (e.g. olen antanut [I have given], ei mennyt [did not go]). I seek to explain variation with the help of statistical methods, as the speech of the same informant there can be as many as nine variants of the participle, some of them from the dialects of the Karelian language and some from the Finnish dialects.
I have compiled my research data from The Corpus of Border Karelian, which is available in the resources of the Language Bank today. During my master’s degree studies I participated in a project for processing the data of the corpus. I also use the Digital Morphology Archives (DMA) available in the Language Bank. For example, I have searched the corpora for the II Participle -NUT for its appearance in the Finnish dialects and especially in the neighbouring Border Karelian dialects. I also use the electronic version of the Karelian Dictionary on a weekly basis.
MOSHNIKOV, ILIA 2014: NUT-partisiipin variaatio Ilomantsin rajakarjalaismurteessa. Pro gradu -Master’. Itä-Suomen yliopisto, Finnish language. Saatavilla: http://epublications.uef.fi/pub/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20140271/urn_nbn_fi_uef-20140271.pdf .
MOSHNIKOV, ILIA 2018: NUT-partisiipin variaatiosta rajakarjalaismurteissa: (n)nA-, n- ja nUn-partisiippien keskinäisestä suhteesta. – Lähivõrdlusi. Lähivertailuja 28 s. 263–284. Saatavilla: http://arhiiv.rakenduslingvistika.ee/ajakirjad/index.php/lahivordlusi/article/view/LV28.08
MOSHNIKOV, ILIA (tulossa): Ol´ noussun sih edee, tottunuh ol´ ga ei syttyny. Tapaustutkimus variaatiosta Suojärven rajakarjalaismurteessa. Karjalankieliset identiteetit rajalla –symposiumiin pohjautuva artikkelikokoelma, Pekka Suutari (toim.).
The FIN-CLARIN consortium consists of a group of Finnish universities along with CSC – IT Center for Science and the Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus). FIN-CLARIN helps the researchers in Finland to use, to refine, to preserve and to share their language resources. The Language Bank of Finland is the collection of services that provides the language materials and tools for the research community.
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