- A series of expeditions to the habitats of the last native speakers of Uralic and Turkic languages of Southern Siberia has been carried out (to native speakers of the Narym and Middle Ob dialects of the Selkup language, the Alexandrov, Vasyugan and Vakh dialects of the Khanty language, the Kondinskoye dialect of the Eastern Mansi language, the Shor dialect of the Khakas language, the Lower and the Middle Mrassu dialects of the Shor language, dialects of the Altay language, the Eushtin dialect of the Siberian Tatar language, the Eastern dialect of the Bashkir language and others).
- Our researchers have developed and tested 20 questionnaires for detecting features of dialects of Turkic languages that are valuable in terms of geographical linguistics.
- At the Laboratory's website we have posted audio dictionaries and corpora for all the known alive and extinct language of Southern Siberia (Yenisey family languages will be added later).
- The Laboratory has created and has been maintaining about 150 electronic audio dictionaries and corpora of text that are available at the Laboratory's website. The dictionaries are provided with references to etymological databases and software computing sound matches and measures of proximity between languages and dialects as well as performing automatic acoustic analysis.
- Adapted questionnaires have been created that are designed to gather psycholinguistic data concerning connection between words and separate modalities of perception (modality rating); questionnaire sets have been developed that include 200 nouns, 200 verbs and 200 adjectives of the Russian language.
- An autonomous fragment of a relational database has been created that includes parametrization lexico-semantic groups, lexico-grammatical groups, derivational classes) (for research of psycholinguistic aspects of That specific ethnolinguistic nature of languages and dialects of Southern Siberia).
- We have created fragments of a corpus of bilinguals (Russian-Turkic language interaction) that includes: (a)) a detailed psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic characterization of respondents of the corpus, (b) a collection of audio files (overall duration is 350 hours), and (c) a corpus of texts – transcripts of audiofiles.
- A registry of bilinguals of the Tomsk Oblast has been created (Russian-Tatar, Russian-Shor, Russian-Khakas bilingualism).
- The Laboratory has found, scanned and transcribed hand-written materials in ethnography of f Chulym Turks, photomaterials in ethnography of Northern nations at the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of the Tomsk State University.
- We have found and 3D-sanned artefacts of Chulym Tatar collections at the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of the Tomsk State University
- Our staff have transcribed handwritten records of the Shor folklore.
- A database has been created that contains folklore texts and samples of everyday language of the formed text corpora (148 000 word usage).
- The Laboratory has conducted work to describe the first four Cyrillic books published before the revolution of 1917 in languages of Southern Siberia. As a result of analysis of these materials we have prepared descriptions of graphic systems of the first Cyrillic books in Ural languages of Southern Siberia (Khanty and Selkup). It has been determined that that this data has high importance as we have found books written in dialects that are now extinct and including these materials in the analysis gave us an opportunity to refine the history of the Khanty and Selpuk languages.
Implemented results of research:
At the Laboratory's website we're building maps for all the languages of Southern Siberia that we have processed. The maps reflect specific nature of these languages in comparison with other Ural and Turkic languages. The maps indicate information on more than a hundred dialects of Ural, Turkic and Tungus languages.
Education and career development:
- The Laboratory has opened a module for postgraduate studies «Comparative and historical contrastive and typological linguistics». 3 postgraduate students have been admitted to the program in 2018 and two in 2018.
- The Laboratory has developed a module for postgraduate studies «Language Theory» from our research in the field of Russian-Turkic language interaction and problematics of Russian-Turkic bilingualism. 4 postgraduate students have been admitted to the program in 2017 and 2018.
- The topic of the project has been included in the «Fundamental and applied linguistics» masters training direction: masters programs «Computer linguistics», «Cognitive linguistics»; 2 masters dissertations have been supervised by the leading scientist.
- Students of the «Fundamental and applied linguistics» program and the «Computer and cognitive linguistics» masters program complete their research projects at the Laboratory. Academic practice programs have been been developed.
- The leading scientist has read a lecture course in comparative and historical Turkic linguistics in Tomsk for all the members of the academic staff of the Laboratory.
- Additional training courses have been delivered in which members of the academic staff of the Laboratory have actively participated. Apart from the leading scientist and professors participating in the project, training was delivered by leading Russian and foreign researchers of languages of Southern Siberia: prof. Erdal (Turkey – Germany), prof. Honti (Hungary), prof. Esling (Canada), prof. N. B. Koshkarova, prof. I. Ya. Selyatina (Novosibirsk), prof. V. M. Alpatov (Moscow) and others.
- Internships have been organized for members of the academic staff of the Laboratory under supervision of leading specialists in Southern Siberian languages and in experimental phonetics: prof. Erdala (Turkey), prof. Honti (Hungary), prof. Wagner-Nagy (Germany), prof. Norta (USA)
- An educational round table with participation of Russian and foreign professors has been organized where members of the academic staff of the Laboratory presented results of their research and received recommendations for further work.
- Master-classes have been conducted by the foreign partner of the Laboratory, PhD in cognitive studies A. Janyan (New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria) in experimental research of bilingualism.
- Additional training has been organized for members of the academic staff of the Laboratory within the «5th Barcelona Summer school on bilingualism and multilingualism» (Spain, 2017), at the programs «Software packages for statistical data processing in humanities» and in theoretical and methodological aspects of experimental research, our researchers have participated in scientific schools and seminars (24th International School in Cognitive Studies (New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria), «Neurobiology of language and speech» seminar (Saint Petersburg State University, Russia)).
- We have conducted the international seminar «Experimental studies of language and speech (E-SoLaS): Experimental designs and implementation», Russia 2017.
- At the «E-SoLaS» conference («Experimental studies of language and speech: bilingualism and multilingualism», Russia, 2018) we have conducted a scientific workshop that featured foreign members of the academic staff of the Laboratory: A. Janyan, Yu. Hyona, as well as researchers, professionals in experimental research of bilingualism: Judith Wylie, lecturer at the School of Development, Cognition And Adversity, Queen's University Belfast (Belfast, United Kingdom), Ute Gabriel, professor at the Department of Psychology Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim (Norway).
Organizational and structural changes:
- On the grounds of the Laboratory a research center has been created for corpus and experimental research of problems of bilingualism furnished with specialized equipment and computers with software for performing psycholinguistic experimental research and data processing (E-Prime, Eye-tracker).
- In collaboration with the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences a virtual laboratory has been created for documenting threatened languages http://lingvodoc.tsu.ru/
Collaborations:
- Institute of Finno-Ugric and Ural Studies (Hungary): joint additional training courses in July 2018 in Tomsk, training the staff of the Laboratory within internships, preparing collaborative publications
- Institute of Finno-Ugric and Ural Studies of the University of Hamburg (Germany): conducting a joint round table in October 2018 in Tomsk, training members of the academic staff of the laboratory within internships, collaborative processing of archives on Southern and Central Selkup dialects
- Institute of Empirical Linguistics of the Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany): training members of the academic staff of the Laboratory within internships, joint processing of texts in Turkic languages and dialects, collaborative expeditions
- Faculty of Psychology of the University of Turku (Finland): conducting a collaborative scientific school within the E-SoLaS conference (Experimental studies of language and speech: bilingualism and multilingualism) «Experimental research of language and speech: design and conducting experiments in linguistic research» (2017), joint scientific research, participation of foreign partners in the educational process of the Tomsk State University, student exchange
- Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), New Bulgarian University (Bulgaria), School of Development, Cognition And Adversity Queen's University Belfast (United Kingdom): conducting a joint scientific school within the E-SoLaS conference (Experimental studies of language and speech: bilingualism and multilingualism)
