Courses

The program includes nine intensive courses, with 2-4 classes per course, and two invited talks. 

The courses are divided into three modules. 

 

 

I. Syntax of individual Uralic languages 

Ekaterina Georgieva (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics) 

In this course we will zoom in on several phenomena in Udmurt in both the clausal and nominal domains. We will discuss negation, complementizers, (non)finite embedding, copular clauses, clitics and possessive phrases, among others. We will also look at some dialectal features of Udmurt. 

Irina Burukina (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics/ELTE) 

We will discuss several syntactic puzzles presented by Mari, focusing primarily on the difference between the structural and semantic cases and the case-licensing of arguments in non-finite contexts (i.e. in non-finite clauses, nominals, and postpositional phrases). 

Katalin Gugán (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics)  

The first session aims at giving an overview of morphosyntax: verbal, nominal, and locational clauses, questions, negation, and clause combining. The second session focuses on information structure-related phenomena: passive sentences with different word order patterns, active sentences with atypically (i.e. locative-) marked subjects, and non-verb-final clauses. 

Veronika Hegedűs (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics), Nikolett Mus (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics) & Balázs Surányi (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics/PPCU)

This course will focus on topics concerning some (morpho-)syntactic and word order properties of Tundra Nenets (North Samoyedic). First we will cover various issues concerning copular sentences, existential clauses and related phenomena, including the distribution of the copula and existential verb, the syntax of nominal and locative predication, as well as so-called environmental constructions. Secondly, we will focus on certain issues concerning word order. While Tundra Nenets is standardly described as an SOV language with strict verb-finality, there are various exceptions, which will be addressed during the course. We will look at the word order of (single and multiple) wh-questions on the one hand, and the syntactic status of possible post-verbal constituents on the other hand. 

 

 

II. Comparative Syntax 

Hans-Martin Gärtner (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics)

The course provides a survey of sentence types in Uralic languages in the spirit of Sadock and Zwicky (1985) and König and Siemund (2007). Particular attention will be paid to the relation between formal marking strategies (finiteness, mood, particles etc.) and functional characteristics (especially illocution types). 

Andreas Pregla (University of Potsdam)

You will acquire skills in order to investigate word order variation formally. First, you will be able to differentiate between notions of “emphasis” that often come with marked word orders exemplified by data from Komi Zyrian, Standard Udmurt, and Meadow Mari. Second, you will know about mirror-image effects in language based on Spoken Finnish and Standard Udmurt, and you will be able to use mirror-image effects to diagnose the structure underlying linear strings. Overall, you will be able to apply the methodology to a language of your choosing. 

Katalin É. Kiss (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics) 

We will discuss parallel developments in Old Hungarian and in the Ugric and Permic languages, among them: 1. Drift from head-final to head-initial syntax. 2. The evolution of finite subordination. 3. Changes in object marking and object-verb agreement. 

Anders Holmberg (Newcastle University) 

Yes-no questions are standardly answered in Finnish by echoing the finite verb of the question for affirmative answers, and the negation plus the verb for negative answers. The syntax of these answers will be discussed in the context of a theory of questions and answers more generally, not just yes-no questions, and not just verb-echo answers. 

 

 

III. Prosodic Phonology & Syntax-Prosody Interface

Katalin Mády (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics) & Eva Liina Asu (University of Tartu)  

The course will provide a theoretical introduction to prosody focussing in particular on some prosodic features of Hungarian and Estonian. The theoretical part will be followed by a practical session with the Praat software that will allow participants to do acoustic measurements themselves. 

Lena Borise (University of the Basque Country) 

We will discuss some work that investigates the workings of the interface between syntax and prosody in the Uralic languages (primarily on the basis of Udmurt). 

 

 

Invited talks

Beáta Wagner-Nagy (University of Hamburg) & Nikolett Mus (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics)

The aim of our talk is to provide the syntactic profile of languages that belong to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family (Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, and Selkup). We will provide some descriptive generalizations about the structure of these languages. The main topics that will be covered are parts-of-speech, Nominal/copular clauses (incl. locative, existential, and possessive clauses), questions, negation, coordination (phrasal and clausal) and subordination, as well as, word order and information structure.

Balázs Surányi (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics/PPCU)

Complementing traditional, informal judgment collection, the use of experimental methods for the elicitation of acceptability judgments in service of syntactic description and theory has gained new ground over the past two decades. This talk provides a review of the basic concepts, the core aims, the most commonly employed methods as well as the lingering challenges in this area, often dubbed ‘experimental syntax’. After critically evaluating the notion of acceptability judgment, including both its legitimacy and its limitations as a behavioural measure in syntactic theorizing, we will survey fundamental options in the construction of the material, the mode of the presentation and the judgment task, as well as the overall design of acceptability judgment experiments. We close by discussing a few common pitfalls and possible ways to avoid them.