Syntactic description of southern and central Selkup: A corpus based study

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Beáta Wagner-Nagy
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278772162

The project's purpose is the creation of a digital corpus of two varieties of the southern Selkup language that are almost extinct. This corpus will be used as a basis for a description of the syntactic structure of those specific varieties of the Selkup language.Selkup belongs to the Samoyedic brach of the Uralic languages. It is less documented language, especially the varieties of the central and southern parts lack a systematic documentation despite the availability of textual material, which was collected through the centuries and is partly already published. The mentioned varieties of the central and southern parts have currently appr. 20 speakers, thus these varieties are facing extinction. Particular attention should therefore be paid to the in detail documentation and description of these dialects. In the course of the project already published texts will be composed, if necessary digitized and finally annotated. The goal is to create the first appropriate systematic corpus for southern and central Selkup dialects, that will not only allow further linguistic analysis, but will provide a general basis for scientific work; for example in ethnological studies. Therefore the corpus will be published in a way that ensures the open access for other scientists. On base of this corpus the project aims to create a comprehensive description of the syntax of the central and southern varieties. Enabling a holistic understanding of the language and closing a research gap, since existing research is mostly based on phonetic and morphological analysis. The few papers dealing with syntax are based on data concerning the northern variety of the Selkup dialects and are just taking a look at some very specific aspects.The project will exceed not only institutional borders but international frontiers as a collaboration with colleagues of the Tomsk State University is incorporated. To reach the goals of the whole undertaking different research methods, skills and fields of interest will be combined.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants