Corpus-driven dictionary of Nganasan

• Applicant: Dr. Valentin Gusev
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 412514449

This application is a demand for prolongation of the current DFG-funded project “Corpus-driven dictionary of Nganasan” by one year. The project is aimed at compilation of an exhaustive dictionary of Nganasan, a small endangered Uralic language spoken in the North of Siberia, the second northernmost language of the world. The original project presupposed a large part of fieldwork needed to check and clarify the data insufficiently presented in the existing sources. However, the fieldwork turned out to be for the most part impossible first because of the COVID-19 pandemy and then because of suspension of any contacts with Russia following the war in Ukraine. This required search for additional sources of data, such as handwritten Nganasan texts kept in archives, which are to be manually digitalised. This task is very time-consuming and could not be fulfilled in the time of the project. Besides this, a new important set of data has been recently discovered, which must also be included in the dictionary. These are two rationales for a prolongation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants