Siberian linguistic area: reality or semblance? The quest for common rarities

• Applicant: Dr. Mark Schmalz
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452731774

I propose to conduct a detailed grammatical study of Siberian languages aimed at finding structural similarities arising through contact between unrelated indigenous Siberian languages. While considerable amount of knowledge has been accumulated about Siberian languages in comparative studies of related languages, generalizing conclusions about Siberia from the viewpoint of areal linguistics are sparse and, above all, contradictory. Although opinions diverge whether Siberia constitutes a linguistic area, the data from contact zones within Siberia testify to a mutual linguistic influence, which in some instances fostered proliferation of rare linguistic types. The goal of the proposed study is to investigate contact phenomena in four of such contact zones in order to determine whether they provide evidence for positing linguistic micro-areas in Siberia and whether they support the idea that Siberia as a whole is a linguistic area, which has become a matter of debate recently. The main methodological principle to be employed in the project is the estimation of the degree of typological markedness of the identified shared features, which is expected to help distinguish genuine areal features from chance resemblance: it is improbable that rare features evolve independently in different languages. The investigated contact zones will be characterized with respect to four parameters: overall borrowing probability and contact intensity, language involvement and feature prominence. These will reflect respectively the probability of a given contact zone being a linguistic area, the probable degree of intensity of language contact in it, the relative contribution of the member languages and that of the diagnostic features to the areal character of the contact zone under scrutiny. Apart from that, a way of delimiting linguistic areas taxonomically/geographically based on individual areal feature sets is proposed.This methodology is believed to offer a possibility for a principled identification and comparison of linguistic areas generally, which will be tested using the data from Balkans and Mainland Southeast Asia as reference points.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants