In the Language Bank: Harri Uusitalo

Kielipankki – The Language Bank of Finland is a service for researchers using language resources. Harri Uusitalo tells us about his research using various types of Finnish-language corpora from different time periods.

Who are you?

I am Harri Uusitalo, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku. I am a researcher of the Finnish language and currently, I am working at the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies in the interdisciplinary projects  and . In the research groups, we examine the historical relationship of the Finnish people with nature.

What is your research topic?

I have studied Finnish texts from different periods, from the time of Agricola to the present day. My doctoral thesis focused on the legal language of the 17th century, and more recently I have been fascinated by environmental themes and ecolinguistic perspectives.

How is your research related to Kielipankki?

Together with my colleagues, I have used the Kielipankki data in some of my research. For example, together with Karita Suomalainen, we used the  and the  to investigate how Finnish people identify and discuss invasive alien species. With Duha Elsayed and Heidi Salmi, we used the  to study the translative form of the A-infinitive in Agricola’s works.

In my future research, I will certainly make use of many other corpora in Kielipankki, such as the , the  and the .

Publications

Uusitalo Harri, Lähdesmäki Heta, Sonck-Rautio Kirsi, Latva Otto, Salmi Hannu & Alenius Teija (tulossa): Alien Plants between Practices and Representations: the Cases of European Spruce and Beach Rose in Finland. Plant Perspectives.

Uusitalo Harri & Suomalainen Karita 2023: . Language@Internet 21.

Elsayed Duha, Salmi Heidi & Uusitalo Harri 2022: . Sananjalka 64. Suomen Kielen Seura, Turku.

Corpora and tools

More information

The  consortium consists of a group of Finnish universities along with CSC – IT Center for Science and the Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus). FIN-CLARIN helps the researchers in Finland to use, to refine, to preserve and to share their language resources.  is the collection of services that provides the language materials and tools for the research community.