Events

This page provides an overview of the upcoming and past events and activities of HALS.

To this date HALS has organised 47 meetings with invited speakers, 6 workshops, 3 seminars, and 6 fieldwork seminars, in addition to a number of . Activities are often organised in collaboration with our host departments and the doctoral programme for language studies, .

Upcoming events

Year Date Time Venue Event
2025 Oct. 17th-28th Field excursion to Azerbaijan
2025 Oct. 31st 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XLVIII), with a talk by Tihomir Rangelov (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology): Colonisation-induced grammatical change in Vanuatu’s indigenous languages.

 

Past events

Year Date Time Venue Event
2025 Sep. 26th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XLVII), with a talk by Maria Konoshenko (University of Helsinki) and Maria Khachaturyan (University of Helsinki/CNRS, Paris): Ethical clearance in linguistic ethnography: Seeking informed consent as multilingual practice.
2025 Sep. 4th 14:00-17:00 Juhlasali, Kielikeskus Ekaterina Gruzdevan 60-vuotisjuhlaseminaari / Celebratory seminar for Ekaterina Gruzdeva (read more ).
2025 Jun. 6th 14:15-15:45 Päärakennus U3039 HALS meeting (XLVI), with a talk by Michael Ewing (University of Melbourne): Interlocutor Reference in Plurilingual Indonesia.
2025 Apr. 25th 14:15-15:45 HCAS Common room (Fabianinkatu 24A) HALS meeting (XLV): Book launch of The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic languages of West Africa, edited by Friederike Lüpke, together with .
2025 Mar. 28th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 HALS meeting (XLIV), with a talk by Chundra Cathcart (University of Zürich): The evolutionary dynamics of communicative efficiency in the lexicon.
2025 Jan. 31st 14:15-15:45 Sali 24 HALS meeting (XLIII) with a talk by Katharina Tyran (University of Helsinki): Silenced from above, subversive on the ground: Policies and practices in multilingual settings in Austria.
2024 Nov. 29th 14:15-15:45 Sali 25

HALS fieldwork seminar (VI) on the , with the following talks:

Ekaterina Gruzdeva: Introduction
Juha Janhunen: Languages of Kyrgyzstan
Jonathan Banks: Do Turkic languages have switch-reference? Evidence from the -Vp converb and event continuity in Kyrgyz
Bojana Damnjanovic: Balkonsky and Kyrgyzushka: A closer look at Kyrgyz-Russian language contact
Enes Yılandiloğlu: Building a Kyrgyz treebank from spoken data: A computational framework
Matilda Carbo: Reduplication in Turkic (Kyrgyz, Uyghur)
Toivo Qiu: The Hunt for the Huhs - the retention and loss of the initial laryngeal spirant h- (< PT *p-) and some other phonological developments in the Modern Uyghur dialects of Kyrgyzstan
Sami Honkasalo, Erika Sandman, Mikhail Zolotilin: Collecting the Dungan source materials: Methodological and theoretical issues
Essi Mäkinen, Emma Vesakoivu: Generational language shift of Koreans in Kyrgyzstan: A hybrid study of sociolinguistic histories
Enes Yılandiloğlu, Sami Honkasalo: Linguistic landscape of Bishkek
Sami Honkasalo: Conclusion

2024 Nov. 15th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XLII) with a talk by Ljuba Veselinova (Stockholm University): GIS and linguistic cartography.
2024 Sep. 27th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8

HALS meeting (XLI): Linguistic landscape research, a joint workshop between HALS and , with talks by Leena Kolehmainen, Sofie Henricson, Ekaterina Gruzdeva and Juha Janhunen, Bojana Damnjanović, and Friederike Lüpke.

Read more about the workshop .

2024 June 11th 09:00-16:00 Sali 4 : Innovating methodology and theory in linguistic fieldwork.
2024 May 17th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XL) with a talk by Ana Vilacy Galucio (Emilio Goeldi Museum of Pará): Integrating language documentation, description and revitalization.
2024 Feb. 23rd 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XXXIX) with a talk by Ekaterina Gruzdeva and Juha Janhunen (University of Helsinki): Khamnigan: languages and ethnicity.
2024 Jan. 26th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XXXVIII) with a talk by Emma Kurkinen, Antti Laine and Silva Nurmio (University of Helsinki): Bantu noun class systems in the typology of individuation and unitization.
2023 Sep. 29th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 HALS meeting (XXXVII) with a talk by Svetlana Vetchinnikova (University of Helsinki): Disciplinary communities: contact, variation and change.
2023 June 16th 14:15-15:45 Sali 11 HALS meeting (XXXVI) with a talk by Abel Warries (University of Leiden): Investigating a prehistoric language contact hypothesis: Tocharian and Uralic.
2023 May 19th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 HALS fieldwork seminar (V) on the , with an introduction by Andrei Dumitrescu and the following talks by the students and organizers:
Kristina Sherrill: Language attitudes of minority Hungarian speakers in Temesvár
Anna Sedláčková: Sociolinguistic situation in Timișoara with a focus on the Serbian speaking minority
Monika Murgová & Anna Busheva: Observations on the sociolinguistics and phonetic features of the Slovak language in Nădlac
Mikhail Zolotilin & Jonathan Banks: Banat Swabian: Sociolinguistic situation, with some phonetic and morpho-syntactic features
Natchanun Sanitdee: Topics in the morphosyntax of Banat Swabian
Andrei Dumitrescu: Patterns of Romanian-German bilingualism at the Nikolaus Lenau high school
2023 Apr. 28th 14:15-15:45 Sali 25 HALS networking seminar for researchers of linguistic and cultural diversity.
2023 Mar. 31st 14:30-16:00 Sali 25 HALS meeting (XXXV) with a talk by Maria Konoshenko (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies): The grammaticalization of quotative constructions: What happens to the addressees?
2023 Feb. 24th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XXXIV) with a talk by Vlada Baranova (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies): ‘Mixed Kalmyk’: new speakers, language attitudes and the language change.
2023 Jan. 27th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XXXIII) with a talk by Mansour Shabani (University of Guilan): The two faces of a nominal linker: Another look at Reverse Ezafe in Gilaki.
2022 Nov. 25th 14:15-15:45 Sali 24 HALS meeting (XXXII) with a talk by Sidney Facundes (Universidade Federal do Pará): Descriptive and typological issues in describing a grammar for an Amazonian language.
2022 Nov. 11th 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (XXXI) with a talk by Juhani Järvikivi (University of Alberta): Putting the social into psycholinguistics - political views and personality in language processing.
2022 Oct. 28th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 HALS meeting (XXX) with a talk by Anja Arnhold (University of Alberta): Prosodic typology, prosody-syntax trade-offs and linguistic complexity.
2022 Sep. 30th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 HALS meeting (XXIX) with a talk by Francesco Gardani (University of Zürich): The borrowability of derivation: A typological overview.
2022 June 10th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 and Zoom HALS meeting (XXVIII) with a talk by Alexis Rojas and Silva Nurmio (University of Helsinki): Higher-order network modeling reveals the multiscale modular organization of semantic communities in the world’s largest colexification network (CLICS).
2022 May 20th 10:15-11:45 Sali 18 and Zoom HALS meeting (XXVII) organized by Chingduang Yurayong, Sumittra Suraratdecha (Mahidol University), Ekaterina Gruzdeva (University of Helsinki) and Toshihide Nakayama (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies): Future directions and potentials in description, ecology and sociology of language.
2022 Apr. 29th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 and Zoom HALS meeting (XXVI) with a talk by Friederike Lüpke (University of Helsinki): Contact, concord, classification: noun class systems and categorisation in a multilingual area.
2022 Feb. 18th 14:15-15:45 Sali 25 and Zoom HALS meeting (XXV) with a talk by Mark Ellison (University of Cologne): Linguistic Prominence and Modelling Language.
2022 Jan. 28th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS fieldwork seminar (IV) on the LingDig field trip to Estonia, with an introduction by Ksenia Shagal and three talks by the students:
Sara Carrier-Bordeleau: Linguistic Landscapes in Tallinn (and in general)
Héloïse Calame: Variation in Estonian negation
Anna Busheva: Influence of Estonian on the phonetics of Russian
2021 Nov. 26th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XXIV) with a talk by Kaius Sinnemäki and Seppo Kittilä (University of Helsinki): Studies on Finnish from a typological(-functional) perspective.
2021 Oct. 29th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XXIII): Discussion on the difficulties of fieldwork during the COVID-19 pandemic and ways to overcome them. The meeting will begin with 5 minute introductions by several researchers who have done or were planning to do fieldwork recently (Sara Carrier-Bordeleau, Rahel Dires, Andrei Dumitrescu, Richard Kerbs, Anette Ross, and Saana Santalahti) followed by free discussion.
2021 Sep. 10th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XXII) with a talk by Kristian Roncero (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology & FSU-Jena): Suppletion meets sociolinguistically neutral variation. Descriptive challenges in West Polesian (East Slavic).
2021 Aug. 27th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XXI) with a talk by Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki): Publishing UH typological/diversity linguistics data openly II.
2021 June 11th 10:15-11:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XX): Introduction of ongoing research at HALS.
Eeva Sippola: Language endangerment and migration in the Philippine Creole communities ()
Ekaterina Gruzdeva: Languages of Russia in the 21st century
Olesya Khanina: Historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic geography: a study of language diversification and spread at the Siberian North ()
Daniela Casartelli: Language emerging from human sociality: the case of speech representation
Lotta Aunio: A Multilectal Grammar: The Western Serengeti languages ()
Matti Miestamo: Research on negation in a typological perspective
Silva Nurmio & Rahel T. Dires: Typology of singulatives ()
2021 May 28th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XIX) with a presentation by Matti Miestamo, Ksenia Shagal and Olli Silvennoinen (University of Helsinki): Negation in Clause-Combining – Project Presentation ().
2021 Apr. 23rd 10:15-11:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XVIII): Introduction of linguistic research at Mahidol University ().
Sophana Srichampa: Language policy for unskilled migrant workers in Thailand ()
Mayuree Thawornpat: Community-based language revitalization in Thailand ()
Sumittra Suraratdecha: Youth engagement in language and cultural revitalization ()
Siripen Ungsitipoonporn: Digital archiving of languages and cultures of ethnic groups of Thailand ()
Siripen Ungsitipoonporn, Sarawut Kraisame & Chingduang Yurayong: Digital platform for language diversity in Thailand ()
Pattama Patpong: Language of death and language of depression ()
2020 Nov. 27th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XVII) with a presentation by Eri Kashima (University of Helsinki): The sociolinguistics of divergence? Qualitative and quantitative data on Nmbo, a multilingual Papuan speech community.
2020 Oct. 30th 14:15-15:45 Zoom HALS meeting (XVI) with a presentation by Olesya Khanina (Institute of Linguistics RAS & Finno-Ugrian Society & University of Helsinki): The rise of linguistic diversity at the Lower Yenisei (Siberia).
2020 Feb. 28th 14:15-15:45 Sali 25 HALS meeting (XV) with presentations by Jack Rueter, Niko Partanen and Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki): From Fieldwork Collections to Universal Dependencies.
2020 Jan. 24th 15:00-17:00 Sali 4 HALS meeting (XIV): introduction of the ERC project "Linguistic Adaptation" (University of Helsinki) and its team members.
Kaius Sinnemäki: Introduction
Francesca Di Garbo: Linguistic variation and adaptation in nominal morphosyntax: some insights from previous and ongoing research
Eri Kashima: Variation and descriptive sociolinguistics from Southern New Guinea
Ricardo Napoleão de Souza: Phonetic variation and (morpho)phonological change from cross-linguistic and typological perspectives.
2019 Dec. 19th 16:15-17:45 Sali 11 HALS meeting (XIII) with a presentation by Katia Chirkova (CRLAO, CNRS): stress and tone in Lizu (Tibeto-Burman).
2019 Sep. 27th 14:15-15:45 Sali 27 HALS meeting (XII) with a presentation by Michael “Mitcho” Yoshitaka Erlewine (National University of Singapore): Patterns of relativization in Austronesian and Tibetan.
2019 May 14th 14:15-15:45 Sali 12 HALS meeting (XI) with a presentation by Nikolai Vakhtin (European University at St. Petersburg): Yukaghir heritage pictography: Transmission of the Arctic traditional knowledge.
2019 May 3rd 12:00-17:00 Sali 8 HALS workshop (V) on areality.
12:00-13:00 – Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm: Areal patterns in lexical semantics
13:00-14:00 – Johanna Nichols: Recent findings on north Eurasian areal-typological evolution
14:00-14:30 – Coffee break
14:30-15:15 – Ekaterina Gruzdeva & Juha Janhunen: Patterns of morphosyntactic transformation in the Amur Linguistic Area
15:15-16:00 – Max Wahlström & Maxim Makartsev: The study of the Balkan Linguistic Area in 2020s
16:00-16:30 – Riho Grünthal: Causative verbs in Uralic: basic patterns and deviations
16:30-17:00 – Janne Saarikivi: Etymology, typology and areality.
2019 Apr. 12th 16:00-17:30 Sali 11 HALS meeting (X) with a presentation by Nicolas Tournadre (Aix-Marseille University): Evidential strategies and accessibility hierarchies.
2019 Mar. 22nd 14:15-15:45 Sali 7 HALS meeting (IX) with a presentation by Maria Konoshenko (Russian State University of the Humanities / Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences): Grammatical tone: between phonology and morphology.
2018 Dec. 7th 14:15-15:45 Sali 12 HALS meeting (VIII) with a presentation by Östen Dahl (Stockholm University): Studying tense and aspect in a massive parallel corpus.
2018 Nov. 30th 14:15-15:45 Sali 12 HALS meeting (VII) with a presentation by Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki): Linguistic adaptation - a new ERC project in the HALS research network.
2018 Oct. 26th 10:00-16:00 Sali 4 HALS seminar (II) on sociolinguistic conditions of language change with a focus on historical, typological and areal approaches. Keynote speaker: Mikael Parkvall (Stockholm University). Other speakers: Erika Sandman (University of Helsinki); Hanna Lantto (University of Eastern Finland); Max Wahlström (University of Helsinki); Terttu Nevalainen, Tanja Säily and Turo Vartiainen (University of Helsinki).
2018 Apr. 27th 14:15-15:45 Sali 17 HALS meeting (VI) with a presentation by Ekaterina Gruzdeva and Nailya Philippova (University of Helsinki): Urban multilingualism in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
2018 Mar. 23rd 14:15-15:45 Sali 17 HALS meeting (V) with a presentation by Ksenia Shagal and Max Wahlström (University of Helsinki): (Non-)finiteness in dependent clauses, a typological study.
2018 Feb. 23rd 14:15-15:45 Sali 17 HALS meeting (IV) with a presentation by Thera Crane (University of Helsinki): Evaluating approaches to aspect in Bantu.
2018 Jan. 26th 14:15-15:45 - Informal HALS meeting on the future activities and plans of the research group.
2017 Nov. 24th 14:15-15:45 Sali 6 HALS meeting (III) with presentations by Stefan Dedio (University of Zürich) and Maria Morozova (Saint Petersburg University / Russian Academy of Sciences).
2017 Nov. 10th 14:15-15:45 Sali 8 HALS meeting (II) with a presentation by Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (Stockholm University): Talking temperature with close relatives and neighbours.
2017 Oct. 27th 14:15-15:45 Sali 11 HALS meeting (I) with a presentation by Ljuba Veselinova (Stockholm University): Maps and mapping in linguistic research.
2016 Dec. 19th-20th 09:00-18:00 - on the ethnology of the peoples of the Russian Federation.
2016 Jun. 20th-23rd - - HALS-related event:
2015 Nov. 13th-14th - - on the Balkans and beyond.
2015 Mar. 12th-13th - - on language ecologies: the Balkans and beyond.
2014 Nov. 28th-29th - - on crosslinguistics and linguistic crossings in Northeast Asia.
2014 May 19th - - on insular worlds: the indigenous peoples and languages of Sakhalin and Hokkaido.
2013 Nov. 18th-19th - - on the Erzya language and culture in the field.
2013 Oct. 11th-12th - - on the domain of space in linguistic description.
2013 May 27th-29th - - on culturally grounded field linguistics.