Sami linguistics in Sweden
Sami linguistics in Sweden is practiced today - by Sami, Swedish and foreign researchers - mainly at the two universities in Umeå and Uppsala. The history of Sami linguistics began as early as 1619 with the appearance of the first printed Sami texts .
17th-19th century
The pastor Pehr Fjellström (1697–1764) from Lycksele began to systematically examine Sami. In 1738 he published the Umesamische the description Grammatica Lapponica and the dictionary Dictionnaire Sueco-lapponicum. The New Testament was also translated into Umesamian in 1755.
The Sami dictionary Lexicon Lapponicum (1780) by Erik Lindahl and Samuel Öhrling also focuses on Umesami, although Pit and Lule Sami vocabulary has also been included. Lindahl and Öhrling cite both Swedish and Latin translations. Since they wanted to reproduce several Sami varieties according to one and the same standard, their dictionary uses a relatively strongly stylized orthography . Compared to Knud Leem , the dictionary gave a less successful picture of the linguistic usage described. But in Sweden and Finland , Lindahl and Öhrling's dictionary was still more widely used than Leem's, possibly because of its "simpler" lemmas .
Early 20th century
At the end of the 19th century there was a change in methods in Sami language research in Sweden. The Hungarian Ignác Halász was the first linguist to systematically conduct field research on Sami. He researched South Sami in Sweden and published the grammar Svéd-lapp nyelv in seven parts between 1885 and 1896 .
The founder of modern Sami linguistics in Sweden KB Wiklund (1868–1934) began teaching the subject at Uppsala University as early as 1894 . In 1909 he became the first professor of Finno-Ugric studies there . His doctoral thesis Draft of a Urlappischen Phonology (1896) laid the foundation for the scientifically operated Finno-Ugric studies in Sweden. Wiklund was a young grammarian and published accordingly on topics such as sound change , level change , place names and loanwords .
Wiklund's successor as professor in Uppsala var Björn Collinder (1894-1983). Collinder started his scientific career as a Nordicist , but a trip to Lapland inspires him to change the subject. As a northernist he published works on the interface between Sami and North Germanic , later his phonology of the Waldlappish dialect by Gällivare (1938) appeared. The debate about EN Setälä's theories had a significant impact on his research on level changes in Finno-Ugric languages. He received his doctorate on this subject in 1929. Other works deal with Germanic and Indo-European loanwords in Ural .
Collinder became best known internationally with A Handbook of the Uralic Languages (1955–1960). The three-volume work consists of a Finno-Ugric etymological dictionary, a grammatical sketch of all Uralic languages and a comparative grammar of Urlaic.
Collinders' successor was Bo Wickman (1917-2007), who became a professor in 1962. Wickman's interest in Finno-Ugric Studies arose after traveling to Estonia and Hungary during the interwar period. Wickman's research also orientated further east than his two predecessors, who mainly drew their inspiration from Swedish Lapland. Wickman's doctoral thesis , which he defended in 1955, deals with the case of objects in various Uralic languages. Although Wiklund has published several popular scientific works on Sami, his most important works are in comparative Finno-Ugric studies.
Important lexicographers in Sweden were Harald Grundström (1885–1960) for Lule Sami and Gustav Hasselbrink (1900–1982) for South Sami. Building on his own observations and field research notes by Wiklund and Björn Collinder, Grundström wrote a large Lulelappic dictionary (1946–1952) that presents the forms of the individual lemmas in six different Lulesami dialects and translates them into Swedish and German.
Hasselbrink studied South Sami as a pastor in Vilhelmina in the 1940s . In 1944 he defended his doctoral thesis Vilhelminalapskans ljudlära med särskild hänsyn till första stavelsen's vocal ' Phonology of Lappish by Vilhelmina with special consideration of the first syllable vowels'. An extremely modern work for its time with an explicitly autosegmental analysis of the regressive vowel harmony ( metaphony ) in South Sami is Alternative Analyzes of the Phonemic System in Central South-Lappish (1965). Corresponding ideas were only published in theoretical linguistics towards the end of the 1970s . Hasselbrink's main work, however, is his three-volume South Lappish Dictionary (1981–1985).
Late 20th century
With the Pitesami Israel Ruong (1903–1986) a new tendency was introduced into Sami research. The ethnic Sami Ruong was both a researcher and a politician. In addition to dealing with Sami politics, he and Knut Bergsland represented the so-called Bergsland-Ruong orthography, a common standard for North Sami in Norway and Sweden, with regard to practical language work . In addition, he actively promoted his scientific career. In 1943, Ruong defended his dissertation on Lappish verbal derivation based on Pitelappish. Between 1949 and 1969, Ruong was a lecturer in Sami languages and ethnology in Uppsala and in 1969 was given an extraordinary professorship. In the new orthography he published the grammar Min sámegiella 'Our Sami language' (1970). Israel Ruong was one of the main initiators for the establishment of the Nordic Sami Institute and also advocated the establishment of a separate Sami institute at Umeå University .
Nils Erik Hansegård (1918–2002) became the first Sami professor in Umeå and worked there from 1975 to 1979. His book Tvåspråkighet eller halvspråkighet 'Bilingualism or Half Language ' (1968) initiated a multi-year discourse on language policy. Hansegård received his doctorate in 1967 with the dissertation Recent Finnish Loanwords in Jukkasjärvi Lappish.
After Hansegård, Olavi Korhonen became professor of Sami in Umeå. He had defended a doctoral thesis on terminology in 1982: Samisk-finska båttermer och ortnamnselement och deras slaviska bakgrund 'Sami-Finnish boat terminology and its Slavic origin'. Another field of activity of Korhonen was Sami lexicography .
Another Swedish linguist was Tryggve Sköld (1922–2012), who, like Collinder, was originally a Nordist. His best-known work deals with the criteria of the urnordian loanwords in Lappish (1961).
As in the rest of the Nordic countries, the last decades of the twentieth century produced several Sami linguists who explored their own mother tongues. After Ruong, in Sweden these are Elina Helander , Mikael Svonni and Susanna Angéus Kuoljok . Helander did his PhD in sociology of language with the thesis Om trespråkighet. En undersökning av språkvalet hos samerna i Övre Soppero 'on trilingualism. An examination of the Sami's language choice in Övre Soppero '(1988). Svonni's doctoral thesis was on the sociology of language and sociolinguistics : Samiska skolbarns samiska. En undersökning av minoritetsspråksbehärskning i en språkbyteskontext 'The Sami Sami schoolchildren. A study of minority language proficiency in the context of language change '(1993). Kuoljok's dissertation is structurally grammatical: Nominalavledningar på "ahka" i lulesamiskan ' Nominal derivatives on ahka in Lulesamischen ' (1997).
21st century
Bo Wickman's successor at the chair in Uppsala was Lars-Gunnar Larsson from 1982 , who held this position until 2014. Larsson's doctoral thesis examines the partitive and ablative cases in Baltic Finnish and Mordovian . Larsson later did research mainly on Sami and published both historical and dialectological works.
In 2003 Mikael Svonni succeeded Olavi Korhonen as professor of Sami in Umeå. Since his move to Tromsø University in 2008, the chair has been vacant. Another linguist in Umeå and Sami lecturer is the umesami Mikael Vinka. He received his PhD in 2002 with a thesis on causativization in North Sámi .
Larsson's successor in Uppsala has been the Finnougrist Rogier Blokland since 2014 , who researches South and Kolasami but also specializes in Baltic Finnish and Permian languages. Another Sami linguist at the Institute for Finno-Ugric Studies in Uppsala is the lecturer Torbjörn Söder. He received his doctorate in 2001 with the thesis "Walk this way" verbs of motion in three Finno-Ugric languages.
Compared to neighboring countries, Sami linguistics in Sweden now occupies an intermediate position. The general comparative Finn-Ugric studies is somewhat stronger than in Norway, where the interest in Sami dominates within the Finn-Ugric studies. Just like in Norway - but in contrast to Finland - researchers today manage at least to a certain extent to break away from the purely historical perspective.
See also
literature
- Korhonen, Olavi. 2005. Saami Studies: Sweden, in: The Saami: a cultural encyclopaedia , Helsinki, pp. 365-370. Extended online version
- Larsson, Lars-Gunnar. 1983. Studies on the use of partitive in the Baltic Finnish languages (= Studia Uralica et Altaica Upsaliensia 15). Uppsala
- Pulkkinen, Risto. 2005. Lappology, in: The Saami: a cultural encyclopaedia , Helsinki, pp. 189-191.
- Söder, Torbjörn. 2001. "Walk this way" verbs of motion in three Finno-Ugric languages (= Studia Uralica Upsaliensia 33). Uppsala
- Vinka, Erling Mikael. 2002. Causativization in North Sámi. Dissertation. McGill University. Montreal Electronic Resource
Web links
- History of research in Uppsala (in Swedish)
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Umeå writes professorship for Sami from" Sameradion & SVT Sápmi from August 25, 2014 (in Swedish)
- ↑ Mikael Vinka's website at Umeå University (in English / Swedish)
- ↑ Personnel page at the Finno-Ugric Department ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (in English / Swedish)
