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Riho Grünthal

University of Helsinki, Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, Faculty Member

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Academia edu includes just a part of my activities. More about my publications, conference papers and other activities can be found at the research portal of the University of Helsinki:https://tuhat.helsinki.fi/portal/en/persons-current/search.html
Phone: +358 2941 40001
Address: Finno-Ugrian languages and cultures
P. O. Box 24 (Unioninkatu 40)
FI 00014 University of Helsinki

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Papers by Riho Grünthal

Юбилей Н. Г. Зайцевой [N. G. Zaitseva 75]

Linguistica Uralica, 2021

Suomalais-ugrilaiset kielet ja kulttuurit: Valintakoemateriaali 2017

Vepsän kel': ELDIA lühetud raport (tegondsatuz)

What happens in language loss?

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, 2020

Besprechung Kehayov, Petar. 2017. The fate of mood and modality in language death. Berlin: Walter... more

Itämerensuomalaisten kielten erilaisuus ja samuus

Virittäjä 108 (2004): 1, 2004

Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread: Supplements

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Mar 11, 2022

Tiit-Rein Viitso 1938–2022

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen

Syncretism in the Central Veps Local Case System

Linguistica Uralica, 2010

Syncretism and the overlapping of morphologically distinct units or entire categories have differ... more Syncretism and the overlapping of morphologically distinct units or entire categories have different influence on morphologically complex and less complex forms. In principle, both syncretism and polysemy corrupt the ideal distribution of morphological units and the balance between form and function. However, compared to polysemy, the influence of syncretism is more dramatic because it decreases the efficiency and grammatical applicability of individual forms, whereas polysemy extends the functional capacity of inflectional categories. In Veps, there is relatively little syncretism in synchronic case paradigms. Both noun and verb inflection are based on regular suffixal morphology. Unlike in the southern Finnic languages, such as Vote, Estonian and Livonian, syncretism does not influence the most frequent case categories in Veps. There are certain lexical types that display morphonological alternation but there are no inflectional categories that would be distinguished by means of flexive morphology and stem alternation. However, in certain cases syncretism extends beyond those categories that are predictable as there are some examples of accidental inflectional homonymy between the partitive singular and nominative plural. More generally speaking, the historical development of the Veps local case system is strongly affected by syncretism. This article focuses on syncretism in the western varieties of Central Veps, which are slightly different from the other local varieties of the given language area. Those categories that are affected by syncretism will be examined in the light of paradigmatic overlapping and syntactic compensation. The assessment of syncretism from a functional perspective is based on the assumption that paradigmatic identity between distinct categories is not always realized at a syntactic level.

Language sociological trends in South African Ndebele communities : A pilot survey

This article presents the results of a 2016 language sociological survey focusing on the language... more This article presents the results of a 2016 language sociological survey focusing on the language choices and practices of two different Ndebele-speaking communities in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, the two northeastern provinces of South Africa. The survey shows the prevailing dynamics in these multilingual environments, in both the private and public spheres. One of the main differences between the investigated groups is that in Mpumalanga, Ndebele is the dominating language in its surroundings, whereas in Limpopo, the local Ndebele variety is in the position of a minority language. From the perspective of daily practices and attitudes, Northern Sotho often dominates in this particular case. The different perceptions of the implementation of language policies, and the attitudes of individual speakers with respect to private and public use of the two Ndebele variants, suggest that further research is needed in order to shed more light on the language sociological status of Limpopo Ndebele in particular. The survey consisted of a pilot sample of three different groups: 1) speakers of the Mpumalanga Ndebele variety, which corresponds to isiNdebele and has official status in South Africa; 2) the significantly divergent Limpopo Ndebele, which does not have any official status; and 3) a control group sample from Mokopane town. 1 We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the numerous people who gave their time to respond to the questionnaire and helped us with collecting the data. We are especially grateful to our local research assistants and coordinators

Partitiivin muotokuva

Virittäjä: Kotikielen Seuran aikakauslehti, Dec 18, 2020

Vanhimmat uralilaiset postpositiot kielen muutoksen ilmentäjinä

Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne, Aug 2, 2020

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-destructive imaging method, where a physical body ... more Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-destructive imaging method, where a physical body is probed with electric measurements at the boundary, and information about the internal conductivity is extracted from the data. The enclosure method of Ikehata [J. Inv. Ill-Posed Prob. 8(2000)] recovers the convex hull of an inclusion of unknown conductivity embedded in known background conductivity. Practical implementations of the enclosure method are based on least-squares (LS) tting of lines to noise-robust values of the so-called indicator function. It is shown how a convolutional neural network instead of LS tting improves the accuracy of the enclosure method signi cantly while retaining interpretability.

Finnic Languages and Baltic Sea Language Area

... of the Baltic Sea region include more precisely a single branch, namely Finnic consisting of ... more

Soome lingvistid eesti keele jälil

Transitivity in Erzya

Transitivity in Erzya: Second language speakers in a grammatical focus

(2) Vežava-ś anoksta-ś lamo jarsamopel. [youngest] hostess-def prepare-pst.3sg much food 'The [yo... more (2) Vežava-ś anoksta-ś lamo jarsamopel. [youngest] hostess-def prepare-pst.3sg much food 'The [youngest] hostess prepared a lot of food.' (ÈK 82) (3) Siń čokšńe-ń pert́ kavańa-st́ inže-t-ńe-ń. they evening-gen around entertain-pst.3pl guest-pl-def-gen 'They entertained the guests the whole evening.' (ÈK 83) (4) Baba-ś… kavań-i-źe topo-ń pŕaka-do. grandmother-def entertain-pst-3sg/3sg curd-gen pie-prt 'The grandmother served with cheesecake.'

[Kirja-arvostelu] Valter Lang: Läänemeresoome tulemised

Suomalais-ugrilaisten vaiettu suuri kriisi

Martti Kahla 1928–2019

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, 2020

Ёмас сымыӈ нэ̄кве во̄ртур э̄тпост самын патум

Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia, 2020

Tämä artikkelikokoelma on koottu professori Ulla-Maija Forsbergin (s. 2.8.1960) 60-vuotispäivän k... more Tämä artikkelikokoelma on koottu professori Ulla-Maija Forsbergin (s. 2.8.1960) 60-vuotispäivän kunniaksi. Teos sisältää oppilaiden ja kollegoiden tieteellisiä artikkeleita Ulla-Maija Forsbergin uraan ja tuotantoon liittyvistä aiheista. Mukaan mahtuu myös kollegoiden muisteloita uran varrelta. Tieteellisten artikkeleiden teemat kuvastavat osaltaan Forsbergin oman tuotannon laaja-alaisuutta ja monipuolisuutta: mukana on runsaasti uralilaista etymologiaa ja äännehistoriaa käsitteleviä artikkeleita, samoin muut uralilaisten kielten historia-aiheet ja useimmat uralilaiset kielet ovat edustettuina. Erityisesti Ulla-Maijalle läheisiä obinugrilaisia kieliä käsitellään eri näkökulmista: joukkoon mahtuu mm. mansin kielen äännehistoriaa, hantin murteiden vertailua, mansin uudissananoja ja hantin informaatiorakennetta. Myös Forsbergin pitkäaikainen kiinnostuksen kohde M. A. Castrénin tuotanto esittäytyy hantin kielen näkökulmasta.

Transitivizing-detransitivizing typology and language family history

Lingua Posnaniensis, 2016

The transitivizing/detransitivizing typology of Nichols et al. 2004 also proves useful to histori... more The transitivizing/detransitivizing typology of Nichols et al. 2004 also proves useful to historical linguistics. We focus on language families of northern Eurasia, chiefly the three oldest families (Indo-European, Uralic, Nakh-Daghestanian), some of their daughter branches aged about 2000-3000 years, and one younger family for which we have data on enough daughters to support a family phylogeny (Tungusic). We use the 18-pair wordlist of Nichols et al. 2004, which typologizes each pair of verbs depending on which of the two is derived. We make some improvements in the coding of grammatical properties and the typologization of pairs. NeighborNet trees based on this information reveal family-wide linguistic geography and areal trends. Adding minimal information about the cognacy or non-cognacy of the roots of the wordlist items produces Neighbor- Net trees which approximate well the known phylogeny of the family. Thus very small closed data sets, collected originally for typology, yie...

Юбилей Н. Г. Зайцевой [N. G. Zaitseva 75]

Linguistica Uralica, 2021

Suomalais-ugrilaiset kielet ja kulttuurit: Valintakoemateriaali 2017

Vepsän kel': ELDIA lühetud raport (tegondsatuz)

What happens in language loss?

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, 2020

Besprechung Kehayov, Petar. 2017. The fate of mood and modality in language death. Berlin: Walter... more

Itämerensuomalaisten kielten erilaisuus ja samuus

Virittäjä 108 (2004): 1, 2004

Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread: Supplements

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Mar 11, 2022

Tiit-Rein Viitso 1938–2022

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen

Syncretism in the Central Veps Local Case System

Linguistica Uralica, 2010

Syncretism and the overlapping of morphologically distinct units or entire categories have differ... more Syncretism and the overlapping of morphologically distinct units or entire categories have different influence on morphologically complex and less complex forms. In principle, both syncretism and polysemy corrupt the ideal distribution of morphological units and the balance between form and function. However, compared to polysemy, the influence of syncretism is more dramatic because it decreases the efficiency and grammatical applicability of individual forms, whereas polysemy extends the functional capacity of inflectional categories. In Veps, there is relatively little syncretism in synchronic case paradigms. Both noun and verb inflection are based on regular suffixal morphology. Unlike in the southern Finnic languages, such as Vote, Estonian and Livonian, syncretism does not influence the most frequent case categories in Veps. There are certain lexical types that display morphonological alternation but there are no inflectional categories that would be distinguished by means of flexive morphology and stem alternation. However, in certain cases syncretism extends beyond those categories that are predictable as there are some examples of accidental inflectional homonymy between the partitive singular and nominative plural. More generally speaking, the historical development of the Veps local case system is strongly affected by syncretism. This article focuses on syncretism in the western varieties of Central Veps, which are slightly different from the other local varieties of the given language area. Those categories that are affected by syncretism will be examined in the light of paradigmatic overlapping and syntactic compensation. The assessment of syncretism from a functional perspective is based on the assumption that paradigmatic identity between distinct categories is not always realized at a syntactic level.

Language sociological trends in South African Ndebele communities : A pilot survey

This article presents the results of a 2016 language sociological survey focusing on the language... more This article presents the results of a 2016 language sociological survey focusing on the language choices and practices of two different Ndebele-speaking communities in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, the two northeastern provinces of South Africa. The survey shows the prevailing dynamics in these multilingual environments, in both the private and public spheres. One of the main differences between the investigated groups is that in Mpumalanga, Ndebele is the dominating language in its surroundings, whereas in Limpopo, the local Ndebele variety is in the position of a minority language. From the perspective of daily practices and attitudes, Northern Sotho often dominates in this particular case. The different perceptions of the implementation of language policies, and the attitudes of individual speakers with respect to private and public use of the two Ndebele variants, suggest that further research is needed in order to shed more light on the language sociological status of Limpopo Ndebele in particular. The survey consisted of a pilot sample of three different groups: 1) speakers of the Mpumalanga Ndebele variety, which corresponds to isiNdebele and has official status in South Africa; 2) the significantly divergent Limpopo Ndebele, which does not have any official status; and 3) a control group sample from Mokopane town. 1 We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the numerous people who gave their time to respond to the questionnaire and helped us with collecting the data. We are especially grateful to our local research assistants and coordinators

Partitiivin muotokuva

Virittäjä: Kotikielen Seuran aikakauslehti, Dec 18, 2020

Vanhimmat uralilaiset postpositiot kielen muutoksen ilmentäjinä

Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne, Aug 2, 2020

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-destructive imaging method, where a physical body ... more Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-destructive imaging method, where a physical body is probed with electric measurements at the boundary, and information about the internal conductivity is extracted from the data. The enclosure method of Ikehata [J. Inv. Ill-Posed Prob. 8(2000)] recovers the convex hull of an inclusion of unknown conductivity embedded in known background conductivity. Practical implementations of the enclosure method are based on least-squares (LS) tting of lines to noise-robust values of the so-called indicator function. It is shown how a convolutional neural network instead of LS tting improves the accuracy of the enclosure method signi cantly while retaining interpretability.

Finnic Languages and Baltic Sea Language Area

... of the Baltic Sea region include more precisely a single branch, namely Finnic consisting of ... more

Soome lingvistid eesti keele jälil

Transitivity in Erzya

Transitivity in Erzya: Second language speakers in a grammatical focus

(2) Vežava-ś anoksta-ś lamo jarsamopel. [youngest] hostess-def prepare-pst.3sg much food 'The [yo... more (2) Vežava-ś anoksta-ś lamo jarsamopel. [youngest] hostess-def prepare-pst.3sg much food 'The [youngest] hostess prepared a lot of food.' (ÈK 82) (3) Siń čokšńe-ń pert́ kavańa-st́ inže-t-ńe-ń. they evening-gen around entertain-pst.3pl guest-pl-def-gen 'They entertained the guests the whole evening.' (ÈK 83) (4) Baba-ś… kavań-i-źe topo-ń pŕaka-do. grandmother-def entertain-pst-3sg/3sg curd-gen pie-prt 'The grandmother served with cheesecake.'

[Kirja-arvostelu] Valter Lang: Läänemeresoome tulemised

Suomalais-ugrilaisten vaiettu suuri kriisi

Martti Kahla 1928–2019

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, 2020

Ёмас сымыӈ нэ̄кве во̄ртур э̄тпост самын патум

Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia, 2020

Tämä artikkelikokoelma on koottu professori Ulla-Maija Forsbergin (s. 2.8.1960) 60-vuotispäivän k... more Tämä artikkelikokoelma on koottu professori Ulla-Maija Forsbergin (s. 2.8.1960) 60-vuotispäivän kunniaksi. Teos sisältää oppilaiden ja kollegoiden tieteellisiä artikkeleita Ulla-Maija Forsbergin uraan ja tuotantoon liittyvistä aiheista. Mukaan mahtuu myös kollegoiden muisteloita uran varrelta. Tieteellisten artikkeleiden teemat kuvastavat osaltaan Forsbergin oman tuotannon laaja-alaisuutta ja monipuolisuutta: mukana on runsaasti uralilaista etymologiaa ja äännehistoriaa käsitteleviä artikkeleita, samoin muut uralilaisten kielten historia-aiheet ja useimmat uralilaiset kielet ovat edustettuina. Erityisesti Ulla-Maijalle läheisiä obinugrilaisia kieliä käsitellään eri näkökulmista: joukkoon mahtuu mm. mansin kielen äännehistoriaa, hantin murteiden vertailua, mansin uudissananoja ja hantin informaatiorakennetta. Myös Forsbergin pitkäaikainen kiinnostuksen kohde M. A. Castrénin tuotanto esittäytyy hantin kielen näkökulmasta.

Transitivizing-detransitivizing typology and language family history

Lingua Posnaniensis, 2016

The transitivizing/detransitivizing typology of Nichols et al. 2004 also proves useful to histori... more The transitivizing/detransitivizing typology of Nichols et al. 2004 also proves useful to historical linguistics. We focus on language families of northern Eurasia, chiefly the three oldest families (Indo-European, Uralic, Nakh-Daghestanian), some of their daughter branches aged about 2000-3000 years, and one younger family for which we have data on enough daughters to support a family phylogeny (Tungusic). We use the 18-pair wordlist of Nichols et al. 2004, which typologizes each pair of verbs depending on which of the two is derived. We make some improvements in the coding of grammatical properties and the typologization of pairs. NeighborNet trees based on this information reveal family-wide linguistic geography and areal trends. Adding minimal information about the cognacy or non-cognacy of the roots of the wordlist items produces Neighbor- Net trees which approximate well the known phylogeny of the family. Thus very small closed data sets, collected originally for typology, yie...