The FinDiaSyn network group

The FinDiaSyn NordForsk network group has the following members:

• Maria Vilkuna (leader), researcher PhD
• Hannele Forsberg, s enior researcher, University of Joensuu
• Markus Hamunen, PhD student, University of Helsinki
• Miia Karttunen, PhD student, University of Joensuu
• Jaakko Leino, researcher PhD, Kotus from August 1st, 2009
• Urpo Nikanne, professor, Åbo Akademi University
• Heli Pekkarinen, PhD student, University of Helsinki

The project FinDiaSyn: Regional aspects of Finnish Syntax, to be started in January 2008 and hosted by the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus), has four-year funding from the Academy of Finland.

Findiasyn has organized two field trips to Ilomantsi in Eastern Finland.

In November 2009, the project will organize a Workshop on Person, Impersonality and Verb inflection in Finnic languages and dialects.

The project investigates central syntactic phenomena in Finnish regional dialects with the aim of bridging an existing gap in the knowledge about Finnish and exploring methods for obtaining reliable data on the structural resources of spoken language. Although research on spoken interaction has always been an object of lively interest among Finnish linguists, and although the lexical, phonological and morphological features of the dialects are quite well known, not enough is known about the regional diversity of syntactic patterns.

The project focuses on central phenomena of clausal syntax such as the different functions of passive and formal (or expletive) subjects as well as different ways of making questions. These topics will be studied by two post-doctoral researchers and three senior researchers representing the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (the main site), University of Joensuu and the Åbo Academy University in Turku. In addition, two doctoral students will write their Ph.D theses in the project.

The findings of the project will contribute to the theory of natural language syntax in general and to typological and areal linguistics in particular. One aim of the project is to build a co-operating network for the scholars and research groups working on and interested in dialect syntax in Finland and to join the corresponding current
research networks in Scandinavia and other European countries.