Languages

Nenets belongs to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family. It is spoken from the Kanin Peninsula in Europe to the Taimyr Peninsula in north-west Siberia, including the autonomous regions of Yamal-Nenets and Chanty-Mansi.

Ulchian (Ultscha, Ulcha, ISO-code ulc) belongs to the Tungusic language family and is spoken by fewer than 150 people in the Amur region (Ulchski Rajon, Khabarovsk region, Russia). As part of the INEL project, we are preparing an Ulcha corpus that includes both earlier published texts and more recent field recordings.

Ket is the only surviving language of the Yenisei language family. It is characterised in particular by the use of lexical tones and an extremely complex verb morphology, including incorporation.

Kalmyk is a Central Mongolian variety of Mongolic languages. This group includes Standard Mongolian (Khalkha), Buryat, Khamnigan, Khorchin, Ordos, and Oirat/Kalmyk.

The Nganasans are the most northern inhabitants of the Eurasian area. The INEL Nganasan Corpus builds on the Nganasan Spoken Language Corpus (NSLC), which was created in 2014-2016. In addition to supplementing and expanding the dataset, the Nganasan sub-project is harmonising glosses and annotations with regard to the conventions and standards of the INEL project.

Kamas belonged to the Southern Samoyedic group of Samoyedic languages, which represent one of the two main branches of the Uralic languages. In the INEL project, various Kamas materials were collated and processed. These are already published texts, which have been digitised, glossed and annotated, as well as materials from archives in Helsinki and Tartu.

This INEL corpus Tavda Mansi fills a gap in the documentation of the indigenous languages of northern Eurasia and enables further descriptions of the language. Mansi is a relatively well-described language: there are numerous descriptions and a corpus is also available, but the Tavda variety is not included in the existing corpora.

Dolgan belongs to the North Siberian group of north-eastern Turkic languages and is spoken by about 1000 people on the Taimyr Peninsula and in neighbouring areas in the far north of Siberia in Russia. In the INEL project, different materials of Dolgan were collected and processed.

Enets belongs to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic languages and is spoken on the Taimyr Peninsula. One of its closest relatives is Nenets.

Evenki belongs to the northern group of the Tungusic languages and is spoken by about 5000 people in the eastern part of Siberia. In the INEL project, resources of North Evenki (spoken on the Taimyr Peninsula and on the lower reaches of the Yenisei; Khantaysky, Ilimpiysky and Erbogachonsky dialects) and South Evenki (spoken on the middle reaches of the Yenisei; Sym dialect) are being worked on.

Selkup is the last Southern Samoyedic language still spoken, which together with the Northern Samoyedic languages make up the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic languages. In the INEL project, Angelina Kuzmina's archival materials (handwritten manuscripts, 8554 in 37 notebooks, and audio recordings, approx. 25 hours) located in Hamburg at the Institute for Finnougristics/Uralistics and in Novosibirsk are being processed, i.e. first digitised and then glossed and linguistically annotated.