Лъӊан уӊипāтқаҳтаӷақā иляни: Еттык! Мин’кы варкын энанэматран?
Мэт титул эл ньараспэйрэтэйэҥ…
For a recent publication, a database required me to state my current affiliation before the article could become published. Since this database did not recognize “independent/unaffiliated” as a valid affiliation, the database assigned me to the University of Nowhere. Unfortunately, this proud Institute of Highest Education neither host a linguistics department nor does it provide web space for its many employees. Because I have deliberately kept outside of social media ever since their invention, it is this page which hosts some information about my work and how to contact me.
Who I am and what I do
Since most of my regular employment (before becoming affiliated with the University of Nowhere) required thousands of hours of work in-situ with the remaining speakers/rememberers of two understudied and moribund Uralic languages and a consecutive work ex-situ on what could be gathered under such circumstances, most of my prior work focused on Forest Enets and Ume Saami. After having lost affiliation, my interest in Uralic languages and Uralic linguistics faded, because it became obvious that the discipline appeared to be uninterested in a linguist who was trained in both Uralic and general linguistics and who had focused on minor Uralic languages in obvious need of coverage.
Dummem, wohl noch immer nicht ausgestorbenem, philologischem Hochmut gegenüber aber sei es ganz ruhig gesagt, dass oberflächliche Kenntnisse zu gewinnen, wenn man die Forderungen kennt, viel schwerer und anstrengender ist, viel mehr unermüdete Wachheit des Geistes erfordert, als das bequeme Leben auf einem Gebiete. (Ernst Lewy 1913. Zur Sprache des alten Goethe. Ein Versuch über die Sprache des Einzelnen. in: ders. Kleine Schriften 1961 p. 94)
Since joining the University of Nowhere, I used the time to transfer data and observations on the other languages I had worked on into digital resources (Dolgan, Manipuri, Tuvin, Taimyr Tundra Nenets, Tundra Yukaghir) and to deepen my knowledge of other languages (e.g. Chukchi, Siberian Yupik Eskimo, Manchu, Kolyma Yukaghir, Lule Saami, South Saami).
Romanist ist nur ein äusseres Kennzeichen; des inneren Beruf nach ist man Sprachforscher – oder man ist es nicht. Einem Sprachforscher kann es nie fehlen; für eine oder die andere Ecke die ihm versperrt wird, eröffnen sich ihm hundert neue Durchgänge; äusserem oder innerem Drang folgend sattelt er nun um, vom Ägyptischen zum Keltischen oder vom Slawischen zum Athapaskischen, das heisst, er wechselt das Pferd, der Sattel bleibt der derselbe. (Spitzer, Leo 1927 (Hrsg). Hugo Schuchardt Brevier: ein Vademecum der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Zweite verbesserte Auflage. Halle an der Saale: Niemeyer. 317)
My linguistic work mainly focuses on morphosyntactic problems of indigenous and minority languages of Northern Eurasia, often including a bit of philological nagging from a functional perspective. As an empirical linguist, I subscribe to Sinclair’s slogan “Trust the Text” (Sinclair 2004), but I take special care, that “the text” can be trusted and that it reflects the norm (Coseriu 2007). If you would like to know what I am currently working on, I need to disappoint you, my philosophy concerning work-in-progress follows the saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. Even though the amount of data I could gather on Forest Enets and Ume Saami would easily occupy me for the rest of my professional life, without funding possibilities/tenure, the future of this data is as endangered as the languages themselves. The “dirty job” of making primary materials available requires time and does not produce immediate results; and this problem won’t change…
Submitted papers
Siegl, Florian. Manchu double predication V-PTCP.PERF + EXIST-PTCP.PERF revisited. (journal article).
Siegl, Florian. ‘Sein’ und ‘Haben’ im Lulesaami II. Weitere Betrachtungen unter Berücksichtigung des Idiolekts des Anta Pirak (journal article)
Papers in print ~ accepted for publication
Siegl, Florian (in print). Constructional Auxiliaries in Eurasia and beyond. Mongolica Pragensia.
Siegl, Florian (in print). Sein’ und ‘haben’ im Lulesaami – Morphosyntaktische Obskuritäten in einer Wiederausgabe ausgewählter Texte Just Qvigstads. JSFOu 100.
Siegl, Florian (accepted for publication). The Syntax of Forest Enets. In: Tamm, Anne (et al.) The Syntax of the Uralic Languages (working title). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Published
Siegl, Florian 2024. Karin Stenberg als Erzählerin: ein übersehenes Talent aus der Perspektive eines unvollendeten Korpus. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 48. 107-154.
Siegl, Florian 2023. Sekundäre depiktive und resultative Prädikation und der tschuktschische Designativ. JSFOu 99. 201-274.
Siegl, Florian 2023. Besprechung: Däbritz, Chris Lasse: Topik, Fokus und Informationsstatus: Modellierung am Material nordwestsibirischer Sprachen. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter 2021. (Language, Context and Cognition 17.) Ural Altaische Jahrbücher N. F. 29. 264-278.
Siegl, Florian 2023. Tundra Yukaghir naade(ŋ) ‘necessity’, naaduol- ‘be needed’ and naadii- ‘need’ or the fate of a “Russian borrowing”. Ural Altaische Jahrbücher N. F. 29. 79-155.
Siegl, Florian 2022. On multiverbal monoclausal predicates with *bimbi in General Funingga’s letters. Mongolica Pragensia 12(2). 7-62.
Siegl, Florian 2022. Prädikative Kasus und depiktive sekundäre Prädikation in Nordeurasien — eine Vorstudie unter Berücksichtigung der Verhältnisse im Tundrajukagirischen. In: Gusev, Valentin & Urmanchieva, Anna & Anikin, Aleksandr (eds.) Siberia et Uralica. In memoriam Eugen Helimski. Studia Uralo-Altaica 56. Szeged. University of Szeged Press. 335-357.
Siegl, Florian 2022. The Enets Languages. In: Laakso, Johanna (et al.) The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 709-753.
Siegl, Florian 2022. Die karitiven Suffixe des Waldenzischen. In: Kaheinen, Kaisla & Leisiö, Larisa & Erkkilä, Riku & Qiu, Toivo E. H. (eds). Hämeenmaalta Jamalille. Kirja Tapani Salmiselle. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston kirjasto. 315-336.
Siegl, Florian 2021. Der Partitiv im Taimyr Dolganischen. JSFOu 98. 349-398.
Siegl, Florian 2021. Die waldenzischen Possessivsuffixe aus taxonomischer und diskursorientierter Perspektive. Ural Altaische Jahrbücher N. F. 28. 44-117.
Siegl, Florian 2021. Notes on Sakha’s modal predicators naada and tustaax from a Taimyr Dolgan perspective. Studia Orientalia Electronica 9 (1). 31-65. DOI 10.23993/store.95601
Siegl, Florian 2021. Time-bounded fieldwork “ex-situ” or consultant work without unlearning another language. Studie z aplikované lingvistiky / Studies in Applied Linguistics 12 (1). 53-80.
Kapišovská, Veronika & Křivan, Jan & Pospíšil, Adam & Siegl, Florian & Ulman, Vít & Vlasák, Jonáš & Zikmundová, Veronika & Židek, Jan 2021. Zpřístupňujme svá data, ale především chraňme konzultanty: stanovisko Pražské deskriptivní lingvistiky. Naše řeč 104. 29-31.
Siegl, Florian 2020. Negation in Taimyr Dolgan. Turkic Languages 24. 233-290.
Siegl, Florian 2020. Review essay: What makes a grammar a modern grammar? Review of Mikael Svonni, Modern nordsamisk grammatik. Journal of Northern Studies 14 (2). 83-94.
Siegl, Florian 2020. Zu den Texten von Ignácz Halász aus der Gegend von Arvidsjaur – Eine dialektologische Annäherung samt kritischer Analyse. In: Bartens, Hans-Hermann & Larsson, Lars-Gunnar & Mattsson Katja & Molnár Judit & Savolainen, Tiina (Hrsg.) Kīel joug om šīld – Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Eberhard Winkler. Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica 94. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 351-379.
Siegl, Florian 2019. Nebensächlichkeiten zur Kopula leä- im Umesaami unter Berücksichtigung der Verhältnisse im Westsaami. Ural Altaische Jahrbücher N. F. 27. 93-127.
Siegl, Florian 2019. Nachbetrachtungen zum waldenzischen Interrogativmodus im nordeurasiatischen Kontext. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 43. 67-87.
Siegl, Florian 2019. naada in Dolgan – a modal predicator and its history. International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 1(2).306-347.
Siegl, Florian 2018. The Syntax and Semantics of Quantification with barı and barıta ‘all’ in Taimyr Dolgan. In Peter K. Austin & Lauren Gawne (eds). Language Documentation and Description, vol 15. London: EL Publishing. 1-35.
Siegl, Florian 2018. Reflections on Linguistic Fieldwork Within Moribund Speech Communities. Études Finno-Ougriennes 49-50. DOI: 10.4000/efo.7615
Siegl, Florian 2017. Ume Saami — the forgotten language. Études Finno-Ougriennes 48. http://efo.revues.org/7106; DOI: 10.4000/efo.7106
Siegl, Florian 2017. Tryggve Sköld och umesamiskan — intryck från en oavslutad språkdokumentation. Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 35. 252-290.
Siegl, Florian 2017. The essive-translative in the Enets languages. In: de Groot, Casper (ed). Uralic Essive and the Expression of Impermanent State. Typological Studies in Language 119. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 431-463.
Siegl, Florian 2017. The essive in South Saami. In: de Groot, Casper (ed). Uralic Essive and the Expression of Impermanent State. Typological Studies in Language 119. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 189-220.
Siegl, Florian 2016. Evidentiality in the Samoyedic Languages — a reply to Usenkova. Ural Altaische Jahrbücher N. F. 26. 190-214.
Recent presentations
All presentations of mine since 2018 took either place at PDL workshops or at the Finno-Ugric Seminar at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Germany). The topics of my PDL talks can be retrieved without much ado elsewhere on this server. The presentation from the 2020 workshop Beyond comparison – experiences and future challenges has been reworked to “Time-bounded fieldwork “ex-situ” or consultant work without unlearning another language“ in Studie z aplikované lingvistiky / Studies in Applied Linguistics 12 (1) in Prague. An expanded study based on my presentation at the 2021 workshop Converbs from a cross-linguistic perspective is now finally in print. The titles of my presentations in Göttingen (2019, 2022, 2023) on Samoyedic linguistics, Saami linguistics, gramaticography and fieldwork can be found here.
Selected older publications (linguistics only)
Beside my interests in indigenous and minority languages and functional linguistics, I did publish a number of papers on Saami history, Siberian ethnohistory, Saami and Siberian sociolinguistics and the like earlier. Since I do not continue with this kind of research (which I subsume, due to the lack of a better label, as “Arctic and Sub-Arctic Humanities”), bibliographic information is not reproduced here. Neither are shorter book reviews, popular scientific papers nor several minor papers which appeared in various Festschrift-type publications:
Siegl, Florian 2016. Eine tundranenzische Grammatik (Irina Nikolaeva: A Grammar of Tundra Nenets). Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 63. 266-282.
Siegl, Florian 2015. The structure of NPs with referential PX.2P in Northern Samoyedic. Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology 1(7). 21-31.
Siegl, Florian 2015. Negation in Forest Enets. In: Miestamo, Matti & Tamm, Anne & Wagner-Nagy, Beáta (eds.) Negation in Uralic Languages. Typological Studies in Language 108. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 45-73.
Siegl, Florian 2015. The Non-possessive Use of PX.2P in Nganasan and Dolgan – a Reappraisal. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 39. 67-100.
Siegl, Florian 2015. Three Nganasan-Evenki/Dolgan morphosyntactic parallels and their implications. Linguistica Uralica 51. 258-277.
Siegl, Florian 2014. The counterfactive mood in Forest Enets and its origin. Finnsch-Ugrische Forschungen 62. 184-206.
Siegl, Florian 2013. Materials on Forest Enets, an Indigenous Language of Northern Siberia. MSFOu 267. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Siegl, Florian 2012. More on possible Forest Enets – Ket contacts. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 3(1). 327-341.
Siegl, Florian 2011. Aspect in Forest Enets and other Siberian indigenous languages — when grammaticography and lexicography meet different metalanguages. In: Haig, Geoffrey L. J. & Nau, Nicole & Schnell, Stefan & Wegner, Claudia (eds). Documenting Endangered Languages — Achievements and Perspectives. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 240. Berlin–Boston: deGruyter. 121-149.
Siegl, Florian 2008. A note on personal pronouns in Enets and Northern Samoyedic. Linguistica Uralica 44. 119-130.
Contact
As already mentioned, I have never found the way into social media and will not change my preferences. Therefore, the most reliable way to contact me is by writing me an old-fashioned e-mail.* I reserve some two or three days for an answer:
f l o r i a n DOT s i e g l AT g m a i l DOT c o m
* I certainly welcome invitations for cooperation, especially such which would result in a paid position. For the time being aka for as long as I am working at the University of Nowhere, I do not accept any unpaid (peer) review invitations – no exceptions made!