Heikki Paasonen | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 24 August 1919 54) | (aged
Other names | Russian: Генрих Иванович Паасонен |
Citizenship | Grand Duchy of Finland |
Alma mater | University of Helsinki |
Known for | Uralic and Turkic Studies |
Spouse | Mariska Paskay de Palásth |
Children | 4 including Aladár Paasonen |
Scientific career | |
Thesis | Mordvinische lautlehre (1894) |
Notable students | Ignatij Zorin |
Heikki Antinpoika Paasonen (2 January 1865 - 24 August 1919) was a Finnish linguist and ethnographer best known for his research in the linguistics and folklore of the Mokshas and the Erzyas during his two research trips to Russia. His studies include works on Chuvash, [1] Mishar Tatar, [2] Meadow Mari and Khanty [3] languages, which led to further discoveries in Finno-Ugric and Turkic studies.
Paasonen was born in Mikkeli, the son of the merchants Anders Paasonen and Fredrika Matiskainen. He became a student at the Swedish-language lyceum in Mikkeli in 1881 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1888 and worked from the following year until 1890 as a researcher with the Mokshas and Erzyas. The subject of his dissertation in 1893 was Mordvinic phonetics. [4] In 1894, Paasonen became a Doctor of Primus and Docent of Finno-Ugric Linguistics. [5] Paasonen made research trips to the Finno-Ugric peoples, including Hungary, collecting linguistic and ethnographic material. In 1902 he became the Chief Inspector of the School Board, and professor of Finno-Ugric linguistics at the University of Helsinki from 1904 to 1919. [6]
Paasonen's research and collections were published quite extensively, many of them after his death. The collection Mordwinische Volkslieder I-IV was published by Paavo Ravila from 1938 to 1947, and the dialect dictionary of Mordvinic languages based on Paasonen's materials, H. Paasonens Mordwinisches Wörterbuch [7] was edited since the 1930s and finally published in 1990 to 1996; it became the basis of lexicological research in these languages. His collections of Khanty were published as a 1926 dictionary and a series of five text collections from 1980 to 2001, edited by Kai Donner and Edith Vértes, respectively; his Mari materials in 1939 edited by Paavo Siro; his Chuvash materials in 1948 edited by E. Karahka and Martti Räsänen.
Paasonen's spouse since 1894 was Hungarian-born Mariska Paskay de Palásth. Colonel Aladár Paasonen was their son. Their other children were Maria Aranka Gizela, Arvid and Ilona Anna. [8] He died in Helsinki in 1919.
Finno-Ugric is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists such as Tapani Salminen and Ante Aikio. The three most spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, are all included in Finno-Ugric.
The Uralic languages, sometimes called the Uralian languages, are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia; other members of the Finnic languages, ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; and the Samoyedic languages, Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia.
Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic, Uraltaic, or Turanic is a linguistic convergence zone and abandoned language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic languages. It is now generally agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share a common descent: the similarities between Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing. Just as in Altaic, the internal structure of the Uralic family has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed higher-order Uralic branchings are becoming more common. The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone.
Moksha is a Mordvinic language of the Uralic family, spoken by Mokshas, with around 130,000 native speakers in 2010. Moksha is the majority language in the western part of Mordovia. Its closest relative is the Erzya language, with which it is not mutually intelligible. Moksha is also possibly closely related to the extinct Meshcherian and Muromian languages.
Nenets is a pair of closely related languages spoken in northern Russia by the Nenets people. They are often treated as being two dialects of the same language, but they are very different and mutual intelligibility is low. The languages are Tundra Nenets, which has a higher number of speakers, spoken by some 30,000 to 40,000 people in an area stretching from the Kanin Peninsula to the Yenisei River, and Forest Nenets, spoken by 1,000 to 1,500 people in the area around the Agan, Pur, Lyamin and Nadym rivers.
Indo-Uralic is a highly controversial linguistic hypothesis proposing a genealogical family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The reconstructed language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and then expanded across northern Eurasia, gradually diverging into a dialect continuum and then a language family in the process. The location of the area or Urheimat is not known, and various strongly differing proposals have been advocated, but the vicinity of the Ural Mountains is generally accepted as the most likely.
The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia.
Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nestor Setälä, a Finnish linguist; it was somewhat modified in the 1970s.
The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, which was founded in 1838.
The Finno-Permic or Finno-Permian languages, sometimes just Finnic or Fennic languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Uralic languages which comprise the Balto-Finnic languages, Sámi languages, Mordvinic languages, Mari language, Permic languages and likely a number of extinct languages. In the traditional taxonomy of the Uralic languages, Finno-Permic is estimated to have split from Finno-Ugric around 3000–2500 BC, and branched into Permic languages and Finno-Volgaic languages around 2000 BC. Nowadays the validity of the group as a taxonomical entity is being questioned, and the interrelationships of its five branches are debated with little consensus.
Uralic–Yukaghir, also known as Uralo-Yukaghir, is a highly controversial proposed language family composed of Uralic and Yukaghir.
The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split into numerous and highly divergent dialects, more accurately referred to as languages. The Ob-Ugric languages and Hungarian comprise the proposed Ugric branch of the Uralic language family.
Gustaf John Ramstedt was a Finnish diplomat, orientalist and linguist. He was also an early Finnish Esperantist, and chairman of the Esperanto-Association of Finland.
Erik Alfred Torbjörn "Björn" Collinder was a Swedish linguist who was Professor of Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala University.
The Proto-Uralic homeland is the earliest location in which the Proto-Uralic language was spoken, before its speakers dispersed geographically causing it to diverge into multiple languages. Various locations have been proposed and debated, although as of 2022 "scholarly consensus now gravitates towards a relatively recent provenance of the Uralic languages east of the Ural mountains".
Paavo Ilmari Ravila was a Finnish linguist and rector of the University of Helsinki.
Arvo Martti Oktavianus Räsänen was a Finnish linguist and turkologist. He operated as a docent of turkology at University of Helsinki from 1926 forwards, and as an additional professor of Turkic philology from 1944 to 1961.
Moksha names are the personal names among people of Moksha language and culture generally consist of a given name, a patronymic, and a family name.