Project researchers Uldis Balodis (left) and Karl Pajusalu (right) with Lutsi rememberer Anna Leščinska (center).
(Photo: Renate Pajusalu; Ludza, Latvia, 2017)
Project researchers
Below are short bios of our project members, their research interests, and contact information.
Karl Pajusalu (CV) is Professor of Estonian dialectology and the History of the Estonian language at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and Docent of the Finnic languages at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has studied phonological and morphological variation of Southern Finnic and other Finno-Ugric languages, their areal contacts, language dynamics and sociolinguistics; he is an author of more than 100 publications on these research topics. Karl Pajusalu is a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences.
Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)
Contact: karl.pajusalu@ut.ee
Uldis Balodis (CV) is a Research Fellow of Finnic Languages at the University of Tartu Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics and a Researcher at the University of Latvia Livonian Institute (Rīga). His work primarily focuses on the South Estonian Lutsi language of southeastern Latvia (Latgale) and Courland Livonian. He is the author of Lutsi kiele lementar | Ludzas igauņu valodas ābece (2020), an introduction to Lutsi language, history, and the village communities were Lutsi was spoken and is currently adding English translations to the online Livonian-Estonian-Latvian Dictionary. He also studies the Native languages of North America and is the author of Yuki Grammar with Sketches of Huchnom and Coast Yuki (2016), a reference grammar of the Yuki language of Northern California.
Affiliation(s): University of Tartu, University of Latvia
Degree: Ph.D. (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Contact: uldis.ivars.janis.balodis@ut.ee
Pire Teras (CV) works as an Associate Professor of Estonian Phonetics at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics of the University of Tartu. Her research has been related to the phonetics of the Estonian language and its dialects, as well as the Finno-Ugric languages. Currently she is interested in studying variation of pronunciation in Estonian and a prosodic change in South Estonian Leivu dialect. Together with collegues she studies acoustic characteristics of quantity in Inari Saami.
Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)
Contact: pire.teras@ut.ee
Tuuli Tuisk (CV) is a Research Fellow of the Phonetics of the Finnic Languages at the University of Tartu. Her main research interest is phonetics with a focus on the prosodic systems of the Finnic languages. Currently, she is studying the pronunciation of Livonian and analyzing it in the wider context of the languages of the Baltic Sea region. She has taught Livonian since 2008 at the University of Tartu. She has also been involved in working with the University of Tartu Archives of Estonian Dialects and Kindred Languages.
Affiliation(s): University of Tartu, University of Copenhagen, University of Latvia
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)
Contact: tuuli.tuisk@ut.ee
Janek Vaab is an MA student at the University of Tartu and researches variation in Estonian. His main research interest is South Estonian with a focus on its phonology and variation. He has done considerable fieldwork -- especially in the Võro and Seto region. For his bachelor’s thesis, he identified the locations where glottal stops occurred in different South Estonian varieties in various phonological and morphological contexts. In this project, he is primarily interested in the variation of the glottal stop and its use in different phonological and prosodic contexts.
Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Contact: janek.vaab@ut.ee