About SOUL

Over the last few years, the syntax of the Uralic languages has become an exciting field of study in linguistic theory. With its wide range of variation as well as family-specific characteristics, the Uralic family offers an abundant source of insights for theories of human language with respect to topics like word order change, contact phenomena, information structure, subordination, possession, evidentiality and more.

In 2012 Paul Kiparsky, Anders Holmberg, Balázs Surányi and Pauli Brattico founded the online journal Finno-Ugric Languages and Linguistics (FULL), which is dedicated to publishing theoretical and empirical research on the Uralic family.

A few years after launching the journal the Editors of FULL decided to cross the border between virtual and real life and organized a workshop on the syntax of the Uralic languages.

This workshop, organized by FULL, took place as part of the 12th International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies held at the University of Oulu on 17-21 August 2015 (The Syntactic Structure of Uralic Languages), together with a sister workshop titled ‘The Syntax of Samoyedic and Ob-Ugric Languages’ organized by Larisa Leisiö and Irina Nikolaeva. (The webpage of these joint events is available here: http://ssul.nytud.hu/)

Inspired by the success of the Oulu Workshops, FULL now launches a new conference series on the Syntax of Uralic Languages (SOUL). SOUL is planned to be a meeting organized biannually for linguists working on, or having an interest in, Uralic languages. We seek to provide a forum to present and discuss topical issues in syntax (and at its grammatical interfaces) in present-day or older Uralic languages, pursued from any theoretical or empirical perspective. It is our aim to advance research by fostering a productive exchange of results and ideas across different linguistic frameworks, promoting further integration and cross-fertilization of current directions of inquiry in the field.