Team

Karl Pajusalu

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 is the principal investigator of the ESTTYP project. 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 200 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 Turku)

Contact: karl.pajusalu[at]ut.ee

Helle Metslang

Helle Metslang (CV) is Professor Emerita at the University of Tartu; Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki and the University of Oulu; Member of Academia Europaea, AcademiaNet, and the Estonian Language Board. She has worked as a Professor at the University of Tartu, Tallinn University, and the University of Helsinki.  Her research interests include morphosyntax, typology, pragmatics, language dynamics, language variation, and historical sociolinguistics. She is a co-author of Estonian reference grammars as well as editor-in-chief of Eesti grammatika (Estonian Grammar) (2023) and the book series Eesti keele varamu (Estonian Language Repository).

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Oulu)

Contact: helle.metslang[at]ut.ee

Miina Norvik

Miina Norvik (CV) is an Associate Professor of Finnic languages and Language Typology at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics at the University of Tartu. Her research focuses primarily on the morphosyntactic features of the minor Finnic languages (e.g., Livonian, South Estonian, Veps, Karelian, Ludian) and their main contact languages. She is interested in the Uralic languages in general and, since 2018, has been the coordinator of the typological database of Uralic languages (UraTyp). Miina Norvik also contributes to interdisciplinary research. Currently, she is the head of the Collegium for Transdisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistics at University of Tartu. Since 2024, she is the head of scientific cooperation at the Centre of Excellence of Estonian Roots.

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)

Contact: miina.norvik[at]ut.ee

Eva Saar

Eva Saar (CV) is a research fellow in Finnic languages and the coordinator of the Centre for South-Estonian Language and Cultural Studies at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics of the University of Tartu. Her research focuses mainly on the minor Finnic languages spoken in Russia, but also on South Estonian. Her research interests include language history, phonology, morphology, and morphosyntax of the Finnic languages, as well as personal names and onomastics in general. Since 1997, she has carried out fieldwork in the Votic, Ingrian, Ludian, Veps, and Karelian language areas in Russia as well as in the Mulgi, Seto, and Võro language areas in South Estonia. She is also the compiler of the Seto-Estonian dictionary and the head of its working group.

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)

Contact: eva.saar[at]ut.ee

Pire Teras

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 colleagues she has studied acoustic characteristics of quantity in Inari Saami.

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)

Contact: pire.teras[at]ut.ee

Tuuli Tuisk

Tuuli Tuisk (CV) is a research fellow in the Phonetics of Finnic languages at the University of Tartu and a visiting researcher at the University of Latvia Livonian Institute. She defended her doctoral dissertation on Livonian word prosody at the University of Tartu Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics in 2015. Her research interests are primarily related to Livonian, especially its pronunciation, but also include phonetic features of other closely related languages (Estonian, Leivu, and Veps). In her studies, she has used an experimental phonetic approach. Since 2006, she has been involved with the phonetic corpus of spontaneous Estonian speech. She is also the administrator of the University of Tartu Archives of Estonian Dialects and Kindred Languages.

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu, University of Latvia
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)

Contact: tuuli.tuisk[at]ut.ee

Uldis Balodis

Uldis Balodis (CV) is a Research Fellow of Southern Finnic Languages and Language Typology 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 an introduction to the Lutsi language, history, and the village communities and is currently working on the English translation of the online Livonian-Estonian-Latvian Dictionary. He also studies the Native languages of North America and is the author of 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[at]ut.ee

Milda Kurpniece

Milda Kurpniece (CV) is a researcher at the University of Latvia Livonian Institute. Her main research interest is contacts between Finnic and Baltic languages, which is the reason she focuses on Livonian, as this language lies in the most intense contact area between these language families. Her dissertation focuses on the Livonian jussive in the context of the Southern Finnic and Baltic languages. She mostly focuses on the morphosyntactic aspects of Livonian and its contact languages, but also has a background in Lithuanian philology as well as an interest in other aspects of contact – such as folklore – between the speakers of these languages.

Affiliations: University of Tartu, University of Latvia
Degree: Ph.D. (University of Tartu)

Contact: milda.kurpniece[at]lu.lv

Patrick O’Rourke

Patrick O’Rourke (CV) is a doctoral student and Junior Research Fellow at the University of Tartu. His research interests include the linguistic prehistory of Livonian, historical sociolinguistics, ethnogenetic studies, and Proto-Uralic morphology. O’Rourke’s doctoral dissertation, titled ’Southwest Finnic’, focuses on the Finnic languages around the Gulf of Riga. The aim of the dissertation is to study the possibility of Livonian sharing a common proto-dialect with the Insular and Western dialects of North Estonian. In this project, O’Rourke focuses on historical contacts of Livonian, including the influence of language contacts on Livonian derivational morphology.

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: M.A.

Contact: patrick.orourke[at]ut.ee

Janek Vaab

Janek Vaab (CV) is a doctoral student and Junior Research Fellow at the University of Tartu and researches variation in South Estonian. His main research interest is Võro with a focus on its phonology and variation. He has done considerable fieldwork – especially in the Võro and Seto region. For his master’s thesis, he compared the occurrence of a glottal stop in different South Estonian varieties in various phonological and morphological contexts. In this project, he is primarily interested in the variation of laryngeals and their use in different phonological and prosodic contexts, as well as in the overall morphophonological variation in South Estonian and how it could be compared to other Finnic varieties.

Affiliation(s): University of Tartu
Degree: M.A.

Contact: janek.vaab[at]ut.ee