Who are modern speakers of indigenous languages of the Arctic, and how their ancestors interacted with each other in the past? How such language contacts have influenced indigenous and colonial languages of the Arctic? How the linguistic history of the region can inform its general history?
These are some of the questions our Research group on circumpolar languages at the Institute of Linguistics RAS is working on. The main focus of our current research is human history of the Arctic through a linguistic lens. We are particularly interested in incorporating linguistic methods and knowledge into an interdisciplinary conversation with genetics and archeology.
This Research group started back in 2017, and until 2021 was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under the auspices of the project ‘Dynamics of language contacts in the circumpolar region’ realised at the Institute of Linguistics RAS.