Linguistics School Students’ Expedition to Guatemala
Elizaveta Vostokova and Alexandra Kozhukhar, students at the School of Linguistics, took part in the expedition to Guatemala in June 2016. The event was organized by the University of Maryland and was dedicated to research into the Kaqchikel Maya people. The expedition was led by Maria Polinsky, Professor of Linguistics, Omer Preminger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics, and Pedro Mateo, Assistant Research Professor at the Maryland Language Science Center. During the first two weeks of the expedition, the participants studied the Kaqchikel language, the rest of the time they spent working with native speakers.
The expedition ran from June 1 to June 30. During the first two weeks, students attended a local Kaqchikel language school organized by the volunteer organization Wuqu’ Kawoq, which provides medical support to locals. It’s office is located in Tecpán, Chimaltenango Department.
Students were hosted by local families throughout their stay. Classes were held on weekdays from 8 am to 4 pm. During and after classes the students had the opportunity to work with native speakers, also enabling them to study different dialects of Kaqchikel. On weekends the group went on excursions to lake Atitlan and Antigua, the former capital of Guatemala.
The students also visited Altiplano – the campus of Universidad del Valle de Guatemala in Sololá, where they presented findings from their field studies. They had the opportunity to discuss their research plans and to share their experiences with their Guatemalan colleagues.
After studying at the language school the expedition moved to the city of Patzún, for field studies. Most of the time, the students worked with the families they lived with. The participants studied not only Kaqchikel, but also other Guatemalan indigenous languages – K'iche’, Tz'utujil and Mam.
In their free time, the students played football, went to the market, had picnics and climbed the volcano. The HSE School of Linguistics hopes that this experience will become a tradition and that next year students of the School will participate in another expedition, continuing to make their contribution to the description of Mayan languages.
This expedition was the students’ first experience of research in the field, and therefore it plays a key role in research development for both the HSE School of Linguistics and the University of Maryland. The expedition also saw the creation of the first field station for linguistic research in Guatemala, founded by Universidad del Valle de Guatemala with the support of the University of Maryland. The participants studied and worked in international groups with researchers from a number of different countries: Brazil, Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, Guatemala and the United States.
For more information about the expedition please see the participants’ blog.
See also:
'Back in School, I Decided That I Would No Longer Suppress My Feelings'
Polina Makarova initially planned to pursue a career in programming but soon shifted her focus to theoretical linguistics. In this interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, she discusses her research on grammatical agreement in the names of professions, the importance of emotional intelligence, and the benefits of keeping an eublepharid, or leopard gecko, as a pet.
'Language Surrounds Us at All Times'
The most likely place to find Anton Buzanov is at the HSE building on Staraya Basmannaya Ulitsa, where the researcher spends nearly all his time. In his interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, he recounts his experience of leading a field expedition to Sami communities, shares his affection for teenage television shows, and observes that engaging solely in activities that bring joy can prevent burnout.
HSE University-Developed Linguatest System Launched in Nizhny Novgorod
Linguatest, Russia’s first foreign-language certification system, has been launched in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The system was developed by specialists from HSE University in cooperation with the National Accreditation Agency and the Prosveshchenie group of companies, who are providing certification and publishing support for the project. Nizhny Novgorod is the first city after Moscow to offer testing under the system.
'The Applied Linguistics Programme Allowed Me to Try Something I Was Interested in While Continuing What I Am Passionate About'
Austin Garrett-Sites, from the US, is a master's student of the Applied Linguistics and Text Analytics programme in Nizhny Novgorod. Students from around the world to come to Russia to get a European education in English with viable employment prospects. Austin spoke about his impressions after the first year of study and his favourite places in Nizhny Novgorod.
What’s It Like to Work as a Computer Linguist
The IT industry is rapidly developing and incorporating new professions. Zoya Mazunina and Arina Mosyagina, linguists with Seldon and graduates of the HSE University Fundamental and Applied Linguistics programme, met with university applicants to talk about the computer linguist profession, issues of automatic language processing, and how linguists use the knowledge they gain at HSE University.
Towards Finding Practical Solutions to Socially Significant Healthcare Problems
The Centre for Language and Brain in Nizhny Novgorod started operations in September 2020. Today, it is comprised of a team of linguists - teachers and students - who are researching the relations between speech and parts of the brain. The Director of the Centre, Natalya E. Gronskaya, spoke to the HSE Look about how the neuro-linguistic laboratory appeared in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as current tasks and prospects the Centre can offer the students and the region.
Predicting Grammatical Properties of Words Helps Us Read Faster
Psycholinguists from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain found that when reading, people are not only able to predict specific words, but also words’ grammatical properties, which helps them to read faster. Researchers have also discovered that predictability of words and grammatical features can be successfully modelled with the use of neural networks. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Weaving Languages Together: Why Megacities Need to Preserve Multilingualism
Moscow, like any modern big city, attracts migrants from different regions and countries. Some of them speak very little or no Russian. Their adaptation and successful integration depend in part on how fast they can learn Russian and in part on whether the city makes an effort to accommodate other languages. According to linguist Mira Bergelson, this latter factor is particularly important if the city is to benefit from immigration.
‘Reading’ with Aphasia Is Easier than ‘Running’
Neurolinguists from HSE University have confirmed experimentally that for people with aphasia, it is easier to retrieve verbs describing situations with several participants (such as ‘someone is doing something’), although such verbs give rise to more grammar difficulties. The results of the study have been published in Aphasiology.
‘We Have Not Yet Fully Understood How Languages Work, and We Are Already Losing 90% of Their Diversity’
Why might a grandmother and her grandson not understand each other? Why would linguists want to go to Dagestan? Is it possible to save the less commonly spoken languages of small nations and Russian dialects? Nina Dobrushina, Head of the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory answered these questions in an interview with HSE News Service.