This paper problematizes the assessment of speakers' proficiency in endangered language communities. We focus in particular on processes of lexical production and elicitation as proxies for full proficiency assessment. Among linguists, it is standard to assess a speaker's knowledge of specific lexical items in order to set a baseline for further…

Language education and schooling are important topics in post-conflict contexts. This study explores the existing situation of mother tongue education in the de facto Abkhazia. The study had the following research questions: (1) What was the ethnic composition of Abkhazia during the Soviet Union, and how Russian occupation changed it? (2) How well…

This article shows how language materiality is conceptualized through an ethnolinguistic analysis of the representation of the owl as an indication of human-bird relationships. This approach enables addressing the multiple relations between birds and speakers and their perception of the environment as these are reflected in language, folklore and…

Changing orientations to language, informed by poststructuralism and postcolonialism, challenge modernist representations of languages as bounded entities, tied to particular territories and identities (Canagarajah, 2019; Makoni and Pennycook, 2007). Viewing language as a hybrid and fluid practice, these developments question the theoretical…

Negidal is a Northern Tungusic language closely related to Evenki with two recognized dialects, Upper and Lower Negidal. This nearly extinct language used to be spoken in the Lower Amur region of the Russian Far East by people whose traditional way of life was based on fishing and hunting. While the number of remaining active speakers of Upper…

Based on econometric methods, we found that Tatar children from families with better material conditions and those who live in bigger cities are more likely to use the Russian language at home. Although Tatar seems to be well protected, thanks to local language policies after perestroika, we found some warning signs for the reformulation of public…

The present study takes an unconventional look at the challenges of bilingualism. High school students' level of the native Kalmyk language is viewed in connection to creative musical abilities (instrumental, vocal, choreographic) in the field of Kalmyk folk musical art. The vector of research is determined by the revitalization of the native…

The concept of "resilience" originated in both ecology and psychology, and refers to the propensity of a system or entity to "bounce back" from a disturbance. Recently, the concept has found increasing application within linguistics, particularly the study of endangered languages. In this context, resilience is used to describe…

The article represents structural semantic analysis of the grammatical number of nouns in the Indo-European (English, German), Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew), and Altai (Tatar, Japanese) languages. The category of number comprises numerous phenomena, including some transitive and historical aspects, which complicate and enrich the system of language.…

This volume includes two sections of the 2018 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; and (2) Language and Linguistics. Education and Educational Research includes 22 papers relating to scientific topics in the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education,…

The aim of this study was to determine the examination of the researches about the use of technology by fine arts teachers. The study was conducted according to the content and citation analysis model. In this context, Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection indexes were included. In the document scanning in the WOS environment, the keywords 'Fine…

This dissertation is focused on analyzing phonological contact between Slavic and non-Slavic languages in southeastern and northeastern Europe, with the particular goal of describing how the social context of language contact interacts with linguistic factors to shape the outcome of contact-induced change. On the basis of case studies drawn from…

Subtractive bilingualism is widespread throughout Siberia, with indigenous youth often more proficient in Russian than in their non-Russian local languages. Siberia's national schools, which are secondary schools offering instruction in local languages of Russia, provide critical institutional support for minority languages. The goal of this…

This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of seven villages above the Arctic Circle, in the region called North Calotte. The area forms a complex nexus of contested and changing multilingualism, particularly as regards to endangered indigenous Sami languages and Kven and Meankieli minority languages. Viewing LL as a discursively…

The article is devoted to linguoculturological description of woman's image in the proverbial worldview of the Dagestan languages. The analysis of proverbial expressions revealed androcentric bias of the Dagestan paroemiological worldview where woman, as a rule, appears for an object: mainly for mother, daughter, bride, and wife/mistress. The…