Alexander Mankov

Senior Researcher, Section of Germanic languages

Education

In 2002 I completed a graduate programme in linguistic typology, historical and comparative lingustics at the Centre for Comparative Studies at the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). In 2004 I defended the thesis “Origin and Evolution of the Category of Gender in Indo-European Languages”. Supervisor: Prof. A.V. Dybo. Download the abstract (PDF, in Russian).

In 1999 I graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of the Russian State University for the Humanities. MA dissertation: “Morphosemantic Factors in the Development of Weak Declension Nouns in Swedish and Icelandic”. Supervisor: Prof. O.A. Smirtnitskaya.

Research interests

Underdescribed languages, field linguistics, comparative grammar of Germanic and Indo-European languages.

Fieldwork

From 2004 to 2013, I made ten trips to the village of Gammalsvenskby (Cherson region) to collect data for the description of the present-day Swedish dialect of the village.

Professional development, internships, work as an invited researcher

• 1.04.2018 — 31.03.2020: Visiting researcher, Institute of the Swedish Language, University of Gothenburg (Sweden); guest employee at the Royal Society for Swedish Culture Abroad (Sverigekontakt).
• 3‒21 September 2018: Advanced Summer School in Spoken Sanskrit at the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies, University of Leipzig. 
• 1–26 August 2016: Summer School in Spoken Sanskrit at the Department of Classical Indology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University.
• 2004–2016: 14 internships, funded by the Swedish Institute (Stockholm) to work at the Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University. Supervisors: Prof. Svante Strandberg, Prof. Staffan Fridell.
• 23 Juny — 4 July 2014: International Summer School in Language Documentation and Language Diversity, Stockholm University.
• February — April, 1997: exchange student at the Department of Swedish at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden).

Research

I am working on the description of the dialect of the village of Gammalsvenskby. This dialect is the only surviving Scandinavian dialect in the territory of the former Soviet Union. This village is located in Cherson region. It was founded in 1782 by migrants from the island of Dagö in the Baltic (current Estonian name of this island is Hiiumaa). The language of the migrants was the dialect of Dagö, one of Swedish dialects of Estonia. In the 18th century, the government of Catherine II took measures to populate New Russia (i.e. territories around the Northern Black Sea coast). The resettlement of the Swedes from Dagö was part of this process. Before the revolution of 1917, the number of Swedes was 718 persons. My first trip to the village took place in 2004. During this trip it became clear that the dialect has been preserved as a full-fledged system and requires a detailed description. During my fieldwork the number of people who could be linguistic informants was no more than 20 persons. All fluent speakers were elderly women. As the dialect is underdescribed, the main task is to collect, classify, and publish the factual material. Up to now, the following topics have been covered:  

• Present-day phonology of the dialect.
• Grammatical categories of nouns: gender, case, number, definiteness; historical processes that have determined the inflexion.
• Masculine nouns in synchrony and diachrony.
• Inflexion and word formation of nouns.
• Inflexion of adjectives, pronouns, verbs.
• Morphological changes characteristic of an endangered language with this dialect as an example.
• Slavonic loanwords.

A comprehensive dictionary of the dialect has also been prepared.

My current tasks are to publish a historical grammar of the dialect (phonology and morphology); to describe a relationship of phonology, morphology, word formation, vocabulary and syntax of the dialect of Gammalsvenskby with other Swedish dialects of Estonia; to describe Slavonic, German, Estonian influence on Swedish dialects of Estonia; to publish brief descriptions of Swedish dialects of Estonia (namely, of the dialects of Dagö, Rågöarna, Vippal, Runö, Ormsö and Nuckö) using both published and archival materials; prepare for publication unpublished archival descriptions (Nils Tiberg: the dialects of Dagö and Gammalsvenskby; Tomas Gärdström: the dialect of Ormsö, Rain Pöhl: the dialect of Lilla Rågö).

Apart from academic publications, the results of the study are described for general public in the Swedish non-fiction magazine Sverigekontakt.

Earlier, I proposed a reconstruction of the development of the Indo-European category of gender and put forward a hypothesis about the emergence in the Germanic languages of new ways of nominal classification which exist alongside the semantically empty gender classification. 

Membership in editorial boards of academic periodicals

St. Tikhon’s University Review. Series III: Philology

Awards

Award of the Swedish Academy (2015).

Science Index

Selected publications