About these pages
Trond Trosterud
The common factor uniting these articles is that they are all more or less related to the languages in the northern parts of Eurasia, with a focus on the Uralic languages. Several of the languages will still be relevant for other language families, and every now and then some general articles will pop up.
As a linguist I am interested in the border area between theoretically possible and impossible grammars, thus my research is part of a programme investigating the generative properties of grammar. I have been writing about binding theory, and on inflection in the border area between morphology and syntax. As regards the question of the relation between the two I have the last couple of years reached a modular view on grammar. I write mainly on Scandinavian and on Uralic, and several of the articles also deal with language contact between the two groups.
The goal is to make IT support endangered languages rather than destroy the linguistic pluralism of this planet. In order to achieve that, we need standardised character sets that contain all the letters that are needed in order to write the languages of the world, and we need keyboard layouts in order to produce them. These things do not come by themselves (apart from for the few languages where it is possible to earn good money on such products), and there are more than enough peoples around that see it as a positive thing that IT contributes to the firm grip English has on all other languages of the world. Through working a.o. in The European Committee for Multilingual Information Infrastructure and in The Sámi Committee for Computer Standardization I try to contribute to creating an information technology on our own premises. The articles tell more about the background for and results of this work.
The articles from the Soviet Union deal with the backgreound for and concequences of what has perhaps been the best minority language policy in the world.
In this connection I would like to draw the attention to one of the treasures of this collection: For one month in the autumn of 1993 I sat and punched in Soviet census data. Here you can find data condering mother tongue, second language and ethnical self-identification for all citizens of the Soviet Union, with ten-years intervals (1939, -59, -70, -79 and -89). Feel free to use them, but send me a note on what you used them for, and mention me in a footnote. [now online!! :-) ]
The articles from Norway and Finland discuss different aspects of language struggle, often linked to aspects concerning both countries.
Some of the articles deal with topics related to research policy, or are suggestions to action programmes for the strengthening of endangered languages.
Here I haver collected some articles on Estonian and other languages. As a matter of fact they were quite favourably recieved when they were published.
Here you will find material relevant to the occasional courses I give at the university.
Here you will find pages related to the same topics that I have written about, but also sites practising what I write about, such as research institutions and software producers.
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Trond Trosterud