Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study
Sweden
fellow
Yoko Yamazaki
2024-2025
Home institution
Stockholm University
Country of origin (home institution)
Sweden
Discipline(s)
Ancient history; Archeology and prehistory; Language sciences and linguistics
Theme(s)
Cultural Studies; Migration; Other
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Yoko Yamazaki is a researcher at the Baltic section, Stockholm University (SU), and is currently leading a project funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Traveling Voices — The diachronic development of the voice system in Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic branches from a migrational perspective.
She is a historical linguist with special interests in the Baltic languages and Indo-European comparative linguistics. Her doctoral dissertation treated a topic of Baltic historical phonology called Monosyllabic Circumflexion. The dissertation was awarded a prize for outstanding PhD theses in 2017 by Swedish Royal Academy of Letters. After completing her PhD at SU, she was awarded an International Postdoc grant from Vetenskapsrådet. With this grant, she stayed at the Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich.
Her major publications include “Diathetic problem of the Baltic ā-preterits to the simple thematic presents” in Historische Sprachforschung 134 (1), 2021, 290-311; and “Balto-Slavic accentology, schools of” in René Genis and Marc L. Greenberg (eds.) Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Leiden: Brill, First published online in 2017. She has co-edited (with Florian Sommer, Karin Stüber, and Paul Widmer) Indogermanische Morphologie in erweiterter Sicht, Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität 2022.
Research Project
Working and Eating Together – Uralic=Indo-European Contacts in the Bronze Age Working Communities
The recent advancements in archaeology and archaeogenomics are elucidating dynamic demographic movements, or migrations, since the 3rd Mill. BCE, involving Indo-European and Uralic speakers in West Eurasia. In particular, Northern and Eastern Europe saw the expansion of the Indo-European associated culture, Corded Ware Culture (ca. 2800 – 2200 BCE). Subsequently, the metallurgy and trading network called Seima-Turbino Transcultural Complex emerged (ca. 2200/1900 BCE), and rapidly spread in the wide range including Eastern Europe and Fennoscandia. This is associated to the Uralic speakers’ expansion.
Thus, Indo-European and West Uralic speaking peoples probably came into contact as the Seima-Turbino Transcultural Complex grew, engaging in trading and metallurgy labors. This is indicated by Indo-European loanwords in the Uralic languages at various chronological stages. Even the genetic evidence can be integrated in this context, too. It is reported that the admixture of Indo-European ancestries and Siberian ancestry component is found in several individuals from two of the Seima-Turbino burial sites. The Siberian ancestry is strongly associated to the Uralic speakers.
There is a Balto-Slavic word *talkā ‘a community of workers that was treated with a feast after work’, which was loaned in West Uralic. The implication of this loanword may tell us some aspects of their life in contacts, i.e., “eating and working together”. This project explores how this loanword can contribute to piece together the picture of the life of those speakers in contact.
Research Interests:
historical linguistics; Indo-European; Baltic linguistics; Uralic family; West Uralic; Finnic; Saamic; language contact; aDNA analysis; archaeology; Corded Ware Culture; Bronze Age; Seima-Turbino transcultural complex;