The Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and the School of Linguistics at HSE University have created corpora of the Abkhaz-Adyghe languages spoken in the Western Caucasus. The corpora serve as valuable resources for studying these languages with their unique features and demonstrate the potential for their modern use. The corpora were developed through a series of field expeditions to the Caucasus conducted by HSE University researchers and students, combined with modern linguistic processing methods and collaboration with colleagues from regional universities. In this interview with the HSE News Service, Yury Lander, Leading Research Fellow at the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and Associate Professor at the School of Linguistics, discusses the work of linguists.

From August 26–29, 2025, the largest annual linguistics conference, Societas Linguistica Europaea, took place in Bordeaux, France. Doctoral students and researchers from HSE University took part in the event. The paper ‘Lability Drift in Modern Aramaic languages’ by Elena Shvedova was highly praised by the expert community and took first place among PhD student presentations. In an interview with the HSE News Service, Elena Shvedova spoke about her research and the conference itself.

HSE University hosted a presentation of the Centre for South Arabian Studies, established under the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies at the Faculty of Humanities. The centre’s work aims to enhance the study of languages and cultures while fostering closer collaboration with scholars and universities in the Arabian Peninsula. The presentation was attended by HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov and diplomats from Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Adyghe State University has opened a laboratory of experimental linguistics. Olga Dragoy, Chief Research Fellow at the Center for Language and Brain, will be the laboratory’s academic supervisor and consultant. The laboratory will study the psycho- and neuro-linguistic mechanisms of functioning of the national languages of Russia, both on-site and during scientific expeditions.

The start of a new academic year is an excellent time to plan the next steps in your academic career. On September 1, HSE University announced the start of its annual Student Research Paper Competition (SRPC-2022). Participation is open to students of Russian and international universities and to 2022 graduates. Last year, a total of 2,196 papers were submitted to the SRPC, of which 435 were from external participants.

Researchers from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain worked with Russian doctors to address the differences between the symptoms of post-stroke aphasia and aphasia caused by glioma surgery. Post-surgery patients demonstrate moderately severe speech disorders that impact all aspects of language processing simultaneously. Understanding these differences will help doctors develop more effective therapies for speech disorders caused by surgical removal of gliomas. The results of the study were published in Brain and Language.

November 25, 2021 marked the publishing of a corpus of Soqotri folklore texts. Translated into Classical Arabic, the texts are accompanied by a brief introduction explaining the basic principles of the Soqotri writing system, which is based on the Arabic orthography. The authors of the book are Soqotri native speakers Ahmed Isa al-Daarhi, Isa Gumaan al-Daarhi, and Maysoon Mohammed Aldarhi. It was published by Maria Bulakh and Leonid Kogan under the editorship of Prof. Vitaly Naumkin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The publication was supported by the UAE Embassy in Moscow.

Researchers of the School of Philological Studies and the Laboratory for Comprehensive Interdisciplinary Projects (HSE University) have prepared a report analyzing communication between pilots and air traffic controllers, and also the barriers that can prevent pilots and controllers from understanding each other. They conducted their research as part of an HSE Big Project called ‘ Language Practices’ led by Professor Mira Bergelson.

Less than a year ago, the Faculty of Humanities at HSE University launched four large-scale projects, bringing together representatives of different disciplines from different departments and campuses of the University. Their goals, content, staffing and expected results were presented at a meeting of the Rector’s Council. Other departments have been tasked with developing their own large-scale projects, which HSE University will be able to include in its application for the ‘Priority 2030’ programme.

Digital archives and electronic versions of manuscripts are essential to the work of modern-day philologists, linguists, and literary scholars. The possibilities that digitization opens up to researchers were the focus of the second international conference of early career researchers of Russian literature. The conference had the theme of ‘Text as DATA: The Manuscript in the Digital Space’ and was hosted by the HSE Faculty of Humanities.

Using 3D-modelling, researchers of HSE and the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) have restored and deciphered an ancient literary monument of North-Eastern Ancient Rus — inscriptions about the murder of Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky written in 1175–1176 on a wall of the cathedral in Pereslavl-Zalessky. The study was published in Slověne = Словѣне. International Journal of Slavic Studies.

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.

Researchers trying to compare economic data of the USSR and capitalist countries face questions of the comprehensiveness, accessibility, and reliability of data on Soviet economic production and growth. At an online seminar hosted by the HSE University International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences, Assistant Professor Ilya Voskoboynikov (Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University) presented an overview of available approaches to studying the absolute size of the Soviet economy and its growth rates.

Daria Khlevnyuk, a postdoc fellow of the Institute and a co-founder of the PoSoCoMeS, took an active part in the conference's organization. The conference was attended by researchers of the Institute, Alisa Maksimova and Boris Stepanov.

Until four years ago there was no simple tool for linguists to mark a set of points on a map with different colors. A point corresponded to a language, and its color corresponded to a linguistic feature of the language. This inspired George Moroz, of HSE’s Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and School of Linguistics, to create a new software product that turned out to be very popular: lingtypology.

On March 12, a seminar of IGITI Centre for University Studies was held. IGITI Chief Research Fellow and Professor of History at Indiana University Ben Eklof presented a paper "Seeing Like a State? Local Governance and State-Society Relations in Provincial Russia Through the Lens of the School". See the abstract.

From a northern village to an academic article, or How many linguists do you need to describe variation in Russian dialect?

The Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and the School of Linguistics are organizing an International Summer School on Areal Linguistics and Languages of Russia.

Language Science Press has published a book on the Mehweb language, edited by Michael Daniel and Nina Dobrushina of the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and Dmitry Ganenkov of the Laboratory of Caucasian languages.

On October 15-21, the second Italy-Russia cultural exchange meeting took place at Amalfi. Devoted to art and spirituality, the event drew the participation of staff members from the HSE Faculty of Humanities. During the meeting a book on the Russian footprint in Amalfi’s history was presented.