Larisa Leisiö

I am a professor of Russian language at the University of Eastern Finland. My research interests include language contacts, Samoyedic languages, and non-standard varieties of Russian including colloquial Russian, Russian in contact with Finno-Ugric languages, and language use in media. My approach to language is typological and usage-based. I studied Russian-Finnish contact in the speech of Finland Russians, in particular code switching, word order in possessive noun phrases, gender integration of Finnish nouns, and the case of the direct object. I traced the impact of Northern Baltic Finnic influence in Old East Slavic and Old Russian.  I am a specialist in Samoyedic (<Uralic) languages, in particular Nganasan. I conducted field work with Forest Finns in Sweden, Finland Russians, Inari Sámi, Estonian Old Believers, as well as Northern Samoyeds in Siberia: Nganasans, Forest Enets, Forest Nenets, and Tundra Nenets.