A General Research on Eurasian Linguistic Areas - Language contact in Eurasia -

在这个研究项目中，成员们研究了欧亚大陆的语言。在这里学习的语言有突厥语、蒙古语、通古斯语、藏缅语、韩语和高加索语。使用这些语言的地区几乎覆盖了欧亚大陆的整个地区。在项目期间，成员们收集和研究了语言材料，考虑到了语言接触的情况。欧亚地区的特点是有大量的语言接触案例。在欧亚语言中，有一群语言长期共存于一个相当有限的多语种区域，有些语言受到更具压倒性的语言的威胁，有些语言是“混合”语言，还有一些“死”语言，它们的书面文本只保存在一些碎片中。欧亚大陆自古以来就是语言史的舞台，作为研究成果，我们分别发表了大量的文章或专著。在项目期满时，成员们出版了一卷收集的论文，标题为《欧亚语言区》(《欧亚语言研究》丛书第七卷)。这些文章是着眼于欧亚大陆语言领域的研究成果，在不同的层面上，历时和共时地发现了多种语言的情况。该项目的参与者进行了研究，目的是从语言的生态角度来阐明语言进化的机制：语言诞生-语言成长-语言接触-语言衰落-语言损失-语言出生。我们期待我们的研究成为进一步研究欧亚大陆语言的宝贵资源。我们已经以“欧亚大陆的语言接触和语言形成--一种新语言的形成机制--”为题启动了这一新项目。

In this research project, the members studied the languages in Eurasia. Among the languages studied here are Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Tibet-Burman, Korean and Caucasian languages. The areas in which these languages are spoken cover almost the entire area of Eurasia. In the period of the project, the members collected and researched on language materials, taking the situations of language contact into account. The Eurasian region is characterized by its abundant cases of language contact. Among Eurasian languages, there are a group of languages which coexist for a long time in a rather limited multilingual region, some languages which are threatened by the more overwhelming languages, some "mixed" languages and also some "dead" languages, whose written texts are preserved only in some fragments. Eurasia has been the stage of language history from ancient times until today.As the research results, we published a lot of articles or monographs respectively. At the end of the term of the project, the members published a volume of the collected papers under the title of Approaches Eurasian Linguistic Areas (the 7^<th> volume of the Contribution to the Studies of Eurasian Language series). The articles are outputs of research which focus on the perspective of linguistic areas in Eurasia, where multilingual situations are found on various levels diachronically and synchronically.The participants of the project conducted their research with the aim of making clear the mechanism of language evolution from the ecological aspect of languages : language birth - language growth - language contact - language decline - language loss - language birth. We expect our research to become an invaluable resource in the further studies of languages in Eurasia. We have already started the new project under the title of "Language contact and Language Formation in Eurasia - Mechanism for formation of a new language -"