Postgraduates and teaching staff members from the Institute of Linguistics and International Communications took part in the First Eurasian Congress of Linguists, which has wrapped up its work in Moscow. The event was organized following the instructions of the Government of the Russian Federation and gathered more than 500 scholars from 46 countries from around the world, including China, India, Latin American countries, the USA, European countries, African countries, the near abroad and all entities of the Russian Federation. This important event was held upon the initiative of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This congress has become a significant platform for the discussion of the current challenges and fields of research in linguistics.
Scientists from our university Olga Turbina and Olga Babina assisted in the organization of this congress: they reviewed the papers for the Computer Linguistics section and also acted as the initiators of a round table on the issues of teaching programmes in Fundamental and Applied Linguistics in Russian universities. Within the frameworks of this congress, our scholars also delivered their reports and actively participated in the discussion of the raised issues. In her report, Professor Olga Turbina covered the topic of the role and influence of language policy on the sentence syntax in the speech of native speakers. Great interest among the linguistics researchers was sparked by a "Map of Languages in Russia" project, which is being created at SUSU and provides a possibility in an interactive mode to visualize data on the spread of the minor and major languages across the territory of the Russian Federation, of which there 155 officially registered in our country as of today. Also, as part of the congress, an international postgraduate from the Institute of Linguistics and International Communications Gautam Kashyap presented the results of his research. He is studying the translation of the Russian poetry metaphors into Hindi.
The congress included eight plenary reports and eighteen parallel sections (with organized interpreting into Russian and English, and Russian and international sign languages), as well as twenty two round tables and a poster section. The participants of the sections and round tables discussed such key topics as the new achievements in research on the languages from different language families, preservation of indigenous languages, artificial intelligence in linguistic studies, interdisciplinary research on multichannel communication, and more. Participation in such a big-scale event allowed our scientists to exchange experience with the leading international experts and come up with new ideas for their own research.
Professor Olga Turbina noted:
"The Eurasian Congress is a unique platform, which provides an opportunity to bring up the results of your research for the discussion by the scientific community of linguists. Discussion of relevant topics, such as neurolinguistics, multimodal linguistics, and others, opens up new horizons for our understanding of language."
Head of the Department of Linguistics and Translation Studies Olga Babina added:
"The scale of this event stresses the importance of Linguistics as a science. The slogan of this congress is "Linguistics without Borders". It accurately explains the event's main concept. This congress has provided its participants a unique opportunity to exchange experience and opinions, and obtain the assessment and comments from linguists both from Russia and other countries.."
The participation of the SUSU scholars in such an important event opens up new possibilities for further development of linguistics in our region.