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Dr. Maria Ovsjannikova

CV

Education and academic qualifications

  • 2019 – Ph. D. in Philology, Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Ph. D. thesis “Accusative-experiencer verbs in Russian: semantic groups and syntactic properties”, pdf)
  • 2011 – M. A. in Linguistics, Department of General Linguistics, St. Petersburg State University (M. A. thesis “Semantic development of Russian locative prepositions”)
  • 2009 – B. A. in Philology, Department of General Linguistics, St. Petersburg State University (Graduate paper “Russian primary prepositions in the light of grammaticalization theory”)
E-mail: maria.ovsjannikova(at)uni-potsdam.de

Professional assignments

  • DFG-funded Postdoctoral Fellow,  Department of Slavic Linguistics, Potsdam University, project "Differential Object Marking in Christian Urmi" (since March 2025)
  • Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Slavic Linguistics, Potsdam University, project “Perception verbs in Slavic: lexicon and grammar” (February 2024 – February 2025)
  • Visiting researcher, Department of Slavic Linguistics, Potsdam University (August 2022 – January 2024)
  • Visiting researcher, Department of Linguistics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (May – July 2022)
  • Research fellow, Department of the Theory of Grammar, Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (2020–2022); previosly junior research fellow and research assistant at the same department (2009–2020)
  • assistant lecturer at St. Petersburg State University, Department of General Linguistics (2013)

Past projects (selected)

  • “The Ontology of the Stative Situations in the Models of Language: a Contrastive Analysis of Bulgarian and Russian Languages” (Russian Foundation for Basic Research / Bulgarian National Science Fund, 2021-2022, team member)
  • “Documentation of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic Spoken in Russia” (Russian Foundation for Basic Research, 2020-2022, team member)
  • “The syntax of Enets in a typological perspective” (Russian Foundation for Basic Research, 2017–2019, team member)
  • “Fieldwork on collecting spontaneous texts with the last Enets speakers” (Russian Foundation for Humanities, 2016, team leader)

Publications

Full list of publications

Published papers (selected)

  • Ovsjannikova, Maria. 2025. What it means to feel in Slavic: An exploration into the semantics of Slavic ‘feel’-verbs. Prace filologiczne 80, 231–253. https://doi.org/10.32798/pf.1796
  • Seržant, Ilja A., Berfin Aktaş, Maria Ovsjannikova & Manfred Stede. 2025. Distance-based approach reveals convergence effects in word order among the languages of the Circum-Baltic linguistic area. Studies in Language. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.24061.ser
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria. 2025. The structure of the sight domain in Slavic: Bulgarian, Polish, and Russian verbs of visual perception in a parallel corpus. Russ Linguist 49, 15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-025-09323-9
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria. 2024. Conditional converb of the verb ‘say’ as a conditional marker in Forest Enets. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 15(1). 127–153. https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2024.15.1.04
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria, & Fedor Rozhansky. 2024. Syntax of the Uralic languages: Principal features and challenges. Introduction to the special issue of ESUKA – JEFUL. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 15(1), 5-53. https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2024.15.1.01
  • Lyavdansky, Alexey, Kirill Kozhanov & Maria Ovsjannikova. 2023. A folktale in a North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic variety of Urmiya, Russia. Journal of Semitic Studies 69(1), 231–267. https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgad010
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria, & Hristina Kukova. 2023. Clausal complements of non-agentive visual perception verbs in Bulgarian and Russian. Slavia XCII (2). P. 145–169. https://doi.org/10.58377/slav.2023.2.02
  • Овсянникова, Мария, Кукова, Христина. 2022. Предикаты восприятия в болгарском и русском языках и их сентенциальные актанты [PredicatesofperceptioninBulgarianandRussianandtheirclausalcomplements]. Св. Коева, Е. Иванова, Й. Тишева, А. Циммерлинг (ред.). Онтология на ситуациите за състояние – лингвистично моделиране. Съпоставително изследване за български и руски. София: Издателство на БАН „Проф. Марин Дринов“, 458–484.
  • Овсянникова, Мария. 2022. Диатезы русских глаголов эмоций [Diathetic classes and alternations of Russian emotion verbs]. Св. Коева, Е. Иванова, Й. Тишева, А. Циммерлинг (ред.). Онтология на ситуациите за състояние – лингвистично моделиране. Съпоставително изследване за български и руски. София: Издателство на БАН „Проф. Марин Дринов“, 161–179.
  • Овсянникова, Мария. 2022. Условное деепричастие в лесном диалекте энецкого языка: корпусное исследование системы употреблений [Conditional converb in Forest Enets: a corpus study of its system of uses]. Урало-алтайские исследования 45, 106–122.
  • Овсянникова, Мария. 2022. Инструментално кодиране на Стимула и диахронното развитие на глаголите за эмоционално състояние в руски език [Instrumental encoding of the Stimulus and the diachronic development of emotional-state verbs in Russian]. Български език, Приложение / BulgarianLanguage, Supplement 69, 429–440.
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria. 2021. Oblique and nominative nominal possessors in Forest Enets. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri / Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 11(2), 57–98. https://doi.org/10.12697/jeful.2020.11.2.03
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria, Sergey Say. 2021. Stimulus encoding in constructions with past passive participles: construal and diachrony. Russian Linguistics 45(3), 283–304. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-021-09248-z
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria, & Sergey Say. 2020. The Instrumental Case in the Diachrony of Russian Reflexive Verbs of Emotion: From Cause to Content. Scando-Slavica 66. https://doi.org/10.1080/00806765.2020.1741029
  • Овсянникова, Мария. 2020. Временны́е отношения в конструкциях с возвратными глаголами мышления [Temporal relations in constructions with reflexive verbs of cognition]. Проблемы функциональной грамматики: Отношение к говорящему в семантике грамматических категорий. М.: «ИД ЯСК», 87–118.
  • Morozova Maria S., Ovsjannikova Maria A., Rusakov Alexander Yu. 2020. Albanian dialects in the light of language contact: A quantitative study of loanwords. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana 16(2), 275-305. https://doi.org/10.30842/alp2306573716210
  • Овсянникова, Мария. 2019. Синтаксическое кодирование экспериенциальных ситуаций в русском языке: сопоставление групп глаголов восприятия, мышления и эмоций [Syntactic encoding of experiential situations in Russian: a contrastive study of perception, cognition and emotion verbs]. Вопросы языкознания 6, 68–93. DOI: 10.31857/S0373658X0007547-0
  • Daniel, M., Von Waldenfels, R., Ter-Avanesova, A., Kazakova, P., Schurov, I., Gerasimenko, E., Ignatenko, D., Makhlina, E., Tsfasman, M., Verhees, S., Vinyar, A., Zhigulskaya, V., Ovsjannikova, Maria, Say, S., Dobrushina, N. 2019. Dialect loss in the Russian North: Modeling change across variables. Language Variation and Change 31(3), 353-376. doi:10.1017/S0954394519000243
  • Lyashevskaya, Olga, Maria Ovsjannikova, Dagmar Divjak & Nina Szymor. 2018. Looking for contextual cues to differentiating modal meanings: a corpus-based study. M. Kopotev, O. Lyashevskaya, A. Mustajoki (eds.). Quantitative Approaches to the Russian Language. Routledge, 51–78.
  • Ovsjannikova, Maria, & Sergey Say. 2014. Between predicative and attributive possession in Bashkir. P. Suihkonen, L. J. Whaley (eds.). On Diversity and Complexity of Languages Spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia, 175–202. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.164.06ovs

Editorial work

  • (2024) Maria Ovsjannikova & Fedor Rozhanskiy. Special Issue: Syntax of Uralic Languages 4 (SOUL-4). Selected papers from the conference. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 15(1).
  • (2017) Д. Ф. Мищенко, М. А. Овсянникова, С. А. Оскольская, С. С. Сай. Исследования по грамматике башкирского языка [Studies in Bashkir grammar]. [= ACTA LINGUISTICA PETROPOLITANA. Труды Института лингвистических исследований РАН. Т. XIII. Ч. 1.]. СПб.: Наука.
  • (2014) С. С. Сай, М. А. Овсянникова, С. А. Оскольская (ред.). Русский язык: грамматика конструкций и лексико-семантические подходы [Constructional and lexical-semantic approaches to Russian]. [= ACTA LINGUISTICA PETROPOLITANA. Труды Института лингвистических исследований РАН / Отв. ред. Н. Н. Казанский. Т. X. Ч. 2]. СПб.: Наука.