Profile
I am a PhD Student in the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Helsinki. As a prerequisite for an in-depth linguistic study of the Late Latin nominal declension, I am currently constructing and annotating a 200,000 word corpus of 8th and 9th century Tuscan charters in collaboration with the Perseus Digital Library Project (Tufts University, Massachusetts). The annotation of morphosyntactic features (treebanking), will enable a large-scale quantitative analysis of otherwise invisible linguistic patterns and trends and will most probably illuminate in a fruitful manner the variation and change occurring in the Latin of the period, so crucial for the development of the Italian Romance language(s). The reduction of the Latin case system is explained nowadays not only with the erosion of the word-ending syllables but also with a partial and temporary transformation of the classical nominative/accusative case alignment into an active/stative alignment. The phenomenon is closely accompanied by the substitution of the classical synthetic system with an analytic one.
Once the corpus was completed, it was possible to engage in the morphosyntactic annotation with the help of Perseus online tools. This phase began in January 2011. Because no annotation Guidelines for substandard Latin were available, I had to introduce a substantial set of further additions and specifications to the existing LDT/IT-TB Guidelines. This task I could not have completed successfully without the help of Marco Passarotti (researcher in computational linguistics at CIRCSE at the University of Sacred Heart, Milan) with whom I also wrote an article on those additional principles (2011).
From August 2011 to July 2012, I continue my research at Villa Lante in Rome as the Wihuri Fellow of the Foundation Institutum Romanum Finlandiae (The Finnish Institute in Rome). In January 2012, I also started as a doctoral student at Langnet (the Finnish doctoral school in language studies).
Earlier history
I acquired my Master’s Degree in March 2010 at the University of Jyväskylä, where I studied for five years (2002–2007). The title of my thesis was Neutri Ravennan papyruksissa – määrällinen ja laadullinen analyysi neutrikategorian tilasta ja muutoksesta myöhäislatinalaisessa tekstikorpuksessa (The Neuter in the Ravennate Papyri – a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the state and change of the neuter category in a Late Latin corpus).
Having attended the Diplôme des Études Médiévales of the Fédération Internationale d’Instituts des Études Médiévales (FIDEM) during the academic year 2007–2008 in Rome, I studied Classical Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew and General Linguistics in Helsinki. In 2009, I contributed to the Parchment Project of the Finnish National Archives by making an inventory and revising the diplomatic data of the Archives’ charter collection. In the autumn 2009, an opportunity to translate Late Latin prose opened up, as a colloquium headed by Dr. Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner took up translating the Rule of Saint Benedict into Finnish. The book titled Pyhän Benedictuksen luostarisääntö finally came out in November 2010.
In 2006 and 2007, I worked as a research assistant at the Department of Classical and Romance Philology at the University of Jyväskylä under the supervision of Professor Outi Merisalo. I was commended the task of emending the transcriptions and preparing the collation of two manuscripts, BN fr. 1950 and Beauvais BM 21 of L’Information des princes, translated possibly by Jean Golein. I also transcribed a part of the ms. Vat. Urb. lat. 491 of the Historia Florentina by Poggio Bracciolini and collated all the text against the ms. BML Laur. 65.40.
Publications
Timo Korkiakangas, Marco Passarotti: “Challenges in Annotating Medieval Latin Charters”, in Proceedings of the ACRH Workshop, Heidelberg, January 5th, 2012. Journal of Language Technology and Computational Linguistics(JLCL) 26:2, 2011, 103–114 (NB page numbers!).
”Neutro plurale e femminile singolare: il fattore grafico nell’interpretazione delle peculiarità della declinazione tardolatina”, in Arctos 44 (Acta Philologica Fennica 2010), 133–145.
”Benedictuksen kieli ja tyyli”, in Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner and Tuija Ainonen (eds.) Pyhän Benedictuksen luostarisääntö. Basam Books: Helsinki 2010.
”Luostarisäännön käsikirjoitusten vaiheet”, in Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner and Tuija Ainonen (eds.) Pyhän Benedictuksen luostarisääntö. Basam Books: Helsinki 2010.
Translation of Proemium and chapters XXV, XXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII and LI in Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner and Tuija Ainonen (eds.) Pyhän Benedictuksen luostarisääntö. Basam Books: Helsinki 2010.
”Pergamentit järjestykseen ja esille verkkoon”, Akti 3/2009 (Bulletin of the Finnish National Archives).
”Kokeilu Uuden testamentin kreikan syntaksin tutkimiseksi”, Folium Classicum 76 (2009).
Conference papers and posters
Marco Passarotti, Timo Korkiakangas: “Challenges in Annotating Medieval Latin Charters”, poster at the Workshop on Annotation of Corpora for Research in the Humanities (ACRH), Heidelberg, 5 Jan 2012.
”L’influenza della formulaicità sull’analisi sintattica delle carte altomedievali toscane – l’intertestualità nel contesto diplomatico”, paper at the LASLA Journées ”Langues anciennes et analyse statistique: cinquante ans après – distances textuelles et intertextualités”, Rome, 20 Oct 2011. [slides]
“Challenges of the Linguistic Annotation of an Early Medieval Charter Corpus”, paper at the Digital Diplomatics 2011 Conference, Naples, 29 Sept 2011.
“Interpreting the Effects of Graphic Resemblance of Certain Inflectional Endings in Late Latin Texts: Neuter Plural and Feminine Singular”, paper at the XVI International Colloquium of Latin Linguistics, Uppsala, 10 June 2011.
”Morfosyntaksia tietokoneella: varhaiskeskiaikaisen asiakirjalatinan annotoinnin haasteita”, paper at the Department of Languages of University of Jyväskylä, 29 Apr 2011.
“How to Study the Latin of Early Medieval Tuscan Charters – the Importance of Context”, paper at Dies Mediaevales, Mikkeli, 10 Sept 2010.
”Sekakäyttöä ja sukupuolenvaihdoksia – myöhäisantiikin latinan deklinaation kehityslinjoja tilastomenetelmin tarkasteltuna”, paper at the XVIII Finnish Symposium on Late Antiquity, Tvärminne, 23 Oct 2009.