Multilingual Facilitation Honoring the career of Jack Rueter Mika Hämäläinen, Niko Partanen and Khalid Alnajjar (eds.) Multilingual Facilitation This book has been authored for Jack Rueter in honor of his 60th birthday. Mika Hämäläinen, Niko Partanen and Khalid Alnajjar (eds.) All papers accepted to appear in this book have undergone a rigorous peer review to ensure high scientific quality. The call for papers has been open to anyone interested. We have accepted submissions in any language that Jack Rueter speaks. Hämäläinen, M., Partanen N., & Alnajjar K. (eds.) (2021) Multilingual Facilitation. University of Helsinki Library. ISBN (print) 979-871-33-6227-0 (Independently published) ISBN (electronic) 978-951-51-5025-7 (University of Helsinki Library) DOI: https://doi.org/10.31885/9789515150257 The contents of this book have been published under the CC BY 4.0 license1. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tabula Gratulatoria Jack Rueter has been in an important figure in our academic lives and we would like to congratulate him on his 60th birthday. Mika Hämäläinen, University of Helsinki Niko Partanen, University of Helsinki Khalid Alnajjar, University of Helsinki Alexandra Kellner, Valtioneuvoston kanslia Anssi Yli-Jyrä, University of Helsinki Cornelius Hasselblatt Elena Skribnik, LMU München Eric & Joel Rueter Heidi Jauhiainen, University of Helsinki Helene Sterr Henry Ivan Rueter Irma Reijonen, Kansalliskirjasto Janne Saarikivi, Helsingin yliopisto Jeremy Bradley, University of Vienna Jörg Tiedemann, University of Helsinki Joshua Wilbur, Tartu Ülikool Juha Kuokkala, Helsingin yliopisto Jukka Mettovaara, Oulun yliopisto Jussi-Pekka Hakkarainen, Kansalliskirjasto Jussi Ylikoski, University of Oulu Kaisla Kaheinen, Helsingin yliopisto Karina Lukin, University of Helsinki Larry Rueter LI Līvõd institūt Lotta Jalava, Kotimaisten kielten keskus Mans Hulden, University of Colorado Marcus & Jackie James Mari Siiroinen, Helsingin yliopisto Marja Lappalainen, M. A. Castrénin seura Markus Juutinen, Oulun yliopisto Mary Elizabeth Rueter Merja Salo, University of Helsinki Michael Rießler, University of Eastern Finland Miikka Silfverberg, University of British Columbia Nina Sokolova Olga Erina Olga Potapova Päivi Rainò (née Pimiä), Humak University of Applied Sciences Pasi Lankinen ja Vuokko Pajala, Mordvan matkaajat Paul & Jenny Rueter Paula Kokkonen Riho Grünthal, University of Helsinki Rogier Blokland, Uppsala University Sampsa Holopainen, University of Helsinki Santeri Junttila, Gripswooldin yliopisto ja Helsingin yliopisto Sidney da Silva Facundes, Universidade Federal do Pará Sirkka Saarinen, Turun yliopisto Sjur Nørstebø Moshagen, UiT The Arctic University of Norway Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura Susanna Virtanen, Helsingin yliopisto Sven-Erik Soosaar, Eesti Keele Instituut Tanja Säily, University of Helsinki Tapio Mäkeläinen ja Renate Blumberga Timo Rantakaulio, Helsingin yliopisto Tom & Toshiko Rueter Tommi A Pirinen, UiT Norgga árktalaš universitehta Tommi Jantunen, Sign Language Centre, University of Jyväskylä Tommi Jauhiainen, University of Helsinki Trond Trosterud, Giellatekno, Institutt for språk og kultur, UiT Noregs arktiske universitet William Yoro Rueter Галина Пунегова, Коми туялан шӧринысь Кыв, литература да история институт, Сыктывкар Галина Рябова Дмитрий Цыганкин Иван Рябов Йӧлгинь Цыпанов, Коми туялан шӧринысь Кыв, литература да важвылӧм институт, Сыктывкар Марина Федина Нина Агафонова Each and every one of us has contributed financially to printing this book and has received a personal printed copy. The money left over after covering the printing costs has been given to Jack Rueter as a birthday gift. A Letter from the Editors Jack Rueter’s lifelong journey of describing Uralic languages and developing computational tools for their analysis is a unique one. Over the course of his career, he has made incredibly important con- tributions to both Finno-Ugric studies and computational linguistics. Although he has devoted most of his attention to the Erzya, Moksha, Komi and Skolt Sami languages, he has also been involved in many ways in the work on other Uralic languages. His work covers, at least to some degree, almost all languages in the Uralic family. In the re- cent years, he has expanded his scope even further, to the Arawakan language Apurinã and other languages of the Amazon region. For many, this could seem like a sudden shift in focus, but in the context of Dr. Rueter’s career, we can see it as a continuation of his long- term interest in the languages of the Americas, which also connects to his earlier work on the Lushootseed language spoken in the re- gions close to in his place of birth. Dr. Rueter is one of the most altruistic and selfless people we have ever met. If one looks only at the list of his academic publications, one will reach an utterly inaccurate conclusion on the importance of his work. He has never been interested in writing academic publica- tions for egotistical reasons to advance his own career. Instead, he has dedicated his career to building resources that are far more valu- able than any purely academic research. His extensive work is the reason that several endangered languages have extensive high-quality digital dictionaries and morphological tools. These resources have a direct impact on people’s lives; without Dr. Rueter, tools we speakers of majority language take for granted, such as spell checkers and keyboards with predictive text, would be a distant dream for several endangered Uralic languages. The idea of doing research for its own sake does not fit well into Dr. Rueter’s agenda. He does research in order to understand, in order to model and, most importantly, in order to share the results with the community. In the field of linguistics and natural language processing, he truly is a pioneer in open-source sci- ence. Dr. Rueter arrived in Finland for the first time in July of 1975, when he was 14 years old. Soon after, at 17, he returned to live for one year in Järvenpää as an exchange student. In 1982, he started his academic studies in the University of Helsinki, and he has stayed on this path ever since then. Dr. Rueter defended his dissertation at the University of Helsinki in 2010. Some important parts of his career have also in- cluded teaching in Mordovia in 1997–2004. In addition, he has al- ways maintained close relations with researchers and institutions in other areas where Uralic languages are spoken, including Estonia, Latvia, Norway and the Komi Republic. Over the years he has also forged new academic relationships, most recently in Brazil. It has been a delight for us to see so many regions of the world represented in this book. Dr. Rueter has made significant contributions to several areas of lin- guistic research. The most well-known, or best associated with Dr. Rueter, are Finite-State Transducers. Their importance for research on Uralic languages is also visible in many contributions in this book, where they play a significant role. The transducers, known as FSTs, essentially form a grammatical description of a language in a pro- grammatic format. The quality and coverage of the descriptions Dr. Rueter has created are on par with any modern grammar book and should be equally highly valued. The FSTs are connected to many other endeavors in Dr. Rueter’s ca- reer, one of the most important being lexicography. Dr. Rueter played a seminal role in the creation of Mordwinisches Wörterbuch, a monumental series of lexica in the Erzya and Moksha languages. In this work, Dr. Rueter’s contribution was of a more technical nature, but in the mid-90s, his independent work as a lexicographer started to bear fruit when his Komi dictionary, Ӧшка-мӧшка ичӧт кыввор комиа-англискӧя-финскӧя, ‘Rainbow vocabulary Komi-English- Finnish', saw light and began to circulate. Though never officially published, it has been a very important tool for many students and re- searchers of the Komi language. Later, Dr. Rueter’s dictionary work continued and evolved into online lexica in the GiellaLT infrastruc- ture, ultimately rendering them openly available. In recent years, this work has developed into a larger online infrastructure with particular emphasis on how to empower language communities and nurture their participation in the dictionary editing process. One of the most recent new directions Dr. Rueter’s research has tak- en comes from the Universal Dependencies project. This project in- cludes systematically annotated materials in different languages of the world. Dr. Rueter is among the most prolific contributors in the project, at least when it comes to the number of treebanks he has con- tributed to or initiated from scratch. Dr. Rueter’s nuanced under- standing of morphosyntax and different grammatical processes has allowed him to curate numerous accurate and substantial materials that will without a doubt stand the test of time. Dr. Rueter is not one to make a show of himself, and instead of boasting about his accomplishments, he prefers to focus on the task at hand. This task of description, documentation and refinement, it seems, appears to be never ending, and it is not unusual to see Dr. Rueter contributing to collaborative projects at any moment of the day or night. What is this task, exactly, a bystander might wonder? We who participate in scientific research with Dr. Rueter have come to understand that what drives his work is not any specific task, but a vision. It is evident from his endeavors that he sees the interconnect- edness of different levels of linguistic research, and, above all, under- stands how a computational infrastructure can be created to bring these levels together. This infrastructure is not ready yet, and nor is Dr. Rueter’s work, but if it is ever realized, it will be in many ways because of his lifelong contribution, which we have come together here to celebrate. To the editors of this work, Jack has always been an insightful men- tor, but also a colleague and a close friend. Jack Rueter’s Selected Work Rueter, J., & Hämäläinen, M. (2020). FST Morphology for the Endan- gered Skolt Sami Language.