How Erzya Sees: New Research on Verbs of Visual Perception

On 28 June 2026, the Saransk-based academic journal Finno-Ugric World published its second issue of the year. Its section on cognitive and corpus linguistics includes a study by Natalia Mosina and Grigory Komissarov on the properties of visual perception verbs in Erzya, examined through the typological model of Åke Viberg (vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 159–169).

Erzya is a Finno-Ugric language spoken mainly in the Republic of Mordovia and neighbouring regions of Russia. Natalia Mosina, a professor at Ogarev Mordovia State University in Saransk and one of the most consistent researchers of Erzya verbal semantics, has spent years mapping this territory with her colleagues: verbs of auditory perception (2020), a comparison of visual perception verbs in Erzya and Finnish (2021), verbs of mental activity (2024). Grigory Komissarov is a doctoral student at the same department. The new study continues that line of work but takes a significant step further: for the first time, Erzya material is systematically tested against the internationally recognised framework of the Swedish linguist Åke Viberg, a founding figure in the typology of perception verbs.

Viberg's model sorts perception verbs along two main axes. The first is control: deliberately directing one's gaze (Erzya vanoms, 'to look') is one thing; perceiving without any act of will (nejems, 'to see') is another. The second axis is orientation towards the perceiving subject or the perceived object — a verb may describe the observer's experience or the way a thing presents itself to the eye. Working from Erzya dictionaries and national corpora, the authors compiled a comprehensive set of visual perception verbs, arranged them according to Viberg's three-part classification, and determined the type of focus for each group.

The study's central finding is that Erzya fully confirms the universality of the model: the oppositions between controlled and uncontrolled perception, and between subject- and object-oriented focus, operate clearly in the Erzya lexicon, with further differentiation within each group. In other words, the Erzya verbal system now stands alongside the languages on which perception typology has been tested so far — and displays the same internal coherence.

For Erzya, publications like this mean more than a narrow technical result. First, Erzya vocabulary is entering the material base of world linguistic typology — not as an exotic footnote, but as a fully fledged testing ground for universal models. Second, the study rests on Erzya dictionaries and corpora, a vivid demonstration that language infrastructure — lexicography and corpus resources — feeds science directly. It is precisely this kind of institution, working steadily rather than from one festive occasion to the next, that the Erzya language still lacks.

There is also a practical dimension for dictionary work. The distinction by control and orientation offers a ready-made tool for refining dictionary entries: where the boundaries run between 'to see', 'to look', 'to gaze' and 'to notice' and their Erzya counterparts, which shades of meaning definitions should record, and how to build a semantic classification of verbal vocabulary.

Valks will add the article to the project's bibliography and draw on it when reviewing the visual perception verbs in the dictionary — to sharpen semantic distinctions, refine part-of-speech and semantic labelling, and prepare related entry clusters. We will not transfer the study's conclusions into dictionary entries automatically: every revision will go through the usual editorial review. But the very fact that Erzya verbal semantics is now being described at the level of world typology is good news for everyone who works with the language.

Source: Mosina N. M., Komissarov G. M. Properties of visual perception verbs in the Erzya language in the light of Å. Viberg's typological model (in Russian) // Finno-Ugric World. 2026. Vol. 18, no. 2; table of contents of the issue.