Нэж Рошан, студентка Парижского университета INALCO, рассказывает о своем участии в адыгейской экспедиции Школы лингвистики

My name is Neige Rochant and I am a master’s student in linguistics at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. In july 2015 I joined a field expedition in the Republic of Adyghea (North Caucasus) organised by linguists of the Higher School of Economics and the Russian State University for the Humanities for their students. The expedition aimed at describing a dialect of the Kabardian language. My internship was not part of any specific program. I had the chance to participate in this expedition thanks to contacts between its organisers and one of my teachers in France. It all began during my last year of undergraduate programme in Russian studies, when I took a strong interest in field linguistics and asked my teacher in language description if there were any possibilities to join an expedition. My teacher brought me into contact with one of the organisers of the expedition, and this is how I ended up being part of the project. It represented an incredible opportunity : not only was it a chance to get an insight into field research in a region that I was interested in, but, in addition, it was specifically organised for novices like me and it was an occasion for practising my Russian. During the expedition, each of us worked individually with the informants (or “consultants”) on a theme they chose and gave a presentation about the results of their research. Apart from the abundant literature about Kabardian that we had to read in preparation of the expedition, we were given few instructions about work methods, so I had to learn by doing. This experience was highly enriching and even exceeded my expectations. It made me want to pursue studies in Caucasian languages and field linguistics.