Professor of the Department of Kazakh Linguistics Gulnar Sarseke conducted joint research with scholars from the University of Surrey

Within the framework of the implementation of the research project “Digital Humanities: Development of an Academic Corpus of Kazakh Language” – the project leader, Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Kazakh Linguistics, Gulnar Sarseke conducted scientific research with scholars from the University of Surrey, England.

Dr Gulnar Sarseke, at the invitation of the head of the Surrey Morphology Group, Professor Erich Round, conducted joint scientific research with researchers of the Surrey Morphology Group from May 11 to 19, 2026.

The Surrey Morphology Group is a linguistic research centre dedicated to the study of language diversity and its theoretical consequences. Scholars of this centre have created a digital repository of examples of language changes in 50 languages. Researchers from the Surrey Morphology Group have analysed languages ​​spoken on all continents, including fieldwork in Dagestan, Oto-Mang, Slavic, Atlantic, Papuan and Tibeto-Burmese. They have created several digital language resources and freely available typological databases covering a wide range of linguistic phenomena in many of the world’s languages. The Surrey Morphology Group also offers a unique opportunity for students wishing to undertake PhD research in theoretical morphology, typology and language documentation and description.

As part of the research visit, project leader Gulnar Sarseke met with Dr David Gyorfi, a research fellow at the center. David Gyorfi is a specialist in Turkic languages ​​and Tense-Aspect-Modality expressions. As a specialist in Turkic languages, his main research interests are in ancient and modern languages ​​such as Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek and Tatar. He investigated auxiliary verbs in Kazakh and defended his doctoral thesis.

During the meeting, Dr Gulnar Sarseke presented the Kazakh language academic corpus developed within the framework of the research project, including its annotated data. This annotated data is a valuable resource for identifying and analysing linguistic features of Kazakh academic discourse. Based on this data, Dr Gulnar Sarseke conducted joint research with Dr David Györfy on auxiliary verbs in Kazakh academic discourse. They identified auxiliary verbs used in Kazakh academic discourse and tested the use of each verb in auxiliary functions based on the annotated data. The joint research yielded a statistical overview of the use of auxiliary verbs in the corpus. The plan was to substantiate the results of the research work theoretically and publish them. The joint research work was productive and useful.

Dr Gulnar Sarseke was provided with a computer-equipped office and given access to the University of Surrey’s library and resources.

We would like to thank the head of the Surrey Morphology Group, Dr David Györfy, and the research staff team at the centre for organising the research visit and establishing a scientific partnership.