Typologically, in many respects Tungusic languages are 'well-behaved Altaic languages'. In phonology they exhibit vowel harmony and a phonemic vowel length. As other Altaic languages Tungusic languages are agglutinating, making use exclusively of suffixation. One specific feature of Tungusic languages is the use of an additional marker for alienable possession. Partially due to existence of the two opposed sets of possessive suffixes, personal and reflexive, Tungusic languages have developed a system of switch-reference more strictly than, say, Turkic languages.
Nominal inflection is characterized by a rich system of locative cases.
East Tungusic, as compared to North Tungusic, in general exhibits less agglutination. By contrast, in North Tungusic idioms modifiers agree, admittedly highly irregularly, with their heads in number and case. Although there are some other scholars conducting research on Turkic, Mongolian, and Korean languages, Tungusic Studies, as represented by works of leading Tungusologists such as V.I. Cincius, V.A. Avrorin, and O.P. Sunik, constitutes a traditional research priority of the department. Descriptive linguistic studies of Tungusic idioms is still one of the department's major priorities, given that many varieties of Tungusic are still poorly documented, Avrorin's two-volume Grammar of Nanai remaining the most comprehensive grammar of a Tungusic language. Petersburg Typological School.