Professor Peter Svenonius Professor and Senior Researcher CASTL, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education University of Tromsø N-9037 Tromsø, NORWAY Office: E2012 (+47) 776 45408 fax: (+47) 776 45625 e-mail: peter.svenonius "alfakrøll" uit.no CV Blog I am a theoretical linguist at CASTL (the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics – A Norwegian Center of Excellence). My research covers many areas in linguistic theory, especially syntax and its interfaces with systems for morphophonological and lexical expression on the one hand and with systems for conceptual and intentional semantic meaning on the other. On the one interface, I explore the nature of ‘Spell-out’, the relationship between syntactic structures in the mind and their observable manifestation. Two recent developments in this area are the lexical insertion theory of spanning which is designed to handle words and concatenative morphology, and a phonological theory of nonconcatenative morphology (developed together with Patrik Bye) which is designed to handle the residue. The spanning theory is related to Distributed Morphology and to the Nanosyntax theory which is being developed here at CASTL. On the other interface, I have been working on the extent to which syntactic cartography can be derived from properties of the meaning systems with which syntax interfaces. One development here is a semantically informed cartography of spatial adpositions, and another is a way of limiting the amount of semantics that must be encoded in the syntactic representations (developed together with Gillian Ramchand). Spring 2012: Seminar on Categories, Tromsø. This spring I am running a graduate seminar (about eight PhD students attend, plus about another six colleagues with PhDs). The seminar explores the relationship of “narrow syntax” (NS, the bare-bones computational system responsible for syntactic structure in its abstract outlines) and semantics (CI, the conceptual-intentional systems).  First phase: Minimalist theory. Rationale for the SMT; Beyond Explanatory Adequacy, Three Factors of Language Design. Merge, Edge Features, Agree. Phases, Inheritance, the Duality of Semantics.   Second phase: Exploring the interface between NS and CI. The “Duality of Semantics”. The relationship of thematic- evental meaning to intentional- quantificational meaning, and the relationship of those to discourse packaging. Research projects Moving Right Along: A five-year project investigating expressions of direction and motion. The main focus is on adpositions, cross-linguistically. This ties in with my previous research on Germanic particles and Slavic prefixes.   Nordic Microcomparative Syntax: A five-year project investigating variation across the Scandinavian dialect continuum. The project is a Nordic Center of Excellence, in collaboration with Århus, Trondheim, Oslo, Reykjavík, Helsinki, and Lund.  Past syntax conferences in Tromsø

[Projects] [Papers][CV] [Moving Right Along] [University of Tromsø] [CASTL]

Last updated 2012