(Academic only; for non-academic topics see my extracurricular page):
This is a Nordic Center of Excellence, which is directed from Tromsø by me and managed by Øystein Alexander Vangsnes, involving the Universities of Tromsø, Reykjavík, Lund, Helsingfors, Århus, Oslo, and Trondheim and financed jointly by those seven universities and NOS (Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences. It is a five-year investigation into microcomparative variation in the syntax of the Scandinavian languages and works closely with the Scandinavian Dialect Syntax Project ScanDiaSyn, the Dutch dialect research group at Meertens, and the Italian Dialect project led by Padova (ASIS).
This is a research project into adpositions and related concepts, of which I am the leader. It is a five-year project financed by the Norwegian Research Council.
This is a Norwegian Center of Excellence which we have set up in Tromsø, and in which I am very active at all levels (organization, research, graduate education). It has funding for a ten-year period, from the University of Tromsø and the Norwegian Research Council.
Argument Structure. In Spring 2004 to Spring 2005, CASTL was the site of three interleaved advanced seminars on syntax: Tarald Taraldsen ran a seminar on nominals and nominalization, Michal Starke ran a seminar on Nanosyntax and adjectives, and I ran a seminar on Argument Structure. The Argument Structure seminar focused on the cross-linguistic properties of causative constructions, especially morphological causatives, which can be divided into two types, inner causatives and outer causatives.
CASTL Subproject, Spring-Fall 2003: Morphosyntax of Spatial and Aspectual Prefixes: Focus on Slavic
Goals In several works (Svenonius 1994, 1996a, 1996b, 2002), I have outlined a theory of the syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics of Germanic verb-particle and separable prefix constructions. Such constructions bear striking resemblances to spatial and aspectual preverbal systems cross-linguistically, for example in Hungarian (É. Kiss 1987), in various North American languages (Craig & Hale 1987 for Rama, Nadëb, and Winnebago, Ackerman & LeSourd 1996 for Fox), Australian languages (Schultze-Berndt 1996 for Jaminjung), and others.
Furthermore, the relationship of such constructions to South Asian-style light verb constructions has been explored recently by Gillian Ramchand (2002, with special reference to Bengali). In this subproject, the relationship of these constructions to the rich system of Slavic aspectual prefixes is explored in detail.
Preliminary indications suggest that the theory developed for Germanic particles can be applied to Slavic prefixes as well. In brief, it is hypothesized that a substantial subset of Slavic prefixes represents VP-internal functional material which determines argument structure. This is in accordance with Filip's (1999, 2000) analysis of the semantics of Slavic prefixes as only epiphenomenally aspectual, with Brody's (1997, 2000) and Julien's (2000, 2002) theory of morphology as obeying a very strict Mirror Principle (predicting certain verbal prefixes to be generated inside VP).
However, the existence of multiple prefix constructions is problematic, and seems to force another source for certain prefixes. This subproject quite straightforwardly furthers the goals of the broader efforts in syntax, specifically as an investigation of the structure of the verbal domain.
The research team assembled in Tromsø includes native speakers of Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Czech, and Polish, facilitating microcomparative investigations. It includes researchers with specialties in morphology, syntax, and semantics, which is important since this project stands at the interface of those domains.
Activities The plan includes intense activity in the spring: a graduate-level course on morphology taught by Øystein Nilsen, an advanced weekly seminar led by Svenonius in which recent papers on Slavic prefixes will be read; plenary lectures by senior researchers including Trosterud, Ramchand, Hankamer, and Julien; a three-day forskerutdanningskurs in morphosyntax for doctoral students, taught by a distinguished invited lecturer; and a conference on morphology in April or May.
The course is aimed mainly at the graduate students and the seminar is aimed mainly at the more advanced researchers, but all are expected to participate in both; the process should lead to a situation where by the time the forskerutdanningskurs and the conference are held in May, the students will be at a sufficiently advanced level to participate actively in the discussion. This is crucial because among them they represent five different Slavic languages, allowing an intense microcomparative investigation.
Activity on the Subproject for Fall 2003 is less intense, consisting mainly of a weekly seminar, allowing the Team to concentrate on processing findings, conducting fieldwork, and writing up the results. The Subproject is expected to result in a collection of papers published in Fall 2003, and hopefully also at least one relevant Master's thesis to be completed in Spring 2004.
Intercomprehension in Germanic Languages Online had financing from Socrates and the Universities of Tromsø, Reykjavík, Lund, Salzburg, Antwerp, Hagen, and the Copenhagen Business School. It was a three-year project led by me and dedicated to producing online materials to promote intercomprehension across the Germanic languages. It drew to a successful completion in 2002.
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Last updated October 22, 2005