Reykjavík/Akureyri

Group leader: Ásta Svavarsdóttir, associate research professor [Contact]

The Arni Magnusson Institute for Icelandic Studies/University of Iceland*

The group covers a broad range of research interests and expertise, including theoretical linguistics ― syntax, morphology, and phonology, both synchronic and diachronic ― lexical studies, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and language technology. The national projects include:

• Variation in Icelandic Syntax (lead by Höskuldur Þráinsson)
• Tagged Icelandic Corpus and Databank of Spoken Icelandic (Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, Ásta Svavarsdóttir, Þórunn Blöndal)
• Variation in 14th century Icelandic (Haraldur Bernharðsson)
• Interfaces of Metrics, Phonology and Syntax (Þórhallur Eyþórsson, Kristján Árnason)
• Viable Language Technology Beyond English ― Icelandic as a Test Case (Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson)
• Linguistic Change in Real Time (Höskuldur Þráinsson, Kristján Árnason, Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir, Matthew Whelpton, Þórhallur Eyþórsson)
• Grammatical categories and functional projections from a cross-modality perspective (Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson, Matthew Whelpton og Þórhallur Eyþórsson)
• Variation in Faroese syntax" (Höskuldur Þráinsson, Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson og Þórhallur Eyþórsson)

Furthermore, members of the group have participated in the Nordic ScanDiaSyn-, NORMS- and NLVN-networks, as well as in the project Moderne importord i språka i Norden (leader Helge Sandøy).

Group members:

Anton Karl Ingason is an MA-student at the University of Iceland. Research interests include the nature of variation and language change as well as the construction and use of annotated corpora for linguistic research. The nature and development of case is of special importance and the interaction between case variation and other phenomena, such as prosody and the organization of the lexical semantics of case.
Personal webpage.

Ásgrímur Angantýsson is a PhD-student at the University of Iceland. Main research interests are syntax and morphology and parameters determining cross-linguistic word order variation. Empirical issues include verb/adverb placement and fronting in embedded clauses in Icelandic, Faroese and Övdalian.
Personal webpage.

Ásta Svavarsdóttir is an associate research professor at The Arni Magnusson Institute for Icelandic Studies, department of lexicography. Research interests include lexical and morphological/morphosyntactic variation in connection to sociolinguistic and stylistic factors, i.e. genre differences, as well as corpus linguistics and language contact.
Personal webpage.

Einar Freyr Sigurðsson is writing his MA-thesis at the University of Iceland about the New Passive in Icelandic (and Faroese). His research interests are (morpho)syntax and corpus linguistics. He is also working on building a treebank in the project “Viable Language Technology Beyond English – Icelandic as a Test Case”, lead by Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson.
E-mail. Alternate e-mail.

Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson is a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. His main field of research is Icelandic syntax, both synchronic and diachronic, and corpus linguistics. Currently he leads the project “Viable Language Technology Beyond English – Icelandic as a Test Case” (http://iceblark.wordpress.com) which is funded by the Icelandic Research Fund. One of the main goals of that project is to develop tools for building a treebank of Icelandic, with main emphasis on the modern language but with a diachronic dimension. When the treebank has been built, it will be a powerful tool for research on both synchronic and diachronic variation in Icelandic syntax.
Personal webpage.

Finnur Friðriksson is an assistant professor at the University of Akureyri. Research interest is variation from a sociolinguistic point of view, especially social conditioning of variation through e.g. language policy and attitudes.
E-mail

Haraldur Bernharðsson is currently a research scholar at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and a regular lecturer at the University of Iceland. He specializes in Icelandic linguistics, Icelandic language history and Germanic comparative linguistics.
Personal webpage.

Hlíf Árnadóttir is an MA-student at the University of Iceland. The topic of the thesis she is working on is verb agreement and nominative objects, where the main focus is on linguistic change in Icelandic and Faroese.
E-mail

Höskuldur Þráinsson is a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. His research area is Icelandic linguistics, especially syntax but also Icelandic dialects; Faroese; comparative Scandinavian syntax and variation in syntax.
Personal webpage.

Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson is an assistant professor at the University of Iceland. His research focus is on Icelandic and Faroese syntax, especially phenomena relating to case marking and argument structure.
Personal webpage.

Kristján Árnason is a professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. His main research area is phonology, metrics and sociolinguistics.
Personal webpage.

Margrét Guðmundsdóttir is a PhD-student at the University of Iceland, working within the project "Linguistic Change in Real Time".
Personal Webpage.

Matthew Whelpton is the Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics. He received his doctorate in 1995 at the University of Oxford under the supervision of James Higginbotham and his thesis concerned the syntax and semantics of infinitives of purpose, intention and result and the implications of these constructions for the syntax-semantic interface. His most recent work is on the resultative construction in Icelandic, English and German.
He would be particularly interested in collaborating in a group working on argument structure, verb classes, constructional alternations, and/or modification. Although his own work has largely been in a broadly Principles and Parameters framework he would be happy and interested to collaborate with those working in Construction Grammar or constraint-based architectures.
Personal webpage.

Michael Schäfer is a PhD-student at the University of Freiburg. He is working on phonetic-phonological variation in connected speech. His dissertation deals with the effect that rhythm and frequency of occurrence, respectively, have on the realisation of reduced forms in Icelandic. He is interested in comparing phonetic variation / reduction phenomena in other Nordic languages, too.
E-mail. Alternate e-mail.

Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir is an associate professor of Icelandic language and linguistics at the University of Iceland. She finished her Ph.D.-thesis Binding in Icelandic: Evidence from Language Acquisition at UCLA in 1993 under the supervision of Nina Hyams. She has for example worked on the acquisition of reflexives and pronouns in Icelandic, Dutch and Faraoese; root infinitives and verb movement in the acquisition of young Icelandic children, and the syntactic and sociological aspects of the "new construction" or "new passive" in Icelandic (Younger speakers: Það var valið mig "It(EXPL) was picked me(ACC)" - older speakers: Ég var valinn "I(NOM) was picked(masc.sg.)". She is particularly interested in studying language change and its origins in language acquisition.
Personal webpage.

Sigrún Steingrímsdóttir is a MA-student at the University of Iceland.
E-mail. Alternate e-mail.

Theódóra Anna Torfadóttir is a Ph.D. student at the University of Iceland. She is working on the progressive construction “vera að” ‘be to’ + infinitive and changes in its use. The expression of ongoing events with “vera að” has been grammaticalized in the language for a long time. Now the use is extending to more state-like or general expressions (e.g. “I am (not) understanding this”; “They were playing well”). It would be interesting to see whether comparable constructions in the Scandinavian languages are extending their use in a similar way.
E-mail.

Þóra Björk Hjartardóttir is an Associate professor in Icelandic for foreign students. Her teaching areas are Icelandic grammar, phonetics and phonology. Research interests are: Interactional linguistics. Sociolinguistic variation: usage and attitudes. She has ongoing research on tag questions and follow ups (er það ekki) in authentic speech of native Icelanders.
She is member of the research group Danes in Iceland 1900 -1970. (Danskere i Island. Mödet mellem dansk og islandsk sprog og kultur 1900 -1970). Her research in the project will focus on the informants linguistic attitudes and their usages of some icelandic discourse units.
Personal webpage.

Þórhallur Eyþórsson is a researcher and a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Iceland.
Personal webpage.

Þórunn Blöndal is an associate professor at the University of Iceland, School of Education. In recent years she has mainly been working within the field of interactional linguistics, discourse analysis and teaching of the mother tongue in secondary schools.
Personal webpage.