Jóhanna Barðdal

Principal Investigator

Professor
Dept. of Linguistics
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent
Belgium
ph: + 32 9 264 38 00
cell: +32 478 646775
johanna.barddal at ugent.be

Education and Academic Qualifications

  • Research Associate Professor, Ghent University (Oct. 2013–Sept. 2018)
  • Research Associate Professor, University of Bergen (April 2008–Sept 2013)
  • Acting Associate Professor, University of Bergen (July–Dec. 2006)
  • Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley (July–Dec. 2005)
  • Docent “Degree” in Scandinavian Linguistics (comparable to Habilitation in Europe or Associate Professor competence in USA), Lund University (March 2004)
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Linguistics, University of Bergen (July 2003–2008)
  • Externally-Funded Researcher, Lund University (2002–2003)
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, University of North Texas (2001–2002)
  • Ph.D. Degree in Scandinavian Linguistics, Lund University (Sept. 2001)
  • Visiting Research Fellow, University of Manchester (2000–2001)
  • Lecturer in Icelandic, Lund University (1993–2000)
  • M.A. Studies in Icelandic Linguistics, University of Iceland (1992–1993)
  • B.A. Degree in Icelandic and German, University of Iceland (Feb. 1992)

Projects and Grants

  • “Language Productivity at Work” (with Peter Lauwers, Timothy Colleman, Renata Enghels, Robert Hartsuiker, Miriam Taverniers, Ludovic De Cuypere, Alice Foucart & Anne-Sophie Ghyselen), Concerted Research Action Grant, Ghent University Research Fund (2019–2024)
  • “Non-Canonical Subject Marking in Germanic Vernaculars”, Starting Grant, Ghent University Research Fund (2016–2021)
  • “Non-Canonical Subject Marking in Romanian: A Synchronic and Diachronic Account” (with Marleen van Peteghem), Research Grant, Research Foundation – Flanders (2016–2019)
  • “EVALISA (The EVolution of case, ALIgnment and argument Structure in Indo-European)”, Consolidator Grant, European Research Council (2013–2018)
  • “The Emergence of Non-Canonical Case Marking,” Research Grant, Norwegian Research Council (2011–2015)
  • “Contrastive Linguistics: Constructional and Functional Approaches”, coordinated by Ghent University, Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) (2011–2015 Invited Member)
  • “Leipzig Valency Classes Project”, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig, DFG (2010–2012 Invited Member)
  • “Indo-European Case and Argument Structure Constructions in a Typological Perspective,” funded by the Bergen Research Foundation and the University of Bergen (2008–2012)
  • Visiting Scholar Grant for 2005 (full six-months’ stipend), Faculty of Arts, University of Bergen (2004)
  • Postdoctoral Project “Syntactic Productivity”, funded by the University of Bergen (2003–2008)
  • “The Semantics of the Oblique Subject Construction in Scandinavian, funded by Birgit och Gad Rausings Stiftelse för humanistisk forskning, Stiftelsen Lars Hiertas Minne, Helge Ax:ons Johnsons stiftelse and the Crafoord Foundation (2002–2003)
  • “The Case of Subjects with Impersonal Verbs in Insular Scandinavian”, funded by the British Academy and directed by Thórhallur Eythórsson (2001)
  • “Focus Structure, Word Order and Thematic Structure”, funded by NOS-H [Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities], (with Jorunn Hetland, Norway, Lars Heltoft, Denmark, Marja Järventausta, Finland, and Valéria Molnár, Sweden) (1995–2000)
  • PhD Project “Case in Icelandic”, funded by RANNÍS (Iceland), Lund University, and STINT (Sweden), including minor grants from the Crafoord Foundation, Helge Ax:ons Johnsons stiftelse, and Gunvor and Josef Anérs stiftelse (1997–2001)

Professional Assignments

  • Panel Member of the Research Foundation – Flanders (2019–2021)
  • Member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Historical Linguistics (2015–2021)
  • External Advisory Board Member of the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin (2011–)
  • Vice President of the Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition (2011–2015)
  • Panel Member at Nordforsk: Co-ordinating and Funding Nordic Research: Advisory Body on Nordic Research Policy (2009–2011)
  • Coordinator of the Norwegian PhD Research School in Linguistics and Philology, UiB (2006–2007)
  • Coordinator of the PhD Research School in Linguistics and Philology, UiB (2004–2007)
  • Consulting specialist at the Swedish National Encyclopaedia, Nationalencyclopedien, Bra Böcker Publisher (1997–2000)
  • Coordinator of the Icelandic program, Lund University (1993–2000)

Plenary / KeyNote Talks

  • TBA. Plenary talk at the 27th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL-27) in Santiago, Chile (August 2025)
  • TBA. Plenary talk at the 7th International Seminar on Innovation and Insights in Language Education and Research at Pattimura University, Ambon, Indonesia (November 2024)
  • Alternating Dat-Nom/Nom-Dat constructions, Subjecthood, and the Extended Intransitive Hypothesis. Plenary talk at Amazónicas 9 in Bogotá, Columbia (June 2023)
  • From Motion to Success? Plenary talk at “NAMED 2021: De/constructing motion events” in Paris (July 2021)
  • How to Succeed in Germanic and Indo-European without even Trying? Plenary talk at “Language Change in English and Beyond: Linguistic Theory and Historical Corpora” in Athens (March 2019)
  • Subject Status of Oblique Subjects in the Early Indo-European Languages. Plenary talk at the 23rd International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics in Thessaloniki (April 2017)
  • Diachronic Construction Grammar and its Challenges. Keynote lecture at the Belgian Journal of Linguistics’ Festive Reception at the Royal Library of Belgium (Dec. 2016)
  • To Be or Not to Be an Oblique Subject—That Is the Question. Plenary talk given at the 47th Poznan Linguistic Meeting, Poznan, September 2016
  • To Be or Not to Be an Oblique Subject—That Is the Question. Plenary talk given at the workshop “Forty Years after Keenan 1976: Subject Properties and Subject Tests, September 2016
  • The Rise and Decay of Non-Nominative Subjects. Plenary talk given at the workshop “The Development of Argument-Marking Systems”, Nijmegen, March–April, 2016.
  • How Do Grammaticalization and Diachronic Construction Grammar Overlap? Plenary talk given at Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar, Gothenburg, October, 2015
  • Dative Subjects in Germanic: A computational analysis of lexical semantic verb classes across time and space. Plenary talk at the 4th International Conference on Meaning Construction, Meaning Interpretation: Applications and Implications, Logroño, October, 2014
  • When is a Nominative an Object? Plenary talk at the 16th International Morphology Meeting in Budapest, Hungary, 29 May – 1 June, 2014
  • The Story of ‘Woe’. Plenary talk at “Contrastive Linguistics and Diachrony”, Ghent, 27–28 February, 2014
  • Bottom-up and Top-down Approaches to Subjecthood. Plenary talk at the SKY conference: “Subject: Cognitive, Typological and Functional Approaches”, Helsinki, 12–14 September, 2013
  • Reconstructing Constructional Semantics: The Dative Subject Construction in Old Norse-Icelandic, Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Russian and Old Lithuanian. Plenary talk at the CRISCO conference: “Non-Canonical Predicative Relations”, Caen, 8–9 November, 2012
  • The Origin of Oblique Subjects in Indo-European. Invited Keynote Presentation at an Invited Symposium on Historical Linguistics, Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Pittsburgh, PA, 6–9 January, 2011
  • Formgerðarfall og orðasafnsfall: Stenst sú tvískipting? [Structural Case and Lexical Case: Does this Dichotomy Hold?]. Keynote talk presented at Hugvísindaþing: Workshop on “Íslensk fallaflóra: Ólík föll og fræðikenningar”, Reykjavík, 5–6 March, 2010
  • Reconstructing Syntax: Construction Grammar and the Comparative Method. Plenary talk presented at Fifth International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG-5), Austin, TX, 26–28 September, 2008

Invited Talk SERIES

  • Reconstructing Syntax (five talks, co-taught with Spike Gildea): The Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of Oregon, July 2025
  • Non-Canonical Subject Marking and Alignment Change in Indo-European Languages (six talks): The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, January 2020
  • Construction Grammar and Syntactic Reconstruction (four talks): Verona University, September 2016
  • Construction Grammar (three talks): University of Pavia & University of Bergamo, October 2015
  • Construction Grammar (two talks): University of Rioja, Logroño, October, 2014
  • Syntactic Reconstruction (three talks): Charles University, Prague, 22–24 October, 2013
  • Constructional and Usage-Based Approaches to Historical Linguistics (four talks): Leiden Winter School, January 2013
  • Construction Grammar and Case Marking (four talks): University of the Faroe Islands, 22–25 October, 2012

Series Editorship

Journal Editorship

Guest EditorSHIP in Journals

  • Guest editor of Transactions of the Philological Society: (2012) “Variation and Change in Argument Realization”, with M. Cennamo & E.v. Gelderen
  • Guest editor of Morphology: (2011) “Empirical Approaches to Morphological Case”, with Cathryn Donohue

Editorial Boards

  • Functions of Language, John Benjamins (2017–)
  • Nordic Journal of Linguistics, Cambridge (2011–)
  • Bergen Language and Linguistic Studies, University of Bergen (2010–)
  • Oslo Studies in Language, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo (2007–)
  • Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði [Icelandic Language and General Linguistics], Icelandic Ling. Association (2003–)

Specialization

  • Icelandic
  • Comparative Research on Scandinavian and Germanic Linguistics
  • Historical Comparative Indo-European Syntax
  • Syntactic Reconstruction
  • Historical Linguistics
  • Diachronic Construction Grammar
  • Productivity
  • Morphological Case
  • Argument Structure
  • Verbal Semantics
  • Grammatical Relations
  • Non-Nominative Subjects
  • Syntactic–Semantic Correspondences
  • Construction Grammar
  • Cognitive Linguistics

CLASSES

  • The Lexicon–Syntax Interface (graduate level)
  • Comparative Germanic Historical Linguistics (intermediate level)
  • Swedish Linguistics (intermediate level)
  • Old Norse and the History of Scandinavian (graduate level)
  • Constructional and Usage-Based Approaches to Historical Linguistics (graduate level)
  • Syntactic Reconstruction (intermediate / graduate level)
  • Oral Presentation Skills (graduate level)
  • The Research Process and its Presentation Techniques (graduate level)
  • Syntax (graduate level)
  • Modern Theories of Grammar and Semantics (intermediate level)
  • Bibliography and Research Methods (intermediate / graduate level)
  • Principles of Linguistics (intermediate level)
  • Introduction to Language Study (undergraduate level)
  • West Nordic (undergraduate level)
  • Icelandic (undergraduate / intermediate level)
  • Danish (undergraduate / intermediate level)

PUBLICATIONS

Full Publication List is Downloadable HERE