Fundamental theoretical ideas of Lars Johanson in Turkic Studies

Abstract

Doctor of Sciences, Professor Lars Johanson is a recognized scholar, an outstanding organizer of scientific research. He conducts research in Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, and Turkology. His academic and pedagogical activities have developed in close interrelation, mutually enriching one another. Professor Johanson is one of the leading representatives of the European School of Typology and has made a significant contribution to the formation of Turkic linguistics as an independent scholarly discipline. The scope of his linguistic ideas and the intellectual courage with which he advances his hypothesis are embodied in the number of fundamental works. His monographs Aspekt im Turkischen (1971), Structural Factors in Turkic Language Contacts (2002) had a strong impact on the advancement of Turkic linguistics and typological studies. His research on verbal aspect in the Turkic languages gave advanced theoretical and methodological base for their typology across structurally diverse languages. The theory of verbal aspect also served as a conceptual basis for the monograph Aspect in the Languages of Europe (2023). Professor Johanson has conducted comprehensive descriptions of Turkic languages from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, taking into account comparative, typological, areal, and cultural features. A central focus of his research is evidentiality, the grammatical category marking the source of information reported by the speaker. Johanson’s theoretical framework for the study of evidentiality in Turkic languages is of particular importance. He distinguished two main semantic types of evidentiality in Turkic languages, direct and indirect, and also identified a distinct “perceptive” type. He further developed a theoretical foundation for the study of interlingual interaction. His Code Copying model represents a significant theoretical contribution to the analysis of language contact, encompassing not only lexical units but also morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic structures. This model was elaborated in the monograph Code Copying: The Strength of Languages in Take-over and Carry-over Roles (2023). Professor Johanson’s scholarly contributions to the study of verbal aspect, evidentiality, and endangered languages have become classical works in the field. His ideas and hypotheses have inspired numerous young scholars to further develop and expand his theoretical framework. Many dissertations have been completed under his supervision, addressing aspectuality in Turkic languages, the grammatical structure of endangered languages, and language contact phenomena. Professor Johanson has also played a significant role as an academic editor and research manager. For several decades, he has been the editor of the book series Turcologica, comprising more than 100 volumes. In 1997, he founded the peer-reviewed journal Turkic Languages. Under his editorship, major overview chapters of the Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics (2023) were prepared and published in electronic format. He also edited the second revised edition of the seminal work The Turkic Languages (2021).