General Linguistics

General Linguistics is the theoretical study of linguistic communication and the structure of human languages. Languages are explored both as mental and social phenomena. Important questions are how people acquire languages and how languages develop in a longer historical perspective. General Linguistics is primarily concerned with what is common to human languages and with general questions about how languages should be analysed and described. It thus complements specialised language subjects, which focus on individual languages or groups of related languages.

At Uppsala University, there are two profile research areas in the general linguistics section. One profile area is concerned with naturalistic and experimental studies of child and adult (second) language learners in a variety of languages, concerning the lexicon, morpho-syntax and discourse pragmatics, typically in close collaboration with scholars abroad, and with colleagues in the Scandinavian languages department. Such empirical work constitutes basic research for previously unresearched language combinations, including children at risk for language impairment, but also serves to assess and develop theories of grammar, language processing, narrative, and language acquisition theory.

The other profile area is language documentation, typology and (largely quantitative) research on patterns of distribution and change of languages and linguistic structures. The focus here is on some previously undescribed and endangered languages of the Americas, Eurasia, Africa, Papua New Guinea and South Asia. This documentation work also feeds into our research on language contact and language change, dialect/language variation and typologically oriented studies, including large-scale statistically based investigations, also allowing us to participate actively in large international collaborations.