Simon Bergqvist

Short presentation

Ph.D. in German linguistics. My research concerns German grammar, focusing on syntactic and semantic issues. In my dissertation project, defended in November 2025, I investigated the usage of the subjunctive II in contemporary spoken German.

Keywords

• semantics
• morphology
• syntax
• german
• grammar
• grapholinguistics

Biography

Research

In my dissertation project, ”Der Konjunktiv II im gesprochenen Gegenwartsdeutsch”, I investigated the usage of the subjunctive II in contemporary spoken German. The material I worked with comes from the corpus FOLK (Forschungs- und Lehrkorpus gesprochenes Deutsch) and encompasses public, institutional and private conversations from the timeframe 2009–2019. My analysis of this material showed what verbs appear in the subjunctive II, how frequent these forms are across the different domains, and what factors motivate their use.

Another interest is grapholinguistics; in a 2020 paper I investigated to what extent Saterland Frisian literary texts correspond to the orthographic rules proposed by linguists.

Teaching

In the spring of 2021 I took Uppsala University’s academic teacher training course. Since then I have taught German grammar within the courses German A and German B.

As a student I have for several semesters been active as a mentor organizing study meetings for students at the A course; this has given me experience in working with Supplemental Instruction (SI).

Cooperations and positions of trust

2022–2025 I was a member of the international Ph.D. student network at Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim.

Together with Julia Sjöberg I organized the Ph.D. student conference Grammatik im Diasystem which took place at Uppsala University in September 2024.

During 2021–2024 I was the chair of the Ph.D. student association at the Department of Modern Languages. Additionally, I was a Ph.D. student representative within the board of the Faculty of Languages during 2021–2022.

Miscellaneous

Outside of the university I am a summer tour guide at Mårbacka manor (since 2017) and have been a board member of Delblancsällskapet (the Delblanc society, 2020–2025).