Lars Johanson is a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. He has been instrumental in transforming the field of Turcology, which was traditionally more philologically oriented, into a linguistic discipline. Apart from his contributions to Turcology, Lars Johanson made a number of pioneering contributions to general linguistics and language typology, in particular to the typology of tense and aspect systems and the theory of language contact. In the period of 1966–2015 he published more than 300 titles, books and scholarly articles. His most important books are Aspekt im Türkischen, published in 1971, and Structural factors in Turkic language contacts, published in 2002. He has numerous publications also on Turkish literature. He was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey. He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degree in Turkic Studies at the University of Uppsala. For many years he was a Professor of Turcology at the Department of Oriental Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Currently he is an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz and a senior lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. A symposium in March 2016 celebrated his career achievements. He is the editor-in-chief of Turkic Languages.
Early life
He was born in 1936 in Köping, Sweden. In 1950–1959 he studied German and Scandinavian languages, Sanskrit and Turcology at the University of Uppsala. In 1961 he took an MA exam in German, Scandinavian languages and Slavic Languages at the same university and in 1963 in Turkic languages. In 1966 he took a doctoral degree in Turkic Languages at the University of Uppsala with a thesis "Studien zur reichstürkischen Verbalsyntax".
Professional career
In 1971, he successfully obtained his degree of 'Habilitation' at the University of Uppsala, based on his thesis '"Aspekt im Türkischen"' .
Several Festschriften have been dedicated to Lars Johanson:
1996 Berta, Árpád, Brendemoen, Bernt and Schönig, Claus Symbolae Turcologicae: Studies in honour of Lars Johanson on his sixtieth birthday 8 March
1996. Stockholm : Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
2002 Demir, Nurettin & Turan, Fikret Scholarly depth and accuracy. A festschrift to Lars Johanson. Ankara..
2010 Boeschoten, Hendrik and Rentzsch, Julian Turcology in Mainz. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz..
2011 Robbeets, Martine and Cuyckens, Robert Shared Grammaticalization. With special focus on the Transeurasian Languages. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins .
He is a member of the "Permanent International Altaistic Conference", "Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Universität Frankfurt", Honorary Member of the "Körösi Csoma-Society", Budapest , Societas Uralo-Altaica, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Uppsala and Honorary Member of the Central Eurasian Studies Society Central Eurasian Studies Society.
1971. Aspekt im Türkischen. Vorstudien zu einer Beschreibung des türkeitürkischen Aspektsystems. Studia Turcica Upsaliensia 1. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.
1979. Alttürkisch als ‘dissimilierende Sprache’. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, 1979: 3. Wiesbaden: Steiner.
1981. Pluralsuffixe im Südwesttürkischen.Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, 1981: 9. Wiesbaden: Steiner.
1991. Linguistische Beiträge zur Gesamturkologie. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
1992. Strukturelle Faktoren in türkischen Sprachkontakten. Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der J. W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 29:5. Stuttgart: Steiner.
1998. with Csató, Éva Á. The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge. Second edition 2006
2001. Discoveries on the Turkic linguistic map. Stockholm: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul.
2002. Structural factors in Turkic language contacts. London: Curzon.
2010. with Robbeets, Martine Transeurasian verbal morphology in a comparative perspective: genealogy, contact, chance. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
2012 with Robbeets, Martine Copies versus cognates in bound morphology. Leiden: Brill.
2016 with Éva Á. Csató & et al. Turks and Iranians: Interactions in Language and History. The Gunnar Jarring Memorial Program at The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.,
