Lars Johanson


Lars Johanson was a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, who was professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. He was married to Éva Á. Csató prof. em. Uppsala University.
Johanson was 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.

Early life and Studies

Johanson was born in Köping, Sweden on 8 March 1936. In 1956–1959, 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"' .
  • 1972-1973 Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Mainz
  • 1973 Habilitation in Turcology at the University of Mainz
  • In 1981, he was appointed professor in Turcology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.
He was invited as a visiting professor to several universities and research institutes:
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 .

    Memberships

He was a member of the "Permanent International Altaistic Conference", "Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Universität Frankfurt", Honorary Member of the "Kőrösi 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.

Death

Johanson died on 24 November 2025, at the age of 89.

Awards

Between 1966 and 2022, he published about 400 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, and his recent publication, ', constitutes a monumental thousand-page survey of all the Turkic languages in their synchronic, diachronic, typological, areal and cultural dimensions.
He is Editor-in-Chief of the ' published online in 2022 by Brill. In 2022, he and Éva Á. Csató published the second revised edition of the standard reference book .
He had numerous publications on Turkish literature.
  • 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.,
  • 2021 Turkic. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/turkic/turkic/BA55DA05FCE5E798C74FF36802C5CBC2
  • 2022 The Turkic Languages 2nd revised edition. London and New York: Routledge.url=https://www.routledge.com/The-Turkic-Languages/Johanson-Csato/p/book/9781032153704
  • 2023 Code Copying. The Strength of Languages in Take-over and Carry-over Roles. Leiden: Brill. url=https://brill.com/display/title/65039
  • 2023 Aspect in the Languages of Europe Ankara: Nobel.
  • 2023 Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics Online. Leiden: Brill. url=https://brill.com/search?q1=Encyclopedia+of+Turkic+Languages+and+Linguistics+Online
  • 2024 Om min penna ägde kraften … En blick tillbaka på turkisk litteratur och kultur . Stockholm: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. ISBN 978-91-8984020-1 url=https://srii.bokorder.se/tr-TR/article/5014/om-min-penna-agde-kraften
  • 2025. with Éva Á. Csató Lingua Turcica Agemica. The Gospels of Matthew and John in Middle Azeri from 17th Century Isfahan. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-12400-3 url=https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_8496.ahtml