Fred Göran Karlsson (born February 17, 1946 in

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

) is a professor emeritus of general

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

Education and background

Karlsson's father Göran Karlsson was a prominent linguist and worked as a professor of Finnish Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi. Fred Karlsson studied

Finnish language Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedis ...

at Åbo Akademi and

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

at the

University of Turku sv, Åbo universitet , latin_name = Universitas Aboensis , image_name = University of Turku.svg , motto = ''Vapaan kansan lahja vapaalle tieteelle'' , established = 1920 , type ...

, and graduated in 1969. In 1972 he graduated in linguistics at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. Karlsson earned his Ph.D. in phonetics at the University of Turku in 1974.

Academic career

In computational linguistics Karlsson has designed a language-independent formalism called Constraint Grammar. It makes possible the automatic morphological disambiguation and syntactic analysis of ordinary running text that has been supplied with all theoretically possible morphological and syntactic interpretations. The basic original reference is Karlsson (1990) which defines Constraint Grammar. Karlsson has also worked on the history of linguistics, where his main contribution is participation in a book by Even Hovdhaugen, Fred Karlsson, Carol Henriksen, and Bengt Sigurd, ''The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries'', Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Jyväskylä 2000. Although Karlsson is a

Swedish-speaking Finn The Swedish-speaking population of Finland (whose members are called by many names; fi, suomenruotsalainen) can be used as an attribute., group=Note—see below; sv, finlandssvenskar; fi, suomenruotsalaiset) is a linguistic minority in Finl ...

, his knowledge of his second native language

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

is exceptionally good, and he is widely considered a de facto authority on the language's rules. His work on the language (e.g. ''Finnish: An Essential Grammar'', Karlsson (2004), originally published in 1983 and republished in 1999) has been used in various Finnish translations of open source projects.

Sources

External links

Official home pageKarlsson (1990)Hovdhaugen, Karlsson, Henriksen & Sigurd 2000
1946 births Living people Finnish scientists Swedish-speaking Finns Linguists from Finland Academic staff of the University of Helsinki {{finland-linguist-stub