Johanna Laakso (born 1962 in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

) is a Finnish

linguist Linguistics is the 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. Linguis ...

and Finno-Ugrist based at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

Biography

Laakso studied Finno-Ugric languages,

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 mi ...

and general linguistics 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 ...

from 1979 to 1990, graduating with a Cand.phil. in 1985, a licentiate in 1988, and a PhD in 1990. Her doctoral thesis was on verbal

derivational morphology Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.'' It is different ...

in the Finnic languages. From 1987 onwards she worked as an assistant at the University of Helsinki, with stints as acting professor of Finnic languages in 1989-90 and acting professor of Finno-Ugric languages in 1991. In 2000 she moved to the University of Vienna to take up her current position as Professor of Finno-Ugric Studies. Laakso has been a member of the

Finnish Academy of Science and Letters The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Finnish ''Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia''; Latin ''Academia Scientiarum Fennica'') is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Fi ...

since 2006, a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2008, and an elected member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

since 2015.

Research

Laakso is a specialist in

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...

, with interests in

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

and

word formation In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word form ...

language and gender Research into the many possible relationships, intersections and tensions between language and gender is diverse. It crosses disciplinary boundaries, and, as a bare minimum, could be said to encompass work notionally housed within applied lingui ...

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

, and

minority language A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) and ...

s. In a 2016 volume, Laakso and co-authors make the case that the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

, European countries in general, and the Nordic countries in particular are failing to provide sufficient support for minority languages and their speakers, citing the cases of

Meänkieli (literally 'our language') is a group of distinct Finnish language, Finnish dialects or a Finnic languages, Finnic language spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Its status as an independent language is d ...

Kven KVEN (1520 AM, "La Voz 1520 AM & 96.3 FM") is a commercial radio station that is licensed to Port Hueneme, California and serves the Ventura County area. The station is owned by Gold Coast Broadcasting and broadcasts a Spanish-language news/tal ...

, Karelian and Estonian.Laakso, Johanna, Anneli Sarhimaa, Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark, and Reetta Toivanen. 2016. ''Towards openly multilingual policies and practices: Assessing minority language maintenance across Europe''. Multilingual Matters, p215.

Selected publications

* Laakso, Johanna. 1990. Translatiivinen verbinjohdin NE itämerensuomalaisissa kielissä (The translative verbal derivation suffix NE in the Finnic languages). PhD thesis, University of Helsinki. Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne. * Laakso, Johanna. 2001. The Finnic languages. In

Östen Dahl Östen Dahl (; born 4 November 1945 in Stockholm) is a Swedish linguist and professor best known for pioneering a marker-based approach to tense and aspect in linguistic typology. Dahl finished his PhD at the University of Gothenburg and subsequ ...

Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm is a Russian-born linguist and typologist who is Professor of General Linguistics at Stockholm University. Biography Originally from Moscow, Koptjevskaja-Tamm's interest in linguistics was stimulated when as a teenager s ...

(eds.), ''Circum-Baltic Languages'', Volume 1: ''Past and Present'', 179-212. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Laakso, Johanna. 2005. ''Our Otherness: Finno-Ugrian Approaches to Women's Studies, Or Vice Versa''. Vienna: Lit Verlag. * Laakso, Johanna. 2011. The Uralic languages. In Bernd Kortmann & Johan van der Auwera (eds.), ''The languages and linguistics of Europe: a comprehensive guide'', 179-198. Berlin: De Gruyter. * Laakso, Johanna, Anneli Sarhimaa, Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark, and Reetta Toivanen. 2016. ''Towards openly multilingual policies and practices: Assessing minority language maintenance across Europe''. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. * Bakró-Nagy, Marianne, Johanna Laakso, and Elena Skribnik (eds.). 2022. ''The Oxford Guide to the Finno-Ugric Languages''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laakso, Johanna Living people Linguists from Finland Academics of the University of Vienna Morphologists Historical linguists Finnish Finno-Ugrists Women linguists University of Helsinki alumni 1962 births