Jens Elmegård Rasmussen (15 March 1944 – 15 May 2013) was a Danish linguist who served as associate professor of

Indo-European Studies Indo-European studies () is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical p ...

and head of the Roots of Europe research center at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

from its initiation in 2008 until his death. He was an expert on

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

and

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

in general, especially morphophonemics, but he also published articles on the history of

Eskimo–Aleut languages The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...

and linguistic diachrony. He supported the Indo-Uralic and Eurasiatic hypotheses. Elmegård Rasmussen was the leading editor of the international scholarly journal Tocharian and Indo-European Studies (TIES) and chief editor of the book series Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European. He was married to the Danish Indo-Europeanist Birgit Anette Olsen.

Selected publications

* 1979, ''Anaptyxis, gemination and syncope in Eskimo: A diachronic study''. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Linguistic Circle. * 1989, ''Studien zur Morphophonemik der Indogermanischen Grundsprache''. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. * 1999, ''Selected Papers on Indo-European Linguistics''. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

References

* 1944 births 2013 deaths Linguists from Denmark Linguists of Indo-European languages Historical linguists {{denmark-linguist-stub