Birgit Anette Olsen (Rasmussen) (born 2 April 1952 in

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

) is a Danish

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, professor 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. ...

and leader of the Roots of Europe research center. She is 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 derivational

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 the history of

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

. She has also published important articles on

linguistic reconstruction Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language t ...

and the history of

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, Anatolian and

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

. She was married to

Jens Elmegård Rasmussen Jens Elmegård Rasmussen (15 March 1944 – 15 May 2013) was a Danish linguist who served as associate professor of Indo-European Studies and head of the Roots of Europe research center at the University of Copenhagen from its initiation in 2008 u ...

, and her official surname is Rasmussen, but as a linguist she uses her maiden name Olsen to avoid confusion in references.

Selected publications

* 1988, ''The Proto-Indo-European Instrument Noun Suffix *-tlom and its Variants''. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. * 1992, "Latin ''-idus'' and the Indo-European Stative". In: ''Copenhagen Working Papers in Linguistics 2'', pp. 1-12. * 1999, ''The Noun in Biblical Armenian''. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. * 2004, "The Complex of Nasal Stems in Indo-European". In J. Clackson & B.A. Olsen (eds.): ''Indo-European Word Formation – Proceedings of the Conference held at the University of Copenhagen, October 20th-22nd 2000'', 215-248. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. * 2006, "Some formal peculiarities of Germanic n-stem Abstracts". In Karlene Jones-Bley (ed.): ''Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Oct. 27-28, 2005''. Washington, D.C.: Journal of Indo-European Studies monograph series 52, pp. 123-142. * 2010, ''Derivation and composition: Two studies in Indo-European word formation''. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. * 2012, "Oldhøjtysk ''(ge)swio'' 'søsters mand' og germanske svogerskabsbetegnelser". In Erik W. Hansen, Alexandra Holsting & Hans Frede Nielsen (eds.): Ældre germansk sproghistorie. Odense: University of Southern Denmark, Mindre Skrifter Blaa Serie 29. * 2014, "On the Role of Stative Markers in Indo-European Noun Formation". In N. Oettinger & T. Steer (eds.): ''Das Nomen im Indogermanischen: Morphologie, Substantiv versus Adjektiv, Kollektivum. Akten der Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 14. bis 16. September in Erlangen'', 261-272. Wiesbaden: Reichert.

References

External links

Official website
1952 births Living people Linguists from Denmark Linguists of Germanic languages Linguists of Indo-European languages Armenian studies scholars Historical linguists Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen Danish women academics {{Denmark-linguist-stub