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

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establishe ...

) is a Danish

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. Lingui ...

, professor at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

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. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

and

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

in general, especially derivational morphology 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 across 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 ...

and the history of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece 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 ...

, Anatolian and

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the 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 spoken Germanic language, ...

. She was married to Jens Elmegård Rasmussen, 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