Johanna Laakso (born 1962 in

Hämeenlinna Hämeenlinna (; ; ; or ''Croneburgum'') is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Kanta-Häme. It is located in the southern interior of the country and on the shores of Vanajavesi, Lake Vanajavesi. The population of Hämeenlinna is appr ...

) is a Finnish

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 ...

and Finno-Ugrist based at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

Biography

Laakso studied Finno-Ugric languages,

Finnic languages The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia. Traditionally, ...

and general linguistics at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

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 differentiat ...

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 since 2006, a corresponding member of the

Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every fi ...

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 Europe ...

since 2015.

Research

Laakso is a specialist in

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th centur ...

, with interests in

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...

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. This field crosses disciplinary boundaries, and, as a bare minimum, could be said to encompass work notionally housed within appli ...

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

, 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, 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'), or Tornedalian is a Finnic language or a group of distinct Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden, particularly along the Torne River Valley. It is officially recognized in Sweden as one of the ...

Kven KVEN (1520 AM, "") 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 talk/sports format. By day ...

, 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 & Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (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 Academic staff of the University of Vienna Morphologists Historical linguists Finnish Finno-Ugrists Women linguists University of Helsinki alumni 1962 births Members of Academia Europaea