PD Dr. John Michael Peterson
Room number H1 5.02
Tel.: (+49) (0)341-973 7643
Office hours: Wednesday, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. or by appointment
Email: peterson@uni-leipzig.de

Department of Linguistics
University of Leipzig
Beethovenstraße 15
D-04107 Leipzig, Germany


Research

  • historical linguistics
  • descriptive linguistics
  • language typology
  • sociolinguistics
  • linguistic theory
  • Special interests: grammatical relations; parts of speech; grammatical voice (especially the middle voice); finiteness; spoken / written language; language contact; multilingualism; language and migration; Role and Reference Grammar (RRG); Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG)
  • The languages of South Asia, especially Munda (Kharia, Santali, Mundari) and Indo-Aryan (Sadri, Konkani, Nepali, Pali, Sanskrit)
  • Maltese (Neo-Arabic)


Education

    • Schule Scituate High School, Scituate, Massachusetts, USA. June, 1981
    • Exchange student - American Field Service (AFS) in Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil. February, 1981 - January, 1982
    • B.A. Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, USA. Major: German, Minor: physics. May, 1986
    • Fulbright Scholar  at the “Nordfriesischen Wörterbuchstelle”, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. October, 1986 - July, 1987
    • Magister. Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. December, 1993. Major: Indology, Minors: General linguistics, Indo-European linguistics
    • Ph.D.  Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. January 1997. Major: General linguistics, Minors: Indology, Indo -European linguistics
    • Habilitation. Universität Osnabrück. February, 2007


Academic experience

    • February, 1994-September, 1994
      Acting assistant professor (Vertretung der Assistentenstelle) , Indology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
    • October, 1994-July, 1997
      Doctoral position, Indology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
    • October, 1997-September, 1998
      Temporary assistant professor (Assistent mit Abschluss), General linguistics, Universität Zürich
    • November, 1997-September, 1998
      Assistant (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter), Project of the Swiss National Foundation (Schweizerischen Nationalfonds) "Arealtypology of South Asia" General linguistics, Universität Zürich
    • October, 1998-September, 2000
      Assistant (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) in the project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) "Allgemein-vergleichende Grammatik (AVG, “Cross-linguistic grammar”)", Department of German, Theoretical linguistics, Ludwig -Maximilians-Universität, München
    • October, 2000-September, 2006
      Temporary assistant professor (wissenschaftlicher Assistent, C1) , General linguistics, Typology and empirical linguistics, Universität Osnabrück
    • October, 2006-September, 2008
      Acting professor (Verwaltung der Stelle eines Universitätsprofessors, W2) for "German as a Second Language and General Linguistics", Universität Osnabrück
    • October, 2008-March, 2009
      Acting professor (Verwaltung der Stelle eines Universitätsprofessors, W2) for "Applied Linguistics in German", Universität Osnabrück
    • Since April 1, 2009
      Acting professor (Vertretung der Stelle eines Universitätsprofessors, W2) for "General Linguistics, especially Typology and Linguistic Variation", Universität Leipzig


Other academic activites

    • "General Editor" (with Anju Saxena, Uppsala) of the new series Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages

      http://www.brill.nl/bssal
       
    • "Regional Editor Europe" for the Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, Mouton de Gruyter. (Title until 2007: Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics) Chief editor: Rajendra Singh, Université de Montréal, Canada.

      http://www.degruyter.de/cont/fb/sp/detail.cfm?id=IS-9783110208290-1
       
    • Member (Kooptiertes Mitglied), Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (Institut für Migrationsforschung und interkulturelle Studien, IMIS), Universität Osnabrück.

      http://www.imis.uni-osnabrueck.de/


Publications (selection)

1998 Grammatical Relations in Pali and the Emergence of Ergativity in Indo-Aryan. München: LINCOM Europa (LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics, 1 / LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics, 6).

 

1999 "The Nepali Subordinated Verb". Yogendra P. Yadava and Warren W. Glover (eds.). Topics in Nepalese Linguistics. Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy. 337-70.

 

2000 "Evidentials, Inferentials and Mirativity in Nepali". Balthasar Bickel (ed.). Person and evidence in Himalayan languages. Special Edition of Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 23/2:13-37.


"Grammatische Relationen in Pali und die Entstehung von Ergativität im Indoarischen". Historische Sprachforschung, 112/2:227-63.

 

2001 "Pali". Jane Gary and Carl Rubino (eds.). Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. New York / Dublin: New England Publishing Associates. 534-538.

 

2002 "The Nepali Converbs: A holistic approach". Rajendra Singh (chief editor). Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2002. Dehli: Sage Publications. 93-133.

 

2003 "Morphological and Semantic Finiteness in Kharia: A first look". Michael Bommes, Doris Tophinke & Christina Noack (eds.), Sprache und Form. Eine Festschrift für Utz Maas. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. 63-73.

 

2005 "There's a grain of truth in every "myth", or, Why the discussion of lexical classes in Mundari isn't quite over yet." Kommentar zu Nicholas Evans & Toshiki Osada: "Mundari: the myth of a language without word classes." Linguistic Typology 9:391-405.

 

2006 Review: George Cardona & Dhanesh Jain (Hrsg.). 2003. The Indo-Aryan Languages. London / New York: Routledge (Routledge Language Family Series). (xx, 1062 pages). Language 82/4. 891-4.

Kharia. A South Munda Language.
(Habilitationsschrift)
Bd. I: Grammatical Analysis. v, 375 S.
Bd. II: Kharia Texts. Glossed, Translated and Annotated. v, 181 S.
Bd. III: Kharia-English Lexicon. ii, 304 S.

 

2007 "Languages without nouns and verbs? An alternative to lexical classes in Kharia." Colin Masica (ed.). Old and New Perspectives on South Asian Languages: Grammar and Semantics. Papers growing out of the Fifth International Conference on South Asian Linguistics (ICOSAL-5), held at Moscow, Russia in July 2003. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 274-303.

 

2008 "Kharia". Gregory D.S. Anderson (Hrsg.), The Munda Languages. London: Routledge. 434-507.


"Die Sprachen Jharkhands. Ein Beispiel für die sprachliche Vielfalt Südasiens und was wir daraus lernen können". Südasien. 28/3: 88 -91.

 

2009 ""Pseudo-Verbs" - an analysis of non-verbal (co-)predication in Maltese." Bernard Comrie, Ray Fabri, Manwel  Mifsud, Thomas Stolz & Martine Vanhove (Hrsg.), Introducing Maltese Linguistics. Proceedings of the 1st International conference on Maltese Linguistics (Bremen/Germany, 18-20 October, 2007). (Studies in Language Companion Series 113). Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 181-204.


"A Kharia-English Lexicon." Himalayan Linguistics Archive 5. i-xv, 1-212.
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/HimalayanLinguistics/


(mit Utz Maas) "Reduplication in Kharia." Morphology 19/2: 207-237.

 

2010 “A Sadri-English / English-Sadri lexicon” (Prelimiary version: April 8, 2010, ca. 1,200 entries - will be updated regularly)
http://www.southasiabibliography.de/Bibliography/Indo-European/Sadri/Sadri_Dictionary/sadri_dictionary.html


“A Kharia-English / English-Kharia lexicon” (Preliminary version: June 8, 2010, ca. 1,800 entries - will be updated regularly)
http://www.southasiabibliography.de/Bibliography/Austroasiatic/Munda/Kharia/Kharia_dictionary/kharia_dictionary.html

 

Submitted, accepted or in circulation as a manuscript:

  • Kharia. A South Munda Language. ca. 400 S. (to appear in the series Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages)
     
  • "Parts of Speech in Kharia A formal account." Jan Rijkhoff & Eva van Lier (Hrsg.), Flexible word classes: a typological study of underspecified parts-of-speech. 30pp.
     
  • "Language contact in Jharkhand. Linguistic convergence between Munda and Indo-Aryan in eastern central India." 27pp.
     
  • "The "totality" morpheme -may in Kharia." To appear in: Ram Dayal Munda (ed.), Felicitation Volume for Noman Zide. 18pp.
     
  • "Konkani." In: Новые индоарийскиеязыки . Ред. кол. Л.И. Куликов, Т.И. Оранская, А.Ю.Русаков. - "Языки мира", т. 16, Российская Академия Наук, Институт Языкознания. Москва: Academia. 34pp.
     
  • (with Savita Kiran) "Sadani / Sadri." In: Новые индоарийскиеязыки . Ред. кол. Л.И. Куликов, Т.И. Оранская, А.Ю. Русаков. - "Языки мира", т. 16, Российская Академия Наук, Институт Языкознания. Москва: Academia. 18pp.
     
  • "Active, middle and stative in Kharia (South Munda) - A prototypical perspective." 41pp.
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