LINGUIST List 21.2841 Thu Jul 08 2010 All: Obituary: Kjartan Ottosson Editor for this issue: Elyssa Winzeler <elyssalinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm Directory         1.    Jan Terje Faarlund, Obituary: Kjartan Ottosson Message 1: Obituary: Kjartan Ottosson Date: 07-Jul-2010 From: Jan Terje Faarlund <j.t.faarlundiln.uio.no> Subject: Obituary: Kjartan Ottosson E-mail this message to a friend Professor Kjartan Ottosson died on June the 28th after a long battle against cancer. Born in Iceland in 1956, Kjartan received his PhD degree at the University of Lund, Sweden, and became professor of Icelandic at the University of Oslo, Norway in 1991. He was closely attached to Norway, both personally and academically, and he also took Norwegian citizenship. His main research interest was the syntax and morphology of Icelandic, Old Norse, and early New Norwegian, where he contributed several important studies. Kjartan combined a solid empirical basis with linguistic theory. His dissertation on the Icelandic mediopassive remains a major work on the historical morphosyntax of Scandinavian. Kjartan was an important member of the research group on ''Linguistic Theory and Language Change'' at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2004/5, and until the time of his illness was part of a major national project on the history of Norwegian. But his academic pursuits were not limited to historical linguistics. He was also an accomplished philologist, actively involved in a project on editing Icelandic sagas. Kjartan represented a rare, but all the more important, combination of theoretical and historical linguistics and philology. His death was a great loss to the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, and to colleagues in Norway and worldwide. We have lost a good colleague and a dear friend. Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 08-Jul-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.