Tomas Riad

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Tomas Riad, 2013

Tomas Staffan Riad (born November 15, 1959 in Uppsala ) is a Swedish linguist . He is Professor of Nordic Languages at Stockholm University and has been a member of the Svenska Academies since 2011 . There he succeeded the writer Birgitta Potsig in chair number six.

Life

Riyadh was born in Uppsala as the son of the architect Hosni Riad and the lecturer Eva Riad, but spent the first five years of his life in Egypt , his father's homeland. This belonged to the Coptic Christians, who suffered more and more under Nasser's policy . The family then decided to move to Uppsala, his mother's hometown. Riyadh graduated from high school in 1978 and studied violin for a year at the Royal College of Music in London . Back in Sweden, he completed his military service as a radio operator and then began studying English, Irish and Swedish at Uppsala University . In 1983 he moved to Stockholm University and from 1985 to 1986 received a PhD position at Brandeis University in the USA. There he dealt with psychology and linguistics and came into contact with Alan Prince , who aroused his interest in phonology . In 1992, Riyadh received his doctorate. His doctoral thesis was entitled Structures in Germanic Prosody - A diachronic study with special reference to the Nordic languages . She gave him the opportunity to do research at Stanford University in the USA. At a later stage of the research project, he succeeded in analyzing August Strindberg's ancient meter in the article Accents left and right (2009) to show how the assimilation of classical verse theory in Swedish worked.

In the mid-1990s he returned to Stockholm University and worked as a research assistant. His main interest was now on special Norwegian and Swedish tone accents . In his 1998 article The Origin of Scandinavian Tone Accents , he put forward the linguistic hypothesis of how the tone accents came about. He was also interested in how Danish could develop in an entirely different direction. This phenomenon is discussed in detail in the article The origin of Danish stød (2000). In his later research, Riyadh became interested in how the rhythm and melody of speech influence word formation, which is particularly evident in the formation of nicknames . He dealt with this in the articles Svensk smeknamnsfonologi (2002) and Osynliga former i ordbildningen (2009). Riad is working with the intonation researcher Sara Myrberg in his current research project Svenskans prosodiska hierarki . In his inaugural speech at the Svenska Academies on December 20, 2011 about his predecessor Birgitta Potsig, Riad carried out a grammatical sentence analysis of her debut book Ur de älskandes liv (1951). It opens up new perspectives on Potsig's writing and represents an interesting reading alternative.

Riad now lives with his partner in the Södermalm district of Stockholm .

Awards

  • Prize of the University Association for the best doctoral thesis (1992)
  • Full-time research grant from the Svenska Academies for five years (2005)
  • Eva and Lars Gårdings Prize in Linguistics (2008)

Works

  • Structures in Germanic prosody. A diachronic study with special reference to the Nordic languages , 1992
  • The Germanic quantity shift. Amsterdam Contributions to Older German Studies , 1995.
  • Betoning och rytm i fri vers, Ernst Brunner's Konstpaus. Ord och style , 1996
  • The Origin of Scandinavian tone accents. Diachronica , 1998
  • Svenskt phonology compendium , 1997
  • Allting ryms i varje frö. Språk och stil , 1999
  • The origin of Danish stød. I: Analogy, Leveling and Markedness. Principles of change in phonology and morphology. , 2000
  • Stöten som aldrig blev av - generaliserad accent 2 i Östra Mälardalen. Folkmålsstudier , 2000
  • The Phonology of Classical Greek Meter. Linguistics , 2000 (with Chris Golston)
  • Svensk smeknamnsfonologi. Studia Anthroponymica Scandinavica , 2002
  • Histories om tonaccenten. Studier i svensk språkhistoria , 2005
  • Rhythm. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics , 2005
  • Tones and Tunes , 2007 (with Carlos Gussenhoven)
  • Börk börk börk. Ehula hule de chokolad muus , 2008
  • Accents left and right. I: Versatility in Versification , 2009
  • Osynliga former i ordbildningen. Svenska akademiens handlingar , 2009
  • Prosodi i svenskans ordbildning , 2009
  • Retroflecting. Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning , 2010
  • Birgitta Defiant: inträdestal i Svenska akademien. Stockholm , 2011
  • The Phonology of Swedish. The Phonology of the World's Languages

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jan Arnald: Stol nr 6 - Tomas Riad
personal data
SURNAME Riyadh, Tomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riyadh, Tomas Staffan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish linguist
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Uppsala