The Linguistics Programme has a strong international and interdisciplinary profile. Linguists work with lingual diversity, gathering knowledge about the more than 7,000 languages in the world and studying language types, language encounters and language change. They explore all aspects of language, from the smallest building blocks of sound, grammar and semantics, to larger contexts such as texts and conversations.

The programme focuses on the connection between communication and language, and offers socio-cultural, interactional, psychological and neurological frames of reference for language and language use.

Linguistics has had a long and proud tradition at Aarhus University. The renowned Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev served as a professor at the programme in the 1930s.

Research environment

The research programme in linguistics at Arts is among the world’s most respected. There is extensive cooperation with researchers in North America, Australia, Europe and Africa. The primary research focus areas of the programme are grammatical theory, linguistic typology and language universals (what distinguishes and what is common to all languages of the world), conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, bilingualism, neurolinguistics, contact linguistics (pidgin and creole languages, mixed languages), and language description and field linguistics (e.g. Australian aboriginal languages, American-Indian languages, African languages and Romany).