Institut für Sprachwissenschaft

Über uns

Prof. Dr. Fernando Zúñiga

Ordentlicher Professor für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft und geschäftsführender Direktor des Instituts

Telefon: +41 31 684 80 04
E-Mail: fernando.zuniga@isw.unibe.ch
Büro: B 165

I hold the chair of General Linguistics and am department head in the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Bern. My current work focuses on morphological typology and grammatical voice, and my recent work has centered around morphosyntactic clause alignment, as well as benefaction and malefaction. I have specialized in the indigenous languages of the Americas (especially the Algonquian languages of North America and Mapudungun in the Southern Cone), but I am also very much interested in Basque, Insular Celtic, West Germanic, and Iberian Romance.

I also hold a degree in economics and worked for some years at Swiss Re, the largest Swiss reinsurer. I am very interested in literature — especially highbrow fiction in English and Spanish, well-written speculative fiction in any language, and many things related to 221B Baker Street. Lastly, I was a piano teacher and pianist from the late 1980s until the early 2000s.

Publications

Forthcoming publications

UNDER REVIEW

Negation in Mapudungun
(Paper for a volume on negation edited by Ljuba Veselinova & Matti Miestamo.)

Words in Indigenous North American languages
(Paper for a volume on indigenous North American languages edited by Carmen Jany, Marianne Mithun & Keren Rice.)

Las construcciones pasivas del español
(Paper for a handbook on Spanish syntax edited by Victoria Vázquez, Rena Torres & Guillermo Rojo.)

IN PREPARATION

Applicative Morphology: Neglected Syntactic and Non-Syntactic Functions
(A volume co-edited with Sara Pacchiarotti, to be published by De Gruyter in the Trends in Linguistics series)

Applicative Constructions in the World's Languages
(A volume co-edited with Denis Creissels, to be published by De Gruyter in the Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics series)

Non-verbal predication in Algic languages
(An article for the De Gruyter volume Non-Verbal Predication: A Typological Survey, edited by Pier Marco Bertinetto, Luca Ciucci and Denis Creissels)

I am also writing several chapters for the two edited volumes on applicatives mentioned above: a short introduction with Sara Pacchiarotti for the first volume and a long introduction (and possibly also a results chapter) with Denis Creissels for the second volume, as well as two more specific articles (viz., one on Mapudungun by myself and one on applicativizing preverbs in selected European languages with Peter Arkadiev)

Research

Recent and Current Research Projects

Islands in an ocean of (poly)synthesis and concatenative morphology. What linguistic theory and typology can learn from selected Amerindian languages

Duration: 01.02.12-31.01.16
Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation
Read more

Referential Hierarchies in Morphosyntax (RHIM): Description, typology, diachrony

Duration: 01.01.09–31.12.12
Funding: European Science Foundation (EuroBABEL project in the EuroCORES program)
Read more about RHIM
Read more about EuroBABEL
Read more about EuroCORES

The typology of benefactives

Duration: 01.03.07–31.12.10
Funding: no special funding
Read more

Approaches to defining and analyzing semantic roles

Duration: 01.01.07–31.12.11
Funding: no special funding
Read more

Alignment in Maku languages and the genetic and areal stability of alignment: A contribution to the typology of morphosyntactic organization

Duration: 01.01.04–31.12.04
Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation

Teaching

Teaching @ U Bern

FS 2021

Syntactic theories and schools of linguistics
Wordhood
North American Languages
Quechua II

Past teaching

University of Bern, Institute of Linguistics

Introduction to Syntax [fall 2013, fall 2015, fall 2020]
Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics [fall 2013, spring 2016, fall 2017, fall 2019]
Introduction to Typology [spring 2016, spring 2018, spring 2020]
Introduction to Typology I & II [fall 2013 – spring 2014]
Writing Linguistic Papers and Theses [spring 2015]
Academic writing for linguists [spring 2020]
Basque I & II [fall 2013 – spring 2014, fall 2015 – spring 2016, fall 2018 – spring 2019]
Mapudungun I & II [fall 2014 – spring 2015]
Quechua I & II [fall 2017 – spring 2018]
Welsh I & II [fall 2019 – spring 2020]
Welsh (structure course) [fall 2016]
Algonquian Languages [fall 2014]
Celtic Languages [fall 2015, spring 2019]
North American languages [spring 2013, spring 2016, spring 2018]
South American languages [spring 2013, fall 2016, fall 2018, fall 2020]
Endangered Languages [spring 2014, fall 2016]
Ergativity [fall 2016]
Grammatical Voice [spring 2013, spring 2015, fall 2017, spring 2020]
History of Linguistics: Authors [fall 2015]
History of Western Linguistics [spring 2014, spring 2019]
Linguistic Relativity [fall 2014, fall 2020]
Nominal Hierarchies in the Languages of the World [spring 2013]
Syntactic Theories and Schools of Linguistics [fall 2018]
Topics in Linguistic Description [fall 2019]
What is a Word? [fall 2014, spring 2018]
Writing Systems [spring 2015, fall 2017, fall 2019]

Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea / Universidad del País Vasco (Spain)
Hizkuntzalaritza eta Euskal Ikasketak Saila / Departamento de Lingüística y Estudios Vascos [April 23-27, 2018]

Elements for a Qualitative Voice Typology

Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy)
Laboratorio di Linguistica [March 1-4, 2016]

Elements for a Qualitative Voice Typology

Universidad de Sonora (Mexico)
Departamento de Letras y Lingüística [November 3-7, 2014]

Elements for a Qualitative Voice Typology

Universidad Nacional de La Pampa (Argentina) [July 7-11, 2014]

Elements for a Qualitative Voice Typology

Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (Argentina) [June 30 - July 3, 2014]

Elements for a Qualitative Voice Typology

Stockholm University (Sweden)
Department of Linguistics, Visiting Erasmus lecturer [May 5-9, 2014]

Amerindian Languages
Grammatical Voice
Why There Are So Many Clitics

Universidad Nacional de Río Negro (Argentina) [May 14, 2013]

Voice Typology

University of Helsinki (Finland)
Department of Modern Languages, Visiting Erasmus lecturer [April 22-26, 2013]

Semantic and Pragmatic Inversion in Amerindian Languages
Pragmatic Voice in the Languages of the World
What, if Anything, is Polysynthesis?

University of Zurich
Department of Comparative Linguistics

Endangered Languages (together with Giorgio Banti) [spring 2007]
Introduction to Comparative Linguistics I & II [spring 2000–spring 2002; fall 2007–fall 2011]
Introduction to North American Languages (proseminar & directed reading) [fall 1999]
The Languages of South America [spring 2012]
Modern Philosophy of Language (together with Mathias Jenny) [fall 2007]
Semantics & Pragmatics [spring 2007–spring 2011]
The Structures of Mapudungun [spring 2012]

University of Zurich
Romance Languages Department

Linguistic Introduction to Mapudungun [spring 2008]

University of Leipzig (Germany)
Linguistics Department

Introduction to South American Languages [spring 2003]

University of Cambridge (UK)
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Visiting Erasmus lecturer [May 07-11, 2007]

An Introduction to Chilean Spanish
The Amerindian Neighbors of Chilean Spanish
Chilean Spanish and its Romance Neighbors

Theses (co-)supervised since 2012

Ph.D. theses (co-)supervised (current)

Dominique Knuchel: A grammatical description of Kogi (Arwako-Chibchan; Colombia)
Jean Rohleder: A grammar of Vamale (Oceanic; New Caledonia)

Ph.D. theses (co-)supervised (completed)

Florian Matter: A typological account of the verbal morphology of Cariban languages, February 2021
[co-supervision: Belén Villena (U Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona): Innovación léxica en mapudungún: productividad, genuinidad y planificación [= Lexical innovation in Mapudungun: Productivity, genuineness and planning], October 2016]
Steffen Haurholm-Larsen: A grammar of Garifuna (Arawak; Honduras), September 2016
[co-supervision: Mario Della Costanza (U Zurich): La marcación diferencial del objeto en español: ¿una construcción con varios significados? [= Differential Object Marking in Spanish: A construction with several meanings?], December 2014]
[co-supervision: Marius Zemp: A historical grammar of the Tibetan dialect spoken in Kargil (Purik), December 2014]
[co-supervision: Jiāng Lì 姜儷: A grammar of Guìqióng (Qiangic; Sichuan), December 2013]

M.A. theses supervised (completed)

Florian Matter: Referential density and preferred argument structure in Mapudungun narrative texts, December 2015
Olivia Reuteler: Du- und Sie-Kulturen in Unternehmen und der Einfluss auf das Verhältnis zum Vorgesetzten [= Du and Sie cultures in firms and the influence upon the relationship to one’s superior], July 2015
Naoki Peter: Hiatus resolution in Blackfoot, December 2014
Mirjam Beck (U Zurich): Argument indexing in Muskogean languages: A predicate-class approach, December 2013
Silvana Camenisch: Differentielle Objektmarkierung im Mapudungun. Eine Untersuchung anhand narrativer Texte [=Differential Object Marking in Mapudungun. A narrative-based investigation], December 2013

Editorial Activity

Fernando Zúñiga — Editorial activity

International Journal of American Linguistics (IJAL)

Together with David Beck from the University of Alberta, I serve as editor of this journal at The University of Chicago Press.

If you would like to inquire about the prospects of publishing your article in this journal, please visit the page linked below; you can also contact David Beck or myself via e-mail for more information.

IJAL website @ U of Chicago Press

Typological Studies in Language (TSL)

Together with Spike Gildea from the University of Oregon, I serve as series editor of this book series at John Benjamins. TSL is a companion series to the journal Studies in Language; volumes in this series are functionally and typologically oriented.

If you would like to inquire about the prospects of publishing your monograph or edited volume in this series, please visit the third page linked below; you can also contact Spike Gildea or myself via e-mail for more information.

Book series @ John Benjamins
TSL website @ John Benjamins
Guidelines and instructions for submission to TSL @ John Benjamins

Linguistic Typology (LT)

I am a member of the editorial board of this journal at De Gruyter. If you would like to inquire about the prospects of publishing your paper or review in this venue, please visit the link below. The responsible editor is Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (Stockholm University, Sweden).

LT website

Studies in Diversity Linguistics

I am a member of the editorial board of this series at Language Science Press. If you would like to inquire about the prospects of publishing your monograph or edited volume in this series, please visit the link below. The responsible editor is Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany).

SiDL website

Línguas Indígenas Americanas (LIAMES)

I am a member of the evaluating committee of this journal published by the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). If you would like to inquire about the prospects of publishing your paper or review in this venue, please visit the link below. The responsible editors are Lucy Seki and Ángel Corbera Mori (both from UNICAMP, Brazil).

LIAMES website

CV

Curriculum Vitae (PDF, 155KB)