Rasmus Gudmundsen Bjorn
IMPRS
Language and the Anthropocene Research Group
Main Focus
I use comparative linguistics to analyze the spread of ideas and material culture in prehistory by examining loanwords with reference to auxiliary data such as archaeology and genetics. My PhD project ‘Crops, Fruits, and Words’ researches this phenomenon in Central Asia, departing from Robert Spengler’s work on assembling the archaeobotanical data for the region. I particularly look at the interfaces between the various language groups, e.g. Iranian, Turkic, Burushaski, and Tocharian.
Curriculum Vitae
Graduated as an Indo-Europeanist from the University of Copenhagen (2017) with the thesis “Foreign elements in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary”. I subsequently published two articles based on my graduate studies while working with Old Norse Philology at the same institution. I started the PhD at the Max Planck Society in September 2019 as an IMPRS student affiliated with the Eurasia3angle project.
Publications
Bjørn, Rasmus G. (2020) “Nouns and foreign numerals – Anatolian ‘four’ and the development of the PIE decimal system”. In Olander & Serangeli (eds.): Dispersals and Diversification, 54-76. Leiden: Brill
Bjørn, Rasmus G. (2019) “Pronouns and particles – Indo-Uralic heritage and convergence”. In Kloekhorst & Pronk (eds.): The precursors of Proto-Indo-European: the Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses, 30-49. Leiden: Brill
Research Projects
- Crops, Fruits, and Words
- Eurasia3angle