Lars Johanson (8 March 1936 – 24 November 2025) was a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, who was professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. He was married to Éva Á. Csató prof. em. Uppsala University.
Johanson was instrumental in transforming the field of Turcology, which was traditionally more philologically oriented, into a linguistic discipline. Apart from his contributions to Turcology, Lars Johanson made a number of pioneering contributions to general linguistics and language typology, in particular to the typology of tense and aspect systems and the theory of language contact.
Early life and Studies Johanson was born in Köping, Sweden on 8 March 1936. In 1956–1959, he studied German and Scandinavian languages, Sanskrit and Turcology at the University of Uppsala. In 1961, he took an MA exam in German, Scandinavian languages and Slavic Languages at the same university and in 1963 in Turkic languages. In 1966, he took a doctoral degree ("filosofie licentiat") in Turkic Languages at the University of Uppsala with a thesis "Studien zur reichstürkischen Verbalsyntax".
Professional career In 1971, he successfully obtained his degree of 'Habilitation' at the University of Uppsala, based on his thesis '"Aspekt im Türkischen"' . 1972-1973 Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Mainz 1973 Habilitation (with the title “Professor”) in Turcology at the University of Mainz In 1981, he was appointed professor in Turcology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.
He was invited as a visiting professor to several universities and research institutes: 1997–1998 ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies 2001 Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden 2001 Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Melbourne 2002 Sonderforschungsbereich 295 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, University of Hamburg 2002 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 2003–2004 guest professor at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul 2006 Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden 2006 Kyoto University, Japan 2006 Yakutsk Academy of Sciences, Yakutsk 2008–2018 Central University of Nationalities, Beijing (Minzu) Minzu University of China 2008 University of Szeged, Hungary 2009–2010 General Linguistics at the University of Zürich University of Zurich
Several Festschriften have been dedicated to Lars Johanson: 1996 Berta, Árpád, Brendemoen, Bernt and Schönig, Claus (eds.) Symbolae Turcologicae: Studies in honour of Lars Johanson on his sixtieth birthday 8 March 1996. Stockholm : Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (Transactions 6.) Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. 2002 Demir, Nurettin & Turan, Fikret (eds.) Scholarly depth and accuracy. A festschrift to Lars Johanson. Ankara. . 2010 Boeschoten, Hendrik and Rentzsch, Julian (eds.) Turcology in Mainz. (Turcologica 82.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. . 2011 Robbeets, Martine and Cuyckens, Robert (eds.) Shared Grammaticalization. With special focus on the Transeurasian Languages. (Studies in Language Companion Series 132.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins - catalog/books/slcs.132/main.
Memberships He was a member of the "Permanent International Altaistic Conference", "Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Universität Frankfurt", Honorary Member of the "Kőrösi Csoma Society", Budapest , Societas Uralo-Altaica, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Uppsala and Honorary Member of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) Central Eurasian Studies Society.
Death Johanson died on 24 November 2025, at the age of 89.Türkolojinin Duayeni Prof. Dr. Lars Johanson Hayatını Kaybetti! Lars Johanson Kimdir?
Awards 1988 Research Award of the Turkish Language Association Turkish Language Association 1999 Doctor honoris causa of the University of Szeged 2004 Turkic World, Turkic Languages Order of Merit (Türk Dünyası Türk Dili Şeref Ödülü), Türk Kültürüne Hizmet Vakfı 2008 Order of Merits of the Republic of Turkey (:tr:Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Liyakat Nişan) Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey
Publications Between 1966 and 2022, he published about 400 titles, books and scholarly articles. His most important books are Aspekt im Türkischen ('Viewpoint aspect' in Turkish), published in 1971, and Structural factors in Turkic language contacts, published in 2002, and his recent publication, Turkic (Cambridge University Press 2021), constitutes a monumental thousand-page survey of all the Turkic languages in their synchronic, diachronic, typological, areal and cultural dimensions. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics published online in 2022 by Brill. In 2022, he and Éva Á. Csató published the second revised edition of the standard reference book The Turkic Languages (Routledge). He had numerous publications on Turkish literature.
1971. Aspekt im Türkischen. Vorstudien zu einer Beschreibung des türkeitürkischen Aspektsystems. Studia Turcica Upsaliensia 1. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. 1979. Alttürkisch als ‘dissimilierende Sprache’. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, 1979: 3. Wiesbaden: Steiner. 1981. Pluralsuffixe im Südwesttürkischen.Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, 1981: 9. Wiesbaden: Steiner. 1991. Linguistische Beiträge zur Gesamturkologie. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 1992. Strukturelle Faktoren in türkischen Sprachkontakten. Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der J. W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 29:5. Stuttgart: Steiner. 1998. with Csató, Éva Á. (eds.) The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge. Second edition 2006 2001. Discoveries on the Turkic linguistic map. (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Publications 5.) Stockholm: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. 2002. Structural factors in Turkic language contacts. [With an introduction by Bernard Comrie.] London: Curzon. 2010. with Robbeets, Martine (eds.) Transeurasian verbal morphology in a comparative perspective: genealogy, contact, chance. (Turcologica 78.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2012 with Robbeets, Martine (eds.) Copies versus cognates in bound morphology. (Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture 2.) Leiden: Brill. 2016 with Éva Á. Csató et al. (eds.) Turks and Iranians: Interactions in Language and History. The Gunnar Jarring Memorial Program at The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. (Turcologica 105.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. , 2021 Turkic. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/turkic/turkic/BA55DA05FCE5E798C74FF36802C5CBC2 2022 The Turkic Languages 2nd revised edition. London and New York: Routledge.url=https://www.routledge.com/The-Turkic-Languages/Johanson-Csato/p/book/9781032153704 2023 Code Copying. The Strength of Languages in Take-over and Carry-over Roles (Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture 38). Leiden: Brill. url=https://brill.com/display/title/65039 2023 Aspect in the Languages of Europe Ankara: Nobel. 2023 (Editor-in-Chief) Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics Online. Leiden: Brill. url=https://brill.com/search?q1=Encyclopedia+of+Turkic+Languages+and+Linguistics+Online 2024 Om min penna ägde kraften … En blick tillbaka på turkisk litteratur och kultur [If my pen had the power ... Looking back on Turkish Literature and Culture]. Stockholm: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. ISBN 978-91-8984020-1 url=https://srii.bokorder.se/tr-TR/article/5014/om-min-penna-agde-kraften 2025. with Éva Á. Csató Lingua Turcica Agemica. The Gospels of Matthew and John in Middle Azeri from 17th Century Isfahan. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-12400-3 url=https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_8496.ahtml
References
Sources Sumru A. Özsoy 2025. In Memory of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Lars Johanson, LINGUIST List 36.3837 Mon Dec 15 2025 András Róna-Tas 2026.In memoriam Lars Johanson (1936–2025). Acta Orientalia Hungarica 79, 1–2. Jankowski, Henryk 2026. In memoriam Lars Johanson (1936–2025). Rocznik Orientalistyczny 79, 176–180 Demir, Nurettin 2026. Lars Johanson’un ardından bir değerlendirme ve iki başyapıtı An assessment of Lars Johanson and two of his masterpieces. Dil Araştırmaları 38, 325–332. Tazhibaeva, Saule & Nevskaya, Irina 2026. Ларс Йохансонның түркітану салаcындағы іргелі теориялық тұжырымдамалары [Fundamental theoretical ideas of Lars Johanson in Turkic studies. Turkish Studies Journal 2, 242–262. Abish, Aynur Профессор, доктор, доктор honoris causa ларс юханссонды еске алу: түркологиядағы ғылыми мұрасы Remembering Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Lars Johanson: His scholarly legacy in Turkic linguistics. Eurasian Journal of Philology: Science and Education. 201/1, 50–58.
External links Britannica profile Brill profile Turkic Languages