About the group
We have several PhD-students affiliated with GAME. They currently work on languages such as English, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. We welcome new PhD-students who are interested in doing theoretical linguistics related to these languages or other European languages which are studied by the GAME-group at ILOS (German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Ukrainian etc.)
The participants share a common interest in describing and defining the words and parts of words that make up the elementary building blocks of Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages, in uncovering the various ways in which these blocks are put together, and in accounting for the meanings that come out of these processes, modulated by properties of the situation of utterance.
In these efforts, cutting-edge theories in the fields of syntax, semantics, pragmatics and their interfaces are placed on solid empirical foundations. Language production and comprehension by first-language speakers, second-language speakers, and foreign-language speakers are all of interest and relevance.
Goal
The participants seek to lay bare the combinatorial possibilities of formatives, words and phrases in all the languages we are concerned with. We also seek to reveal what these units mean and what it means when those combinatorial possibilities are exploited, in terms of narrow content, as well as regarding non-at-issue information and the implications of utterances as complex actions.
One further goal is to model our findings in explanatory ways and to embed the results at the forefront of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic research.
Members
- Nicholas Elwyn Allott
- Solomeia Bagautdinova
- Kristin Klubbo Brodahl
- Maria Buyko
- Aldair Diaz Gómez
- Atle Grønn
- Dag Trygve Truslew Haug
- Hans Petter Helland
- Iuliia Karchina
- Elizaveta Khachaturyan
- Tina Malen Bergdølmo Lybekk
- Christine Meklenborg Nilsen
- Saeedeh Salimifar
- Diana Santos
- Alexandra Anna Spalek
- Kjell Johan Sæbø
- Espen Johan Klævik-Pettersen
- Joanna Nykiel
Guest lectures and seminars
Closing Game Workshop May 2026
A three-days final GAME-workshop at Atle's house in Telemark/Nome/Lunde/Kjeldal. Co-organizers: Maria Buyko, Aldair Diaz-Gomez, and Atle Grønn. Other UiO-participants: Nicholas Elwyn Allott, Solomeia Bagautdinova, Kristin Klubbo Brodahl, Iuliia Karchina, Saeedeh Salimifar, Kjell Johan Sæbø, Elizaveta Kibisova, Espen Johan Klævik-Pettersen (UiA). Special guests: Elena Callegari (Reykjavik, former member of SynSem at ILOS/HF) and Simone Mellquist (Umeå).
Linguists united! Workshop June 2024
GAME-Workshop uniting linguists of all shades. June 2024.
Time and place: June 5, 2024 12:00 PM–6:00 PM, 12. floor NT, Blindern
Members of the research group GAME are invited to a one day workshop with keynote presentation by Professor Sam Wolfe from the University of Oxford.
Main organizer: Professor Christine M. Nilsen.
Programme
- Christine M. Nilsen, Welcome and presentation of the participants.
- Professor Sam Wolfe, University of Oxford: “Diachrony Meets Modern Romance Syntax”
- Dag Haug
- Hilde Hasselgård
- Valentina Alfarano and Åshild Næss: ‘Valency morphology in Reefs-Santa Cruz’
- Sverre Stausland: The merger of the 2. and 3.sg.pres.ind. in Old Norse.
- Joanna Nykiel: 'The role of syntax in the licensing of fragments’
- Espen Klævik-Pettersen and Karen Hovind: ‘Pass-ing for measurement: The Norwegian degree morpheme pass and non-canonical degree questions’
- Concluding remarks followed by dinner downtown Oslo
Workshop on mood in Slavic and beyond
On the sidelines of Solya’s midterm evaluation: a half-day workshop on mood in Slavic (and Romance and Germanic).
Time and place: Dec. 7, 2023 1:00 PM–4:30 PM, Seminarrom 2, P.A. Munchs hus
Special guest: Marco Biasio (Univ. Verona), Solya’s evaluator.
Programme
- Atle Grønn: Words of welcome
- Atle Grønn, Oslo: TAM-categories – compositionality, concord and competition
- Marco Biasio, Verona: Slavic Anankastic Modals: Where we are now (and how can we move forward)
- Kjell Johan Sæbø, Oslo: On anankastic imperatives
Organiser: Atle Grønn
Game on! Workshop June 2023
Chomsky, Russian, fake news, Old French. These are all keywords for the GAME ON workshop on June 13th.
Time and place: June 13, 2023 9:30 AM–5:30 PM, Seminar room 2, Sophus Bugges hus, Blindern
Members of the research group GAME are invited to a one day workshop with keynote presentations by Professor Sam Wolfe from the University of Oxford and Senior lecturer Nick Allott from the University of Oslo. The research fellows of the GAME group have all been invited to present their work.
Other interested are welcome to listen to the talks. Please contact Professor Christine M. Nilsen or Professor Kjell Johan Sæbø.
Programme
- Welcome and presentation of the participants.
- Professor Sam Wolfe, University of Oxford: “The history of French: Insights for Diachronic Syntax and Parametric Theory”
- Tina Malen B. Lybekk: “Cliticisation of the French subject pronouns”
- Senior lecturer Nick Allott: The inevitability of abstraction and the role of data: why Chomsky was right about the philosophy of science
- Maria Buyko: “All you can—and fail to—infer: informational oddness in disjunctions"
- Lisa Kibisova: “Grammar and Style of Russian Fake News”
- Solomeia Bagautdinova: “Pseudo-imperatives in Russian”
- Closing remarks
- Dinner downtown Oslo
Workshop with Chris Kennedy
Time and place: Sep. 9, 2022–Sep. 11, 2022, Nome, Telemark
Atle welcomed Chris Kennedy, Gillian Ramchand and five members of the group for a workhop at his house in Nome.
Workshop Semantics in Norway (SiN)
Six members of the group teamed up with fellow semanticists from UiO, UiT and NTNU for a Semantics in Norway (SiN) workshop at Helgaker Gård, Hadeland.
Time and place: May 4, 2022–May 6, 2022, Helgaker Gård, Hadeland.