Johannes Hirvonen

I am a doctoral student at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In my dissertation I explore the effect of language contact on the system of negative indefinite pronouns and adverbs, focussing on languages in contact with Russian. I have previously worked on a number of topics in Meadow Mari, including Null Subjects, Negative Concord, and Information Structure. Furthermore, I have worked on Null Subjects in Livonian, and the morphophonology of the Estonian short illative or additive. Other current and future research interests: discoursive functions of possessive suffixes in Meadow Mari, the Volga-Kama Region as linguistic area, diachronic studies on the morphosyntax of smaller Uralic languages. We are organizing a linguistics student conference at Universität Wien, Österreich: spraWIEN! Get in touch!

Publications

• in preparation: Information Structure in Meadow Mari. to appear 2024 in Вопросы Языкознания. Special issue on the Information Structure of Uralic languages, ed. by Daria Zhornik.
• Hirvonen, Johannes and Jeremy Bradley. to appear 2024. Negative Concord in Meadow Mari. In: Gréte Dalmi, Jacek Witkoś & Piotr Cegłowski (eds.) Strict Negative Concord in Slavic and Finno-Ugric. Licensing, Structure and Interpretation. De Gruyter.
• Hirvonen, Johannes. 2022. Nullsubjekte im Livischen. [Null subjects in Livonian.] In: Jeremy Bradley & Márta Csire (eds.) Tonavan Laakso – Eine Festschrift für Johanna Laakso. Central European Uralic Studies 2. Wien: Praesens Verlag, 180–197. [Published Version]
• Bradley, Jeremy and Johannes Hirvonen. 2022. Null subjects in Mari. In: Dalmi, Gréte & Tsedryk, Egor & Cegłowski, Piotr. Null Subjects in Slavic and Finno-Ugric. Licensing, Structure and Typology, 281–306. De Gruyter. Studies in Generative Grammar 145. [Link to publication]
• Bradley, Jeremy, Johannes Hirvonen and Veronika Milanova. 2019. Benefaktív és malefaktív szerkezetek az uráliban (és azon túl). Előzetes vizsgálat. [Benefactives and malefactives in Uralic (and beyond). A pilot study.] Általános nyelvészeti tanulmányok XXX, 19–36.

• Hirvonen, Johannes. 2023. Focus and Topic in Meadow Mari. Master's Thesis, Universität Wien. [Link to thesis]
• Hirvonen, Johannes. 2020. The Estonian Illative: Productivity and Formalization. Master's Thesis, Universität Wien. [Link to thesis]

Talks

• upcoming On the Diachrony of Negative Concord in Mari. Syntax of Uralic Languages 5, Universität Hamburg, 12.09.–13.09.2024
• upcoming Perspectives on the origin of discoursive functions of the Meadow Mari 3SG possessive suffix ŽE. SLE 57, Helsinki, 21.08.–24.08.2024
• upcoming Negative participles: what people think they do vs. what they really do. (with Ksenia Shagal & Zsófia Schön) SLE 57, Helsinki, 21.08.–24.08.2024
• upcoming Besitz allein macht nicht glücklich – die vielen Funktionen der marischen Possessivsuffixe. Wir werden 50! – 50 Jahre Wiener Finno-Ugristik, Wien, 27.05.–28.05.2024. [Link to program]
• 06.11.2023 Negative Indefinites in Contact – Evidence from Uralic. Research colloquium, Universität München.
• 25.10.2023 Topics in Mari Information Structure. Uralic Information Center (online).
• 08.09.2023 Contact-induced change of Negative Indefinites – the case of Meadow Mari. ICHL 26, Universität Heidelberg, 04.09.–08.09.2023.
• 25.08.2022 Negative indefinites without overt licensing in a Strict Negative Concord language, Meadow Mari. CIFU XIII, Universität Wien, 21.08.–26.08.2022
• 19.03.2022 On the origin of the Mari negative prefix NI-. Linguistic diversity in the Volga Language Union. Typology of grammatical phenomena and language contacts (online), 18.03.–20.03.2022
• 10.12.2021 Sprachenvielfalt in der Wolga-Kama-Region. (with Jeremy Bradley & Christian Pischlöger) 46. Österreichische Linguistiktagung (online), 09.12.–12.12.2021
• 09.12.2021 Nullsubjekte im Marischen. 46. Österreichische Linguistiktagung (online), 09.12.–12.12.2021
• 03.09.2021 Perspective shift in reported discourse of Finno-Ugric languages. (with Denys Teptiuk) SLE 54 (online), 30.08.–03.09.2021 [Link to extended slide set]
• 12.12.2020 Negative Concord in Mari. 5th Workshop on the languages of the Volga-Kama Sprachbund (online), 11.12.–12.12.2020
• 01.02.2020 What does the illative tell us about Estonian morphophonology? 8th Winter School of Uralic Studies, ELTE Budapest, 27.01.–01.02.2020
• 25.04.2019 Livonian Particle Verbs and their Dative Arguments. 35. IFUSCO, Universität Wien, 23.04.–27.04.2019
• 26.10.2018 Dativargumente von Partikelverben sind Applikative: ein Vergleich von Deutsch und Livisch. 44. Österreichische Linguistiktagung, Universität Innsbruck, 26.10.–28.10.2018

CV

Complete CV

About me

Proud father of twins born in 2020.

I was born in Vienna to Austrian-Finnish and Finnish parents. I pronounce my name with Austrian German [jɔˈhanɛs ˈhɪɐvɔnɛn] or Finnish phonetics [ˈjohɑnːes ˈhirʋonen]. I only insist on the initial stress on my last name in any case.

I believe in walking, cycling and public transport as efficient and sustainable forms of individual mobility.

Some of my sample-based music can be found on Soundcloud.