He has been instrumental in transforming the field of Turcology, which was traditionally more philologically oriented, into a linguistic discipline.[citation needed] 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.[2]
In the period of 1966–2022 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. His most 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. Chief Editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics, to be 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 earned his undergraduate and doctoral degree in Turkic Studies at the University of Uppsala. For many years he was a Professor of Turcology at the Department of Oriental Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Currently he is an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz[3] and a senior lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden.[4] A symposium in March 2016 celebrated his career achievements.[5]
He was born in 1936 in Köping, Sweden. 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".
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. ISBN975-93344-3-7.
2010 Boeschoten, Hendrik and Rentzsch, Julian (eds.) Turcology in Mainz. (Turcologica 82.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN978-3-447-06113-1.
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.
He is a member of the "Permanent International Altaistic Conference", "Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Universität Frankfurt", Honorary Member of the "Körösi Csoma Society", Budapest [3], 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.
1971. Aspekt im Türkischen. Vorstudien zu einer Beschreibung des türkeitürkischen Aspektsystems. Studia Turcica Upsaliensia 1. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. OCLC462515544
1979. Alttürkisch als ‘dissimilierende Sprache’. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, 1979: 3. Wiesbaden: Steiner. ISBN3515029559
1981. Pluralsuffixe im Südwesttürkischen.Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, 1981: 9. Wiesbaden: Steiner. ISBN3515035745
1992. Strukturelle Faktoren in türkischen Sprachkontakten. Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der J. W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 29:5. Stuttgart: Steiner. ISSN0931-9484
2001. Discoveries on the Turkic linguistic map. (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Publications 5.) Stockholm: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. ISBN9186884107
2002. Structural factors in Turkic language contacts. [With an introduction by Bernard Comrie.] London: Curzon. ISBN0-7007-1182-1
2010. with Robbeets, Martine (eds.) Transeurasian verbal morphology in a comparative perspective: genealogy, contact, chance. (Turcologica 78.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN978-3-447-05914-5
2012 with Robbeets, Martine (eds.) Copies versus cognates in bound morphology. (Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture 2.) Leiden: Brill. ISBN978 90 04 22407 0
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. ISSN0177-4743, ISBN978-3-447-10537-8[13]
2021 Turkic. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2022 The Turkic Languages 2nd revised edition. London and New York: Routledge.
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 Insttute in Istanbul. ISBN 978-91-8984020-1 url=https://srii.bokorder.se/tr-TR/article/5014/om-min-penna-agde-kraften
