Daniel Karvonen
Senior Lecturer
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz
Office: 154 Folwell Hall
Email: karvo001 @ umn.edu
Telephone: 612.626.1651
As I always prefer to say to my students, Finnish isn't difficult, it's just different. As someone who grew up hearing the language, but not speaking it, I had to learn it the hard way, just like them. I'm committed to sharing my passion and excitement for the language and culture with my students and to give them the tools they need to become excellent speakers of the language.
I teach all three levels of Finnish (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) in the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch and I also teach phonology in the Linguistics Program. I'm a linguist by training, and my primary area of research is in phonological theory, with an empirical focus on Finnish and related languages. Some of my areas of interest include: metrical theory, loanword phonology, and the prosodic structure of compound words.
I hold a B.A. in Finnish and Russian from the University of Minnesota; an M.A. in Linguistics from Indiana University, Bloomington; and I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2005. My dissertation, entitled "Word Prosody in Finnish", shows that word stress in Finnish is sensitive to rhythm, syllable weight, and morphology.
Selected presentations:
"Ternary Syllable Weight in Finnish ." Presented at the University of California Santa Cruz Linguistics Alumni Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz. September 2008.
"A Three-Way Distinction in Syllable Weight: Evidence from Finnish ." Presented at the 16th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester, UK. May 2008.
"The Prosodic Structure of Pseudo-compounds in Finnish." Presented at the 30th Annual Colloquium of Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW), University of Tromsø, Norway. April 2007.
"Explaining Nonfinality: Evidence from Finnish." Presented at the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), University of California, Berkeley. April 2007.
"Finding the Perfect LCTL [Less Commonly Taught Language] Textbook: Does it Exist?" With Jenneke Oosterhoff. Presented at the 8th National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) Conference, University of Wisconsin, Madison. April 2005.
"Morphologically-influenced Stress in Finnish." Presented at the 18th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Lund University, Sweden. May 2000.
Publications:
"Explaining Nonfinality: Evidence from Finnish." In Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Charles B. Chang and Hannah J. Haynie, 306-314. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Word Prosody in Finnish. PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. 2005.
"Opacity in Icelandic: A Sympathy Account." With Adam Sherman [Ussishkin]. Proceedings of NELS 28. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 1998.
"Sympathy, Opacity, and U-Umlaut in Icelandic." With Adam Sherman. In Phonology at Santa Cruz [PASC] 5:37-48. 1997.
"Vaikeita sijamuotoja suomen kielen ajanilmauksissa," Virittäjä, 98: 3 (1994) pp. 453-457. 1994.