Belgian Professor of Linguistics this year's Honorary Doctor

Hubert Cuyckens, Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Leuven, Belgium, has been appointed Honorary Doctor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Gothenburg.

− It is a great honor that such a distinguished professor receives an honorary doctorate at our university, said Dean Margareta Hallberg.

Professor Hubert Cuyckens is an internationally known researcher in the field of cognitive linguistics – a branch of linguistics that sees language as an integral part of human cognitive capacity – and historical linguistics. He is also interested in grammaticalisation, the language change process that creates new grammatical words (prepositions, conjunction) or bending elements (verb flexion).

In the explanatory memorandum it states that: "As a holder of Carl and Thecla Lamberg visiting professorship during the autumn of 2015, Cuyckens has enriched the linguistic research at the Faculty of Arts. Particularly appreciated was his graduate course on grammaticalisation for graduate students in English, Swedish and African languages."

− Doctoral students testified to an inspiring exchange of high quality with a fruitful exchange between the various language subjects, says Margareta Hallberg.

Hubert Cuyckens is one of the editors of the prestigious overview volume The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics that was published by Oxford University Press in 2007. The book brings together 49 contributions from leading researchers in cognitive linguistics (a total of 1 368 pages), and provides a unique overview of the theoretical concepts and models in cognitive linguistics. He is also editor of the international journal Folia Linguistica.