Generous grants to do my Ph.D finally arrived from heaven (or rather from CASTL, --- Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics --- at the University of Tromsø) in 2003!

.... this of course means that I'm supposed to finish my dissertation pretty soon ....

Research interests:
Comparative syntax, dialect syntax, first language acquisition, verb placement, remnant movement.

I’m currently looking at verb placement in embedded (V2 and non-V2) contexts in various dialects of Norwegian.

Upcoming talks:
• April 12, 2007: ‘Verb movement in Scandinavian Non-V2 contexts,’ (joint with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Anna-Lena Wiklund, and Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir), at GLOW XXX, Tromsø, Norway.

• June 8, 2007: ‘Verb movement interfering with subjects in Norwegian non-V2 contexts,’ at CGSW 22 (The 22nd Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop), Stuttgart, Germany.

• June 9, 2007: ‘The Force behind V2,’ (joint with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, and Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, and Anna-Lena Wiklund), at CGSW 22 (The 22nd Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop), Stuttgart, Germany.


Recent papers, manuscripts, etc.:
Bentzen, Kristine, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, and Anna-Lena Wiklund (submitted): ‘On the Force behind V2.’

Wiklund, Anna-Lena, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Kristine Bentzen, and Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir (to appear): ‘Rethinking Scandinavian verb movement,’ accepted for the Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics.

Westergaard, Marit and Kristine Bentzen (to appear): ‘The (non-) effect of input frequency on the acquisition of word order in Norwegian embedded clauses,’ submitted to the Proceedings of the workshop ‘Input Frequencies in Language Acquisition’ at DGfS, Cologne, Germany. [a previous version of the paper is available on LingBuzz].

Bentzen, Kristine (2007): ‘The degree of verb movement in embedded clauses in three varieties of Norwegian,’ in Kristine Bentzen and Øystein A. Vangsnes (eds.) Nordlyd 34: Scandinavian Dialect Syntax 2005, pp. 127-146. [Downloadable here]

Hróarsdóttir, Žorbjörg, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Anna-Lena Wiklund, and Kristine Bentzen (2006): ‘The Tromsø guide to Scandinavian verb movement,’ Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 78, pp. 1-36.

Bentzen, Kristine (2005): ‘What’s the better move? On verb placement in Standard and Northern Norwegian,’ Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 28.2, pp.153-188. [a previous version of the paper is available on LingBuzz].

Recent talks:
• March 15, 2007: ‘Spring cleaning of embedded V2 in Scandinavian,’ (joint paper with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, and Anna-Lena Wiklund), CASTL Colloquium, Tromsø, Norway.

• January 26-27, 2007: ‘Embedded V2 in Scandinavian: Empirical observations,’ (joint with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Anna-Lena Wiklund, and Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir), at the Workshop on Verb Placement, Reykjavik, Iceland.

• October 30, 2006: ‘On the interaction between verb movement and subjects in Northern Norwegian embedded clauses,’ at the NORMS workshop on Northern Norwegian dialects, during the NORMS dialect meeting on Northern Norwegian, October 30-November 3, Tromsø/Senja, Norway.

• October 19, 2006: ‘The Tromsø guide to Scandinavian verb movement,’ (joint with Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, and Anna-Lena Wiklund), at Grammatikseminariet, Lund, Sweden.

• August 6, 2006: ‘Subject positions, subject interpretation, and remnant movement,’ at the NORMS workshop on Subjects and microcomparative variation, August 5-6, Trondheim, Norway.

• June 8, 2006: ‘V-to-I as remnant vP-to-SpecTP,’ at the Workshop for PhD students and young researchers at the ScanDiaSyn Grand Meeting in Solf, Finland.

• June 8, 2006: ‘Icelandic V-to-I movement reconsidered,’ (joint paper with Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, and Anna-Lena Wiklund), at the Workshop for PhD students and young researchers at the ScanDiaSyn Grand Meeting in Solf, Finland.

• May 11, 2006: ‘Spring cleaning of verb movement in Norwegian and Icelandic,’ (joint paper with Anna-Lena Wiklund, Žorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, and Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson), CASTL Colloquium, Tromsø, Norway.

• January 30, 2006: ‘Verb placement in embedded clauses in Norwegian dialects,’ at the Workshop on Inversion and Verb Movement, January 30-31, Tromsø, Norway.

• January 30, 2006: ‘The word order in embedded clauses in Norwegian child language,’ (together with Marit R. Westergaard), at the Workshop on Inversion and Verb Movement, January 30-31, Tromsø, Norway.

Previous talks

Papers

Scandinavian Syntax
I'm affiliated with NORMS, Nordic center of Excellence in Microcomparative Syntax, as well as the ScanDiaSyn project, investigating syntactic variation across the Scandinavian languages.

The project partners of ScanDiaSyn had a Grand Meeting in Leikanger, in the beautiful (but rainy!) Sognefjorden in August 2005, and another one Grand Meeting in Solf, in the deep forests of Ostrobothnia, Finland in June 2006.

The NORMS group had a Workshop on Northern Norwegian dialects in October 2006, followed by field work on the island of Senja, outside of Tromsø.

Language Acquisition Group
I am part of the Language Acquisition Group which meets every other week to discuss recent papers in language acquisition. At the upcoming GLOW XXX in Tromsø in April 2007, Marit Westergaard, Merete Anderssen and I are organizing the workshop Optionality in the Input: Children’s Acquisition of Variable Word Order.

Teaching previous terms

CV

While I was waiting for generous grants from heaven to do my Ph.D, I have been working full-time on IGLO (Intercomprehension in Germanic Languages Online). We've been making net-based language courses with the intention of enhancing the intercomprehension of the Germanic languages. The courses are now ready and available for everyone, so if you want to learn, say Dutch or Icelandic, have a go!