A chair in General Linguistics (allmän språkvetenskap) was established at Stockholm University in 1968. Early on, the activities within the discipline of General Linguistics were quite diversified; over the years, a number of specializations have been spawned which have become disciplines in their own right, such as sign language studies, bilingualism research, and computational linguistics. More recently, however, the General Linguistics group has developed a profile which can perhaps be best characterized as typological in the broadest sense of the word. The formulation “typological in the broadest sense of the word” is added here to emphasize that typology should not be understood in the traditional way, as the classification of languages in types, but rather as something that should really be called “comparative linguistics” (if that term had not received another meaning in the 19th century) -- that is, as a study of human languages in which systematic cross-linguistic comparisons have a central place. But the perspective that characterizes linguists in Stockholm also includes an appreciation of the importance of diachronic, areal and “ecological” factors for the study of linguistic structure and a fascination with linguistic diversity. This defines a framework which encompasses the bulk of the research within the group, to be exemplified in the following. 
    Large-scale typological research conducted by members of our group has been concentrated on the following topics: tense-aspect (Östen Dahl), action nominalizations, possession, (pseudo-)partitive and related constructions (Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm), suppletion in verbal morphology and numeral derivation, and negation of non-verbal and existential sentences (Ljuba Veselinova), co-compounds (Bernhard Wälchli). Dahl and Koptjevskaja Tamm have also worked on topics such as negation, kin terms, and case marking. Andreas Jäger’s postdoctoral project (sponsored by VR) is a large-scale typological study of finiteness phenomena/constraints in reported speech constructions.
   A central focus of interest has been areal typology, that is, the study of the geographic distribution of linguistic features and the processes that give rise to it. A common view has been that mutual influence between languages concern primarily vocabulary and more exceptionally grammar. However, a major insight of areal typology is that grammatical structures spread easily across languages and that the typological profile of a language is largely predictable from its geographical location. In the nineties, Dahl and Koptjevskaja Tamm participated in the ESF-sponsored program on the typology of European languages (EUROTYP), where Dahl led the group on tense and aspect. Koptjevskaja Tamm also led a project on the Circum-Baltic languages (financed by the Faculty of Humanities). Dahl, Koptjevskaja Tamm and Veselinova have contributed to the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (an initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig). Dahl and Veselinova partake in the LL-Map project at Eastern Michigan University, an NSF funded endeavour aiming to dynamically integrate language information with extensive data from the physical and social sciences by means of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technology. Parkvall’s dissertation on African influences in Atlantic creoles also fits into the areal typology framework. 
    A promising but hitherto rather neglected area is that of lexical typology. Koptjevskaja Tamm has collaborated with Ekaterina Raxilina (Moscow) in cross-linguistic studies on the semantics of words denoting temperature and of verbs denoting motion in water, which have shown many subtle differences among languages. Koptjevskaja Tamm and Päivi Juvonen coordinate an INTAS-funded project "Core vocabulary in a typological perspective: semantic shifts and form/meaning correlations" involving researchers from Moscow, Kyiv, Stockholm, Paris and Tübingen. 
   Large-scale typological research has to be combined with and guided by in-depth studies of individual languages or groups. These studies, in their turn, have to be “typologically enlightened” if they are to be of more general interest. Dissertation projects focusing on specific language families are Umberto Ansaldo’s on comparative constructions in Sinitic and Jonsson’s on-going work on subordination in Oceanic. Several finished or on-going dissertation projects aim at descriptive grammars of non-European languages: Eva Lindström’s on Kuot (a language of Papua New Guinea), Henrik Liljegren’s on Palula and Perder’s on Dameli (two Dardic languages of Pakistan), and Kenneth Claesson’s on Weenhayek (Bolivia). A “micro-areal” approach is taken in Andrea Kiso’s on-going dissertation project focusing on tense-aspect systems in four Bantu languages spoken in Malawi (Chichewa, Chitumbuka, Chisena and Chingonde), and in Dahl’s study of processes of grammatical change in North Scandinavian vernaculars (sponsored by RJ), such as the extended uses of definite forms of nouns which are found over a large geographical area. 
    Typology goes naturally together not only with a focus on the distribution of linguistic phenomena in space but also with the study of the ways languages change over time. Grammaticalization processes in the broad sense, that is, the diachronic processes by which grammatical constructions and grammatical marking arise and develop in languages, have been a central concern in much of the work already mentioned as well as in, for instance, Juvonen’s dissertation on definiteness in Finnish and in Ulrika Kvist Darnell’s on-going dissertation project on the Swedish posture verbs, which is also a contribution to the lexical-typological research within this conceptual domain. Another way of looking at basically the same phenomena is in terms of grammatical complexity, which is the topic of a recent monograph by Dahl. Central issues here are the notion of linguistic complexity in general and the relationship between the processes that increase and decrease complexity on the one hand and the societal conditions under which languages exist (the “ecology” of languages). Creole languages, with less-than-average grammatical complexity, are of particular interest here, as well as their precursors, pidgin languages, which have been the object of study in a project conducted by Mikael Parkvall and Juvonen (sponsor: RJ). Their project was a global study of pidgin languages. In spite of being potential sources of theoretical insights, pidgins have, surprisingly enough, never been studied on a world-wide scale. The project yielded a better understanding of what a language needs and does not need in order to perform successfully as a means of communication, and also highlighted some processes that give rise to creoles. 
    In an even broader framework, a diachronic study of languages may shed light on the general history of mankind. Lindström's research focuses on the non-Austronesian language Kuot of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. She has also been the Swedish PI in the cross-disciplinary project Pioneers of Island Melanesia (ESF/OMLL/VR), investigating the early pre-history of Island Melanesia from the combined perspectives of linguistics, bio-anthropology, genetics and archaeology.
   A field in part related to language typology and language change is the adult second language acquisition and use. Björn Hammarberg’s research in this area initially combined a typological orientation with data from learner performance, studying syntactic phenomena in Swedish in the target perspective, and phonological properties of German in a source perspective. His recent interests centre more on the acquisitional process, the process of speaking, and the interaction of languages in the multilingual language learner, but also grammatical areas such as constructions of comparison, adnominal possession (with Koptjevskaja Tamm), constructions with the neutral pronoun (in part with Inge Bartning), and adjective agreement. Individual multilingualism (“L3 studies”) is represented by a comprehensive case study of acquisitional processes in a multilingual language learner, originally in cooperation with Sarah Williams. The ASU corpus is a longitudinal oral and written corpus of adult learner Swedish with a corresponding part from native Swedes. Somewhat related is Kerstin Lindmark’s on-going dissertation project, which uses a parallel corpus of translations into Swedish to examine patterns of source language influence on translations, in particular those done by neophyte translators.
   The research profile of the department as a whole (including phonetics and Sign Language) also includes language acquisition as a salient component. In general linguistics, this area is represented by Tove Gerholm’s dissertation project which explores the development of emotive expressions in preschool children.