Prof. Dr. Diana Forker

Positions

Since 04/2019
University of Jena, Department of Slavonic languages and Caucasian studies,
full professor

08/2016–03/2019
University of Jena, Department of Slavonic languages and Caucasian studies,
Substitute professor (Vertretungsprofessorin)

2011–2017
University of Bamberg, Chair of General Linguistics,
Lecturer

2013–2014
James Cook University, Cairns Institute,
Feodor Lynen Research Fellow

2007–2011
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Linguistics, Leipzig,
Doctoral fellow

Fellowships and awards

• Georg von der Gabelentz Award (Association for Linguistic Typology)
• Habilitationspreis (prize for the best habilitation) (University of Bamberg)
• Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship of the Humboldt Foundation at the Cairns Institute, James Cook University
• Wilhelm von Humboldt-Preis (German Linguistic Society)
• Otto Hahn Medal (Max Planck Society)

Externally funded projects (last five years)

2021–2024
BMBF (Forschungsvorhaben auf dem Gebiet der Regionalstudien (area studies) “Resilienz im Südkaukasus: Perspektiven und Herausforderungen des neuen EU-Außenpolitikansatzes” (895.409,09 Euro)

2021–2024
Volkswagen Foundation (Between Europe and the Orient – A Focus on Research and Higher Education in/on Central Asia and the Caucasus) “The Caucasus from the perspective of social sciences” (249,800 Euro)

2019–2024
DFG (Heisenberg Programm) “Language contact, language history and areal typology in the Caucasus and beyond” (477,000 Euro)

2017–2020
BMBF (Kleine Fächer, große Potenziale) “LexCauc - A lexical database for the languages of the Caucasus”, PI Oleg Belyaev & Diana Forker (299,900 Euro)

2012–2019
VW Foundation (DoBeS Initiative) “Documenting Dargi languages in Daghestan - Shiri and Sanzhi” (291,000 Euro) visit websiteExternal link

This is my full CVpdf, 337 kb · de

At the FSU Jena I teach courses such as:

• Introduction to Caucasus Studies
• Cultures and ethnic groups of the Caucasus
• Oral Literature and Mythology of the Caucasus
• Contemporary literature of the Caucasus
• South Caucasian Languages
• North Caucasian Languages
• Language, culture and identity
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Language Policy
  
  

I supervise BA, MA and PhD students of the Institute of Slavonic languages and Caucasus studies who study and research the Caucasus from anthropological, linguistic, historical or political perspectives.

Supervisory experience:

• PhD dissertation: Natia Botkoveli, Resilience of students from Post-Soviet countries (Jena, ongoing)
• PhD dissertation: Felix Anker, Reported speech in Caucasian languages (Jena, 2024)
• PhD dissertation: Tamar Khutsishvili, Land use strategies in an Armenian border village (Jena, 2022)
• PhD dissertation: Lidiia Melnyk, Linguistic analysis of pandemic management (Jena, ongoing)
• PhD dissertation: Irena Gonashvili, Resilience in the South Caucasus: To What Extent Can the New Global Strategy of the European Union Contribute to the Region-Building in the South Caucasus? (Jena, ongoing)
• PhD dissertation: Veronika Pfeilschifter, Ideology, utopia and decolonial resilience - The new post-Soviet left in the South Caucasus (Jena, ongoing)

• MA thesis: Narmin Gurbanova. Study of indigenous rituals in Northern Azerbaijan (2025, Jena)
• MA thesis: Tobias Schneider. Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen in den Sprachen des Kaukasus (2025, Jena)
• MA thesis: Helmut Sandeck. Inverse Verben im Abchasischen (2024, Jena)
• MA thesis: Maximilian Grübsch. Georgische Fremdwörter im Tschetschenischen: Gender-Assignment. (2023, Jena)
• MA thesis: Jana Hesina. Sprachliche Ideologie und Identität von russischen Herkunftssprechern in Deutschland. (2021, Jena)
• MA thesis (co-supervisor): Julia Schmidt. Nacht und Meer als Sinnbilder der Unendlichkeit in Bunins Lyrik. (2019, Jena)
• MA thesis: Michael Stürmer. Perzeptionen von Europa und migrantische Strategien georgischer Asylbewerber. (2020, Jena)
• MA thesis: Khatuna Jashi. Das orthodoxe Christentum im postsowjetischen Georgien: Tradition und Neuheit (2020, Jena)
  
• MA thesis: Felix Anker. Topological relations in Tsova-Tush. (2019, Bamberg)
• MA thesis: Simone Gasch. Politisierte Kunst und Künstler in Jerewan. (2017, Jena)
• MA thesis (co-supervisor): Steffen Reetz. A quantitative corpus-based analysis of post-predicate goals in spoken Oghuz Turkic varieties. (2015, Bamberg)

Last three years. For preprints and handouts see my Academia pageExternal link

Books

1. Forker, Diana. 2020. A grammar of Sanzhi Dargwa. Berlin: Language Science Press. The book is freely available for downloadExternal link

Collective volumes

1. Forker, Diana. Postpredicate elements in Adyghe (West Caucasian). 2024. Geoffrey Haig et al. (eds.) Post-predicate elements in the Western Asian Transition Zone: A corpus-based approach to areal typology. Berlin: Language Science Press, 305–331.
2. Forker, Diana. Postpredicate elements in Kartvelian and East Caucasian. 2024.  Geoffrey Haig et al. (eds.) Post-predicate elements in the Western Asian Transition Zone: A corpus-based approach to areal typology. Berlin: Language Science Press, 279–303.
3. Forker, Diana. Clause chaining in Adyghe (West Caucasian). 2024. Sarvasy, Hannah S. & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.) Clause chaining in the world’s Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 576–602.
4. Forker, Diana & Ala Al Sheshani. 2023. Far beyond the Caucasus: Chechen in contact with Jordanian Arabic. Nataliya Levkovych (ed). Diversity in Contact. Berlin: De Gruyter, 111–144.
5. Forker, Diana. 2023. Emphatic reflexive particles in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. In Ioana Nechiti & Thede Kahl (eds.) Ethno-Cultural Diversity in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften., 369–384.
6. Forker, Diana & Victor Friedman. 2023. The Caucasus. In Martin J. Ball & Rajend Mesthrie (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics around the World, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
7. Forker, Diana & Lenore Grenoble (eds.) 2021. Language contact in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
8. Forker, Diana & Geoffrey Haig (eds.) 2018. Person and gender in discourse: An empirical cross-linguistic perspective. Linguistics 56(4).
9. Hannah Sarvasy & Diana Forker (eds.) 2018. Word hunters: Field linguists on fieldwork. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
10. Forker, Diana & Timur Maisak (eds.) 2018. The semantics of verbal categories in Nakh-Daghestanian languages: Tense, aspect, evidentiality, mood/modality. Leiden: Brill.

Articles in journals (peer-review)

1. Forker, Diana & Natia Botkoveli. 2024. Resilience through language? A case study of three minority communities in Georgia. International Journal of Multilingualism, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2024.2328140External link.
2. Forker, Diana & Natia Botkoveli. 2022. The Impact of Language on Resilience in Minority Communities of Georgia. Caucasus Analytical Digest 127, 9–15.
3. Forker, Diana. 2021. General linguistics and the nature of human language. Theoretical Linguistics 47(1–2), 61–74.
4. Forker, Diana. 2021. Complexity and its relation to variation. Frontiers in Psychology doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.632468
5. Forker, Diana. 2020. The late success of Soviet language policy. International Journal of Bilingualism. doi: 10.1177/1367006920947168
6. Forker, Diana. 2020. Elevation as a grammatical and semantic category of demonstratives. Frontiers in Psychology doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01712
7. Forker, Diana. 2020. More than just a modal particle: The enclitic =q'al in Sanzhi Dargwa. Functions of Language.
8. Forker, Diana. 2019. Elevation as a category of grammar: Sanzhi Dargwa and beyond. Linguistic Typology 23, 59–106.
9. Forker, Diana. 2019. The impact of language contact on Hinuq: Phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Language Typology and Universals 71, 29–62.
10. Forker, Diana. 2018. Sanzhi-Russian code switching and the Matrix Language Frame Model. International Journal of Bilingualism.
11. Geoffrey Haig & Diana Forker. 2018. Agreement in grammar and discourse: A research overview. In Person and gender in discourse: An empirical cross-linguistic perspective. Linguistics 56(4), 715–734.
12. Forker, Diana. 2018. Gender agreement is different. In Person and gender in discourse: An empirical cross-linguistic perspective. Linguistics 56(4), 865–894.

Chapters in books (peer-review)

1. Forker, Diana & Lenore Grenoble. 2021. Introduction. In Forker, Diana & Lenore Grenoble (eds.) Language contact in the territory of the former Soviet Union, 1-13.
2. Forker, Diana & Lenore Grenoble. 2021. Some structural similarities in the outcome of language contact with Russian. In Forker, Diana & Lenore Grenoble (eds.) Language contact in the territory of the former Soviet Union, 259-287.
3. Comrie, Bernard, Diana Forker & Zaira Khalilova. 2021. Antipassives in Nakh-Daghestanian languages: Exploring the margins of a construction. In Janic, Katarzyna & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.) Antipassive constructions in the languages of the world. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 515-578.
4. Forker, Diana. Sketch grammar of Avar. 2021. In Polinsky, Maria (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 243–279.
5. Forker, Diana. 2021. Information structure in Caucasian languages. In Polinsky, Maria (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 871–900.
6. Forker, Diana. 2019. Grammatical relations in Sanzhi Dargwa. In Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Balthasar Bickel (eds.) Argument Selectors: A new perspective on grammatical relations, 69–106. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
7. Forker, Diana & Felix Anker. 2019. Bridging constructions in Tsezic languages. In Valérie Guérin (ed.) Briding constructions, 99–128. Berlin: Language Science Press.
8. Hannah Sarvasy & Diana Forker. 2018. Word hunters: Unsung heroes of linguistics. In Hannah Sarvasy & Diana Forker (eds.) Word hunters: Field linguists on fieldwork, 1–8. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
9. Forker, Diana. 2018. Introduction. In Forker, Diana & Timur Maisak (eds.) The semantics of verbal categories in Nakh-Daghestanian languages: Tense, aspect, evidentiality, mood/modality, 1–25. Leiden: Brill.
10. Forker, Diana. 2018. Evidentiality and related categories in Avar. In Forker, Diana & Timur Maisak (eds.) The semantics of verbal categories in Nakh-Daghestanian languages: Tense, aspect, evidentiality, mood/modality, 188–214. Leiden: Brill.
    
11. Forker, Diana. 2018. Evidentiality in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (ed.) The Oxford handbook of evidentiality, 490–509. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12. Comrie, Bernard, Diana Forker & Zaira Khalilova. 2018. Affective constructions in Tsezic languages. In Jóhanna Barðdal, Stephen Mark Carey, Thórhallur Eythórsson & Na'ama Pat-El (eds.) Non-canonically case-marked subjects within and across languages and language families: The Reykjavík-Eyjafjallajökull papers, 59–86. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
13. Forker, Diana. 2018. Evidentiality and its relations to other verbal categories. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (ed.) The Oxford handbook of evidentiality, 65–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Complete list of publicationspdf, 182 kb · de