Dr SVETLANA BERIKASHVILI

Svetlana Berikashvili is an associate professor of Linguistics at the Ilia State University in Tbilisi. She holds a Ph.D. degree in General Linguistics (Georg-August-Universität-Göttingen, Germany & Ilia State University, Georgia), and Ph.D. in Greek Linguistics, MA in Classical Philology and BA Hons in Georgian Language and Literature & Modern Greek Language and Literature (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia).

In 2024 Svetlana joined the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies as a visiting Georgian Studies Fellow, where she conducted research on the manuscripts related to Georgian Grammar, studies of Georgian and Georgian word-lists from the Wardrop Collection at the Bodleian Library and prepared them for online publication through the Wardrop Collection Online (WCO). Prior to this she also held a PostDoc position in General Linguistics at Bielefeld University, Germany.

Her main research interests lie in formal linguistics, more precisely in syntactic theory focusing on ergativity issues and case licensing; endangered languages, focusing on morphosyntactic variation and change and language contact issues; morphology; diachronic linguistics; Georgian morphosyntactic computational analysis using special tools for the annotation of universal syntactic dependencies; and corpus linguistics.

Since 2005 Svetlana has been teaching various courses on Greek language, Georgian language and Linguistics at different universities, including Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia; National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; Ilia State University, Georgia; Georg-August-Universität-Göttingen, Germany, etc. Her approach to teaching focuses on engaging young scholars in research projects, thus strengthening the nexus between research and teaching and developing the teaching architectures that promote research-based educational practices.

Lately, Svetlana’s research projects covered the following topics:

• • Bodleian manuscripts of Georgian Grammar and Language studies, including preparation of an online edition of related manuscripts. Some results can be accessed here.
• • Georgian morphosyntactic computational analysis, with the development of tools for annotating universal syntactic dependencies. Some results can be accessed here.
• • Generative syntax of Georgian, with a focus on ergativity, case-licensing and subject marking. Svetlana's PhD thesis on this topic can be accessed here.
• • The study Pontic Greek (Romeika), an endangered and under-documented variety of Greek spoken by the Pontic community of Georgia, with attention to morphosyntactic variation, language change and contact phenomena. Some results are presented in the monograph.

Further details on Svetlana's research interests and publications can be found in her CV (downloadable under HOME) and in the Projects & Online Resources section.