Professor Piotr Garbacz has been an Associate Professor at the Institute for Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies (Institutt for lingvistiske og nordiske studier) at the University of Oslo since 2017, where he served as Director of the Institute from 2017-2020. He served as Director of the Institute for Languages and Literatures at the University of Southeastern Norway from 2014-2016, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow and associate professor at the University of Oslo from 2010-2014.

Professor Garbacz has a PhD in Scandinavian linguistics from Lund University (Sweden), where he defended his dissertation on the morphology and syntax of Elfdal (the first grammatical work on Elfdal since 1909) in the spring of 2010. Elfdal is an eastern Scandinavian dialect, considered by some linguists to be a separate language. Professor Garbacz holds a master’s degree in Swedish philology from Jagiellonian University (2003). From 2004 to 2010, he worked at Lund University (Sweden), where he gained extensive teaching experience at several universities in Scandinavian and other European countries. In 2014, he received a teaching award from ILN.

Professor Garbacz’s academic interests include the syntax and morphology of Scandinavian languages and the connections between syntax and morphology within generative grammar. He is particularly interested in dialects and language history, including both the history of Swedish, Germanic and Indo-European languages and etymology. He speaks a number of Germanic languages: Swedish, English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and to some extent Elven, Faroese and Icelandic.

From 2020 to 2024, he participated in the NorPol project funded by the Norwegian Science Council (Norges Forskningsrad) and led by Prof. Toril Opsahl.

How did your adventure in science begin?

While studying Swedish philology at the Jagiellonian University (UJ), I felt that I wanted to delve into scientific research. I was definitely a “nerd.” My decision to follow a career path in science was facilitated by the encouragement of my lecturer at the time, Prof. Ewa Daty-Bukowska (UJ), to apply for a PhD program, as well as the support of my lecturers in applying for foreign scholarships, an individual course of study and a generally positive attitude towards me. In addition, I felt comfortable in my studies; I certainly brought this partly from my family home. In Cracow, Thad the great pleasure and honor of meeting the late Prof. Miroslaw Skarzynski, which was a great inspiration and pleasure for me. We kept in touch until the Professor’s death in 2019.

What factors prompted your decision to go abroad? What were the biggest challenges associated with this decision?

In the case of my specialty after obtaining a master’s degree in Swedish philology, it was primarily the opportunity to work with the best scholars in the field, i.e., the opportunity to do my doctoral studies in Sweden, at Lund University, where I was accepted for doctoral studies immediately after graduating from UJ. I also got into a PhD program at UJ, where I spent less than a winter semester in 2003, waiting for a decision on my admission to Lund. On top of that, the purely practical and financial working conditions in Sweden were incomparably better than those offered by UJ at the time.

What are the benefits to you of working in an international scientific environment compared to working in Poland?

I have never worked at a university in Poland, so it is very difficult for me to speak from my own experience. From the stories of colleagues I have heard over the years, my impression is that in Poland the social side of university work is important, in Norway the emphasis is on pragmatism and getting things done. Yet Norway may lack the so-called “flair” and then it is not scientific work, but such scientific craftsmanship, of which, unfortunately, there is a little in Norway.

Do you keep in touch with the Polish scientific community?

Yes, with Scandinavians, mainly from Krakow and Poznan.

What are you currently working on and what is the focus of your scientific research?

Over linguistic structure in seven dialects from the Ovansiljan region in the northern part of the Swedish province of Dalara. This is an absolutely unique collection of dialects, not to say separate languages, and there are an enormous number of structures of immense linguistic interest and theoretical importance, both for linguistics as such and for sociolinguistics. On top of that, all of these dialects are threatened with extinction. The smallest of them currently has only about 20 speakers, elderly people alone. The largest of them, Elvdalese, has at best about 2,500 declared users.

What are the latest developments in your field of research that are of particular interest to you?

Using Al to analyze linguistic structures, using Al to produce so-called corpora, i.e. collections of written text or transcribed spoken text. The idea is that Al can both be “taught” to transcribe text and translate it into a form that will be usable in a text corpus, but also transcribe speech (at least to some extent) and analyze linguistic structures.

What is your most important scientific achievement or discovery? Why is it important?

Describing the structure of Elvdalian and other dialects from Ovansiljan and the theoretical implications of this description on the widely postulated relationship between morphology and syntax, where my data indicate that there is no such relationship, or at least none in the form postulated so far.

What scientific problems in your discipline are you most looking forward to solving and why?

On whether linguistic structures are autonomous or part of a person’s general cognitive competence.

Here much could be said, but the main axis of the dispute in general linguistics for several decades has revolved around whether language is a separate part (module) in human cognitive structures and is largely independent of use (this position is defended by generativists), or whether it is an integral part of human cognitive structures and is largely just dependent on use (this position is defended by cognitive scientists).

What are the biggest challenges you face in your scientific work?

Extinction of the bustles I study (from objective problems) and working on better and better organization of my time (from subjective problems).

What are the most important research questions you plan to address in the near future? What developments do you see in your field?

A description of the structure of the dialects in Ovansiljan in all their aspects, and the construction of a corpus of written texts and recordings from these dialects. As far as dialectology is concerned, I think that the wise use of Al has great possibilities ahead, more than we suppose.

Are there practical implications or potential applications of the results of your research?

How do you see their impact on society or the economy?

Yes, at the psychological level it is building pride in speaking a particular dialect and passing it on to the next generation. From the point of view of impact on society, it’s raising awareness of the fact that the language is changing and that linguistic change is not per se a change for the worse.

What advice would you give to young scientists at the threshold of their scientific careers?

It may sound shallow, but my advice is to devote yourself to what you love and in which you find vocation, satisfaction and meaning. Yet it is very important to be pragmatic in your choices, not to get burned out in your “love” for science, because this “feeling” should be mature. Otherwise it will be fraught with problems and be a source of frustration.

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