Henrik Bergqvist
University of Gothenburg
Henrik Bergqvist is Associate Professor and Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Gothenburg. He has a long-standing interest in how knowledge is expressed in language, and he has worked in South-Eastern Mexico and Northern Colombia with speakers of the indigenous languages Lakandon and Kogi to document aspects of their grammars with a focus on epistemic marking. In collaboration with Nick Evans and Lila San Roque, he has formulated the linguistic notion of ‘engagement’, as a specific kind of epistemic marking strategy where the respective perspectives of the speech-act participants are situated with regard to some event. Henrik considers pragmatics and language use to be crucial for linguistic analysis in general and he is currently approaching the study of epistemic marking with this in mind. Together with Karolina Grzech, he has a project which aims to define the linguistic expression of evidentiality from its pragmatic properties and its use in conversation.