Janez Orešnik on his seventieth birthsday

Abstract

Over a career spanning some forty years, Janez Orešnik has quietly gone about the business of firmly establishing himself at home and abroad as a linguist at ease in diachronic comparative studies of Indoeuropean languages and descriptive stu­ dies of modern languages in the best of the structuralist tradition. In theoretical lin­ guistics, he questions with insight what the generative wisdom of the day claims separates the particular from the universal in languages, whether phonological, morphological or syntactical. He is comfortable with twenty or so languages and is known graciously to engage guest speakers at conferences he hosts at the Universi­ ty of Ljubljana in their native languages. He makes a point of actively participating at the Monday meetings of the Ljubljana Linguistic Circle.