OBLIGATORY COURSE
CV
Studied linguistics and philosophy in the University of Zagreb, where he graduated in 1990. He received his M.A. from the University of Zagreb in 1992 and his Ph. D. thesis from the same university in 1995. His mentor was Radoslav Katičić. In 1996 he became Assistant Professor in that department, in 2000 he became Associate Professor, and in 2004 Full Professor (with tenure since 2009).
He was a guest researcher in the University of Vienna in 1993 (his host was Heiner Eichner) and in Oxford University in 1995 (his host was Anna Morpurgo Davies). He was a Fulbright Fellow in the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1997-1998 (his academic host was Andrew Sihler) and a Humboldt Fellow in University of Bonn in 2002-2003 (his host was Stefan Zimmer). In the summer semester of 2008, he was a guest researcher in Leiden University, and in the summer of 2011, he was a guest professor in the University of Georgia at Athens. In the summer semester of 2015 he was a guest of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (his host was Martin Haspelmath), and in the winter semester of 2015 he was a guest professor in Heidelberg University. In the summer semester of 2021 he was invited to be a guest professor in Hokkaido University, but his visit had to be postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Teaching
He teaches several courses in Indo-European, Celtic linguistics and language typology. He gave invited lectures and plenary talks at conferences in many universities in Croatia and abroad: Madison (Wisconsin), Yale, Athens (Georgia), Toronto, Vienna, Bonn, Konstanz, Berlin, Leipzig, Mainz, Düsseldorf, Heidelberg, Leiden, Nijmegen, Helsinki, Macerata, Naples, Pavia, Moscow, Oxford, Paris, Limoges, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Tuzla, Mostar, Cetinje, Osijek, Dubrovnik, Zadar and Rijeka.
Functions and membership
2000-2020 one of the founders and co-directors of the inter-disciplinary Ph. D. programme “Language and Cognitive Neuroscience” in the University of Zagreb
1998-2000 Head of the Department of Linguistics in the University of Zagreb
2002-2004 Head of the Department of Language and Linguistics in Matrix Croatica
1996- the Head of the Chair of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics in the Department o Linguistics of the University of Zagreb
Head of the Etymological Committee of the Croatian Academy and a member of the Etymological Committee of the International Congress of Slavicists.
Editorial work
1999-2009 Editor for philology and linguistics in the Croatian Encyclopaedia published by the Institute of Lexicography “Miroslav Krleža” in Zagreb
He is on the editorial board of Suvremena lingvistika (Zagreb), Folia Onomastica Croatica (Zagreb) and Voprosy Onomastiki (Ekatarinburg).
Prizes
In 2002 he was awarded with the Croatian Academy’s Award for a Lasting Contribution to Science, and in 2019 he was the laureate of the Croatian Philological Association’s Award Bulcsú László for the Life’s work in Philology.
Publications and projects
He was the principal investigator of the project “Croatian language from a comparative point of view” (Project nr. 0130649) and several other projects funded by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education (1995-2013). From 2014 until 2018 he was the principal investigator of the project “Common Slavic Linguistic Atlas and the Atlas of European Languages” funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. From 2004 until 2009 he participated in the “New Pokorny” project (the new Indo-European etymological dictionary project) carried out at Leiden University. He was elected a member of the expert commission of the Flemish Science Foundation (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen, Bruxelles) for the period 2021-2023.
He published thirteen books: Harfa sa sjevera. Iz irske književnosti [The Northern Harp. Selections from Irish Literature] (Zagreb 1995), A Theory of Textual Reconstruction in Indo-European Linguistics (Frankfurt a/M & New York 1996), Kratka poredbenopovijesna gramatika latinskoga jezika [Short Comparative and Historical Latin Grammar] (Zagreb 1997, 2nd edition 2010, Albanian translation Prizren 2017.), Kultura i književnost Hetita [Culture and Literature of the Hittites] (Zagreb 2000), Uvod u poredbenu lingvistiku [Introduction to Comparative Linguistics] (Zagreb 2001), Kamen kraljeva. Srednjovjekovne irske sage [The Stone of the Kings. Medieval Irish Sagas] (Zagreb 2004), Gender in Indo-European (Heidelberg 2004), Jezična raznolikost svijeta [Language Diversity in the World] (Zagreb 2005, 2nd edition 2011.), Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika [Comparative and Historical Grammar of Croatian] (Zagreb 2008), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (Leiden 2009), Slavic Nominal Word-Formation (Heidelberg 2014), Lingvistička povijest Europe [A Linguistic History of Europe] (Zagreb 2016) and An Areal Typology of Agreement Systems (Cambridge 2018). He is the editor and the first author of Etimološki rječnik hrvatskoga jezika [Etymological Dictionary of Croatian] (Vol. I, A-NJ, Zagreb 2016, Vol. II, O-Ž, Zagreb 2021). He co-edited four international joint volumes and (with Ljiljana Jojić) the Hrvatski enciklopedijski rječnik [An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Croatian] (Zagreb 2001). He also published literary translations from Latin, Hittite, Greek, Old Irish, Modern Irish, Lithuanian, Welsh, Russian, Kabardian (Circassian), German, French, Italian and English.
Full bibliography
CROSBI
https://www.bib.irb.hr/pretraga?operators=and|Matasovi%C4%87,%20Ranko%20%2814229%29|text|profile