The first joint doctoral defence between Sorbonne University (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV) and the University of Iceland took place on 9 April in Paris when Rósa Elín Davíðsdóttir defended her thesis in Linguistics. This is a joint degree at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Literature and Linguistics at the UI’s School of Humanities and the French department at Sorbonne University. Furthermore, this is the first doctoral degree from the Department of French Studies at the University of Iceland. Her thesis received the best possible evaluation from the selection committee.
The opponents were Jean Pruvost, Professor of French at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and Annick Farina, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Florence, Italy.
Davíðsdóttir‘s principal supervisor was André Thibault, Professor of French at Sorbonne University and Erla Erlendsdóttir, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Literature and Linguistics at the University of Iceland. With Erlendsdóttir on the doctoral committee were Ásta Svavarsdóttir, Research Associate Professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, and François Heenen, Adjunct at the UI‘s Faculty of Foreign Languages, Literature and Linguistics. Karl Gadelii, Professor at the Faculty of Nordic Languages at Sorbonne University was head of the doctoral committee and chaired the ceremony that took place at Sorbonne in Paris.
The thesis, titled La lexicographie bilingue islandais-français: Propositions d’articles pour un dictionnaire islandais-français avec une attention particulière au traitement des locutions figées et semi-figées(a bilingual idioms dictionary) discusses bilingual lexicology with Icelandic as a target language and French as a source language, emphasising the importance of idiomatic set phrases. It touches upon the different functions of bilingual dictionaries. They are supposed to help people understand a foreign language, but also to express themselves orally and in writing. The thesis sheds light on the importance of idioms and the knowledge of set phrases in own, and foreign languages is stressed.
The results are presented as Icelandic-French dictionary items containing idioms, with rationales on how to define the criteria for choosing a certain idiom over another. The work is based on a new Icelandic database for dictionaries, ISLEX, developed at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.
Rósa Elín Davíðsdóttir is born in 1981. She completed her BA-degree in French studies from the University of Iceland and an MA degree in Linguistics from Sorbonne University. Davíðsdóttir leads the work on the French section of a new Icelandic-French dictionary; a collaboration between the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute of Foreign Languages.