In compliance with LA City orders to slow the spread of COVID-19, our faculty and staff are working remotely until further notice. Our staff can be reached via email during our normal office hours, Monday-Friday 8am-5pm. For general inquiries, please e-mail linguist@humnet.ucla.edu.
Research
The empirical focus of my research is the syntax and semantics of the archaic Indo-European languages, in particular Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and the Anatolian languages. Recent work includes a monograph on second-position clitics in Ancient Greek and an article on differential object marking in Lycian.
My research is driven by two broad goals. First, I aim to show that we can dramatically improve the current descriptions of these languages by incorporating the methods and insights from theoretical linguistics. These improved descriptions in turn make clearer the nature of language change for the very simple reason that we acquire a more precise account of what actually changed. The second goal of this research program is to demonstrate the need for any theory of natural language to incorporate diachrony.