Historical and Areal Linguistics

Graduate Field Methods Course History

This page summarizes the history of graduate instruction in linguistic field methods at Berkeley, with information about academic year, language(s), consultant(s), and instructor(s), when known. Links in the Language column are to archival collections in the California Language Archive (CLA). The information has been reconstructed from archival course catalogs, which occasionally do not reflect the ultimate instructor of record, and in consultation with Linguistics faculty, graduate students, alumni, and records in the CLA. We will...

Kavitskaya speaks at UChicago

October 26, 2023

Darya Kavitskaya gave two talks at UChicago this week: a colloquium on Oct 26th on "Functional factors in contrast preservation and loss: Evidence from Slavic” and a talk for Language Variation and Change group on Oct 27th on "Dialects of Crimean Tatar: Fieldwork and its challenges”.

Nichols and Berge present at the International Conference on Historical Linguistics at Heidelberg University.

September 12, 2023

Two (former) Berkeley affiliates presented at the International Conference on Historical Linguistics at Heidelberg University. Johanna Nichols presented on "Reconstructing prehistoric sociolinguistics from modern grammatical evidence" and Anna Berge (PhD 1997, now a professor at the University of
Alaska, Fairbanks) on "Prehistoric climate
...

Kavitskaya publishes in the Journal of Historical Linguistics

September 4, 2023

Darya Kavitskaya published an article with co-author Florian Wandl "On the reconstruction of contrastive secondary palatalization in Common Slavic" in the Journal of Historical Linguistics. Congrats, Dasha!

Publication of first two volumes of Amazonian Languages: An International Handbook

January 31, 2023

The first two volumes of Amazonian languages: An international handbook were officially published on January 30. Edited by Patience Epps and Lev Michael, these two volumes present grammatical descriptions of all reasonably well-attested linguistic isolates of the Greater Amazonian region. Volume I covers Aikanã to Kandozi-Shapra, and Volume II covers Kanoé to Yurakaré. (A chapter in Volume III will summarize what we know about the more poorly-attested isolates and small language families known only from colonial-era materials.)

Linguists currently or formerly affiliated with Berkeley contributed significantly to these volumes:

Introduction (freely available online): Patience Epps (UT Austin) and Lev Michael

Aʔɨwa: Christine Beier and Lev Michael

Cholón: Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus (University of Amsterdam) and Kelsey Caitlyn Neely (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme; Berkeley PhD 2019)

Muniche: Lev Michael, Stephanie Farmer (Berkeley PhD 2015), Greg Finley (Meta, Berkeley PhD 2015), Karina Sullón Acosta (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos), Christine Beier, Alejandrina Chanchari Icahuate (Munichis, Peru), Donalia Icahuate Baneo (Munichis, Peru), and Melchor Sinti Saita (Munichis, Peru)

Mỹky: Bernat Bardagil (University of Groningen; Berkeley postdoc 2017-2020)

Omurano: Zachary O'Hagan (Berkeley PhD 2020)

Taushiro: Zachary O'Hagan

Warao: Andrés Romero-Figueroa (Universidad Católica Andrés Bello) and Konrad Rybka (University of Leiden; Berkeley postdoc 2015-2018)

In addition, Zachary O'Hagan was the editorial assistant in the first several years of the project.

The next volumes in the series will focus on the small language families of Greater Amazonia, and the final volumes, on the large language families of the region.

Ko publishes in Diachronica

November 8, 2022

Congratulations to Edwin Ko on the publication of a new article, "On the origins of multiple exponence in Crow," in the journal Diachronica.

Ko speaks at the American Philosophical Society

September 28, 2022

Edwin Ko will be sharing his dissertation work at the American Philosophical Society (APS) Brown Bag series on Tuesday, October 4th from 9-10 am Pacific time (hybrid). His dissertation is provisionally entitled "Inferring the history of the Siouan languages: Phylogeny, chronology, and geography." For the Zoom link to attend this event, contact Edwin Ko.

Andrew Garrett

Professor of Linguistics, Nadine M. Tang and Bruce L. Smith Professor of Cross-Cultural Social Sciences

PhD, Harvard

Historical linguistics; Indo-European; Karuk, Yurok, and California Indian languages; language documentation and revitalization