My current projects are listed immediately below, along with brief descriptions.
Downloadable versions of my published papers and conference presentations (handouts, posters, etc.) are available further below; you can also find most of these on my Academia page.
[ Current Projects ]
Anatolian & Indo-European word-prosody
How was word stress determined — and how did it interact with ablaut — in Proto-Indo-European and its daughter languages? This project aims to address these question, with special attention to the Anatolian evidence and its historical implications.
My most recent paper on this topic was presented at the 7th Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology. I argued that Hittite exhibits stress cyclicity: denominal and deverbal derivatives preserve the primary stress of their base as secondary stress, which blocked regular shortening of unstressed long vowels. I then argued for a historical connection between Hittite secondary stress and the underapplication of pretonic vowel deletion in PIE and tentatively proposed that such irregular pretonic mid vowels bore secondary stress in PIE. You can find the slides here.
The broad question raised above is also at the center of what is presently my main project, a multi-volume book (provisionally) entitled: Hittite and Indo-European Word Prosody.
On the diachrony of word stress in the Cupan languages
Despite their common ancestor, the Cupan languages (Luiseño, Cahuilla, Cupeño) all differ from one another in their principles of stress assignment. I am interested in how these differences arose ––- how have the diverse word-prosodic systems of these languages developed out of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan fixed stress system?
At SSILA 2018, I discussed the divergent developments of Cahuilla, which has innovated fixed root-initial stress, and Cupeño, which has lexical accent and a general preference for word-initial stress. The handout is available for download here.
Comparative and historical grammar of Anatolian
It is uncontroversial that the Anatolian languages provide crucial evidence for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European — in particular, because of the branch’s unique position in the IE family as a sister of the ancestor of the non-Anatolian languages. More than a hundred years after Hrozný’s decipherment of Hittite, however, the Anatolian languages await a systematic treatment from a comparative-historical perspective.
One of my long-term projects is to produce such a treatment, broadly on the model of Michael Weiss’s monumental Outline of the Comparative and Historical Grammar of Latin. The aim of this project is to produce a tool that is useful to specialists, synthesizing the results of recent synchronic and diachronic research on the Anatolian languages, but that is also accessible to non-specialists, introducing them to the historical study of Anatolian and Indo-European languages.
[ Dissertation ]
2017 ● Lexical Accent in Cupeño, Hittite, and Indo-European. PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. ➤ download
[ Papers ]
to appear ● “Voice Reversal as an Anatolian Phenomenon” in Acts of the 12th International Congress of Hittitology, Istanbul, September 4–8, 2023. ➤ (contact me for ms.)
2025 ● “A phonology-morphosyntax interface explanation of the ‘nasal infix’ in (Proto-)Indo-European” (with Klaus Baki and Sam Zukoff) in Duygu Demiray, Roger C. Lium, and Nir Segal (eds.), Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Vol. 1, 39–52. ➤ download (ms.)
2025 ● “The Anatolian reflexes of Indo-European τομή-, φυγή-, τόμος-, and τομός-type nominals and their historical implications. Indogermanische Forschungen 130.91–140. ➤ download
2023 ● “The Unexceptional Stress of the “Endingless Locative” in Indo-European” in David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Anthony D. Yates (eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 201–224. Hamburg: Buske ➤ download / data
2022● “Emergent Mobility in Indo-European *-r/n-stems and Its Implications for the Reconstruction of the Neuter Plural” in David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 271-295. Hamburg: Buske ➤ download
2022 ● “A new prosodic reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European *–mon-stems” Indo-European Linguistics 10.214–288. ➤ download
2020 ● “Voice Reversals and Syntactic Structure: Evidence from Hittite” (with John Gluckman). Glossa 5, 120/1–39. ➤ download
2020 ● “The Phonology and Morphology of Anatolian *–mon-stems” in David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 245–264. Hamburg: Buske ➤ download
2020 ● “Lexical accents are underlying foot edges: Evidence from Vedic Sanskrit” in Mariam Asatryan, Yixiao Song, and Ayana Whitmal (eds.), Proceedings of the 50th Annual North East Linguistic Society, Vol. 3, 255–268. ➤ download (ms.)
2019 ● “Suffixal *o-vocalism without “Amphikinesis”: On Proto-Indo-European *–oi-stems and Ablaut as a Diagnostic for Word Stress” in David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 199–221. Bremen: Hempen. ➤ download
2019 ● “The Phonology, Phonetics, and Diachrony of Sturtevant’s Law.” Indo-European Linguistics 7.214–307. ➤ download
2018 ● “The Phonology of Anatolian Reduplication: Synchrony and Diachrony” (with Sam Zukoff). Indo-European Linguistics 6.201–270. ➤ download
2018 ● “The morphology of Proto-Indo-European” (with Jesse Lundquist) in Jared Klein and Brian Joseph (eds.), Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics, 2079–2195. De Gruyter: Berlin / New York. ➤ download
2017 ● “Against Root Faithfulness in Cupeño Stress.” In Karen Jesney, Charlie O’Hara, Caitlin Smith (eds.), Supplemental Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Meeting on Phonology, 1–11. ➤ download
2016 ● “Hittite Stressed Vowel Lengthening and the Phonology-Orthography Interface” in David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 235–257. Bremen: Hempen. ➤ download / extended version
2016 ● “Stress Assignment in Hittite and Proto-Indo-European” in Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 1.25/1–15. ➤ download
2016 ● “Left But Not Leftmost? Interactions between Epenthesis and Ictus Assignment in Anatolian” in Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 161–178. Bremen: Hempen. ➤ download
2015 ● “Anatolian Default Accentuation and its Diachronic Consequences.” Indo-European Linguistics 3.145–187. ➤ download
2014 ● “On the PIE ‘Quasi-Serial Verb’ Construction: Origin and Development” in Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 237–255. Bremen: Hempen. ➤ download
[ Reviews ]
2020 ● Review: S. Patri, Phonologie hittite (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. ➤ download
[ Conference presentations & invited lectures ]
December 2, 2025 ● “Stress and cyclicity in Hittite and its diachronic development.” 7th Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, Edinburgh ➤ slides
September 17, 2025 ● “Inheritance, not innovation: The (morpho)syntax of motion verbs in Hittite, Anatolian, and Indo-European.” 2025h Arbeitstagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Prague. ➤ slides / data (.csv)
June 20, 2025 ● “The development of Hittite ḫi-verbs in –(ā̆)i– and the ablaut of the *–h₂e-conjugation.” 44th Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Munich. ➤ slides
April 10, 2025 ● “The ablaut of Hittite ḫi-verbs in –(ā̆)i– and a new sound law. 235th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society. ➤ slides
February 22, 2025● “Early Hittite literature and the emergence of the annalistic style.” Achamenid Workshop 3. ➤ slides
October 27, 2024 ● “Indo-European nasal infixation and the Mirror Alignment Principle” (with Klaus Baki and Sam Zukoff). 35th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles. ➤ slides
October 17, 2024 ● “A phonology-morphosyntax interface explanation of the ‘nasal infix’ in (Proto-)Indo-European” (with Klaus Baki and Sam Zukoff). 55th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, New Haven. ➤ slides
July 1, 2024 ● “Vedic śūṣá– `powerful’ and the diachrony of vowel deletion in Indo-European. 43rd Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference ➤ slides
March 22, 2024 ● “Toward a prosodic account of Hittite ‘hyperbaton’” (with Craig Melchert). 234th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society. ➤ handout
December 4, 2023 ● “Cyclicity as a Proto-Indo-European phenomenon.” Sixth Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, Edinburgh. ➤ slides
October 19, 2023 ● “The principles of Anatolian poetry.” Invited lecture, University of Richmond. ➤ slides
September 5, 2023 ● “The diachrony of ‘voice reversal’ in Hittite.” 12th International Congress of Hittitology, Istanbul. ➤ slides
June 25, 2023 ● “On the Indo-European τομἠ- and φυγή-tpes and their Anatolian reflexes. 42nd Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Carrboro, NC. ➤ slides
March 11, 2023 ● “How to talk about dragon-slaying in Hittite.” 233rd Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society, Los Angeles. ➤ slides
December 1, 2022 ● “Cyclicity in Indo-European non-primary derivation.” Distinguished Professors’ Lecture, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań ➤ slides
November 13, 2022 ● “The unexceptional word-prosody of the “endingless locative” in Indo-European. 33rd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ slides / data (.csv) / data (.pdf)
June 24, 2022 ● ḫašš- ‘ash’, ḫašša– ‘hearth’, and the properties of non-primary derivatives in Hittite and Indo-European. 41st Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Cambridge, MA. ➤ slides
February 22, 2022 ● Motion verbs in Anatolian and Indo-European. Invited lecture, University of California, Los Angeles. ➤ slides / data (.csv) / data (.pdf)
December 2, 2021 ● Hittite and the Indo-European accent: A conversation with Alwin Kloekhorst. Invited lecture, University of Oxford. ➤ slides
November 5, 2021 ● The origin of stress mobility in Indo-European *–r/n-stems. 32nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ slides
October 27, 2021 ● The morphophonology of Indo-European non-primary derivatives. Invited lecture, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ➤ slides
July 15, 2021 ● Indo-European word prosody and the impact of Anatolian. Oxford Workshop on Indo-European Accentuation, Oxford, UK. ➤ handout
June 18, 2021 ● The synchronic and diachronic prosody of Hittite –r/n-stems. 40th Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Ithaca, NY/Blacksburg, VA. ➤ slides
May 17, 2021 ● Lexical accents as foot edges: Evidence from Vedic Sanskrit and Modern Greek. Universität Leipzig Phonology Reading Group, Leipzig. ➤ slides
February 14, 2021 ● ‘cut’, ‘kill’ and the restructuring of root ablaut in Anatolian radical –mi-verbs. Invited lecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. ➤ slides
February 14, 2020 ● What is a lexical accent? Indo-European evidence for a metrical representation. Berkeley Linguistics Colloquium, Berkeley, CA. ➤ slides
December 10, 2019 ● Indo-European “secondary mobility” and its implications for accentedness. Fourth Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, Edinburgh. ➤ slides
November 9, 2019 ● The word-prosody of Proto-Indo-European *–mon-stems and their implications for (internal) derivation. 31st Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles. ➤ slides
October 26, 2019 ● Lexical accents are underlying foot edges: New evidence from ancient Indo-European languages. 50th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Cambridge, MA. ➤ slides
June 22, 2019 ● Hittite paḫḫweni, Greek πυρί, and their implications for Indo-European ablaut. 38th Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Philadelphia. ➤ handout
May 28, 2019 ● (Some) Indo-European ablaut is phonological: Post-tonic */o/-deletion in neuter “*men-stems” and beyond. Invited lecture, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. ➤ slides
May 25, 2019 ●“Indo-European ablaut and the trap of the leftmost column.” 27th Annual Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, UK. ➤ poster
January 5, 2019 ●“Unaccusative active verbs do not lack a Voice layer: The morphosyntax of Hittite ‘voice reversal’.” 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, New York, NY. ➤ slides
November 9, 2018 ●“PIE *–oi-stems Were Not ‘Amphikinetic’: Decoupling Stress Mobility and *o-Vocalism” 30th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ handout
October 6, 2018 ● “A Diachronic Counter-example to the Subset Principle: The Case of Anatolian Reduplication” (with Sam Zukoff). 2018 Annual Meeting on Phonology, San Diego, CA. ➤ poster / handout
July 26, 2018 ● “Voice Mismatch in Hittite: Locality and Emergent Alignment.” 3rd Munich-UCLA Historical Linguistics Colloquium, Munich. ➤ handout
June 16, 2018 ● “Some basics of Indo-European phonology.” 37th Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Ann Arbor, MI. ➤ handout
March 30, 2018 ● “Anatolian and the reconstruction of Indo-European word prosody.” Invited lecture. University of Vermont, Burlington, VT. ➤ slides
January 7, 2018 ● “On the diachrony of word stress in the Cupan languages.” 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Salt Lake City, UT. ➤ handout
January 6, 2018 ● “Substantive bias and the acquisition of final (de)voicing patterns” (with Eleanor Glewwe et al.). 92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America, Salt Lake City, UT. ➤ handout
November 4, 2017 ● “Hittite ‘fire’ and “proterokinesis” as epiphenomenon.” 29th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ handout
February 4, 2017 ● “On Reduplication and Stress in Cupeño.” 43rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, CA. ➤ slides
January 7, 2017 ● “The Phonology of Cupeño X-fixing Reduplication.” 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Austin, TX. ➤ slides
January 6, 2017 ● “The Unexceptionality of Cupeño Stress: Toward a Restrictive Typology of Lexical Accent.” 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Austin, TX. ➤ poster
November 12, 2016 ● “Variation and Change in Anatolian Reduplication” (with Sam Zukoff). 28th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ handout
October 23, 2016 ● “Against Root Faithfulness in Cupeño Stress.” 2016 Annual Meeting on Phonology, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ poster
June 6, 2016 ● “The Phonology of Anatolian Reduplication” (with Sam Zukoff). 35th Annual East Coast Indo-European Conference, Athens, GA. ➤ handout
January 9, 2016 ● “On the Evolution of Lexical Accent in Cupeño.” 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Washington, D.C. ➤ handout
January 8, 2016 ● “(Reconstructing) Stress Assignment in Hittite and Proto-Indo-European.” 90th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Washington, D.C. ➤ handout
October 24, 2015 ● “On the Relationship between Stress and Vowel Quantity in Hittite.” 27th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ handout
March 13, 2015 ● “On Hittite Verbal Prosody: Synchronic Evidence for (Non-)Default Accentuation.” 225th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society, New Orleans, LA. ➤ handout
January 11, 2015 ● “Motivating Osthoff’s Law in Latin: Diachronic Constraint Stability and Phonological Innovation.” 146th Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies, New Orleans, LA. ➤ handout
December 9, 2014 ● “Issues in the Reconstruction of Anatolian and Indo-European Prosody.” Invited lecture, Universität Wien, Vienna. ➤ handout
December 6, 2014 ● “Anatolian ‘Indeterminate’ Relative Clauses Revisited: Syntax, Semantics and the ‘Held–Garrett Rule’.” 41st Österreichische Linguistiktagung, Vienna. ➤ handout
October 24, 2014 ● “Accent ‘Retraction’ in Hittite: Toward a Unified Phonological Account.” 26th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ handout
March 25, 2014 ● “On Proto-Anatolian Verbal Ablaut: The Hittite ašanzi-Type Reexamined.” Kyoto-UCLA Workshop on Indo-European, Kyōto. ➤ handout
March 14, 2014 ● “The Anatolian āmreḍita: Distribution, Function, and Prehistory.” 224th Meeting of the American Oriental Society, Phoenix, AZ. ➤ handout
January 3, 2014 ● “Homeric ΒΗ Δ’ ΙΕΝΑΙ: A Serial Verb Construction in Greek?” 145th Annual Meetings of the American Philological Association, Chicago, IL. ➤ handout
October 25, 2013 ● “On the PIE ‘Quasi-Serial Verb’ Construction: Origin and Development.” 25th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, CA. ➤ handout
October 25, 2013 ● “Toward the Reconstruction of an Indo-European Poetic Area: The Evidence of Hittite Meter.” Invited lecture, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. ➤ handout