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Key research themes
1. How can prosodic and stress patterns refine the phonological reconstruction of non-primary nominal stems like *-mon in Proto-Indo-European?
This theme focuses on refining the phonological and morphological understanding of internally derived Proto-Indo-European *-mon-stems, moving beyond previous assumptions of amphikinetic inflection and root full-grade stress patterns. It matters because it challenges established paradigms of PIE nominal derivation, root vocalism, and stress accentuation systems, with implications for morphophonological processes and ablaut patterns across daughter languages.
Key finding: This paper presents evidence from Vedic Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Greek, and Hittite that PIE internally derived *-mon-stems featured stem-final stress (*R(e)-món-) rather than the previously assumed amphikinetic pattern... Read more
2. What phonetic and phonological evidence from daughter languages and experimental methods inform our understanding of PIE phonological features such as stress, vocalism, and segmental properties?
This research area engages both diachronic data from Indo-European daughter languages and synchronic experimental phonetics tools to analyze acoustic correlates—duration, intensity, formants, pitch—and articulatory features that illuminate PIE phonological phenomena including stress prominence and segmental identity. The integration of instrumental phonetics contributes objective measurements, enhancing reliability over purely comparative methods and native speaker intuition.
Key finding: This study uses acoustic analysis (via Praat software) of 2000 Sindhi recordings to quantify phonetic correlates of lexical stress, such as vowel duration, intensity, and formant frequencies. It demonstrates the importance of... Read more
Key finding: The paper proposes a phonetic-driven model for the development of the PIE syllabic velar nasal *ŋ̍ that underwent divergent evolution into nasal vowels with varying articulations across IE daughter languages. This provides... Read more
Key finding: Drawing on synchronic distribution, dialectology, historical data, and acoustic analysis, this paper identifies a unique reflex of proto-Bisayan *l and *-d- in Akeanon as a velar approximant [ɰ]. This case study exemplifies... Read more
3. How do morphophonological processes such as reduplication and voice system development in PIE enhance our knowledge of segmental dissimilation, voicing assimilation, and verbal morphology?
This theme investigates specific morphophonological phenomena in PIE—reduplication patterns, the passive voice, and voicing/length contrasts in stops—through comparative and typological analyses. It matters since these processes affect the reconstruction of the PIE phonological system, revealing regularities and irregularities of segmental and suprasegmental behavior that influence morphological paradigms and their phonological shapes across IE branches.
Key finding: This paper reanalyzes IE reduplication onset cluster copying under the premise that reduplication copies the entire onset cluster which then undergoes dissimilation particularly in obstruent plus resonant (TR) and sibilant... Read more
Key finding: Using Early Vedic and Greek data, this article argues that PIE marked voice primarily by an active-middle distinction with no specialized passive morphology, positing the passive syntactic pattern encoded by middle... Read more
Key finding: This paper defends reconstructing PIE heteromorphemic sibilant degemination and regressive voicing assimilation as synchronic phonological rules, citing Anatolian and earliest daughter language evidence contrary to claims of... Read more