Teaching
Courses for 2011-12:
Freshman Seminar 34x. Language and Prehistory (fall term).
An introduction to the methods of historical linguistics, followed by an exploration of the ways language can be used, and misused, as a tool for investigating the distant past.
Linguistics 220ar. Advanced Indo-European (fall term).
The topic this year will be the Greek and Latin verb.
Linguistics 123. Intermediate Indo-European (spring term).
Designed as a sequel to Linguistics 122. A detailed overview of Indo-European comparative grammar, with emphasis on recent developments and discoveries.
Linguistics 118. Historical and Comparative Linguistics (spring term).
An introduction to diachronic linguistics at the graduate level. Theory of language change: sound change and analogy, syntactic and semantic change, change in progress. The comparative method: proving genetic relationship, reconstruction, and subgrouping.
Other courses I have recently taught:
Linguistics 122. Introduction to Indo-European
Linguistics 168. Introduction to Germanic Linguistics
Linguistics 221r. Advanced Indo-European
NB: Ling. 220ar and Ling. 221r are "topics" courses whose focus — often a language or language area — varies from year to year. In recent years Lithuanian, Tocharian, and Italo-Celtic have all been taught under this heading.