Historical Linguistics

Historical text

Historical linguistics is the scientific study of how languages change over time, which seeks to understand the relationships among languages and to reconstruct earlier stages of languages. At UGA, our primary focus is on historical Indo-European linguistics – the history and development of the Indo-European family of languages, which includes English.

Personnel

Joshua Bousquette

Associate Professor

Sociolinguistics, Heritage language communities, Historical linguistics, Germanic languages 

Lukas Denk

Visiting Lecturer

Linguistic Typology
Morphology
Linguistic Complexity
Navajo and less-documented languages

Jonathan Evans

Professor

Old English, Old Norse, the works of Tolkien

Richard Elliott Friedman

Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies, Emeritus

Historical Semitic linguistics and philology

Baruch Halpern

Covenant Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies, Dept. of Religion

Historical Semitic linguistics and philology.  Diffusion models.  

Literary representation of oral and stylistic registers (key, tone, modals).   

Jared S. Klein

Distinguished Research Professor

Historical linguistics, Indo-European syntax and discourse structure

William Kretzschmar

Willson Professor in Humanities, Dept. of English

Language variation, Corpus linguistics, American English

Keith Langston

University Professor, Department Head, Undergraduate Coordinator

Slavic prosody and the phonology/morphology interface; historical Slavic linguistics and accentology; and sociolinguistics, with a focus on questions of language and identity and language contact in the former Yugoslavia.

Margaret Lubbers Quesada

Professor Emerita

Language acquisition, Historical linguistics, Hispanic linguistics

Diana Ranson

Professor Emerita, Department of Romance Languages

Language variation and change, Romance languages

Alexander Sager

Associate Professor, Dept. of Germanic & Slavic Studies

Middle High German, Historical Germanic linguistics

Olga Thomason

Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Germanic & Slavic Studies

Historical Indo-European linguistics, Prepositional semantics, Slavic linguistics and folklore, Acquisition of Russian by foreign and heritage language learners

Mark Wenthe

Lecturer

Historical Indo-European linguistics, Syntax

Related Events


Language Variety in the South V & Southeastern Conference of Linguistics XXXII

,

,
Athens, GA

Language Variety in the South V & Southeastern Conference of Linguistics XXXII

,

,
Athens, GA

Related Articles...

A graph showing vowel changes across generations
Collaborative UGA & Georgia Tech Linguistics Study Featured in Columns, Across News Outlets

UGA Linguistics faculty members Dr. Margaret Renwick and Dr. Jon Forrest were featured in this week's Columns article, discussing the rapid decline of the Georgia accent among…

Support Linguistics at UGA

Your donations to the Department of Linguistics will support research and travel opportunities for students and faculty and other initiatives to enhance students' education in linguistics. Please consider joining other friends and alumni who have shown their support by making a gift to our fund. We greatly appreciate your contributions to the success of our programs!  

EVERY DOLLAR CONTRIBUTED TO THE DEPARTMENT HAS A DIRECT IMPACT ON OUR STUDENTS AND FACULTY.