Title
Professor of Linguistics

Department
Dept of Linguistics


Faculty URL
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~garrett/

Email
garrett@berkeley.edu

Fax
(510) 643-5688


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Research Expertise and Interest
linguistics, English, California, language change, Indo-European languages, historical linguistics, northern California Indian languages, linguistic structure, typology, ancient Greek, Latin, Irish, Oceanic languages

Research Description
I work on?Karuk?and?Yurok?(languages of northern California) and on early Indo-European languages, especially?Greek,?Latin, and languages belonging to the Anatolian branch (such as?Hittite?and?Lycian). I have also worked on the history and (British) dialects of?English, on comparative Austronesian (especially involving?Leti,?Ponapean, and?Rotuman), and on the Ohlone language?Rumsen?(spoken around Carmel and Monterey).
I am a historical linguist interested in language change (in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), patterns of language diversification, and methods of reconstruction. One broad aim of my historical research is to reintegrate the study of language change with linguistic theory and typology. A goal of my Americanist work is to bring philological and field work together to develop a picture of the linguistic ecology of California and the west coast. In language documentation, I am especially interested in language documentation projects whose products serve both academic linguists and indigenous communities. I have found that digital databases and online resources are flexible enough to benefit a variety of users.