CEAS Faculty Alan C. Yu Co-Edits Volume That Brings Together the Works of Internationally-Renowned Linguists

Published on January 10, 2024

Bringing together internationally-renowned linguists with diverse research backgrounds and methodological concerns, The Life Cycle of Language: Past, Present, and Future, brings together an international group of linguists from a diverse range of research backgrounds to explore the cycles of change in the world's languages. Historical linguistics does not solely focus on reconstructing a language's linguistic past and exploring the mechanisms underlying previous language changes; it also addresses broader questions concerning the development and ongoing evolution of language. The chapters in this book draw on data both from languages from the distant past, such as Hittite, Proto-Turkic, and Proto-Bantu, and from present-day languages including Akan, Cantonese, Kuuk Thaayorre, Seliš-Ql'ispé, Nivaclé, and Spanish. The contributions showcase current research in historical linguistics and exemplify the dynamism and inherently interdisciplinary nature of the field.

Alan C. L. Yu is the William Colvin Professor of Linguistics and the College at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on language variation and change, particularly from an individual-difference perspective. His co-editor of the volume, Darya Kavitskaya, is Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and in the Linguistics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her main research interests are contrast preservation and loss and opacity, and she is particularly interested in palatalization and vowel harmony. Her work focuses on phonological issues in Slavic, Turkic, and Uralic, and is connected to other linguistic fields such as historical linguistics, phonetics, and language acquisition.