David Goldstein

David Goldstein

Professor of Linguistics, Indo-European Studies, and Classics

University of California, Los Angeles

Biography

I hold a joint position in the Department of Linguistics and the Program in Indo-European Studies at UCLA, as well as a courtesy appointment in the Department of Classics. My research is devoted to two broad areas. The first is the relationship between language change and linguistic theory, with a particular focus on syntactic and morphosyntactic change in Indo-European. The second is computational phylogenetics.

From December 2022 through July 2023, I will be a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. During Easter Term 2023, I will be a Lewis-Gibson Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies.

I am honored and thrilled to be a member of the 2021 cohort of Guggenheim Fellows.

Download my CV.

Interests

  • Computational phylogenetics
  • Syntactic, morphosyntactic, and semantic change
  • Indo-European
  • Quantitative methods
  • Corpus linguistics

Education

  • Ph.D., 2010

    University of California, Berkeley

  • M.A., 2004

    University of California, Berkeley

  • M.Phil., 2002

    University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College

  • B.A., 2000

    Amherst College

Recent & Upcoming Talks

From phonology to phylogeny
A new approach to the diversification of ancient Greek

Recent Publications

(2022). Toward a non-teleological account of demonstrative reinforcement. Life cycle of language: Past, present, and future, ed. Alan C. L. Yu and Darya Kavitskaya. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PDF DOI

(2022). The Old Irish article. Journal of Celtic Linguistics 23:1–34.

PDF DOI

(2022). There’s no escaping phylogenetics. Ha! Linguistic studies in honor of Mark R. Hale, ed. Laura Grestenberger, Charles Reiss, Hannes A. Fellner and Gabriel Z. Pantillon, 71-91. Wiesbaden: Reichert.

PDF Code Dataset

(2021). A multifactorial account of differential agent marking in Herodotus. Journal of Greek Linguistics 21:3-57.

PDF Code Dataset DOI

(2020). Indo-European phylogenetics with R. Indo-European Linguistics 8:110-180.

PDF Code Dataset DOI

Teaching

Courses 2021-2022

Indo-European Morphology

Winter 2022

Indo-European Syntax

Spring 2022

Linguistic phylogenetics

Winter 2022

Contact

  • (310) 825-0634
  • 3125 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095
  • My office is on the third floor of Campbell Hall, 3122B.
  • Office hours Fall 2021: Friday 2:00 to 4:00