Dr Michele Bianconi
College Lecturer in Linguistics
Michele Bianconi studied Classics (BA) and Classical Philology and Ancient History (MA) in Pisa, and General Linguistics and Comparative Philology (DPhil) at Oxford.
Michele’s field of research, which is part of ‘Indo-European Studies’, lies at the intersection between Classics, Linguistics, and Near-Eastern studies. His DPhil dissertation was on the linguistic relationships between Ancient Greek and the Anatolian languages between the second and first millennia BCE. He has written papers and given talks on Greek, Anatolian and Latin linguistics, on Indo-European reconstruction, and on specific topics in other ancient Indo-European languages. He currently leads the Ancient Anatolia Network at TORCH and is the P.I. of the John-Fell-funded project ‘Uncovering Messapic Texts’.
Michele teaches Indo-European comparative linguistics, General Linguistics, and Greek and Latin linguistics, and has taught literature tutorials, language classes, and reading classes for the undergraduate courses in Classics. He also teaches Hittite and other ‘minor’ Anatolian languages (Luwian, Lycian, Carian) at postgraduate level.
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Selected publications
2025. A new assessment of Messapic vocalism: sound change, script adaptation, and synchronic phonology, «Indo-European Linguistics» 13: 1-40. [with M. Capano and P. Sabattini].
2024. Review of: R. Kim et al. (edd.) 2020, Hrozný and Hittite. The First Hundred Years, Leiden/Boston: Brill, «Journal of Indo-European Studies» 51: 237-244.
2024. Le mot carien pour ‘chef’, une nouvelle racine anatolienne, et un changement phonétique carien-grec, «Kadmos» 63(1/2): 59-78.
2023. The Ancient Greek datives in -essi: contact or independent innovations?, «Transactions of the Philological Society» 121/3: 357-381. [with M. Capano].
2023. The Typology of contact-induced change in morphosyntax, special issue of the Transactions of the Philological Society. [ed. with R. Meyer]
2023. Homo homini lupus: Anatolian Echoes of Indo-European Ideology, in L. Massetti (ed.), Castalia: Studies in Indo-European Linguistics, Mythology, and Poetics, Leiden: Brill: 26-52.
2023. The survival of the optative in New Testament Greek «Journal of Greek Linguistics» 23: 36-78. [with E. Magni]