You cannot learn a language, any language, dead or alive, without learning something about its speakers, and this is a great bonus. Anyone who has studied a language knows this. But many may not realize that this goes for studying dead (I prefer to say philological!) languages, too. I teach three such languages: Gothic, Old High German, and Old Saxon (= Old Low German). All three groups of speakers had a profound affect on the development of modern-day Europe.

The East Goths (Ostrogoths) became allies of the Huns. (Attila is Gothic for "Little Father"!) And the West Goths (Visigoths) are known for the first successful sacking of Rome (410 AD). Of course, their battles with Rome marked the beginning to the end of the Roman Empire. The lore surrounding some of the more famous battles and heroes is found throughout European literature. We also know about them from Richard Wagner's The Ring.

The Saxons are, of course, related to the Anglo-Saxons who invaded England in ca. 450AD. In the 9th century, the Saxons proved to be the fiercest foe of Charlemagne (= Charles The Great = Karl der Große). In the Carolingians (derived from "Charles" or "Carl") we see the beginnings of both France and Germany. We are not completely sure what language Charles himself spoke, but his grandsons signed a treaty in 842 in both German and French (The Strasburg Oaths) -- the first document to be written in French. The language of the Old High Germans is that of the Carolingians (or Franks), Alemannians (= modern Swabians, Alsatians, Swiss), and Bavarians.

Language can vary over four parameters: space, time, social strata, and context. These four areas in linguistics are typically known as dialectology, historical (or diachronic) linguists, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. I offer introductions to all these areas with more advanced courses in historical or diachronic linguistics.

There was a time when the field of historical linguistics was known as atheoretical. Laymen -- even academics not trained in the area -- thought (perhaps still think!) that historical linguistics means comparative philology or histories of languages based on a the history of words. But this is not so today. Linguistics as a discipline has burgeoned this past (20th) century. I teach a course called Survey of Theory in Historical Linguistics (German 231), which underscores this assertion. Recent topics have include grammaticalization theory, natural grammar, invisible hand theory, parameter-setting theory, optimality theory, language contact theory, and theory in reconstruction. All these areas don't vie for superiority. Many intertwine.

I have published in the area of grammaticalization theory and theory in comparative reconstruction. In the former, I have tried to add to the database of knowledge on various change types or typologies of change. Some of this research includes the grammaticalization of directional adverbs, modal verbs, and derivational suffixes in German and Germanic. In these works, I have found consistent corroboration to the principles that grammar usually derives from lexical or less grammatical constructions and that their development is context-induced.

In my most recent book, The Bifurcation and Repression Theories of Germanic and German, I dealt with theory in (comparative) reconstruction. The bifurcation and repression theories involve a wide range of issues, from the use of typological universals in comparative reconstruction, to modern phonological theory, to the history of the Germanic tribes, as interpreted by both ancient and modern historians, and to evidence from the so-called matron inscriptions from the second and third centuries AD. I hope to have made contributions in these areas, but another accomplishment would be to answer one simple question: Was Jacob Grimm wrong in his formulation of the First Consonant Shift (a.k.a. Grimm's Law)?

Someone asked me once what my favorite course to teach was. I had never thought about the question and couldn't give an answer. I still can't. I am ecstatic about being able to teach German language at all levels, about teaching and researching philological languages like Gothic, Old Saxon, and Old High German, about teaching introductions to general linguistics, including the phonetics, dialectology and sociolinguistics of German, and about teaching and researching language variation and change. I cannot think of a more crucial characteristic to the human species than language. We define ourselves by and with language. Come study it with me!