Andrew M. Byrd
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles.
B.A., University of Georgia, Athens.
Office Hours (Fall 2022): 10:15-11:15 MWF
My primary research focus is the application of various methodologies to difficult problems in historical linguistics, including phonetic experimentation, database construction and analysis, and the application of phonological theory, in order to make predictions about unreconstructable data.
I am currently creating a searchable database of the PIE language called DERBi PIE (Database of Etymological Roots Beginning in PIE), built with Python, Flask, and JavaScript, building on the work of former UK Linguistics MA student Phill Barnett.
I am also passionate about educating the public about Proto-Indo-European and historical linguistics, which has led me to some interesting jobs, including translation of PIE for museum exhibits, original plays, and TV shows. I've also created languages for multiple video games (Ubisoft's Far Cry Primal, A44's Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, and other projects I can't talk about just yet).
These days, together with Dr. Brenna Reinhart Byrd, I am working on producing a video game about the PIE language and culture and an interactive textbook. These are both works in progress, though hopefully not too far off.
Books:
- (2016) Tavet Tat Satyam. Studies in Honor of Jared S. Klein on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Edited by Andrew Miles Byrd, Jessica DeLisi, and Mark Wenthe. Ann Arbor & New York: Beech Stave Press.
- (2015) The Indo-European Syllable. Leiden: Brill.
Articles:
- (2023) with Zia Khoshsirat. The Indo-Iranian labial-enlarged causative suffix: Indic -(ā)páya-, Eastern Iranian *-(ā)u̯ai̯a-, and Proto-Caspian *-āwēn-, in Indo-European Linguistics 11, 1-32.
- (2022) The Use of the Google Suite in LIN 200: How To Create Your Own Language, Greater Faculties: A Review of Teaching and Learning 3, Article 12.
- (2021) with Anton Vinogradov and Brent Harrison. Mistake Captioning: A Machine Learning Approach for Detecting Mistakes And Generating Instructive Feedback, in Proceedings of Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, September 1-3, 2021, 1455-1462.
- (2020) with Brenna Reinhart Byrd. Teaching Proto-Indo-European as a Constructed Language, in Jeffrey Penske, Amy Fountain, and Nathan Sanders (eds.), Language Invention in Linguistics Pedagogy. Oxford: OUP.
- (2019) Motivating Lindeman’s Law. In Adam Alvah Catt, Ronald I. Kim, and Brent Vine (eds.), QAZZU warrai. Anatolian and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Kazuhiko Yoshida, 6-20.