I defended my PhD dissertation with high distinction on Nov. 27th 2008 (pdf below), at the DDL CNRS Laboratory of the University of Lyon 2. My dissertation is about the coding strategies of Path in two ancient languages (Homeric Greek and 10th-century Old English) in a functional-typological perspective and grammaticalization approach. The dissertation more specifically studies these two languages in synchrony and deals with the relationships of competition, compensation and recycling between emergent, stabilized and declining systems. Homeric Greek and Old English (10th-century) are studied at a moment of important typological changes and shifts affecting their systems (the short-lived emergence of multiple preverbation in Homeric Greek and the shift from prefixed to particle verbs in Old English). The dissertation claims that these changes were functionally-driven, and that the functional domain of space plays a central part, for instance through interesting phenomena of Source vs. Goal asymetry. In a broader perspective, the dissertation intends to demonstrate the productivity of a typological description of languages and of a systematic grammaticalization approach.

As a PhD student, I have been teaching 4 years in two different universities, as a GTF and as an Instructor. I taught general linguistics, morphosyntax and typology, phonetics and phonology. I was also a visiting scholar for 6 months in the Linguistics Department of the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), in 2006-2007.

Overall, my research interests are the linguistic expression and coding strategies of space in language typology, grammaticalization processes and the dynamics of system emergence and decline, functional-typological linguistics, cognitive linguistics and morphosyntax.