Dieter Gunkel

I hold a joint appointment in the Department of Classics and the Program in Indo-European Studies (PIES), and specialize in the historical and comparative grammar of Greek, Latin, and other older-attested Indo-European languages. I am also interested in how language is set to melody and poetic meter.

I have written on accentuation and word-formation in Greek, archaic word forms and versification in Vedic Sanskrit, and the nature of Tocharian metered verse, among other things. I am currently researching text-setting in ancient Greek music. You can find out more about my research on my website.

My teaching for Classics includes a rotation of linguistically oriented courses such as History of Greek (Greek 240), Greek Dialects and Historical Grammar (Greek 242), Mycenaean Greek (Greek 243), History of Latin (Latin 240), and Italic Dialects and Latin Historical Grammar (Latin 242).

I received my PhD from PIES in 2010. Before joining the faculty at UCLA in 2024, I held positions in the Lehrstuhl für Vergleichende und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft at the University of Munich (2010–2017) and in the Department of Classical Studies and the Linguistics Program at the University of Richmond (2017–2024).