I’m an academic with joint appointments in UCLA’s Department of Classics and Program in Indo-European Studies (PIES). I received my PhD from PIES in 2010, then held positions in the Lehstuhl für Historische 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) before joining the faculty at UCLA in 2024. At various points along the way, I studied and taught at the Latin/Greek Institute in New York and in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Vienna.
I specialize in the historical-comparative grammar of the older Indo-European languages, including Latin and ancient Greek. I am also interested in poetic meter, versification, and vocal music in several Indo-European traditions. You can download a selection of my publications and presentations below. For a fuller list, see my CV.
2024. Sandell, Ryan P. and Dieter Gunkel. “On the representation and realization of the ancient Greek acute: Evidence from tone-tune mappings in ancient Greek music.” Journal of Greek Linguistics 24:78–183 [download]
2023. “Musical evidence for low boundary tones in ancient Greek.” Greek and Roman Musical Studies 12:1–54. [download]
2022. Gunkel, Dieter and Kevin M. Ryan. “Vedic Sanskrit vocatives in -an: The case for restoring two endings.” In Ha! Linguistic Studies in Honor of Mark R. Hale, ed. Laura Grestenberger, Charles Reiss, Hannes A. Fellner, and Gabriel Z. Pantillon, 117–134. Wiesbaden: Reichert. [preprint]
2022. “The first person singular of the athematic middle optative in Vedic and Indo-Iranian.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.2:251–266. [preprint]
2018. “Localizational evidence for the restoration of Rigvedic *mimihí ‘measure’.” In Vina Diem Celebrent. Studies in Linguistics and Philology in Honor of Brent Vine, ed. Dieter Gunkel, Stephanie W. Jamison, Angelo O. Mercado, and Kazuhiko Yoshida, 76–92. Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press. [download]
2018. Gunkel, Dieter and Kevin M. Ryan. “Phonological evidence for pāda cohesion in Rigvedic versification.” In Language and Meter, ed. Dieter Gunkel and Olav Hackstein, 34–53. Leiden: Brill. [download]
2016. “The Sanskrit source of the Tocharian 4×25-syllable meter.” In Sahasram Ati Srajas. Indo-Iranian and Indo-European Studies in Honor of Stephanie W. Jamison, ed. Dieter Gunkel, Joshua T. Katz, Brent Vine, and Michael Weiss, 82–95. Ann Arbor: Beech Stave Press. [preprint]
2015. Bross, Christoph, Dieter Gunkel, and Kevin M. Ryan. “The colometry of Tocharian 4×15-syllable verse.” In Tocharian Texts in Context, ed. Melanie Malzahn, Michaël Peyrot, Hannes Fellner, and Theresa-Susanna Illés, 15–28. Bremen: Hempen. [preprint]
2014. Bross, Christoph, Dieter Gunkel, and Kevin M. Ryan. “Caesurae, bridges, and the colometry of four Tocharian B meters.” Indo-European Linguistics 2:1–23. [download]
2011. “The emergence of foot structure as a factor in the formation of Greek verbal nouns in -μα(τ)-.” Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 65:77–103. [download]
2011. Gunkel, Dieter and Kevin M. Ryan. “Hiatus avoidance and metrification in the Rigveda.” In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, ed. Stephanie W. Jamison, H. Craig Melchert, and Brent Vine, 53–68. Bremen: Hempen. [download]
2014. “Accentuation.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. 1, A–F, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis et al., 7–12. Leiden: Brill.
2014. “Law of Limitation.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. 2, G–O, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis et al., 323–325. Leiden: Brill.
2014. “Sotera Rule.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. 3, P–Z, Index, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis et al., 296–297. Leiden: Brill.
2014. “Wheeler’s Law.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. 3, P–Z, Index, ed. Georgios K. Giannakis et al., 515–516. Leiden: Brill.
2024 [March 22]. “Discontinuous noun phrases in Vedic prose.” 234th Meeting of the American Oriental Society, Chicago. [download]
2024 [March 19]. “The syntactic expression of polarity focus in Vedic prose.” Linguistics Research Seminars, Trinity College, Dublin. [download]
2017 [October 21]. “On ‘accent retraction’ in Greek and Vedic vocatives.” Cornell workshop on Greek linguistics, Cornell University. [download]
2015 [June 24]. Gunkel, Dieter and Kevin M. Ryan. “Investigating Rigvedic word order in metrically neutral contexts.” Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, University of Vienna. [download]