Michael Dunn
Professor in General Linguistics at Department of Linguistics and Philology
- Telephone:
- +46 18 471 13 41
- E-mail:
- Michael.Dunn@lingfil.uu.se
- Visiting address:
- Engelska parken
Thunbergsvägen 3H - Postal address:
- Box 635
751 26 UPPSALA
Download contact information for Michael Dunn at Department of Linguistics and Philology
- ORCID:
- 0000-0001-5349-5252
Short presentation
I have been Professor of General Linguistics at Uppsala University since 2014. My academic background is in language description, linguistic typology, and phylogenetics, and my current research focus is on the evolutionary dynamics of language change. My personal homepage has more information.

Publications
Recent publications
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan Languages
Part of The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia, p. 633-667, Mouton de Gruyter, 2024
Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles
Part of Journal of Language Contact, p. 54-103, 2024
- DOI for Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles
- Download full text (pdf) of Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles
Part of Science Advances, p. 1-15, 2023
- DOI for Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
- Download full text (pdf) of Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
Part of Language and Cognition, p. 716-739, 2023
- DOI for Two measures are better than one: combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon
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Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo-European
Part of Transactions of the Philological Society, p. 152-167, 2023
- DOI for Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo-European
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All publications
Articles in journal
Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles
Part of Journal of Language Contact, p. 54-103, 2024
- DOI for Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles
- Download full text (pdf) of Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles
Part of Science Advances, p. 1-15, 2023
- DOI for Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
- Download full text (pdf) of Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
Part of Language and Cognition, p. 716-739, 2023
- DOI for Two measures are better than one: combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon
- Download full text (pdf) of Two measures are better than one: combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon
Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo-European
Part of Transactions of the Philological Society, p. 152-167, 2023
- DOI for Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo-European
- Download full text (pdf) of Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo-European
Part of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, p. 127-150, 2022
- DOI for Improved distance measures for “mixed-content miscellanies": an adaptation for the collections of sayings of the desert fathers and mothers
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Uralic typology in the light of a new comprehensive dataset
Part of Journal of Uralic Linguistics, p. 4-42, 2022
Part of Studia Neophilologica, p. 155-172, 2021
- DOI for From effluvia to chemicals: techniques of self and somatic ethics in tropical health travel narratives
- Download full text (pdf) of From effluvia to chemicals: techniques of self and somatic ethics in tropical health travel narratives
The evolutionary trends of grammatical gender in Indo-Aryan languages
Part of Language Dynamics and Change, p. 211-240, 2021
Best practices in justifying calibrations for dating language families
Part of Journal of Language Evolution, p. 17-38, 2020
- DOI for Best practices in justifying calibrations for dating language families
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A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family
Part of Royal Society Open Science, 2018
- DOI for A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family
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Dative sickness: Aphylogenetic analysis of argument structure evolution in Germanic
Part of Language, 2017
- DOI for Dative sickness: Aphylogenetic analysis of argument structure evolution in Germanic
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Evolutionary dynamics of language systems
Part of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017
- DOI for Evolutionary dynamics of language systems
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Process-based modelling shows how climate and demography shape language diversity
Part of Global Ecology and Biogeography, p. 584-591, 2017
- DOI for Process-based modelling shows how climate and demography shape language diversity
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A combined comparative and phylogenetic analysis of the Chapacuran language family
Part of International Journal of American Linguistics, p. 255-284, 2016
Ancient genomes link early farmers from Atapuerca in Spain to modern-day Basques
Part of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, p. 11917-11922, 2015
Semantic systems in closely related languages
Part of Language sciences (Oxford), p. 1-18, 2015
Spatial relations in closely related languages
Part of Cognitive Processing, 2015
Toward a Mechanistic Understanding of Linguistic Diversity
Part of BioScience, p. 524-535, 2013
Time and place in the prehistory of the Aslian languages
Part of Human Biology, p. 383-400, 2013
Systematic typological comparison as a tool for investigating language history
Part of Language Documentation & Conservation, p. 34-71, 2012
Part of Diachronica, p. 1-27, 2012
Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family
Part of Science, p. 957-960, 2012
Anthropological papers of the University of Alaska: The Dene-Yeniseian connection (review)
Part of Language, p. 429-432, 2012
Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals
Part of Nature, p. 79-82, 2011
Universal typological dependencies should be detectable in the history of language families
Part of Linguistic Typology, p. 509-534, 2011
Kin Term Diversity Is the Result of Multilevel, Historical Processes
Part of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010
Contact and phylogeny in Island Melanesia
Part of Lingua, p. 1664-1678, 2009
Explaining the Linguistic Diversity of Sahul Using Population Models
Part of PLoS biology, 2009
Genetic and Linguistic Coevolution in Northern Island Melanesia
Part of PLOS Genetics, 2008
Part of Language, p. 710-759, 2008
Four languages from the lower end of the typology of locative predication
Part of Linguistics, p. 873-892, 2007
Is Kazukuru really non-Austronesian?
Part of Oceanic Linguistics, 2007
Statistical reasoning in the evaluation of typological diversity in Island Melanesia
Part of Oceanic Linguistics, p. 388-403, 2007
Measuring the phylogenetic signal of grammatical gender in Indo-Aryan languages
Part of Language Dynamics and Change
Chapters in book
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan Languages
Part of The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia, p. 633-667, Mouton de Gruyter, 2024
Part of The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, p. 190-211, Routledge, 2015
Gender determined dialect variation
Part of The expression of gender, p. 39-68, Mouton de Gruyter, 2014
Gender determined dialect variation
Part of The expression of gender, p. 39-68, Mouton de Gruyter, 2014
Language history and culture groups among Austroasiatic-speaking foragers of the Malay Peninsula
Part of Dynamics of Human Diversity, p. 257-275, Pacific Linguistics, 2011
The Spread of the Arawakan Languages: A View from Structural Phylogenetics
Part of Ethnicity in ancient Amazonia, p. 173-196, University of Colorado Press, 2011
The Languages of Island Melanesia
Part of Genes, Language and Culture History in the Southwest Pacific, p. 118-141, Oxford University Press, 2007
Inferring Prehistory from Genetic, Linguistic, and Geographic Variation
Part of Population Genetics, Linguistics, and Culture History in the Southwest Pacific, p. 141-155, Oxford University Press, 2007
Other
Review of Evolutionary Linguistics by April McMahon and Robert McMahon
Part of American Anthropologist, p. 690-691, 2014