DPhil student in Linguistics & Graduate Research Assistant (Language and Brain Lab)
Background
Jonathan Walls completed his MPhil at the University of Oxford in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, and was a recipient of the Anna Morpurgo Davies Master's Bursary from the UK Philological Society. He studied Russian (BA), French (BA), and Italian (BA) during his undergraduate studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. During his studies, he was senior staff at the University of Oklahoma's Language Learning Center specialising in digital media conversion. As a part of his studies, he spent an academic year in St. Petersburg, Russia, studying Russian language and culture at the St. Petersburg Politechnic University. Additionally, he spent an intensive summer course at the Université Grenoble Alpes studying French language.
Previous Research/Teaching
During his MPhil, he completed a thesis discussing the underlying algorithm for the stress system of the Hittite language. This work created a level-ordered system for Hittite phonology and a framework that explains the behavior of clitic chains and preservation of long vowels, and identifies probable locations of secondary stress in Hittite. His secondary area of study was in Celtic and Old Irish.
Before arriving at Oxford, his research focused on the Pamir languages found in Central Asia, a small subgroup of the Indo-Iranian language family. His undergraduate thesis for his Russian studies was a translation of Tatyana Pakhalina's foundational descriptive work on these languages from the original Russian into English. He was the lead language tutor for the University of Oklahoma and taught Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish in small group sessions for undergraduates. Independently, he has also taught Biblical Hebrew for adults on a volunteer basis for various organisations, and has produced an interlinear translation of the book of Exodus designed for liturgical reading in a synagogue, available for download at glottophilos.com.
Current Research Interests
Jonathan's current research interests are focused on the Anatolian regional languages including genetically Anatolian languages like Hittite, Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian, but also regionally significant languages like Hattian, Hurrian, and Akkadian. He aims to expand his work on Hittite metrical phonology to create a broader understanding of the rule-based systems governing the Anatolian stress systems and the writing systems that communicate them, culminating in a view towards creating a reconstruction of the Proto-Anatolian stress system. His current research is funded by the Christie-Miller Scholarship in partnership with the LPP faculty through Trinity College.
He is the creator and maintainer of the LuwianType and HitType LaTeX packages for typing in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Hittite cuneiform, respectively. The LuwianType package is available at glottophilos.com/luwiantype.html or via the CTAN LaTeX repository at ctan.org/pkg/luwiantype, and the HitType package is available at glottophilos.com/hittype.html or on CTAN at ctan.org/pkg/hittype.
He has recently produced a 3D-printable set of carrying case and stylus for writing Anatolian cuneiform, available for free download at https://glottophilos.com/cuneiformtools.html.
Current Work
Jonathan is currently employed as a graduate research assistant in the Language and Brain Lab in the Faculty of Linguistics (brainlab.web.ox.ac.uk). His work entails writing code to support the FlexSR speech recognition project, and has previously involved labeling Praat data for an examination of Bengali English and aspiration patterns, as well as helping to run EEG experimentation, among other duties.