I am a Professor of Linguistics, specializing in Phonology and Morphophonology, at the Department of Linguistics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (visit my departmental website here). I earned my Ph.D. from Leiden University/HIL in 1999, with a thesis titled Headmost Accent Wins. Prior to my appointment at A.U.Th., I was a Talent-Stipendium (NWO) postdoc researcher at UMass, Amherst (1998–1999) and served as a faculty member at the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at Boston University (2000–2001) and the Department of Mediterranean Studies at the University of the Aegean (2001–2009). From 2020 to 2024, I was an adjunct faculty member at the Hellenic Open University
My primary research emphasis is on phonology and its interface with morphology and syntax. In my dissertation, I examined a group of lexical accent systems, namely Greek, Russian, and a few Salish languages, and proposed that stress in such systems is largely determined by morphosyntactic structure. I also have a profound interest in contact-induced systems and, especially, endangered varieties of Greek that have been in long-term contact with Turkish (e.g., Asia Minor Greek, (Ofitika) Pontic, etc.).
Throughout my career as a graduate student and scholar, I have been fortunate to engage with the academic communities of numerous prestigious departments in Europe (e.g., University of Göttingen, University of Konstanz, Cambridge University, Leiden University/LUCL, etc.) and the USA (e.g., Stanford University, UCSC). In 2008, I visited the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT under the Fulbright Scholar Program to conduct research on the evolution of pitch accents in Ancient Greek.
I have published 5 books, co-edited 7 more, and authored over 70 articles in scientific journals, peer-reviewed volumes, and proceedings. Additionally, I have presented my work at more than 100 international conferences, workshops, and colloquia. More information on my publications can be found here.
Currently, my research team and I are interested in exploring patterns of (stochastic) variation in areas such as stress acquisition, the application of sandhi rules, and allomorphy, as well as their formal expression within the framework of Gradient Harmonic Grammar (Smolensky & Goldrick 2016). In the project GRADIENCE (Modeling the limits of grammar: Integrating lexical frequency in a Gradient Harmonic model of lexical stress; Evidence from young and adult Greek speakers’ grammars), we explore how nominal stress patterns in both young and adult speakers’ Greek grammar can be computationally modeled.