University defined my adult life, from age 18 to age 28, during which time I undertook a bacherlor’s, master’s and finally a doctorate degree in linguistics.
My specialism was historical syntax (the word-order patterns of historical languages and how they change), and my PhD was a four-year research project that compared the word order of a set of Indo-European languages, in order to ‘reconstruct’ certain aspects of the word order of their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. I also developed a narrower specialism in the syntax and development of the Old Irish language, itself one of the research set behind the PhD. The others were Latin, Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Hittite, Old English, Old Norse and Old Church Slavonic, which gave me expertise in the philology and linguistics of a broad range of languages.
My PhD thesis can be accessed here: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/42148
My academic output includes two peer-reviewed journal articles:
- Bate, D. L. (2024). Deriving the Old Irish Clause: The (Surprisingly) Simple Syntax Behind Old Irish Clause Types. Journal of Historical Syntax 8.1. 1-48.
- Bate, D. L., & Ram-Prasad, K. J. (2025). Wackernagel’s Law in Vedic and Old Irish. In: Proceedings of the 34th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference: Los Angeles, October 27–28, 2023 (Vol. 34, p. 1). Helmut Buske Verlag.
Pandemic permitting, my PhD journey also included many opportunities to give talks, including to groups at Oxford University, Cambridge University, UCLA, Charles University and the University of Vienna, and to the Linguistics Association of Great Britain.
Having now taken a step away from the academic world, I intend to remain committed to continuing my research as much as time, money and library restrictions allow. For example, my first post-academic talk was at the DiGS conference in Oxford in June 2025, again on the subject of Old Irish syntax. If I can be of help with your own academic research, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Danny L. Bate 