Iris Kamil

Email: Iris.Kamil@ed.ac.uk
Web: Personal Website

PhD supervisors:

Biography

Background

I am a Linguist and Assyriologist, specialising in Semitic languages, predominantly Akkadian and Ethiosemitic. My general approach to language is to view it as a very dynamic system of interaction between multiple internal systems and external factors. Being more interested in theoretical and historical questions, I mostly investigate morphological problems in their interfaces with syntax, phonology, and semantics with a special regard to how these forms and problems arise and develop diachronically.

As for my background, I have studied at the University of Vienna between 2016 and 2022, earning a BA in Linguistics (2019), an MA in Assyriology (2022), and soon a second MA in Indo-European Studies and Historical Linguistics. Between 2019-2021 I was a research fellow at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, working on the Late Babylonian Priestly Literature project.

CV

140906.pdf

Qualifications

BA in Linguistics (2019)
MA in Assyriology (2022)

Research

Research summary

My work fits somewhere within the triangle of Theoretical Linguistics - Historical Linguistics - Assyriology. Predominantly, I employ methods of theoretical linguistics on questions of the historical linguistic field on languages spoken in the ANE.

Current research interests

Akkadian verb; Semitic morphosyntax, morphophonology, morphosemantics; Proto-Semitic reconstruction; epistolary corpora. My PhD project sets out to reinvestigate the Akkadian verbal system within the framework of Distributed Morphology. Special attention will be given to a re-evaluation of the system as an aspectual one, to the forms' argument structure, and the role of the roots and their Aktionsart. Ultimately, this project sets out to test how much such an analysis can help us make predictions for Proto-Semitic mophosyntax.

Past research interests

While at the Assyriology department in Vienna, I worked on Late Babylonian literature, religion, epigraphy.

Conferences

Invited speaker

2022:

t-Forms of the Akkadian Stative, Workshop on Semitic Prefixes and Suffixes, Paris, 11th-12th of March 2022

2021:

Akkadian Pluractionals in Old Babylonian Letters – a Reanalysis, Atelier de Phonologie, Université de Paris 8 (virtual), 24th of November 2021

Organiser

Norbert Jokl Gedenksymposium, University of Vienna, 3rd of May 2022

Participant

2022:

News on the Adad-Šuma-Uṣur Epic, 34. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Berlin, 12th-17th of September 2022

Tocharian periphrastic yām-constructions revisited (with Laura Grestenberger), 34. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Berlin, 12th-17th of September 2022

New Visions on Kingship in Late Babylonian Priestly Literature (with Céline Debourse), 66. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Mainz, 25th-29th of July 2022