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Welcome to my website.

I am a linguist interested in the (pre-)history of Lithuanian and Indo-European comparative linguistics. I have been studying the prehistorical developments of the languages and linguistic reconstructions.

In January 2026, with the initiative of Sampsa Holopainen (University of Helsinki), we started a network for early to mid career researchers in prehistoric sociolinguistics together with colleagues. More information on the network is found here. The information on my previous projects are available here.

Since August 2021, I started a blog in linguistic topics as a part of my outreach activity. Some language- or linguistics-related topics are presented in Japanese in a small-talk style. Your visits are much welcomed.

My academic background

• 2024-present Associated Fellow at Center for the Human Past


• 2018-2025 Researcher at the Department for Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German, Stockholm University.
  • Fall 2024 Senior fellow at Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study / Center for the Human Past.
  • 2018 - 2021 International Postdoc at the Department of Comparative Language Science, Zurich University.


• 2012-2016 PhD student at the Department for Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German, Stockholm University.


• 2007-2012 Doctoral student at the Linguistics Department, Kyoto University.
  • 2010-2011 Special student at the Linguistics Department, Harvard University.
  • 2008-2010 JSPS Research Fellow, DC2.


• 2005-2007 Master student at the Linguistics Department, Kyoto University.


• 2001-2005 Undergraduate student at the Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University.

email:
yoko dot yamazaki at balt.su.se

To appear

• "Working and Eating Together — Commensality in the life of Early Bronze Age peoples in Contacts in the post Seima-Turbino Transcultural Complex." To appear in International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction.


• "A case study on the Lith. sùkti-type verb – a back-formation of active paradigms from the lost mediopassives." To appear in the proceedings of the XVII. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft.

2024

• "The simple thematic present ending in the 2nd person singular in Baltic" The Journal of Indo-European Studies 51 (1 & 2), 2023, 147-164.

2023

• "Diathetic problem of the Baltic ā-preterits to the simple thematic presents" Historische Sprachforschung 134 (1), 2021, 290-311.


• "The prehistory of kláusti, klausýti, and their related forms revisited" Lietuvių kalba 17, 2022, 49-60. doi: 10.15388/LK.2022.4.

2022

• Sommer, Florian, Karin Stüber, Paul Widmer, and Yoko Yamazaki (eds.) Indogermanische Morphologie in erweiterter Sicht. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität 2022.


• "The Baltic transitive ia-presents and their paired preterits in the ē- or *iyā-stem — Between a conditioned allomorph and an independent morpheme" In: Sommer et al. (eds.) Indogermanische Morphologie in erweiterter Sicht, Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität 2022, pp. 413–430.

2021

• 「ベルンドイツ語の丁寧表現、不思議だと思ったことありませんか？」『ベルン日本人会会報 241号』 pp. 4-5. (a popular science publication in Japanese; published in a local newsletter of the Japanese society of Bern, Switzerland, Bern Nipponjin-kai kaiho Vol. 241, December 2021, pp. 4-5.)


• 「バルト語 歴史言語学の世界にようこそ」『ベルン日本人会会報 239号』pp. 8-11. (a popular science publication in Japanese; published in a local newsletter of the Japanese society of Bern, Switzerland, Bern Nipponjin-kai kaiho Vol. 239, July 2021, pp. 8-11.)


• “Lith. mir̃ti / Latv. mirt `to die' and Lith. mir̃šti / Latv. mìrst `to forget' in East Baltic” Acta Linguistica Lithuanica 83, 2021, 11-26.

2020

• “A review of Jay Jasanoff (2017) The prehistory of the Balto-Slavic accent” Acta Slavica Iaponica 40, 2020, 283-299.

2019

• "Sievers-Edgertons Variants, Stang-Larssons Rule, and Narten Imperfects in Baltic Long-Vowel Preterits" Baltistica 54(1), 2019, pp. 35-46.


• "The root vocalism of Lith. dãvė / dial. dẽvė 'gave' revisited" In: Catt, Adam Alvah, Ronald I. Kim, and Brent Vine (eds.) QAZZU warrai, 2019, pp. 410–419, Beech Stave Press.

2017

• “Balto-Slavic accentology, schools” to appear in Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics, Rene Genis and Marc L. Greenberg (eds.). First published online: 2017.

2016

• Monosyllabic Circumflexion in Lithuanian. PhD thesis, 2016, Stockholm University. Available at DiVa; the errata list is here.

2014

• "Monosyllabic circumflexion or shortening? － The treatment of the long vowels in the 3rd person future forms in Lithuanian －" Indogermanische Forschungen 119, 2014, 339-354.


• Jenny Larsson, Kristina Bukelskytė-Cepelė, and Yoko Yamazaki “Report from the Second Joint Conference on Baltic and Scandinavian Studies held at Yale University, 13–15 March 2014.” Baltu filoloģija 23 (1), 2014, 129–132.

2009

• "The Saussure Effect in Lithuanian" The Journal of Indo-European Studies 37 No. 3 & 4, 2009, 430–461. [PDF file]
  • The list of corrigenda is available.
  • The original manuscript is also available.

• "Working and Eating Together — Some aspects of the life of Early Bronze Age peoples in Contacts in post-Seima-Turbino-Transcultural-Complex Community",
  December 10th, 2024, Baltic Seminar, Stockholm University.


• "Baltic kinship terms in Finno-Ugric, Indo-European kinship terms and their family structure", w. Axel Palmér,
  November 27th, 2024, Mini-Seminar, Center for the Human Past.


• "Working and Eating Together — Some Aspects of the Life of Early Bronze Age Peoples in Contacts in Seima-Turbino Transcultural Complex",
  October 8th, 2024, SCAS seminar, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.


• "A case study on Lith. sùkti-type verbs — an investigation in descendants of the lost mediopassives"
  September 10th, 2024, Fachtagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft, University of Basel. [presentation slides]


• "The simple thematic present ending in the 2nd person singular in East Baltic"
  September 13th, 2023, Arbeitstagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft , University of Köln. [presentation slides]


• "The 3rd person thematic ending in Baltic"
  November 30th, 2022, Indo-European Seminar, Uppsala University. [presentation slides]


• "The Baltic verbal endings - what happened to them while traveling from the IE homeland?"
  September 22nd, 2022, Tarptautinė Kazimiero Būgos konferencija, Vilnius University.


• "Dar kartą apie kláusti, klausýti ir jiems giminingų formų priešistorę (Examining once again the prehistory of kláusti, klausýti, and their related forms)"
  May 27th, 2022, 3-ioji tarptautinė hibridinė Prano Skardžiaus konferencija, Vilnius. [presentation slides]


• "Introducing Traveling Voices — The diachronic development of the voice system in the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic branches from a migrational perspective"
  March 23rd, 2022, The Next Step — Shaping the Future of Indo-European Studies, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. [Presentation slides].


• "Diathetic problem of the Baltic ā-preterits to the simple thematic presents"
  October 14th, 2021, XIII Starptautiskā Baltistu Kongress, University of Latvia. [Presentation slides].


• "Investigation on the prehistory of the Baltic preterit system"
  November 28th 2019, Språkhistoriska seminariet, Stockholm University. Available on youtube.


• "A preliminary investigation on the “medial-intransitive” ė-preterits in Baltic"
  September 27th 2019, International Conference on the occasion of the 140th Anniversary of Kazimieras Būga, Birštonas.


• "Sievers-Edgerton's law and Stang-Larsson's rule in the Baltic ē-preterite"
  June 4th 2019, Arbeitstagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Ljublijana.


• "Diathetic Problem in the Baltic Preterit System"
  March 28th 2019, Kyoto Indo-European Roundtable in Honor of Kazuhiko Yoshida, Kyoto.


• Luzius Thöny & Yoko Yamazaki "Shared retentions and the periphery: From dialect maps to computer simulations"
  July 25th 2018, IXth Congress of the International Society for Dialectology and Geolinguistics, Vilnius University.


• "Sievers-Edgerton’s Law, Stang-Larsson’s rule, and Narten Imperfects in Baltic"
  April 5th 2018, 4th Indo-European Research Colloquium, University of Zürich.


• "A revisit to the origin of the root vocalism of Lith. dãvė / dẽvė 'gave'"
  October 20th 2017, Kalbų ir Tarmių Transformacijos, Lietuvių Kalbos Institutas.


• "The root vocalism of Lithuanian ė-preterit''
  May 7th 2017, Revitalizing Baltic Linguistics in Bern, University of Bern.


• "The root vocalism of Lithuanian ė-preterit"
  April 20th 2017, 3rd Indo-European Research Colloquium, University of Vienna.


• "What are they fighting about? The different schools of Balto-Slavic accentology"
  December 15th 2016, Språkhistoriska seminariet, Stockholm University [PDF file].


• "Monosyllabic Circumflexion of the Lithuanian 3rd person future forms: its distribution and origin"
  August 20th 2016, Nordiska Slavistmötet, Stockholm. [PDF file]


• "Historical phonology in Lithuanian and Balto-Slavic: relative chronology of Monosyllabic Circumflexion"
  December 4th 2015, Phonology Colloquium, Stockholm University.[PDF file]


• "The Tones of Lithuanian Demonstrative Pronoun ‘tas/ta’"
  October 30th 2015, 12th International Congress of Balticists, Vilnius University.[PDF file]


• "The relative chronology of Monosyllabic Circumflexion"
  May 29th 2015, Workshop on Baltic and Slavic Accentology, Stockholm University.[PDF file]


• "The accentuation of the East Baltic particles and Monosyllabic Circumflexion"
  March 2015, First Indo-European Colloquium, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.[PDF file]


• "The Accentuation of East Baltic Reflexes of PIE Root Nouns"
  IWoBA X, October 2014, University of Ljublijana. [PDF file]


• "The East Baltic accentuation of the former root nouns in PIE"
  March 14th 2014, conference on Baltic and Scandinavian studies, Yale University. [PDF file]


• "Some Notes on the 3rd Person Future Forms in Lithuanian"
  30th July, 2013, The Lengthened Grade in Indo-European, Leiden University. [PDF file]


• "Monosyllabic Circumflexion in Lithuanian － with an investigation of some dialectal forms －"
  6th March, 2012, Conference on Indo-European Linguistics, Kyoto University. [PDF file]


• "The Chronology of Monosyllabic Circumflexion in Lithuanian"
  April 8th 2011, Harvard University. [PDF file].


• "On the Intonation of the Nominative Singular Ending of n-stems in Lithuanian and the Minimal Word Syndrome"
  June 12th 2010, Stockholm University. [PDF file].

• "Introduction to Baltic linguistics" Spring term 2016, baltiska språk, Stockholm University.


• "Tutorial on Historical Linguistics" a class meeting on 26/04/2012 −Departmental Seminar at Division of Behavioral Studies, Kyoto University.

• March 2017
  Prize for outstanding PhD theses, Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien (Swedish Royal Academy of Letters).

• 2011
  Fulbright Award, Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC).