Dr Nicholas Zair
I read Classics at Oxford before doing a doctorate in Comparative Philology and General Linguistics. I was appointed a Research Fellow at Peterhouse in 2010, and am now a Senior Lecturer in Classics (Classical Linguistics and Comparative Philology) in the Classics Faculty.
The linguistic history and development of Latin and the languages of Ancient Italy, the Celtic languages, and Proto-Indo-European.
Books
2016. Oscan in the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2012. The Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Celtic. Leiden & Boston: Brill
Edited Volumes
2020. James Clackson, Patrick James, Katherine McDonald, Livia Tagliapietra & Nicholas Zair (eds.), Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in and around the Ancient Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Recent Articles
2020. Rupert Thompson & Nicholas Zair. “Irrational lengthening” in Virgil. Mnemosyne 73, 577–608
2020. The Mamertini in Messina: mobility, migration and mercenaries. In James Clackson, Patrick James, Katherine McDonald, Livia Tagliapietra & Nicholas Zair (eds.), Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in and around the Ancient Mediterranean, 156-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2019. Moreed Arbabzadah & Nicholas Zair. Notes on a British Curse Tablet from Red Hill, Ratcliffe-on-Soar (Nottinghamshire). Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 212, 172-9
2019. Reconstructed forms in the Roman writers on language. Language and History, Latest Articles, 1-20. Available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2019.1649856
2018. On the relative sonority of PIE /m/. Indo-European Linguistics 6, 271-303
2018. Latin bardus and gurdus. Glotta 94, 311-18
2017, with Katherine McDonald. Changing script in a threatened language: reactions to Romanisation at Bantia in the first century BC. In Mari Jones & Damien Mooney (eds.), Creating Orthographies for Endangered Languages, 291-304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2017. The origins of -urC- for expected -orC- in Latin. Glotta 93, 255-89
2016. Vowel weakening in the Sabellic languages as language contact. Indogermanische Forschungen 121, 295-316
2015 [2013]. Latin glārea ‘gravel’. Historische Sprachforschung 126, 280-86
2015, with Katherine McDonald and Livia Tagliapietra. New readings of the multilingual Petelia curse tablet. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 195, 157-64
2015. Old Irish gniid ‘makes, does’, Middle Welsh gweinydaf ‘serve’ and i-presents. Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 62, 213-222
