I am a linguist specializing in Slavic languages. My main research interests revolve around the question of how and why the Slavic languages came to be the way they are. In my PhD thesis I developed a model of the relative chronology of Proto-Slavic and Russian sound changes. In other works, I focus on the rise of new morphemes as a result of grammaticalization processes. Recently, I have become interested in the grammar of Slavic microlanguages, i.e., Slavic varieties apart from the major languages which are to some degree codified. These languages provide compelling cases for the study of the effects of language contact. Another interest concerns the creation of electronic resources for the study of language. In cooperation with student assistants, I am, for instance, working on a digital version of the model elaborated in my PhD thesis. I also have a background in Slavic philology; for example, I have participated in editing Old Church Slavonic texts found in Saint Catherine’s monastery on the Sinai Peninsula in 1975.

https://uzh.academia.edu/FlorianWandl

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Florian-Wandl

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4992-176X

PhD thesis

Vom Urindogermanischen zum Russischen: Eine Studie zum Lautwandel und seiner relativen Chronologie, University of Zurich (2020).

Research articles

• With Lenka Scholze (Sorbian Institute, Bautzen): “Virility”, in: Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics, ed. by M. L. Greenberg et. al. (under review).
• With Rafał Szeptyński (PAN, Krakau): “Egda žena otročęmь xoditъ. On the the 5th prescription in the Old Church Slavonic Folia medicinalia”, in: Zeitschrift für Slawistik 69:2 (accepted).
• With Darya Kavitskaya (UC Berkeley): “On the reconstruction of contrastive secondary palatalization in Common Slavic”, in: Journal of Historical Linguistics 13:2 (2023) (https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.21003.wan).
• With Darya Kavitskaya (UC Berkeley): “A rare contrast in Slavic: the palatalization of rhotics”, in: Rarities in phonetics and phonology: evolutionary, structural, typological and social dimensions (= Topics in phonological diversity, forthcoming, https://langsci-press.org/catalog/series/tpd), ed. by C. Anderson, N. Kuznetsova & S. Easterday, Language Science Press (accepted).
• “Univerbation and prosodic change: On the origin of the Slavic definite adjective accentuation”, in: Indo-European Linguistics (2023, online first) (https://doi.org/10.1163/22125892-bja10024).
• “Superlative morphology from syntax: Slavic nai-/naj- and internal definiteness marking in Old Lithuanian”, in: Transactions of the Philological Society 120(1) (2022), 103–127. (https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12230)
• “Trapped morphology and the rise of the Slavic definite adjective inflection. A reexamination”, in: Folia Linguistica Historica 43(1) (2022), 1–31. (https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2022-2012)
• With Barbara Sonnenhauser (University of Zurich): “Relative clauses”, in: Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics, ed. by M. L. Greenberg et. al. (2021). (http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2589-6229_ESLO_COM_032033)
• With Chundra Cathcart (University of Zurich): “In search of isoglosses: continuous and discrete language embeddings in Slavic historical phonology”, in: Proceedings of the Seventeenth SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology (co-located with the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics). Edited by G. Nicolai, K. Gorman und R. Cotterell (2020), 233–244.  (Awarded best runner-up paper.) (https://aclanthology.org/2020.sigmorphon-1.28.pdf)
• “On the relative chronology of the II regressive and the progressive palatalizations of Common Slavic”, in: Russian Linguistics 44 (2020), 79–108. (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-020-09219-w)
• “On the Slavic Word for ‘Morning’: *(j)u(s)tro”, in: Scando-Slavica, 65:2 (2019), 263–281. (https://doi.org/10.1080/00806765.2019.1672096)

Review article

• “Einige kritische Bemerkungen zu Rainer Fechts Monographie Neoakut in der slavischen Wortbildung: der volja-Typ (2010)”, in: Richerche slavistiche 10 (56) (2012), 399–416.

Editions of medieval manuscripts (as a project participant)

• Psalterium Demetrii Sinaitici et Folia medicinalia monasterii s. Catharinae codex slav. NF 3. editio critica (= Glagolitica Sinaitica: Editionen und Abhandlungen zur glagolitisch-altkirchenslavischen Tradition des Sinai, vol. 2). Praeparaverunt Henricus Miklas, Catharina Maria MacRobert, Andreas N. Sobolev, Dana Hürner, Florianus Wandl, Melania Gau cum dissertationibus Petrae Stankovska, Simonis Brenner, Floriani Kleber, Manfredi Schreiner, Michaelis Melcher, Ernesti Georgii Hammerschmid sub redactionae Henrici Miklas, Catharinae Mariae MacRobert, Andreae N. Sobolev, Wien 2021.
• Die kirchenslavische Übersetzung der Dioptra des Philippos Monotropos. Vol. 2: Text der Bücher II, III und IV, ed. by Jürgen Fuchsbauer (in print).
• Missale Sinaiticum, ed. by Heinz Miklas et al. (in preparation).

Teaching materials

• With Gianna Frölicher and Tonja Stukalina: Einführungen in das wissenschaftliche Arbeiten für Slavisten.

Digital ressources

• Digital model of the relative chronology of Russian sound changes (with contributions by Lea Gafner, Luca Salini, and Thilo Thelitz) (in preparation)
• With Chundra Cathcart (UZH): Database of Slavic cognates in phonetic transcription (with contributions by Jovanka Antić) (in preparation)

Invited talks

• “Old Russian birchbark letters”, in the course “Introduction to Slavic Linguistics” led by Darya Kavitskaya at the University of California, Berkeley (07.02.2023, online).
• “Subjektverdoppelung im Resianischen”, Slavic Linguistics Colloquium, Slavic Department, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (11.01.2023, Freiburg/online).
• “Reconstructing and visualizing relative chronology in linguistics”, Slavic Linguistics Colloquium, HU Berlin, Department of Slavic and Hungarian Studies (28.01.2022, Berlin/online).
• “On some early attestations of Slavic”, in the course “Introduction to Slavic Linguistics” led by Darya Kavitskaya at the University of California, Berkeley (09.02.2021, online).
• “On the origin of the superlative prefix Sl *nai-”, Zagreb Linguistic Circle / Zagrebački lingvistički krug (14.01.2020, Zagreb).

Conferences and Workshops

• With Thilo Thelitz (UZH): “ From book to graph: digitizing models of relative chronology”, Seminar: Relative Chronology in Historical Linguistics (29.-30.06.2023, University of Copenhagen).

• “On the origin of the Slavic i-stems” 17th Annual Meeting of the Slavic Linguistics Society (SLS) (19.-21.09.2022, Hokkaido University in Sapporo / online)
• With Darya Kavitskaya (University of California, Berkeley): “On the reconstruction of the secondary palatalization contrast in Common Slavic”, Fifth Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology (06.-08.12.2021, University of Edinburgh / online, poster).
• With Darya Kavitskaya (University of California, Berkeley): “A rare contrast in Slavic: the palatalization of rhotics”, Phonological diversity matters: Rarities in phonology (Workshop organized by C. Anderson, N. Kuznecova und S. Easterday), 50th Poznań Linguistics Meeting (16.-19.09.2021, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań / online)
• “Beyond proportional analogy: the case of Slavic vĭsĭ and sicĭ”, Analogical Patterns in Inflectional Morphology (APIM 2020) (14.04.2022, Free University of Berlin / online).
• “On the origin of the accentuation of the definite adjective in Slavic”, 16th SLS Meeting (03.-05.09.2021, Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign / online)
• “Superlative morphology from syntax: The case of Slavic nai-/naj-”, 15th SLS Meeting (04.-06.09.2020, University of Bloomington, Indiana / online)
• With Chundra Cathcart (UZH): “In search of isoglosses: continuous and discrete language embeddings in Slavic historical phonology”, Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL): Seventeenth SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology (10.07.2020) (awarded best runner-up paper).
• “Common Slavic contrastive palatalization: Fact and fiction”, 18th Spring Workshop on Linguistic Reconstruction (12.-14.03.2020, University of California, Berkeley) (http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~garrett/swotmlr18.html) with Darya Kavitskaya, University of Berkeley) (cancelled due to Covid-19).
• “Aksl. žęti, žьn̑e ‘ernten’ und Verwandte: Etymologie zwischen Morphologie und Phraseo-logie”, 16. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft: Jenseits der Formenlehre. Indo-germanische Morphologie mit Grauzonen- und Schnittstellenphänomenen (07-10.09.2020, UZH) (https://www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/de/16.-Fachtagung-der-Indogermanischen-Gesellschaft.html) (cancelled due to Covid-19).
• “Superlative morphology from syntax: the case of Slavic *nai-“, Typology in Bologna: Comparative constructions: linguistic typology at the crossroads (25-26.05.2020, University of Bologna) (https://eventi.unibo.it/typobo-2020) (cancelled due to Covid-19).
• “Models of relative chronology: reconstruction and representation”, Fourth Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology (09-10.12.2019, University of Edinburgh, poster).
• “Zur Herkunft des Superlativpräfixes slav. *nai-”, 13. Deutscher Slavistentag (24.-26.09.2019, University of Trier).
• “On the relative chronology of the progressive and the second regressive palatalization of common Slavic: explaining Meillet’s ě” 14th SLS Meeting (11.-13.09.2019, University of Potsdam).
• “From Proto-Indo-European to Russian. A study of sound change and its relative chronology”, Roots of Europe Summer Seminar: Languages and Migrations in Prehistoric Europe (07.-12.08.2018, National Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen)
• “Slav. *(j)utro : *(j)ustro”, Indogermanisches Forschungskolloquium (05.-06.04.2018, UZH).
• “Probleme rund um die Baudouinsche oder Dritte Palatalisierung”, Altslavistentagung: Altslavistik einst und jetzt (29.-30.09.2017, University of Vienna).