Elena Martinez is a Postdoctoral Researcher, specialising in Historical Linguistics and Philology of the Anatolian languages.
Her primary areas of interest are the languages of the Iron Age and Classical periods of Anatolia, including Lycian, Lydian, Carian, and Hieroglyphic Luwian. Her research focuses on the philological and linguistic study of these languages, both from the synchronic and diachronic points of view, as well as on language contact between them and the languages of the Aegean milieu. During her doctoral studies, she conducted a comparative study of the family lexicon of Lycian and Hieroglyphic Luwian, integrating the philological knowledge of these languages with Indo-European Linguistics, and applying the combinatorial method within the context of Limited Text Corpus Languages (LTCL). In her postdoctoral years, she broadened the scope of her research to include language and cultural contacts between Anatolia and the Aegean world, thanks to her participation in the ERC PALAC project (Pre-Classical Anatolian Languages in Contact) at the Università degli Studi di Verona. She is currently a member of the Spanish research project Anatolian gods and their names in direct sources of Anatolian languages from the 1st Millennium (Universitat de Barcelona – Universidad Complutense de Madrid – Universidade de Santiago de Compostela).
The goal of her Visiting Fellowship is to extend and edit for publication her doctoral research on family lexicon, which will appear under the title The Kinship Lexicon of Lycian and Hieroglyphic Luwian. This publication, which will include new epigraphic findings and recent developments of the discipline, will contribute to the field of Anatolian Studies with a new and updated lexicographical study.
Selected publications
- 2025: Chapter 7: Lydian and the Languages of the Achaemenid Empire. In: F. Giusfredi, A. Matessi, S. Merlin, and V. Pisaniello (eds.), Contacts of languages and peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite world. Volume 2: The 1st Millennium and the Eastern Mediterranean Interface. Leiden/Boston: Brill, pp. 157-172. DOI: 10.1163/9789004729704_008.
- 2025: with Merlin, S., Chapter 15: Greek and the Anatolian languages of the 1st millennium: Lycian, Lydian, and Carian. In: F. Giusfredi, A. Matessi, S. Merlin, V. Pisaniello (eds.), Contacts of languages and peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite world. Volume 2: The 1st Millennium and the Eastern Mediterranean Interface. Leiden/Boston: Brill, pp. 338-359. DOI: 10.1163/9789004729704_016.
- 2023: Again on the Xanthos Pillar ha͂tahe. Between combinatory analysis and Greek epigraphic interference. In: J.-V. García Trabazo, I.-X. Adiego, M. Vernet, B. Obrador-Cursach, and S. Soler (eds.), New approaches on Anatolian linguistics (Barcino Monographica Orientalia 22). Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona [ISBN: 978-84-9168-937-9], pp. 135-150.
- 2021: Milyan dialectal divergence and its traces in onomastics. Kadmos. Zeitschrift für vor- und frühgriechische Epigraphik 60.1, pp. 137-156. DOI: 10.1515/kadmos-2021-0010.
- 2021: The Anatolian words for ‘son’ and the semantics of muwa-. In: A. Payne, Š. Velhartická, J. Wintjes (eds.), Beyond All Boundaries. Anatolia in the 1st Millennium BC (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 295). Leuven: Peeters [ISBN: 978-90-429-4884-6], pp. 253–266.
- 2021: Lycian hba-. Towards the interpretation of TL 44a.49. In: Ll. Feliu, A. Millet, and J. Vidal (eds.), Sentido de un empeño. Volum d’Homenatge a Gregorio del Olmo Lete. (Barcino Monographica Orientalia 16). Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona [ISBN: 978-84-9168-362-9], pp. 293-305.
- 2019: Phonotactics of the Lycian labial glide. Indogermanische Forschungen. Zeitschrift für Indogermanistik und historische Sprachwissenschaft 124, pp. 219-229. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/if-2019-0007.
- 2019: Anatolian kinship word-pairs and their Mesopotamian connection. In: I-X. Adiego – J.V. García Trabazo – M. Vernet – B. Obrador-Cursach – E. Martínez-Rodríguez (eds.), Luwic Dialects and Anatolian: Inheritance and Diffusion (Barcino Monographica Orientalia 12, Series Anatolica et Indogermanica 1). Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona [ISBN: 978-84-9168-375-9], pp. 181–203.
- 2018: Revisiting gender and morphology in Lycian a-stem nouns. In: E. Rieken (ed.), 100 Jahre Entzifferung des Hethitischen. Morphosyntaktische Kategorien in Sprachgeschichte und Forschung Akten der Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 21. bis 23 September 2015 in Marburg. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag [ISBN: 978-3-95490-331-3], pp. 275-288.
