David Sasseville

David Sasseville is a Post-Doc researcher in Comparative Linguistics (Hittitology) at Philipps University Marburg, specializing in Anatolian languages with particular focus on Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian. A French-Canadian from the Gaspésie peninsula of Québec, he completed his undergraduate studies in Ancient Greek, Latin, and Historical Linguistics at Concordia University in Montreal before pursuing two Master's degrees at Marburg University: one in Indo-European Linguistics focused on the Anatolian branch, and another in Ancient Greek Philology.

His research centers on the linguistic structure and historical development of Anatolian languages, with special emphasis on verbal morphology, phonology, and syntax. Through meticulous philological analysis combined with comparative linguistic methods, Sasseville bridges traditional philology with modern linguistic theory to reconstruct earlier stages of these languages and their relationship to Proto-Indo-European.

Sasseville's scholarly output demonstrates consistent advancement in understanding Anatolian languages through careful examination of fragmentary texts. His 2021 monograph Anatolian Verbal Stem Formation: Luwian, Lycian and Lydian provides a comprehensive classification of verbal stem classes across these languages. His more recent work includes studies on Luwian dative-locative endings, Lydian o-vocalism, Palaic texts from Hattusa, and the identification of new languages in Hittite archives.

He actively collaborates with international scholars including Susanne Görke (with whom he's preparing a new edition of Palaic texts from Hattusa), Elisabeth Rieken, Ilya Yakubovich, and Annick Payne across multiple institutions. His work on the eDiAna digital dictionary project has involved supervising academic internships for doctoral student Oscar Billing from Uppsala University and MA student Jonas Döll from Philipps University Marburg.

Sasseville teaches a diverse range of courses including Hieroglyphic Luwian, Cuneiform Luwian, Palaic, Historical Grammar of Sanskrit, Hittite Reading for Beginners, Latin Linguistics, Lycian Varieties, and Introduction to Historical Linguistics, reflecting his broad expertise across ancient languages and linguistic theory.