Paul J. Hopper is an American linguist of British birth. In 1973, he proposed the glottalic theory

Glottalic theory

The glottalic theory holds that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, , but not the murmured ones, , of traditional Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions....

 regarding the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 consonant inventory, in parallel with the Georgian linguist Tamaz Gamkrelidze

Tamaz Gamkrelidze

Tamaz Valeryanovich Gamkrelidze is a distinguished Georgian linguist, orientalist public benefactor and Hittitologist, Academician and President of the Georgian Academy of Sciences , Doctor of Sciences , Professor .Gamkrelidze was born in Kutaisi, Georgian SSR...

 and the Russian linguist Vyacheslav V. Ivanov. He later also became known for his theory of emergent grammar

Emergent grammar

Emergent grammar is an approach to the study of syntax, originally proposed by Paul Hopper, which postulates that rules for grammar and syntactic structure emerge as language is used...

 (Hopper 1987), for his contributions to the theory of grammaticalisation

Grammaticalisation

In linguistics, grammaticalization is a process by which words representing objects and actions transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical objects...

 and other work dealing with the interface between grammar and usage. He currently works as the Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

 in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

, USA.

Selected publications

• (1973) Glottalized and murmured occlusives in Indo-European. Glotta 7: 141-166.
• (1987) Emergent grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13: 139-157. (Online on archive.org - http://web.archive.org/web/20050407212050/http://home.eserver.org/hopper/emergence.html)
• (1993) (with Elizabeth Closs Traugott) Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.