Rate My Professor Somdev Kar

Somdev Kar is an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Tübingen, Germany, an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Hyderabad, India, and a BA Honours in Linguistics from the University of Calcutta, India. Kar joined IIT Ropar on June 28, 2010, progressing to his current position, where he teaches courses such as Fundamentals of Linguistics (HS452), Sound Patterns in Human Language (HS505), Morphology (HS461), Laboratory Phonology (HUL465), Topics in Optimality Theory (HS608), Computational Phonology (HS614), Natural Language Processing (DS554), and others including English Syntactic Structure and Understanding India.

His research focuses on phonology within the Optimality Theory framework, phonetics, morphology, speech processing, natural language processing, and evolutionary linguistics, with emphasis on Indian languages including Bangla, Hadoti, Kanauji, Mappila Malayalam, Old Tamil, Maithili, and Dharamshala Tibetan. Key publications include the book Syllable Structure of Bangla: An Optimality-Theoretic Approach (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Syllable structure and stratification in Bangla with Hubert Truckenbrodt (Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2019); Sonorant Gemination in Old Tamil with R. Venkatakrishnan (Bhasha, 2025); Onomatopoeia in Maithili: A Correspondence Analysis in Optimality Theory with P. Kumari (Journal of Universal Language, 2026); Intervocalic Gemination in Mappila Malayalam: Evidence from Perso-Arabic Loanwords with T.P.P. Raza (SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 2024); Sonority and reduplication in Hadoti with G. Chand (Journal of Universal Language, 2018); and Kanauji of Kanpur: A Brief Overview with P. Dwivedi (Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 2016). He also co-authored the book Matribhashapedia: IMLI Linguistic Encyclopedia of Mother Languages (International Mother Language Institute, 2024). Kar serves as principal investigator on projects such as Evolutionary Traces in Indian Language and Linguistic Tradition (ICSSR, 2025-2026), Speech Vector Approach to Linguistic Phylogeny of Indian Languages (Indo-Taiwan Joint Research Centre, 2024), and AI Multilingual Benchmark (Plumeria V2 - Bengali) consultancy (Appen Butler Hill Group, 2024-2025), as well as co-principal investigator on Language, Culture, and Survival among the Birhor PVTG (ICSSR, 2025-2028).