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Darya Kavitskaya is a Professor at the University of California Berkeley, specializing in Slavic Languages and Literatures, as well as Linguistics. Her research predominantly centers on phonological theory, focusing on aspects such as contrast, opacity, syllable structure, sonority, phonotactics, vowel harmony, epenthesis, and pre- and post-aspiration. Kavitskaya also explores the phonetic and phonological properties of various languages, emphasizing the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of trills, distinctive features, secondary articulation (such as palatalization), and the phonetic correlates of stress. Her work extends into areal linguistics, particularly concerning Slavic languages—including Russian, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, and Czech—as well as Turkic (Crimean Tatar), Uralic (Tundra Nenets), Celtic (Scottish Gaelic), and Kartvelian (Georgian) languages. Furthermore, she has interests in historical Slavic, morphology, sound symbolism, and language disorders. Kavitskaya’s contributions to the field are influential in understanding the complex interplay of phonetics and phonology across diverse linguistic landscapes.
The Mathematics Subject GRE is required for the Fall 2026 admissions cycle. General GRE is optional.