The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto
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Languages and Early Migration “Language Resources,” Cambridge University Press website Prologue This introduction to languages and early migration is reproduced from the online Language Resources that I created, linked to the website for my book, A History of Humanity. The main essay provides basic definitions on language, then summarizes language-group distribution, history, and debates, concluding with language spreadsheets and references. An example of phylum-level details is shown for Amerind, the original languages of North ands South America. Essay The purpose of this online resource collection is to interpret the place of language in human history. In a simplified presentation of a complex issue, this Introduction begins with concise definitions and descriptions. It traces the logical order of language divergence and displays the major phyla or families going back more than 15,000 years. After summarizing the history of language divergence and movement in six periods, we turn to the problems and debates in language history. These include the effects of “language overlays” as one replaces another, efforts to define “macro-phyla” for very early times, and early maritime migrations. The accompanying files for 14 individual phyla provide descriptions of each Homeland, language migrations over time, maps (which are also available as separate image files), concise spreadsheets showing major subgroups in each phylum, and citations of works on each phylum. In a separate Excel file, the 14 individual sheets each give a restatement of the concise spreadsheet at top and, below, a full spreadsheet showing many of the languages in each phylum. Definitions The elements of language, as understood by linguists, include lexicon (the meanings of words), morphology (the pieces of words and how they are fit together), phonology (the sounds made in any language), and syntax (the organization of lexicon, morphology, and phonology into meaningful sentences). -
Armenian Secret and Invented Languages and Argots
Armenian Secret and Invented Languages and Argots The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Russell, James R. Forthcoming. Armenian secret and invented languages and argots. Proceedings of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9938150 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#OAP 1 ARMENIAN SECRET AND INVENTED LANGUAGES AND ARGOTS. By James R. Russell, Harvard University. Светлой памяти Карена Никитича Юзбашяна посвящается это исследование. CONTENTS: Preface 1. Secret languages and argots 2. Philosophical and hypothetical languages 3. The St. Petersburg Manuscript 4. The Argot of the Felt-Beaters 5. Appendices: 1. Description of St. Petersburg MS A 29 2. Glossary of the Ṙuštuni language 3. Glossary of the argot of the Felt-Beaters of Moks 4. Texts in the “Third Script” of MS A 29 List of Plates Bibliography PREFACE Much of the research for this article was undertaken in Armenia and Russia in June and July 2011 and was funded by a generous O’Neill grant through the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. For their eager assistance and boundless hospitality I am grateful to numerous friends and colleagues who made my visit pleasant and successful. For their generous assistance in Erevan and St. -
The Impact of Hittite and Tocharian: Rethinking Indo-European in the 20Th Century and Beyond
The Impact of Hittite and Tocharian: Rethinking Indo-European in the 20th Century and Beyond The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Jasanoff, Jay. 2017. The Impact of Hittite and Tocharian: Rethinking Indo-European in the 20th Century and Beyond. In Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics, edited by Jared Klein, Brian Joseph, and Matthias Fritz, 31-53. Munich: Walter de Gruyter. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41291502 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 18. The Impact of Hittite and Tocharian ■■■ 35 18. The Impact of Hittite and Tocharian: Rethinking Indo-European in the Twentieth Century and Beyond 1. Two epoch-making discoveries 4. Syntactic impact 2. Phonological impact 5. Implications for subgrouping 3. Morphological impact 6. References 1. Two epoch-making discoveries The ink was scarcely dry on the last volume of Brugmann’s Grundriß (1916, 2nd ed., Vol. 2, pt. 3), so to speak, when an unexpected discovery in a peripheral area of Assyriol- ogy portended the end of the scholarly consensus that Brugmann had done so much to create. Hrozný, whose Sprache der Hethiter appeared in 1917, was not primarily an Indo-Europeanist, but, like any trained philologist of the time, he could see that the cuneiform language he had deciphered, with such features as an animate nom. -
Tongan Personal Pronouns*
TONGAN PERSONAL PRONOUNS* Catherine Macdonald University of Toronto 1. Background: Tongan Grammar Tongan is an ergative, VSO, mostly isolating language. The template of a clause is given in (1); an illustrative example, in (2): (1) Tense-Aspect-Mood Particle (TAM), Predicate, Arguments, PPs (2) Oku kai ‘e Sione ‘a e ika ‘i he potu ki tahi Pres eat Erg Sione Abs Det fish Loc Det area Loc sea "Sione eats the fish in the area of the sea." [Tchekhoff, 1981:15] 1.1. Tongan Pronouns Tongan has two series of personal pronouns. Those in the first series act like DPs: They can function as arguments, following the predicate and preceded by a case marker, as in (3a), or they can be the objects of prepositions as in (3b). (3) a. Na'e taki ‘e ia ‘a kinautolu past lead erg 3sg abs 3pl "He led them." b. Na'e hulohula ‘e Sione mo kimaua Past dance erg Sione with 1exc.du "Sione danced with us." These pronouns meet Cardinaletti & Starke's (1994) (henceforth, C&S) tests for “strong” pronouns. They can be co-ordinated; they are assigned 2-roles; and they are distributed like DPs. They can be new in discourse, defined by pointing, or bear contrastive stress. The paradigm of strong pronouns is presented in (4). *I wish to thank Diane Massam for guidance and critique, and my Tongan consultant Siokatame Vahavaha’i Moengangongo (“Moahengi”) for sharing his knowledge of Tongan. All errors are my own. 2 (4) Paradigm of strong pronouns 1st Exclusive Singular au Dual kimaua Plural kimautolu 1st Inclusive Singular kita Dual kitaua Plural kitautolu 2nd Singular koe Dual kimoua Plural kimoutolu 3rd Singular ia Dual kinaua Plural kinautolu In addition to the strong personal pronouns, there is a set of monosyllabic “deficient” personal pronouns in Tongan. -
Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology in the Caucasus
-.! r. d, J,,f ssaud Artsus^rNn Mlib scoIuswVC ffiLffi pac,^^€C erplJ pue lr{o) '-I dlllqd ,iq pa11pa ,(8oyoe er4lre Jo ecr] JeJd eq] pue 'sct1t1od 'tustleuolleN 6rl Se]tlJlljd 18q1 uueul lOu soop sltll'slstSo[ocPqJJu ul?lsl?JneJ leool '{uetuJO ezrsuqdtue ol qsl'\\ c'tl'laslno aql 1V cqtJo lr?JttrrJ Suteq e:u e,\\ 3llLl,\\'ieqt 'teqlout? ,{g eldoed .uorsso.rciclns euoJo .:etqSnr:1s louJr crleuols,{s eql ul llnseJ {eru leql tsr:d snolJes uoJl uPlseJnPJ lerll JO suoluolstp :o ..sSutpucJsltu,' "(rolsrqerd '..r8u,pn"r.. roJ EtlotlJr qsllqulso ol ]duralltl 3o elqetclecctl Surqsrn8urlstp o.1". 'speecorcl ll sV 'JB ,(rnluec qlxls-pltu eql ut SutuutSeq'et3:oe9 11^ly 'porred uralse,t\ ut uotJl?ztuolol {eer{) o1 saleleJ I se '{1:clncrlled lBJlsselc uP qil'\\ Alluclrol eq] roJ eJueptlc 1r:crSoloaeqcJe uuts11311l?J Jo uollRnlele -ouoJt-loueqlpue-snseon€JuJequoueqlpuE'l?luoulJv'er8rocg'uelteq -JaZVulpJosejotrolsrqerdsqtJoSuouE}erdlelutSutreptsuoc.,{11euor8ar lsrgSurpeeco:cl'lceistqlsulleJlsnlpselduexalere^esButlele;"{qsnsecne3 reded stql cql ur .{SoloeeqJlu Jo olnlpu lecrllod eql elBltsuotuop [lt,\\ .paluroclduslp lou st euo 'scrlr1od ,(:erodueluoJ o1 polelsJUtr '1tns:nd JturcpeJe olpl ue aq or ,{Soloeuqole 3o ecrlcu'rd eq} lcedxa lou plno'{\ 'SIJIUUOC aAISOldxe ouo 3Jor{,t\ PoJe uP sl 1t 'suolllpuoJ aseql IIe UsAtD sluqle pur: ,{poolq ,{11euor1dacxo lulo^es pue salndstp lelrollrrel snor0tunu qlr,n elalder uot,3e; elllBlo^ ,(re,r. e st 1l 'uolun lel^os JeuIJoJ aql io esdelloc eqt ue,tr.3 'snsBsnBJ aql jo seldoed peu'{u oql lle ro3 ln3Sutueau 'l?Iuusllllu -
Albanian Language Identification in Text
5 BSHN(UT)23/2017 ALBANIAN LANGUAGE IDENTIFICATION IN TEXT DOCUMENTS *KLESTI HOXHA.1, ARTUR BAXHAKU.2 1University of Tirana, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Informatics 2University of Tirana, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Mathematics email: [email protected] Abstract In this work we investigate the accuracy of standard and state-of-the-art language identification methods in identifying Albanian in written text documents. A dataset consisting of news articles written in Albanian has been constructed for this purpose. We noticed a considerable decrease of accuracy when using test documents that miss the Albanian alphabet letters “Ë” and “Ç” and created a custom training corpus that solved this problem by achieving an accuracy of more than 99%. Based on our experiments, the most performing language identification methods for Albanian use a naïve Bayes classifier and n-gram based classification features. Keywords: Language identification, text classification, natural language processing, Albanian language. Përmbledhje Në këtë punim shqyrtohet saktësia e disa metodave standarde dhe bashkëkohore në identifikimin e gjuhës shqipe në dokumente tekstuale. Për këtë qëllim është ndërtuar një bashkësi të dhënash testuese e cila përmban artikuj lajmesh të shkruara në shqip. Për tekstet shqipe që nuk përmbajnë gërmat “Ë” dhe “Ç” u vu re një zbritje e konsiderueshme e saktësisë së identifikimit të gjuhës. Për këtë arsye u krijua një korpus trajnues i posaçëm që e zgjidhi këtë problem duke arritur një saktësi prej më shumë se 99%. Bazuar në eksperimentet e kryera, metodat më të sakta për identifikimin e gjuhës shqipe përdorin një klasifikues “naive Bayes” dhe veçori klasifikuese të bazuara në n-grame. -
Greek-Anatolian Language Contact and the Settlement of Pamphylia
CHRISTINA SKELTON Greek-Anatolian Language Contact and the Settlement of Pamphylia The Ancient Greek dialect of Pamphylia shows extensive influence from the nearby Anatolian languages. Evidence from the linguistics of Greek and Anatolian, sociolinguistics, and the histor- ical and archaeological record suggest that this influence is due to Anatolian speakers learning Greek as a second language as adults in such large numbers that aspects of their L2 Greek became fixed as a part of the main Pamphylian dialect. For this linguistic development to occur and persist, Pamphylia must initially have been settled by a small number of Greeks, and remained isolated from the broader Greek-speaking community while prevailing cultural atti- tudes favored a combined Greek-Anatolian culture. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND The Greek-speaking world of the Archaic and Classical periods (ca. ninth through third centuries BC) was covered by a patchwork of different dialects of Ancient Greek, some of them quite different from the Attic and Ionic familiar to Classicists. Even among these varied dialects, the dialect of Pamphylia, located on the southern coast of Asia Minor, stands out as something unusual. For example, consider the following section from the famous Pamphylian inscription from Sillyon: συ Διϝι̣ α̣ ̣ και hιιαροισι Μανεˉ[ς .]υαν̣ hελε ΣελυW[ι]ιυ̣ ς̣ ̣ [..? hι†ια[ρ]α ϝιλ̣ σιι̣ ọς ̣ υπαρ και ανιιας̣ οσα περ(̣ ι)ι[στα]τυ ̣ Wοικ[. .] The author would like to thank Sally Thomason, Craig Melchert, Leonard Neidorf and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable input, as well as Greg Nagy and everyone at the Center for Hellenic Studies for allowing me to use their library and for their wonderful hospitality during the early stages of pre- paring this manuscript. -
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Stratifying the Peopling of Madagascar
INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO STRATIFYING THE PEOPLING OF MADAGASCAR Paper submitted for the proceedings of the Indian Ocean Conference, Madison, Wisconsin 23-24th October, 2015 Roger Blench McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge Correspondence to: 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/ Ans (00-44)-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7847-495590 E-mail [email protected] http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm This version: Makurdi, 1 April, 2016 1 Malagasy - Sulawesi lexical connections Roger Blench Submission version TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................................. i ACRONYMS ...................................................................................................................................................ii 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................................. 1 2. Models for the settlement of Madagascar ................................................................................................. 2 3. Linguistic evidence...................................................................................................................................... 2 3.1 Overview 2 3.2 Connections with Sulawesi languages 3 3.2.1 Nouns.............................................................................................................................................. -
Indo-European: History, Families & Origins
Indo-European: History, Families & Origins 1 Historical Linguistics Early observations pointed to language relatedness: The Sanscrit language, whatever by its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists .... Sir William Jones -- Presidential Discourse at the February 2, 1786 meeting of the Asiatic Society 2 Darwin & Historical Linguistics Darwin's On The Origin of Species published in 1859 German biologist Ernst Haeckel persuades his friend - philologist August Schleicher, to read it Schleicher (and generations of historical linguists) apply evolutionary principle to comparative/historical linguistics 3 Test The Methodology Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) used the comparative method to predict that a certain group of sounds had to have existed in Indo-European 20 years later, when Hittite texts were discovered, Saussure's laryngeals were attested! 4 Indo-European Family 5 Indo-European Homeland 6 Family Branching 7 Earliest Attestation of IE Daughter Languages Anatolian 17th c. B.C.E Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) 15th c. B.C.E Greek 13th c. B.C.E. Iranian (Avestan / Old Persian) 7th c. B.C.E / 6th c. B.C.E. Italic 6th c. B.C.E Tocharian 6th c. B.C.E Germanic 1st c. -
Towards the Kalmar Union
S P E C I A L I Z E D A G E N C I E S TOWARDS THE KALMAR UNION Dear Delegates, Welcome to the 31st Annual North American Model United Nations 2016 at the University of Toronto! On behalf of all of the staff at NAMUN, we welcome you to the Specialized Agency branch of the conference. I, and the rest of the committee staff are thrilled to have you be a delegate in Scandinavia during the High Middle Ages, taking on this challenging yet fascinating topic on the futures of the three Scandinavian Kingdoms in a time of despair, poverty, dependence and competitiveness. This will truly be a new committee experience, as you must really delve into the history of these Kingdoms and figure out how to cooperate with each other without sending everyone into their demise. To begin, in the Towards the Kalmar Union Specialized Agency, delegates will represent influential characters from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which include prominent knights, monarchs, nobles, and important religious figures who dominate the political, military and economic scenes of their respective Kingdoms. The impending issues that will be discussed at the meeting in Kalmar, Sweden include the future of the Danish and Norwegian crowns after the death of the sole heir to the thrones, Olaf II. Here, two distant relatives to Valdemar IV have a claim to the throne and delegates will need to decide who will succeed to the throne. The second order of business is to discuss the growing German presence in Sweden, especially in major economic cities. -
Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Halm, R
Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Halm, R. & Slater, J. Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Robert Halm 1 Bloomington, IN, USA Jay Slater Pittsburgh, PA, USA Following up on recent work, we consider morpheme-final nasals in the Nivkh language family of northeast Asia using the Standard Comparative Method, and attempt to reconstruct the inventory and morphophonemic behavior of morpheme-final nasal phonemes in Proto-Nivkh (PN). Previous work has pointed towards PN nasals at four loci, /*m/, /*n/, /*ɲ/, /*ŋ/, of which at least /*ŋ/ could be phonemically either “strong”, triggering fricatives to surface across morpheme juncture, or “weak”, triggering plosives to surface; with weak /*ŋ/ place-assimilating to following plosives across morpheme juncture, and weak /*n/ and weak /*ŋ/ elided in the Amur and West Sakhalin lects. However, with the benefit of more and better data than were available to previous authors, we find instead that elision must have been conditioned by a feature other than the strong-weak contrast (provisionally, length), but which interacted with the strong-weak contrast (“short” strong nasals were inextant), and that this “length” contrast also conditioned assimilation or non-assimilation of final /*ŋ/ (only “short” weak /*ŋ/ assimilated, not “long” weak /*ŋ/). We confirm that the strong-weak morphophonemic contrast existed for at least /*m/, /*ɲ/, and /*ŋ/ (rather than only for /*ŋ/), and the “length” contrast for /*n/ as well as /*ŋ/. Keywords: Nivkh, Gilyak, Proto-Nivkh, nasal, Comparative Method 1 Address correspondence to: [email protected] Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 1 Application of the Comparative Method to Morpheme-Final Nasals in Nivkh Halm, R. -
Linguistic History and Language Diversity in India: Views and Counterviews
J Biosci (2019) 44:62 Indian Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1007/s12038-019-9879-1 (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().,-volV) Linguistic history and language diversity in India: Views and counterviews SONAL KULKARNI-JOSHI Deccan College, Pune, India (Email, [email protected]) This paper addresses the theme of the seminar from the perspective of historical linguistics. It introduces the construct of ‘language family’ and then proceeds to a discussion of contact and the dynamics of linguistic exchange among the main language families of India over several millennia. Some prevalent hypotheses to explain the creation of India as a linguistic area are presented. The ‘substratum view’ is critically assessed. Evidence from historical linguistics in support of two dominant hypotheses –‘the Aryan migration view’ and ‘the out-of-India hypothesis’–is presented and briefly assessed. In conclusion, it is observed that the current understanding in historical linguistics favours the Aryan migration view though the ‘substratum view’ is questionable. Keywords. Aryan migration; historical linguistics; language family; Out-of-India hypothesis; substratum 1. Introduction the basis of social, political and cultural criteria more than linguistic criteria. The aim of this paper is to lend a linguistic perspective on This vast number of languages is classified into four (or the issue of human diversity and ancestry in India to the non- six) language families or genealogical types: Austro-Asiatic linguists at this seminar. The paper is an overview of the (Munda), Dravidian, Indo-Aryan (IA) and Tibeto-Burman; major views and evidences gleaned from the available more recently, two other language families have been literature.