Linguistics

https://grammaticon.clld.org/concepts

The Grammaticon is a collection of grammatical comparative concept terms with definitions and links to other resources and comparative data collections such as WALS (The World Atlas of Language Structures) and Grambank.

Version 1.1 is an early-release version that is still in some ways incomplete. The plan is to update and expand it regularly.

The Grammaticon contains several hundred English grammatical concept terms, with (retro-)definitions by Martin Haspelmath, and links to corresponding terms in the English Wikipedia, the SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, and Croft’s Comparative Concepts Database ( https://comparative-concepts.github.io/cc-database/cc-database.html; originally in the online appendix of Croft (2022).

In the definitions, a superscript circle (°) marks terms which are defined elsewhere in the Grammaticon (“defining concepts”). Each concept page also shows the “derived concepts” (which are defined with reference to it), as well as “related features”. [[Some concepts have preliminary definitions, enclosed in double square brackets.]]

In this video, I examine the historical 'MEET-MEAT' contrast in English, and the ways in which some dialects have managed to retain it to some extent into modern times. Vowel contrasts and mergers are a big topic in historical linguistics, and I've tried to use this one as a bit of an 'in' to the concept in general. I'm hoping it will also appeal to learners of English, as it clarifies one of the many idiosyncrasies of the spelling system - the difference between 'ee' and 'ea' spellings despite their identical pronunciation in a lot of word pairs.

(News from March.)

The article is in Pannonian Rusyn, something Dulichenko has created a name for: a Slavic literary (=standard) microlanguage - the sort of language variety you don't see in major overviews, a language without a nation-state's backing, but not quite just a "dialect", since it has a norm and is used in writing and possibly even official communication. Pannonian Rusyn is the language of the people who migrated from west Ukraine to Vojvodina (north Serbia) and Slavonia (NE Croatia) in 18th century. Other Slavic microlanguages recognised by Dulichenko included Rusyn in Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland (different from the one in Serbia and Croatia), isolated varieties of Croatian in Austria and Italy, Kashubian in Poland, Banat Bulgarian in Romania and Serbia...

Since machine translators will probably get wrecked by this text, I'll try to roughly translate (though I never actually took the time to learn Rusyn specifically, just working off my knowledge of other Slavic languages) at least the first two paragraphs:

At 84 years of age, on the 4th of March Alexander Dmitrievich Dulichenko, a well-known slavist, has passed away. He was the first to fundamentally study all characteristics of Rusyn language and classify it into among microlanguages, where it stood out as the most developed, with its functional use approaching major Slavic literary languages.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Dulichenko was born on 30th October 1941 in Novoalexeyevska, Krasnodar Kray, in Russia. He graduated at the Turkmen University in Ashgabat, at the Institute of Slavic and Balkan studies in 1974, in Moscow he defended his bachelor thesis Literary Rusyn language of Yugoslavia, and then in 1980 at the Linguistics Institute of Belarisuan Academy of Sciences in Minsk attained PhD on the basis of the dissertation on the problem of formation and development of Slavic literary microlanguages. [...] Prof. Dulichenko was particularly interested in the language of Bačka-Syrmia (Pannonian) Rusyns, and learned it by reading the publications of the instute Ruske Slovo (Rusyn Word). Several times he has visited our institute, as well as held lectures for our students at the Department of Rusyn studies in Novi Sad.

The Mysterious Origin of Dravidian Languages | History of Dravidian Languages

Dravidian languages are among the oldest surviving language families in the world, but one of the biggest mysteries is where and how they actually originated. There are several theories about their origins and today, we’ll explore these theories and try to understand the fascinating journey of the Dravidian languages. Let's see....

I kinda wonder if North West England might see a Good be with ye ➡️ Good be ye ➡️ Goodbye happen to the phrase 'av a good un' (have a good one)

It's already spoken as if it's one word, as avagud'un effectively

Rebracketing: when a word or term "steals" or has letters "stolen" from it, and then changes form through that. A Norange ➡️ An Orange, An Ewt ➡️ A Newt, Good be ye ➡️ Goodbye

Language is a toolkit to communicate ideas, and a toolkit frozen in glass is a useless toolkit.

You need to swap out that hammer when it starts getting damaged, or put back a screwdriver when you find out you need it again, or add new tools when you find that the tools you have now aren't fit to purpose.

And sure, there's some loose screws at the bottom of the bag, but they don't harm anything, and very occasionally they come in useful.

Kusman was hired as a labourer on the Cavustepe excavations after his military service in the 1960s and there encountered his first stele.

"The inscription was very beautiful," he told AFP. But the head of the dig discouraged him from learning this "very difficult" script, which borrowed its cuneiform alphabet from Assyrian.

Is "no" the most powerful word of creation?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64861962

Today’s bad idea is one with a very recent history but also a long backstory: David talks to author and journalist James Marriott about what happens when the written word gets supplanted by video and when videos get shorter and shorter. Did the rot set in with television, with YouTube or with TikTok? Is short-form video a symptom or a cause of our shrinking attention spans? What does it mean to have a TikTok prime minister? And is there any way to get people reading again?

Some great discussion but ultimately they spend far too much time waxing cynical about the potential of mediums they are not organic to.

It is mildly embarassing that in this entire discussion the politics and world view of the people who control the algorithm are never honored as the vastly distorting forces they are.

Another thought, they keep bringing up Marshal Macluhan and his thoughts on media, and then also reflecting how paradoxes in the way media changes keep occurring together in twin, i.e. as media gets more fragmented some media becomes longer and longer and more rambly (joe rogan is given as example). They chalk this down to merely the return of the communication of information from written to auditory, a medium that requires repetition and I am not so sure.

The thing Finnegans Wake that stood out to me most was how Joyce would almost always imbue characters and elements with some element of both extremes, if a character is strong they are also described as possibly very weak, if they are described as a coward what is perhaps being said is that they are a hero, and up is in some ways the very essence of down... as a dream language should function arguably but also... there is something infuriatingly magical about this.

It would seem like this kind of approach to language would annihilate any meaning.. and yet it doesn't. Joyce talks in terms of bandwiths of possibility and invokes them without needing to locate a possibility necessarily within one specific possible realworld manifestation of it. This doesn't mean that Joyce doesn't give shape to characters or entities within those bandwiths, the width is polyphonic to invite alternative perspectives not annihilate any single one perspective or unique identity.

I don't think Marshal Mcluhan or the people in this podcast understand that about the ideas that in many ways came out of or were heavily inspired by Joyce and Finnegans WAke.

Western legal systems, universities, and international institutions are accustomed to translating other societies into their own language. Human rights, for example, emerged in a particular historical and cultural context, yet they have been adapted and interpreted across the world. What happened in Ecuador was the reverse.

For centuries, we learned to think about nature through Western concepts and translated those ideas into environmental law. But environmental law and the Rights of Nature are not the same thing. Environmental law is ultimately anthropocentric. It protects air, water, and ecosystems because they are necessary for human well-being. Air quality, water quality, land use — all these standards are designed primarily around human needs.

The Rights of Nature begin from a different premise. Nature is not simply something that serves humanity; it possesses value and rights of its own.

Translating that worldview into constitutional law required building bridges between Indigenous knowledge, environmental law, ecology, and biology. We needed a language that courts and policymakers could understand. That is why the Constitution speaks of vital cycles, regeneration, and ecological processes. Much of that language comes from biology and ecology.

In a sense, the Rights of Nature are an exercise in translation. They express an Indigenous understanding of the world through concepts that can operate within a modern legal system.

I believe this helps explain why humanity has struggled to respond effectively to climate change. We continue trying to solve a planetary crisis using legal and political tools designed for a very different relationship with nature.

link to open access paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea3015?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D61508541257954853309097241413656240736%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1786160684

I know tupuna are always with us, but language is the vehicle of cultural transmission. Consequently, language is critical to a person’s health. That’s why we celebrate language weeks throughout the year. And I don’t just mean Pacific languages weeks. There are others too. New Zealand Sign Language Week, New Zealand Chinese Language Week, Hindi Language Week.

Looks like the former mod of Linguistics made me mod even though I said no. I value this nature and science server so I'm looking for someone serious to take over.

An international research team involving researchers from Spain, the USA and Germany have reconstructed plausible trajectories of global language diversity across the last 12,000 years. Their study, published in Science, suggests that language diversity increased for most of the Holocene, reached a remarkable peak between approximately 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, and then declined rapidly thereafter.

“What English accomplished by accident, German shall have by regulation: a gender-equitable world language, and an alternative path to fluency for the millions learning it.”

It systematically eliminates several complex grammatical features:

• Gender System: Uses a single article form for most contexts
• Case Markings: Removes most case-based inflections
• Noun Declensions: Simplifies noun endings across cases
• Job Titles: Eliminates gender-specific forms in occupational titles

While Alman reduces grammatical complexity, it preserves:

• Core vocabulary
• Basic word order
• Verb conjugations
• Essential syntactic structures

This project seems quixotic, especially given the prevalence of English as an L2 language for so many Germanic language speakers, including Standard High German, and so many Europeans. I can understand the urge for Europeans to displace English as a lingua franca, though.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/48999778

“The project aims to develop new programs for Hawaiian immersion education that are academically accessible and community-based, providing opportunities for future growth,” he wrote in messages with Civil Beat.

The group has already created and discussed dozens of signs, but the system is still unofficial and developing. Some signs focus on everyday vocabulary, Hawaiian cultural concepts and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi grammar structures. 

Kaaumoana-Cummings shared that they are still organizing and developing the signs carefully before publicly releasing an official list. However, simple words such as no, yes, house, land and mountain have been established. 

In ASL, “house” is signed as though you were to outline the shape of a house with both hands, starting from the tip of the roof down to the sides of the walls. In ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima, “hale” is signed with fingertips touching to form the shape of a roof, tapping them together.

Author: Cwterp

Author: unknown

CC BY-SA 3.0

Author: Murraytheb

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/1177551

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