I never talked much to people that use a lot of expressions, and the usage of Spanish terms, like "nada" or "amigo", as I could observe from the outside, felt inconsistent. And upon thinking on that, it got me curious, is it common to use such expressions or not?
In a re-evaluation of Hockett's foundational features that have long dominated linguistic theory—concepts like "arbitrariness," "duality of patterning," and "displacement"—an international team of linguists and cognitive scientists shows that modern science demands a radical shift in how we understand language and how it evolved. ... read full post
For example, Latin language and Roman numerals. Are people likely to mistake numbers like ID (499) or VIM (994) for words, or is it always clear enough what's what from context? I think Hebrew, Braille, and maybe Greek also do this, though i'm not as familiar with those scripts as with Latin. ... read full post
Don't get me wrong, i think linguistics is a lot of fun and i get that it's an interesting field. I just don't understand what practical applications it has beyond understanding languages better. What do we do with that understanding of languages? Is it purely about seeking knowledge?
As an avid (ab)user of phrases-as-lemmata, I found this interesting.
Discovered through YouTube: Linguists just made a breakthrough in defining a 'word. ' No, really
Today, dinner almost universally refers to the evening meal. But it has had a long etymological history to get to that point. ... read full post
My apologies, since this post actually contains a swear word, id...t, which I'm going to censor. But this came up with a test reader of a text I'm working on: ... read full post
Bill Labov passed away peacefully at home on December 17, 2024, with his wife and fellow Penn linguist Gillian Sankoff by his side. He leaves behind a legacy so large that it is hard to put into words. All three authors were fortunate enough to have had Bill as our PhD supervisor (Laurel: 2012, Meredith: 2014, Betsy: 2018). We feel that the many hours we spent in his presence and with his work have given us a good insight into who and how he was. We also feel deep love and gratitude for him and for his imprint on the field and on us. As such, this piece is our reflection on Bill as a person, an advisor, and a scholar, from our perspective as three of his students from his later years. ... read full post
Interesting short text about the history of Finnish, focusing mostly on its interaction with nearby Germanic languages.
cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/133291
I share some of my research about the reasons why English spelling is so inconsistent
This is a lot more sociolinguistics and social history of language than pure linguistics, so I understand if this is a little tangential.
cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/33025461 ... read full post
A curated list of open-access descriptive grammars.
Interesting video on the stone that allowed researchers to decipher Ancient Egyptian. Check comments for a few notes.