The Note Azzurre (Blue Notes), arguably the most representative work of the Scapigliato Carlo Dossi, have always
been the focus of attention of scholars and enthusiasts. A few notes, however, have been studied little or not at
all: these fragments revolve around extremely modern matters and obsessions, such as the impact of technology
on…[Read more]

Subject of this article is the Gagauz language, spoken by about 200,000 speakers, mainly in
the Republic of Moldova and the Ukraine. Linguistically, it is very close to Turkish but shows
several special features that have developed under the influence of Slavic languages. The
linguistic features of the Gagauz language will be examined and are…[Read more]

Compounding and derivation are frequent in many language families. As a consequence, words in different languages are often only partially cognate, sharing only a few but not all morphemes. While partial cognates do not constitute a problem for the phonological reconstruction of individual morphemes, they are problematic when it comes to…[Read more]

In discussions of the history of American Sign Language (ASL), a village sign language—Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL)—has been identified as a possible contributor to ASL and to its differentiation from French Sign Language (LSF; cf. Groce 1985: 73-74, Lane et al 2011: 76, Poole Nash 2015: 611). On this account, MVSL contributed to ASL t…[Read more]

Young children are thought to play a unique role in the emergence and evolution of language. In research on language acquisition by a deaf child of late learners of ASL as well as in research on the emergence of new signed languages, young children have shown the ability to impose systematicity on relatively less systematic linguistic input…[Read more]

For a long time, metaphors have played an important role in depicting language history. In this study, we contrast early metaphors on language history, such as the family tree or the wave model, with recent metaphors that were popularized after the quantitative turn, such as forests of trees or phylogenetic networks. Speculating about metaphors…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: En su teoría sobre la interacción estratégica, Erving Goffman muestra cómo las dinámicas de control de la información y de la infiltración de informantes en las líneas enemigas no son únicamente una cuestión de espionaje internacional o de servicios secretos. La vida cotidiana, tal como nos la desvela el análisis de Goffman, e…[Read more]

Compounding and derivation are frequent in many language families. As a consequence, words in different languages are often only partially cognate, sharing only a few but not all morphemes. While partial
cognates do not constitute a problem for the phonological reconstruction of individual morphemes, they
are problematic when it comes to…[Read more]

The chapter discusses recently developed computational techniques providing concrete help in addressing various tasks in historical language comparison, focusing specifically on those tasks which are typically subsumed under the framework of the comparative method. These include the proof of relationship, cognate and correspondence detection,…[Read more]

English abstract: Psychological processes internal to the individual, as well as those of a symbolic, discursive or cognitive nature, are built on the basis of social interaction, and—given that social interaction exists prior to individuals, exceeds them in complexity, and forms them—the development of consciousness, and of communicative and sym…[Read more]

The objective of this article is to make an attempt at describing and mapping out one of the major grammatical processes, the process of relativization, and to identify aspects of the referential structure where confusion of interpretation may occur.

In Discourse Evolution and Power, I set out my theory of Discourse Stream Analysis (DSA©). After presenting a critique of Critical Discourse Analysis, I establish the principles of DSA including the notion of the subject and the analysis of text over time using linguistic techniques. I then apply DSA principles to two sets of texts about…[Read more]

Según la epistemología de Xavier Zubiri, nuestra sensación de la realidad, la organización misma de nuestra percepción tanto del mundo externo como del mundo interno, no es “pura sensación”, sino que está mediatizada por esquemas de representación y por relaciones semióticas importadas de actos cognitivos anteriores (y así más que conocer, r…[Read more]

Introduction to “Diversity in Writing Systems: Embracing Multiple Perspectives”, a special issue of Written Language and Literacy containing six papers from the Association of Written Language and Literacy’s 2019 conference of the same time.

This is the accepted version; the published version is available at…[Read more]

This repository comprises a dataset developed from a subset of ASJP, in which all lemmas are presented in a broad phonological transcription, automatically annotated for cognacy, and phonologically aligned. Per-family NEXUS files with binary annotation of presence/absence of cognate sets are also available. The dataset is intended to facilitate…[Read more]

This slide set includes a translation into English of Tam o’ Shanter by Robert Burns. The aim of the translation is to preserve the original poetic effect of the poem written in Scots. The slide set is intended for academic and educational purposes, as well as personal enjoyment.

Tam o’ Shanter, a great narrative poem written by Roberts Burns, is written in Scots and as such is difficult to access by standard English speakers and non-natives alike. This monograph offers an account of the language of Tam as characterised by a significant number of distinctive lexical and phonological items related to Old Norse. It is c…[Read more]

Tam o’ Shanter, a great narrative poem written by Roberts Burns, is written in Scots and as such is difficult to access by standard English speakers and non-natives alike. Old Norse influences form an essential part of the fabric of Tam, and the poem can only be fully understood when these are identified and described. This article presents a n…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: El concepto de ‘autor implícito’ (implied author) lo difundió Wayne Booth en ‘La Retórica de la Ficción’ (1961) pero, como veremos, algo apuntaron al respecto con anterioridad otros autores. Aquí señalamos más en concreto el precedente de Hegel. ______…[Read more]

The weblog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, published on the Hypotheses platform for scientific blogging, offers tutorials and discussion notes on computer-assisted approaches to the history and diversity of languages. A substantial part of its content is contributed as part of the ERC Starting Grant “Computer-Assisted Language C…[Read more]