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]

This graduate seminar approaches the urban and rural landscapes of peninsular Italy from the Early Iron Age until the Gothic Wars, with the goal being to examine key points of intersection (and departure) between the spheres of ‘town’ and ‘country’. In adopting an holistic approach to these categories that are often juxtaposed, the seminar…[Read more]

Troy has long captured the human imagination. The story of its fall and the tales of both its inhabitants and besiegers have caught the attention of artists and their audiences from antiquity to post-modernity. It seems we are drawn to the struggle that is Troy and the Trojan War, to the paragons of virtue, and the archetypes of other, less noble…[Read more]

One of the medical manuscripts recovered from Tomb No. 3 at Mawangdui (dated 186 B.C.E.) states that, “When a person is born there are two things that need not to be learned: the first is to breathe and the second is to eat.” Of course it is true that all healthy newborn human beings possess the reflexes to breathe and eat. Yet, the imp…[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]

The Persian King Darius I (reigned 522-486 BCE) constructed a canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea – an ancient precursor to the Suez Canal that made it possible to sail from Egypt to Persia, and to places in between.

In a groundbreaking endeavour to triangulate three important traditions of our collective cultural heritage, the Arkeologisk Museum of the University of Stavanger presents Eden and Everything After, a conceptual exhibition organised around notions of the loss of – and slim hope of reconnection with – the lost paradise. Mirroring the boldly exp…[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]

Poland has been recognized as important in the widespread migration of the Vikings, yet subject to little theoretical inquiry. I became particularly interested in the ways in which the Vikings in Poland understood and negotiated their world. To my knowledge, nobody has drawn together the pan-European evidence about the image of the two mythical…[Read more]