Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “ab…[Read more]

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]

The neolithic figurines of North – and North-East Europe, belonging to Pitted Ware culture and Pit-Comb Ware culture, are a desideratum to research. These pretty creations, often sculptures of human and animals such as bears, moose, seals, wild-horse, domestic animals and fantastic four-limped beings are spatially distributed over the Baltic R…[Read more]

Journal of Historical Linguistics, Volume 11, Issue 2, 357 – 366.

Kaluza’s law is a proposed restriction in the metre of Beowulf against the resolution of light-heavy sequences: words like cyning ‘king’ can only resolve and count as the equivalent of a single heavy syllable under more restricted circumstances than can words such as wudu ‘wood’. There has been debate about how to define these ‘restrict…[Read more]

„Geiht“ mit h und „Blatt, goot, oolt“ mit t? Im Gegensatz zum Hochdeutschen ist das Niederdeutsche bis heute keine normierte Schriftsprache. Wie kann es aber sein, dass offensichtlich falsche Schreibweisen (z. B. das falsche Dehnungs-h im Wort „geiht“) seit Jahren als maßgebend und verbindlich für einen großen Teil des niederdeutsche…[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]

PhD dissertation in Saami linguistics, University of Oulu, Finland, 2009.

This article presents two newly-discovered fragments of Linear B tablets from recent excavations at the site of Ano Englianos, Bronze Age Pylos, along
with a third possibly inscribed object.

The final publication is available at http://www.degruyter.com.

Kaluza’s law is a proposed restriction in the metre of Beowulf against the resolution of light-heavy sequences: words like cyning ‘king’ can only resolve and count as the equivalent of a single heavy syllable under more restricted circumstances than can words such as wudu ‘wood’. There has been debate about how to define these ‘restricted…[Read more]

This course explores the art, archaeology, and culture of the Greek world from prehistory to the Roman period. The course focuses on architecture, sculpture, painted pottery, and wall painting as its main object classes and situates artistic and stylistic developments within their social, political, and historical context. We will consider issues…[Read more]

The Plague of Justinian began in 541 and quickly spread over the area of the late antique Mediterranean. There it continued in more than a dozen plague waves until the middle of the 8th century, causing much suffering and a great number of deaths. Academia traditionally debates it as the end of Antiquity. Isochronal, the effect of climate change…[Read more]

Interior design of medieval and modern pubs.

Durch die immer schneller voranschreitende Stadtentwicklung reichten Straßenbezeichnungen bald nicht längei aus, um sich ähnelnde Häuser zu unterscheiden. So musste ein Wirt sein Gasthaus den Einheimischen und Fremden kenntlich und attraktiv machen. Diese Kennzeichnung erfolgte mit diversen Hilfsmitteln, die sich im Laufe der Zelt entwickelten und…[Read more]

Computergestützte Methoden ermöglichen es, Informationen zv Raumnutzung und Bewegungsabläufen in architektonischen Strukturen zu gewinnen. Dies kann bei der Interpretation ergrabener Wirtshäuser hilfreich sein. Ein geeignetes Werkzeug hierfür ist die Space-Syntax-Analyse. So kann mit der angewandten Software UCL Depthmap 10 (Turner/Friedrich 2011…[Read more]

Der computergestützte Sprachvergleich (Wu et al. 2020) hat zum Ziel, Sprachvielfalt und Sprachgeschichte mit Hilfe einer Mischung aus computerbasierten und nicht-automatischen aber formalen Methoden zu untersuchen und dadurch grundlegende Fragen zur Entwicklung spezifischer Sprachfamilien (Sagart et al. 2019) oder zur Typologie von Sprachvielfalt…[Read more]

Single finds are often neglected in the analysis of Bronze Age depositions, since their context is often unclear or even completely unknown. It is often assumed that single finds originally belonged to hoards, graves or settlements. But do they really belong to other contexts, or are they an autonomous context category that deserves more…[Read more]

Geomagnetic research and drillings provide new results regarding settlement organisation and population size of three small settlements from the Pre-Cucuteni and the Cucuteni A-B period of Suceava County in Romanian Bucovina. In these settlements from different stages of the Cucuteni-Tripolye complex, domestic dwellings can be distinguished from…[Read more]

Destruction is an element of human behaviour that is universally present throughout our history. But what are the driving forces behind these violent acts? Can an underlying motivation be recognised in the archaeological record? This article focuses on the destruction and mutilation of monumental architecture and figurative works, and puts them…[Read more]

Un esquema utilizado en mis clases de Comentario de Textos Literarios Ingleses para explicar las diversas dimensiones o parámetros de análisis funcional del discurso: la relación entre interlocutores o ‘tenor’, el canal comunicativo, medio o ‘modo’, y la función interactivo-comunicativa o ‘dominio’. ___…[Read more]