Scholars have often assumed that the Eusebian apparatus was defunct and ignored in the Middle Ages. I argue, however, that Greek manuscripts offer evidence for readers’ ongoing use of the Eusebian apparatus. While the transmission of the Eusebian apparatus was subject to error, users maintained the functionality of the Eusebian system. Readers a…[Read more]

While the amount of digitally available data on the worlds’ languages is steadily increasing, with more and more languages being documented, only a small proportion of the language resources produced are sustainable. Data reuse is often difficult due to idiosyncratic formats and a negligence of standards that could help to increase the…[Read more]

By reviewing a recent quantitative study of rhyme patterns in Mandarin Chinese, this study shows how data handling and data analysis in the study of rhyme patterns can be improved. Suggestions for improvement include (a) a consistent annotation of rhyme data, which is exhaustive and facilitates data reuse, and (b) emphasizes the importance of…[Read more]

This conference aims to bring together researchers applying network analysis to pre-modern manuscripts and manuscript texts. Key topics include:

• Theoretical reflections on the challenges and advantages of applying network analysis, including social network analysis, to pre-modern written cultures;
• Application of network analysis to cor…[Read more]

The Tannaitic Laws of Battery: Scripture and Halakhah
Amit Gvaryahu
Four laws in the Pentateuch discuss fights between people. The arrangement of these laws and their relationship to one another were debated in the Tannaitic academies. The school of Rabbi Ishmael read these laws as a single entity, each law “coming to teach things omitted” in…[Read more]

abstract A foundational text in the study of Tannaitic Midrash and Halakhah, Sifre Deuteronomy 122 is a list of places where Halakhah ʿ qpt scripture. This word, ʿ qpt, has long been understood to mean ‘circumvent’, ‘bypass’ or ‘belie’, and the pericope has been read as a list of places where ‘Halakhah circumvents scripture’, and thus a testament…[Read more]

Ideally it would be fantastic to reconstitute the life history of a visual artefact, such as a pictograph site in the hope that it may help in es-
tablishing the meanings of these images, their role in the mental and physical landscape as well as the likely sensory and soundscape. This
is because human beings rely on their senses to understand…[Read more]

Powerpoint presentation for the MLA2020 collaborative roundtable “Digital Humanities in Japan and Korea: Approaches and Challenges,” organized by the LLC Korean and LLC Japanese since 1900 Forums. This brief introduction to “Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture” was one of seven presentations by…[Read more]

En la más reciente edición y estudio de la Carajicomedia, su editor llama la atención sobre un aspecto determinado de esta obra, y por extensión, a todas las sátiras a mitad de camino entre lo burlesco y lo erótico: se establece la necesidad de explorar «more fully the political complexity of the period; the reasons that its authors may have h…[Read more]

Efforts on language documentation have been increasing in the past. While the amount of digital data of the world’s languages is increasing, only a small amount of the data is sustainable, since data reuse is often exacerbated by idiosyncratic formats and a negligence of standards that could help to increase the comparability of linguistic data.…[Read more]

This is a summary of 12 contributions made by me for the blog “The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks” in 2018. The contributions are shared in form of a PDF document with a table of contents that allows for a quick search of the contributions and offers also the direct links to the blog.

They say the global proliferation of colonial and neoliberal (ir)rationalities and the techno-managerial enclosure of the ‘commons’ (Hardt & Negri 2000; Harvey 2004) has resulted in a ‘foreclosure of politics’, prompting calls for a renewed technocultural hegemony for a post-capitalist future (Srnicek & Williams 2015) or a return to the revolut…[Read more]

One of the effects of climate change is an increase in extreme weather and natural disasters. Unless CO₂ emissions are significantly reduced very soon, it is inevitable that the effects of disaster will exceed many (and ultimately all) societies’ mitigation capacity. Compounding unmitigated disaster effects will slowly but surely push a society t…[Read more]

While language contact has so far been predominantly studied on the basis of detailed case studies, the emergence of methods for phylogenetic reconstruction and automated word comparison – as a result of the recent quantitative turn in historical linguistics – has also resulted in new proposals to study language contact situations by means of aut…[Read more]

Invited contributions to the Humanist Discussion Group, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, a 2019 compilation of the 1997-1998 series, with outdated information omitted: 1) [Introduction to] gleanings from Pacific Asia, 2) Academic Websites subject to Attribution Ethics, 3) Korea-Japan-U.S. Website copying case closed,…[Read more]

The Nagas since time immemorial were never under any foreign powers. They lived in a state of nature where any principality that ever encompassed them was rudimentary, unscathed and the purest that nature could provide them. Their primordial worlds had endured for generations until the modern century without being bothered and unaware of what was…[Read more]

The fact that “all languages evolve, as long as they exist” (Schleicher 1863: 18f) has been long known to linguists and does not surprise us anymore. The reasons why all language change constantly, however, is still not fully understood. What we know, however, is that language usage must be at the core of language evolution. It is the dynamics amo…[Read more]

A Twitter Moment on August 12, 2017 distilled the author’s views on “Bilingualism and Cultural Identity.” Then the tweetstorm was shared on Facebook with the author’s photos added, following up on the aspect of tourism and the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, focusing especially on cosplay (costume play).

Bilingual introduction to a collection of research papers in Japanese on bilingualism in Japan, between Japanese and English, involving children and adults, investigating the bilingual development of native speakers of Japanese as well as of English.