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]

The spread of the Omicron variant this winter was met with renewed calls for the UK Government to fund the arts and culture through the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic and beyond. ‘We are in crisis mode’, Nicolas Hytner, former artistic director of the National Theatre, told the BBC’s Newsnight programme. ‘We need to see short-term finance, we need to see loa…[Read more]

Politikwissenschaftler und Sozialphilosoph Karsten Schubert beleuchtet den Zusammenhang von Sexualität und schwuler Politik und fragt, welche Art von Politik in welcher Situation der HIV-Pandemie begünstigt beziehungsweise verhindert wurde. Dazu erläutert er zwei Thesen

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]

This article takes up the insurrection in Washington DC, and the paranoid politics of QAnon. It analyzes the gamification of paranoia across QAnon and related paranoid publics, tracking such gamification as a political-economic demand generated by neoliberalism. Taking seriously Sigmund Freud’s insight that delusional formations are attempts at…[Read more]

Essay on the poetry of Emily Dickinson and her impact upon literature. This essay celebrates her global reach from within societal spheres of gender. “Emily Dickinson transformed the genre of poetry from the academic salon styled idealism to the personal poignant voice of reality from the poet’s point of view.”

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]

Slideshow for a forthcoming invited presentation. ABSTRACT: Podcasting originated as a new form of audio broadcasting, but by 2006, issues of ease of use, proprietary technology, and finances slowed its momentum. Now podcasting is more popular than ever. This presentation therefore traces the author’s initial and current CALL podcasting p…[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]

Part of a collaborative commission between the National Humanities Alliance, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Pieces in this collection offer reflections and insights on the state of public humanities ahead of the National Humanities Conference in November 2022 and are referenced in “Exploring What’s…[Read more]

Part of a collaborative commission between the National Humanities Alliance, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Pieces in this collection offer reflections and insights on the state of public humanities ahead of the National Humanities Conference in November 2022 and are referenced in “Exploring What’s…[Read more]

Part of a collaborative commission between the National Humanities Alliance, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Pieces in this collection offer reflections and insights on the state of public humanities ahead of the National Humanities Conference in November 2022 and are referenced in “Exploring What’s…[Read more]

Part of a collaborative commission between the National Humanities Alliance, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Pieces in this collection offer reflections and insights on the state of public humanities ahead of the National Humanities Conference in November 2022 and are referenced in “Exploring What’s…[Read more]

Part of a collaborative commission between the National Humanities Alliance, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Pieces in this collection offer reflections and insights on the state of public humanities ahead of the National Humanities Conference in November 2022 and are referenced in “Exploring What’s…[Read more]

Part of a collaborative commission between the National Humanities Alliance, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Routledge, Taylor and Francis. Pieces in this collection offer reflections and insights on the state of public humanities ahead of the National Humanities Conference in November 2022 and are referenced in “Exploring What’s…[Read more]