This is an essay written for submission to the science journal *Nature* in 2016. It was rejected, and since it was in response to a piece that originally appeared in *Nature*, I saw no reason to attempt to place it elsewhere. I am posting it now (January 2024), because it has become newly relevant to understand the London 6330 genome as…[Read more]

This paper aims to show from a functional-pragmatic point of view, how the Portuguese verb ir+infinitive integrates the paradigm of the Portuguese modal verbs. At the same time the classification of ir as a temporal auxiliary verb is questioned.

O objetivo deste artigo é mostrar como, numa perspectiva da pragmática funcional, o verbo p…[Read more]

This is an initial “take” on the research design and implications of the findings announced, in pre-print, of the new aDNA Yersinia pestis genomes retrieved by Jiang et al. 2024 from the 7th-century mass burials under the collapsed hippodrome at Gerasa/Jerash, Jordan. The significance of this study lies not simply in presenting 8 new genomes fro…[Read more]