Focussing on the Duchy of Cornwall’s organisational structure during the Wars of the Roses, this survey examines the principal offices (which evolved around administration of its marine and terrene regalities) and personnel (administrative elite) in Cornwall and Devon. Consideration of successive Princes’ Councils and counsellors (and Councils of…[Read more]

Avery Cornburgh (d.1487) of Bere Ferrers (Devon) and Dovers (Essex) – a Lancastrian, Yorkist, and Tudor household servant – was one of the appreciable numbers of crown servants utilised in local government during the fifteenth century. Serving in Cornwall and Essex as JP, MP, sheriff, and commissioner, he was prominent in Cornish affairs as a res…[Read more]

Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard i…[Read more]

The formalization of sound changes as finite state transducers is implicit already in the Neogrammarians. For at least six decades scholars have recognized the potential of transducers for improving the speed and rigor of research in historical linguists, but almost no historical linguists actually use them. This article identifies the obstacles…[Read more]

कोरोना की आड़ में जो कुछ हुआ है, उस पर नजर रखना आवश्यक है। ऐसी अनेक छोटी-छोटी घटनाएं हैं, जिनकी ओर प्राय: हमारी नजर नहीं जाती। वैश्विक स्वास्थ्य बाजार के किंग पिन माने जाने बिल गेट्स इनमें से अधिकांश घटनाओं से आपको जुड़े हुए दिखाई देते हैं। ऐसा ही एक मामला वीडियो कॉलिंग की सर्विस देने वाले ‘जूम’ से संबंधित था।

वस्तुत: यह सब सिर्फ व्यापा…[Read more]

In the course, I give a basic introduction into some of the recent developments in the field of computational historical linguistics. While this field is predominantly represented by phylogenetic approaches with whom scholars try to infer phylogenetic trees from different kinds of language data, the approach taken here is much broader,…[Read more]

The weblog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, published on the Hypotheses platform for scientific blogging (https://calc.hypotheses.org/), 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…[Read more]

Wissenschaftler und Denker haben sich widerstandslos für die Durchsetzung der herrschenden Corona-Agenda einspannen lassen.

Der durch das Coronavirus veranlasste Lockdown hat nicht nur unsere körperliche Freiheit ausgehöhlt, sondern auch unsere geistige Freiheit untergraben. In vielen Ländern wurde für das Denken Käfighaltung angeordnet. Offen…[Read more]

Although he obtained a medical degree at the University of Caen in 1618, Isaac Beeckman never practised medicine. Instead, he developed an atomistic conception of Galenic physiology by discussing, throughout his notebook, the constituents and functioning of the living body. Interestingly, Beeckman applied his atomistic interpretation to the notion…[Read more]

Although he obtained a medical degree at the University of Caen in 1618, Isaac Beeckman never practised medicine. Instead, he developed an atomistic conception of Galenic physiology by discussing, throughout his notebook, the constituents and functioning of the living body. Interestingly, Beeckman applied his atomistic interpretation to the notion…[Read more]

Lecture, given at the Fifth Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (Università di Pavia, 2022-09-05/09)