My notes (taken c. 1990) on Geoffrey Leech’s ‘Principles of Pragmatics’ (London: Longman, 1983). Pagination on the left; my parenthetical comments in italics.

This article presents a detailed examination of the benefits, challenges, and purpose of conducting a doctoral-level literature review. The article analyzes both the cognitive neurolinguistic processing challenges attending the assimilation and synthesis of large volumes of new information and the metacognitive knowledge strategies needed to…[Read more]

Was King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ seen as a failure by his contemporaries? The study looks at sources that were written during and immediately after Æthelred’s reign in order to see if the king was criticised or blamed for the misfortunes in the conflicts with the Danes. The most important authors to be considered are Ælfric of Eynsham and Archbish…[Read more]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]