This document summarizes all contributions to the blog “Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice” from 2019, online also available under https://calc.hypotheses.org.

This book first proves that the rationale behind Russia’s aggressive actions in its neighborhood resides in its goal of achieving certain geostrategic objectives which are largely predefined by the state’s imperial traditions, memories, and fears that the Kremlin may irretrievably lose control over lands which were once Russian. In other words,…[Read more]

The term “Intermarium” has a long historical tradition and was commonly used to define the area between the Baltic and Black Seas. With its regular re-appearances in contemporary academic and political discourses, this book explores and assesses a variety of its connotations. In order to do this, it applies a multi-dimensional approach to the Int…[Read more]

Workshop presentation about reconstruction of sounds preserved only in marginal daughter languages attested later than the earliest daughters

Discussion of recent new proposals for the reconstruction of the PIE sounds called “laryngeals”

English abstract: A paper arguing the relevance of a cognitive narratological perspective and a retrospective stance attentive to hindsight bias in order to clarify the debate on racial differences and population diversity in biology. The issue is discussed with reference to the dichotomy between ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’ in paleoanthropology as…[Read more]

In this contribution, I take up Michael Nijhawan’s focus on the embodied aspects of memory and time he elaborates so insightfully in “The Precarious Diasporas of Sikh and Ahmadiyya Generations”, specifically his invocation of, via Veena Das’s work, of Bergson’s distinction between translational and rotational time. Drawing on examples from my ow…[Read more]

“སོ་རི་མེ་བུ།”, “so ri me bu” (teeth, mountain, fire, boy), is an alphabet book for Tibetan. It was in use at Esukhia’s immersion and online school from 2015 to 2018, when it was replaced by an improved and expanded version called “A0 Jongdeb” (https://www.esukhia.xyz/a0-cover). At the time, it represented a major pedagogical breakthroug…[Read more]

This work discusses the processes of celebrating funerals among the Akan people, some Akan belief systems and modern trends that have evolved in funeral ceremonies. It also demonstrates the complexities involved in organizing the funeral from the day of death culminating into the celebration of the final funeral rite. The actual purpose of funeral…[Read more]

This study presents a digital, retro-standardized edition of the Tableaux Phonétiques des Patois Suisses Romands (TPPSR), an early collection of lexical dialect data of the Suisse romande, which was compiled by Louis Gauchat, Jules Jeanqaquet, and Ernest Tappolet in the beginning of the 20th century and later published in 1925. While the plan of…[Read more]

This paper compares anthropomorphic power-figures from the Vodun and Kongo cultural areas. Vodun is practised along the Guinea Coast of West Africa (especially in Benin and Togo) whereas the Kongo religion is native to the west coast of Central Africa (especially the two Republics of the Congo and northwest Angola). First, overlaps in belief and…[Read more]

Native speakers are often assumed to be efficient in identifying whether a word in their language has been borrowed, even when they do not have direct knowledge of the donor language from which it was taken. To detect borrowings, speakers make use of various strategies, often in combination, relying on clues such as semantics of the words in…[Read more]

Since 2007–2008, American undergraduates’ media ecology has changed dramatically without an accompanying transformation in how they use media to end relationships. The similarities in people’s breakup practices between 2008 and 2018 reveal that, regardless of what social media is used, American undergraduates turn to media in moments of break…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: En este retropost de 2010 hablamos de Miguel de Unamuno y de su doble escepticismo, escepticismo ante la fe y ante el ateísmo. Es un libro desilusionado, San Manuel Bueno, Mártir—desilusionado con las creencias religiosas, y desilusionado con el ateísmo. Una vez perdida la ilusión en redimir a la humanidad en este o en el otro…[Read more]

This piece is part of APLA’s newest Speaking Justice to Power Series, which focuses on Kashmir and marks the one-year anniversary of the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A of the constitution (August 5, 2019).

The paper focuses on the issue of witchcraft at the Gold Coast and Asante in particular. Information from archival sources and secondary sources has been gleaned to form a historical narrative covering the period 1907 to 1940. The dilemma of the indigenous people concerning witchcraft, the attempts of Indigenous Priest Healers (IPH) to cure and…[Read more]

Although the United Nations has called for a global ceasefire during the pandemic, Kashmiris are bracing for a new wave of violence as India accelerates its settler-colonial ambitions.

While World War II was still raging in Europe and the Pacific, the onset of the Greek Civil War in December 1944 marked the beginning of the Cold War. For the people of Greece, the civil war would continue the devastation that the Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupations had initiated. The civil war’s catastrophic cleavages in Greek society are…[Read more]

This is a review of the book “Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, Jeffrey J. Kripal, University of Chicago Press, 1995” . “Kali’s child” fell well short of a proof that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical experiences were actually “profoundly, provocatively, scandalously erotic”. To reconstruct the autobiogr…[Read more]

Literature on traditional medicine in Africa is diverse and broad but most are country based, regional based or time based. There is the need for a systematic review that focuses on the nature of traditional medicine and its healers, the impact of the changing society on traditional medicine, and an analysis of same based on scholarly literature.…[Read more]