In this essay I focus on language among people of South Asian background in a diasporic location, Mauritius, for two reasons. First, language has often been considered as one of the cultural elements whose persistence may yield clues about the production of diasporic identity. However, diasporas do not exist objectively on the basis of a…[Read more]

Omani students were introduced to Independent Learning Tools, such as MyELT, Moodle, and MS Teams, during the Covid-19 pandemic. They used these tools for their study throughout the pandemic. Hence, this research investigated how satisfied were Omani students with independent learning tools during Covid-19. This study is significant because it…[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]

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]

Notas tomadas en la Jornada de la Obra Social de IberCaja en colaboración con el Instituto Francés, “Darwin: Del Big Bang al Hombre (2013); organizadas simultáneamente en la sede de IberCaja en Zaragoza, y en el ayuntamiento de Brive (Francia). Las ponencias de la primera parte de la jornada versan sobre el contexto histórico y científico de Char…[Read more]

Humanity’s age-old dilemmas are often set down to what we call human nature. Even the most philosophical shake their heads in despair at this, as an impassible boundary to progress. Though some have denied its existence, studies indicate that we do indeed have a nature, instincts, and patterns of behavior which are endemic to our species. Even…[Read more]

Moroccan linguistic situation goes back to the ancient times of colonization. The country has suffered a lot during this era from political, economic, and even social influences. As a result, this made Morocco distinctive and diversified in its sociolinguistic phenomena. We can find Diglossia, code-switching, borrowing, bilingualism, Triglossia,…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: ´La piel que habito´, película de 2011 de Pedro Almodóvar, es una historia sugerente, llena de ecos de debates de actualidad, y que señala en muchas direcciones diferentes, todas interesantes, pero el núcleo donde se unen todas es un personaje tan patológico que es totalmente implausible, excepto como ficción cinemat…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: El lenguaje no puede entenderse al margen de la evolución. No basta sólo con explicar el surgimiento evolutivo de una “capacidad de lenguaje”, sino que también hay que explicar la evolución del lenguaje en sí, el lenguaje en acto y no en potencia. En suma, no sólo se trata de averiguar si nuestros ancestros hablaban, pues hoy c…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: El lenguaje no puede entenderse al margen de la evolución. No basta sólo con explicar el surgimiento evolutivo de una “capacidad de lenguaje”, sino que también hay que explicar la evolución del lenguaje en sí, el lenguaje en acto y no en potencia. En suma, no sólo se trata de averiguar si nuestros ancestros hablaban, pues hoy c…[Read more]

Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) nasce ad Asheville, North Carolina. Mentre studia drammaturgia ad Harvard scrive per il teatro, ma il successo arriva con il romanzo autobiografico ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ (1929), seguito da ‘Of Time and the River’ (1935) e dai postumi ‘The Web and the Rock’ (1939) e ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ (1940). ‘Passage to England: A…[Read more]

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

Egyptologists have long struggled to translate D.t nHH, with expressions ranging from ‘linear and circular eternity’ to ‘everlasting completedness and ongoingness’. Similarly, ethnologists have found it impossible to translate the pan-Australian Aboriginal concept of tjukurrpa, resorting to neologisms such as ‘the Dreamtime’ or ‘the Dreaming’.…[Read more]

Medical tourism can be defined as the process of travelling outside of an individual’s country to another to seek medical care. The current research studies medical tourism in Ghana historically, focusing on Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumase. Using a qualitative research approach, the study p…[Read more]

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has threatened ethnographic inquiry, undermining its quintessential characteristic. Participant observation, then, has been thoroughly dismembered by the radical measures implemented to prevent the spread of the virus. This phenomenon, in short, has dragged anthropologists to a liminal state within which ethnography is…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Unas notas sobre el final del libro ‘El lugar del hombre en el cosmos’ de Fred Spier, sobre la sostenibilidad de la actual comunicación globalizada. La Gran Historia sitúa al ser humano en el contexto de la evolución cósmica y de la ecología de los recursos. Vivimos hoy en la Era de los Combustibles Fósiles. Con esta energ…[Read more]