In a recent issue of the Journal of Language Evolution, Syrjänen et al. (2021) investigate the suitability of computing Cummins and McInerney’s (2011) TIGER rates for estimating the tree-likeness of linguistic datasets compiled for phylogenetic reconstruction. The authors test the TIGER rates on a diverse sample of simulated data, which by and lar…[Read more]

There are hundreds of alphabetic texts in Zapotec languages dating back to the 16th century. Today, however, Zapotec speakers are generally unable to read these texts, due to lack of access to the texts and an unfamiliarity with the orthographic practices. Moreover, significant changes have taken place in the grammar in the intervening centuries.…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: Proponemos, en contraposición a la noción de ideología corriente en la crítica cultural y ejemplificada aquí por el libro de Teun A. van Dijk “Ideología: Un enfoque multidisciplinario” (Gedisa, 1999), una noción de ideología más interaccional, más dialógica y más unida a las situaciones efectivas en las que la ideología s…[Read more]

Considerando o catálogo Lumière como experiência inaugural do cinema mundial, este artigo propõe uma leitura anarquívica de algumas de suas imagens. Diferenciando a operação do cinematógrafo como dispositivo cosmotécnico de arquivamento do mundo e aparelho cosmopoético de invenção de mundos, exploro as formas de inscrição da diferença no…[Read more]

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]

Reflections on Trevor Paglen’s (ab)use of the JAFFE dataset

On the project pirate.care

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]

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

Twenty-five years ago, my colleagues Miyuki Kamachi and Jiro Gyoba and I designed and photographed JAFFE, a set of facial expression images intended for use in a study of face perception. In 2019, without seeking permission or informing us, Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen exhibited JAFFE in two widely publicized art shows. In addition, they…[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]

Las videotecas de las televisoras locales son centros de información y socialización de contenidos. Favorecen el procesamiento y conservación de la información audiovisual para su posterior recuperación. El procesamiento de la información audiovisual en la televisión local es un área que ha sido poco abordada desde la producción científi…[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]

There seems to be a continuum between Fernando Pessoa’s metadrama of heteronyms and his strict-sense plays, but this is more hypothesis than theory, because Pessoa’s dramas—notwithstanding the editions of Teatro Estático (2017) and Fausto (2018)—are still largely unknown. Written between 1903–1908, the tragedy of Marino is the earliest of Pessoa’…[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]