Archive for Announcements

Wheat and word: astronomy and the origins of the alphabet

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-first issue:

"On the Origins of the Alphabet: Orion/Osiris in Need of a Head/Seed, the Roots of Writing, the Neolithic Europe Word as Sun/Seed System (NEWS), and a Solution to the Tartaria and Gradeshnista Tablets," by Brian R. Pellar.

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp341_alphabet_orion_osiris.pdf

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Sinoglyphic scripts for Sinitic and non-Sinitic languages in East / Southeast Asia

Forthcoming from De Gruyter, July 14, 2024 (ISBN: 9783111382746):

Vernacular Chinese-Character Manuscripts from East and Southeast Asia, edited by: David Holm.

Volume 40 in the series Studies in Manuscript Cultures

Keywords: Asia; vernacular; ritual; library collections; recitation

Topics:  Asian Literature; Asian and Pacific Studies; Dialectology; Linguistics and Semiotics; Literary Studies; Literature of other Nations and Languages; Southeast Asia; Textual Scholarship; Theoretical Frameworks and Disciplines

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The language of spices

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-eighth issue:

Mapping the Language of Spices: A Corpus-Based, Philological Study on the Words of the Spice Domain,” by Gábor Parti.

ABSTRACT

Most of the existing literature on spices is to be found in the areas of gastronomy, botany, and history. This study instead investigates spices on a linguistic level. It aims to be a comprehensive linguistic account of the items of the spice trade. Because of their attractive aroma and medicinal value, at certain points in history these pieces of dried plant matter have been highly desired, and from early on, they were ideal products for trade. Cultural contact and exchange and the introduction of new cultural items beget situations of language contact and linguistic acculturation. In the case of spices, not only do we have a set of items that traveled around the world, but also a set of names. This language domain is very rich in loanwords and Wanderwörter. In addition, it supplies us with myriad cases in which spice names are innovations. Still more interesting is that examples in English, Arabic, and Chinese—languages that represent major powers in the spice trade at different times—are here compared.

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Tocharian Bilingualism and Language Death in the Old Turkic Context

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-seventh issue:

“Tocharian Bilingualism, Language Shift, and Language Death in the Old Turkic Context,” by Hakan Aydemir.

pdf

ABSTRACT

The death of a language is a sad and dramatic event. It is, however, a fact that many languages died out in the past and are now dying out as well. However, although we often know the time and causes of present or recent language deaths and have a relatively large amount of information about them, we often do not know the time and causes of past language deaths, or our knowledge of these processes is very limited. In other words, the very limited written sources or linguistic material make it very difficult to study “language shift” or “language death” phenomena in historical periods.

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Central Asian Turkish languages

I write to announce an exceptional opportunity to learn the Turkish languages of Central Asia.

There is a new Turkic course at Penn: TURK 1050.
 
This is a survey course that introduces students to the main languages spoken in Central Asia: Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Azeri. The language study will facilitate student research in topics like politics, history, and cultural events. This course aims at generating interest in the languages and studies of Central Asia spanning different periods of its history, with main focus on the linguistic forms and cultural activities.
 
Tuesdays and Thursdays 5:15 PM-6:45 PM
beketova@upenn.edu

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Topolects and texts

Illuminating new book from Hong Kong University Press edited by Richard VanNess Simmons:

Studies in Colloquial Chinese and Its History:  Dialect and Text

ISBN : 978-988-8754-09-0

The book also has a Chinese title:

Hànyǔ kǒuyǔ de lìshǐ yánjiū: fāngyán hé wénxiàn

漢語口語的歷史研究:方言與文獻

I would prefer to render this into English as:

Studies on the History of Spoken Sinitic:  Topolects and Texts

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The Cantophone and the state

Cantonese — its nature, its status, its past, present, and future, its place in the realm of Sinitic languages and in the world — has been one of the chief foci of Language Log.  Consequently, it is my great pleasure to announce the publication of the three-hundred-and-thirty-fourth issue of Sino-Platonic Papers:

“The Concept of the Cantophone: Memorandum for a Stateless Literary History,” by Wayne C. F. Yeung.

https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp334_cantophone.pdf

This is a landmark work of scholarship that penetratingly probes the position of Cantonese — and thereby all "Chinese" topolects — in the complex mix of language, literature, nation, politics, and culture.  

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Austronesian languages of Taiwan

Handbook of Formosan Languages (Online): The Indigenous Languages of Taiwan

Editors:

Paul Jen-kuei Li, Academia Sinica
Elizabeth Zeitoun, Academia Sinica
Rik De Busser, National Taiwan Cheng-Chi University

Leiden:  Brill, 2023

Outright Purchase: € 2249 / US dollars 2495
Subscription: € 350 / US dollars 390

A print version is forthcoming (September 2023 ; 3 vols, ~ 2200 pp.)

Features

  • The first comprehensive reference work on Formosan languages, relevant for decades to come.
  • Sketch grammars of almost all known Formosan languages, living or extinct.
  • Written by renowned scholars in the field from around the world.

Publication Schedule

Handbook of Formosan Languages Online was launched in May 2023 with 50% of the total content. The other 50% will be published in July 2023.

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The Sutradhar and the Ringgit: A Study of Terms Related to the Early Puppet Theatres

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-second issue:

The Sutradhar and the Ringgit: A Study of Terms Related to the Early Puppet Theatres,” by Keith Rawlings.

ABSTRACT

Certain words in Sanskrit, Old Javanese, and Ancient Greek that appear in centuries-old texts are thought by many scholars to be early references to puppetry, leading to certain theories about the history of that art. These particular words from antiquity and the Middle Ages and their interpretations and translations underpin currently received views about the antiquity of puppetry. This paper discusses the history of the related scholarship, examines varying interpretations of the words, and suggests other possible meanings, leading to questions about their interpretation. I hope to show that, because words in earlier eras of a language may have different interpretations from those accepted later, texts and the scholarship that relies on them should be re-examined in the light of current knowledge.

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Combinatory Sound Alternations in Proto-, Pre-, and Real Tibetan

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-first issue:

Bettina Zeisler, “Combinatory Sound Alternations in Proto-, Pre-, and Real Tibetan: The Case of the Word Family *Mra(o) ‘Speak,’ ‘Speaker,’ ‘Human,’ ‘Lord’” (free pdf), Sino-Platonic Papers, 331 (March, 2023), 1-165.

Among many other terms, discusses the Eurasian word for "horse" often mentioned on Language Log (see "Selected readings" below for examples).   Gets into IIr and (P)IE.

ABSTRACT

At least four sound alternations apply in Tibetan and its predecessor(s): regressive metathesis, alternation between nasals and oral stops, jotization, and vowel alternations. All except the first are attested widely among the Tibeto-Burman languages, without there being sound laws in the strict sense. This is a threat for any reconstruction of the proto-language. The first sound alternation also shows that reconstructions based on the complex Tibetan syllable structure are misleading, as this complexity is of only a secondary nature. In combination, the four sound alternations may yield large word families. A particular case is the word family centering on the words for speaking and human beings. It will be argued that these words ultimately go back to a loan from Eastern Iranian.

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Review of Yoshida Yutaka's Lectures on Sogdian Grammar

Despite its being a Middle Iranian language that has been extinct for a millennium, we've often mentioned Sogdian on Language Log.  That's because of its intrinsic linguistic interest, but also because its speakers, as I have often said, were Eurasian Kulturvermittlers par excellence and outstanding socioeconomic entrepreneurs.

Now we have a comprehensive, reliable grammar of Sogdian, which is cause for celebration:

Yoshida Yutaka 吉田豊 2022. Sogudogo bunpō kōgi ソグド語文法講義
[Lectures on Sogdian Grammar]. Kyoto: Rinsen. iv, 500 pp.

ISBN: 978-4-653-04188-7.

Although this hefty tome is in Japanese, Adam Alvah Catt has written an informative review that enables those who cannot read it themselves to get a good idea of the book's contents.

Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Volume 76: Issue 1 (March 17, 2023), 165-167

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1556/062.2023.00325

URL:  https://akjournals.com/view/journals/062/76/1/article-p165.xml

Here I will make available the first, next to last, and last paragraphs of the review.

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"Subscribe to Open"

As the S2O website explains,

“Subscribe to Open” (S2O) is a pragmatic approach for converting subscription journals to open access—free and immediate online availability of research—without reliance on either article processing charges (APCs) or altruism. […]

S2O allows publishers to convert journals from subscriptions to OA, one year at a time. Using S2O, a publisher offers a journal’s current subscribers continued access. If all current subscribers participate in the S2O offer (simply by not opting out) the publisher opens the content covered by that year’s subscription. If participation is not sufficient—for example, if some subscribers delay renewing in the expectation that they can gain access without participating—then that year’s content remains gated.

The offer is repeated every year, with the opening of each year’s content contingent on sufficient participation. In some cases, access to backfile content may be used to enhance the offer.

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Lecture on the anatomical origins of language

[Please read all the way to the bottom of this post.  There are some big surprises here, including references to a book and an article on linguistics by the novelist Tom Wolfe (1930-2018), who's clearly on the wrong side of the political fence.  Despite the spate of mostly unremittingly anti-Wolfe comments, many important issues about the field are raised there.]

Monday, Mar 6, 5:15 pm-7:15 pm – Seminar 5

Mercedes Conde-Valverde, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares (Spain)
Title: Sounds of the Past

Speaker: Dr. Mercedes Conde-Valverde
Title: The Sounds of the Past

Lecture via Zoom; https://binghamton.zoom.us/j/98942256738

Class meets in S2-259

Abstract

One of the central questions in the study of the evolutionary history of human beings is the origin of language. Since words do not fossilize, paleoanthropologists have focused on establishing when the anatomical structures that support human speech, our natural way of communicating, first appeared and in which species of human ancestor. Humans differ from our closest primates not only in the anatomy of the vocal tract, which enables us to speak, but also in the anatomy and physiology of the ear. Our hearing is finely tuned and highly sensitive to the sounds of human speech, and is clearly distinct from that of a chimpanzee.

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