Language Log

Victor Mair passed away two days ago, on Sunday 6/28/2026. We'll have a proper series of memorial posts and links later, but for now, here's a Facebook post from his brother Denis, his Wikipedia page, and a link to LLOG posts written by or mentioning him.

Speech Prosody 2026 starts tomorrow, and I've been asked to present 5 minutes of welcoming remarks at the opening session.

My plan is to start with a quick reading of the abstract from my 2011 Henry Sweet lecture, "Towards the Golden Age of Speech and Language Science":

For the sciences of speech and language, the 21st century promises to bring the kind of progress that the 17th century brought to the physical sciences.

Our telescopes and microscopes, our alembics and Pneumatical Engines, are today's vast archives of digital text and speech, along with new analysis techniques and inexpensive networked computation.

However, the scientific use of these new instruments remains mainly exploratory and potential. There are several critical problems for which we have at best partial solutions; and like our 17th-century predecessors, we need to unlearn some old ideas on the way to learning new ones.

Focusing especially on Henry Sweet's own interests in phonetics and in the history of English, this talk will discuss some of the barriers to be overcome, present some successful examples, and speculate about future directions.

"Words as Data: How Data Journalists Tell Stories about Documents and Text." Bradshaw, Paul. Online Journalism Blog, May 14, 2026. 

"Discovering Regularity and Mechanisms of Word Sense Acquisition in Childhood." Li, Jiangtian et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123, no. 20 (May 11, 2026): e2525788123. 

• "How Six Minnesotans Are Preserving Their Rare Languages." Das, Shubhanjana. Sahan Journal, April 28, 2026. https://sahanjournal.com/arts-culture/native-speakers-rare-languages-minnesota/.

• "An Inverse Correlation between Structural Linguistic and Human Genetic Diversity." Graff, Anna et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 123, no. 18 (May 5, 2026): e2526762123. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2526762123.

• "Does the Brain Really Know What Word Is Coming Next?" Antonello, Richard J. eLife 15 (April 27, 2026): e111163. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.111163.

• "The Sound of Populism: Distinct Linguistic Features Across Populist Variants." Wang, Yu et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (April 27, 2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-06799-8.

• "The Phonology of Sperm Whale Coda Vowels." Beguš, Gašper et al. Royal Society Proceedings B: Biological Sciences 293, no. 2069 (April 15, 2026): 20252994. https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2994.

Because there are so many excellent entries of interest to Language Log readers in various fields, I am including all of those in this extensive list;

• "Genetic History of Scythia." Andreeva, Tatiana V. et al. Science Advances 11, no. 30 (July 25, 2025): eads8179. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads8179. Updated 27 March 2026.
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• "Decoding Parrot Duets: Complex Communication in Yellow-Naped Amazons." Dahlin, Christine R. et al. Journal of Avian Biology 2026, no. 1 (February 12, 2026): e03552. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jav.03552.

Talk in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania:

"The Calendarized Onomasticon and the Arrival of Birthday Celebration from the Ancient Near East to China", by Sanping Chen, author of Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages

Dr. Chen's talk will be Wednesday, February 25th from 12:00 – 2:00pm in the Wolf Humanities Conference Room (WILL 623).

New book in the Cambridge Elements Series
Yuanfei Wang and Victor H. Mair
Early Globalism and Chinese Literature
Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2026 

The entire book, richly illustrated in color, is available open access online.

Summary

Exploring 'early globalism and Chinese literature' through the lens of 'literary diffusion,' this Element analyzes two primary forms. The first is Buddhist literary diffusion, whose revolutionary impact on Chinese language and literature is illustrated through scriptural translation, transformation texts, and 'journey to the West' stories. The second, facilitated diffusion, engages with the maritime world, traced through the seafaring journey of Cinderella stories and the totalizing worldview in literature on Zheng He's voyages. The authors contend that early global literary diffusion left a lasting imprint on Chinese language, literature, and culture.

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

“Relations Between Greece and Central Asia in Antiquity: An Examination of the Written Sources” (pdf) by Yu Taishan.

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

“Zhenzhu’s Deputy: Loyalty and Filiality in The Compass of Islam,” by Jonathan N. Lipman.
(free pdf)

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

“A Study of Dunhuang Manuscript S.2614V, Mahāmaudgalyāyana Rescuing His Mother from the Underworld: Revisions and Textual Transmission,” by Ryu Takai.

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

“The Many Voices of Silence: The Diverse Theories of the Ineffable Dao in the Zhuangzi,” by Ming SUN.

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

“How Oppenheimer Mistook Time for Death at Trinity (the A-bomb Test Site) and How the Bhagavad Gītā, Read Properly, Resonates with the Block Universe of Einstein,” by Conal Boyce.