Language Log

It is my pleasure to announce the publication of the following volume which has just appeared:

Victor H. Mair, ed.  Tocharica et archaeologica : A Festschrift in Honor of J. P. Mallory (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph No. 69) (September 1, 2024)

This volume of celebratory papers, assembled upon the retirement of J. P. Mallory from his two decades as editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, has been written by his colleagues in admiration and gratitude for his long service to the journal and to the field in general. The contents mirror the broad range of the honoree's own expertise and interest in Indo-European studies. Above all is his consuming passion for the history of the Tocharians and their language, a subject on which he has labored diligently throughout his career: Who were the Tocharians? Where did they come from? Where did they end up? With what other languages was their own tongue related? This consuming quest led him to delve deeply into the realms of linguistics, archeology, and cultural anthropology, all of which are represented in the papers collected in this volume. Indo-European studies has been much enriched by J. P. Mallory's dedication to the journal that he edited with such care and precision. This monograph reflects the esteem and respect in which the contributors, all specialists in related fields, hold the honoree, J. P. Mallory. Foreword; Victor H. Mair – Preface; Douglas Q. Adams – On the Significance of Some Iranian Loanwords in Tocharian; Donald Ringe – A New Argument from Old Principles: Tocharian A cmol ‘birth’ and Its Implications; Melanie Malzahn – Tocharian B ārkwi, A ārki ‘white’ Revisited; Brian D. Joseph – More on Albanian Negation; Václav Blažek – Hippologica Euroasiatica: Tocharian A lāk*; Adrian Poruciuc – Gothic hlaiw as a Loan Word in Slavic and Romanian; Victor H. Mair and Diana Shuheng Zhang – How to Ride Your Elephant: Sanskritic Dream Omens in Tocharian; Harald Haarmann – The Innovation of Wheel and Wagon: Transport Technology as a Multicultural Joint Venture of Pastoralists and Agriculturalists; Peter S. Wells – Ornate Drinking Vessels as Indices of Feasting in Bronze and Iron Age Europe; Alexandra Comşa – Some Pathological Conditions of the (Bronze Age) Tumular Ochre Bearers in Connection with Their Environment

According to the publicity page:

One fall day in 2018, Ellen Jovin set up a folding table on a Manhattan sidewalk with a sign that said “Grammar Table.” Right away, passersby began excitedly asking questions, telling stories, and filing complaints.

What happened next is the stuff of grammar legend.

Ellen and her filmmaker husband, Brandt Johnson, took the table on the road, visiting all 50 US states as Brandt shot the grammar action.

Apparently today is "National Linguistics Day":

National Linguistics Day is a new awareness campaign which is designed to be a focal point in the year to get people thinking, talking and learning about the science of language.

For a few of you, this post advertises an opportunity. I'm one of the organizers of a special session at Interspeech 2025, "Challenges in Speech Data Collection, Curation, and Annotation". Or for short, "Speech Data CCA".

For the rest of you, this is yet another discussion of the large number of interpretations for (almost) any random 3-letter initialism — Acronym Finder yields 311 hits for CCA.

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-fourth issue:  "Handling Chinese Characters on Computers: Three Recent Studies" (pdf), by J. Marshall Unger (August, 2024).

Abstract
Writing systems with large character sets pose significant technological challenges, and not all researchers focus on the same aspects of those challenges or of the various attempts that have been made to meet them. A comparative reading of three recent books—The Chinese Computer by Thomas Mullaney (2024), Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu (2022), and Codes of Modernity by Uluğ Kuzuoğlu (2023)—makes this abundantly clear. All deal with the ways in which influential users of Chinese characters have responded to the demands of modern technology, but differ from one another considerably in scope and their selection and treatment of relevant information long known to linguists and historians.

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-third issue: "Speaking and Writing: Studies in Vernacular Aspects of Middle Period Chinese Culture" (pdf), edited by Victor H. Mair (August, 2024).

Foreword
The three papers in this collection were written for my seminar on Middle Vernacular Sinitic (MVS). They cover a wide variety of topics, from epistolary style to social mores, to philosophy and religion. They reveal how a vernacular ethos informs the thought and life of men and women from different social classes and distinguishes them from those who adhere to a more strictly classical outlook. Although they are on quite dissimilar subjects, this trio of papers harmonize in their delineation of the implications of vernacularity for belief and perception. Taken together, they compel one to consider seriously what causes some people to tilt more to the vernacular side and others to cling to classicism. While the authors of these papers do not aim to arrive at a common conclusion on the meaning of the vernacular-classical divide, the readers who probe beneath the surface of all three papers will undoubtedly find facets that refract and reflect themes that bind them into a unified body of inquiry.

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-second issue: "Dramatic Transformations of Sinography in East Asia and the World" (pdf), edited by Victor H. Mair (August, 2024).

Foreword
The three papers in this collection were written for my “Language, Script, and Society in China” course during the fall semester of 2023. All three of them are concerned with radical changes made to Sinographic script during its adjustment to modernity.

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-first issue:  "Placing Western Coins Near the Deceased in Ancient China: The Origin of a Custom," by Pin LYU:

ABSTRACT: This article traces the custom in ancient China of placing Western coins in proximity to corpses during burial. Academic attention has focused on the origin of the custom since Marc Aurel Stein initially connected the finding in Turfan of Western coins placed in the mouths or on the eyes of the corpses with Charon's obol, the ancient Greek coin that, similarly placed, paid Charon to ferry the dead to the underworld. Some scholars agreed with Stein's proposal, while others suggested that it was instead a traditional Chinese funerary ritual, unrelated to Greece. This article moves away from over-reliance on written sources and aims at uncovering the patterns underlying this custom, through the collection and analysis of available archaeological material. Results indicate that the custom possibly originated in the Hellenistic practice of Charon's obol and then traveled to China with Sogdian immigrants, developing into a regional funeral ritual in Turfan.

Tangutologists and Old Chinese aficionados take note: the whole 2024 Festschrift for M.V. Sofronov, produced on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2019, is now available via C. Harbsmeier's academia page: https://t.co/hGUhgrgauE pic.twitter.com/zH7zxY0YjG

— Wolfgang Behr (@behrwolf) June 27, 2024

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-ninth issue — Benjamin Porteous, "Reading Genesis 22 and Analects 18 in Late Antiquity":

ABSTRACT: This paper compares modes of scriptural interpretation from two ends of the Eurasian landmass in the late antique period (400–600 CE). Juxtaposing midrashim on Genesis with the Lunyi yishu 論語義疏, a famous expository commentary on the Confucian Analects, the paper argues that the difference between late-antique Confucian and Jewish commentarial practice lies in differing senses of responsibility for the sacred text. The Lunyu yishu curates the full Analects text, while midrashim presuppose a reader who turns elsewhere for the full version of the Hebrew Bible. The paper provides full typologies of commentarial technique in the midrashim and the Lunyu yishu; this is designed to assist comparison and further understanding of the practice of medieval Chinese commentary.

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

"A Historical Perspective on the Central Asian Kingdom of Kucha," by Angela F. Howard.

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp348_kucha.pdf

ABSTRACT

The article reexamines the dating of the earliest Buddhist cave paintings in the ancient Kingdom of Kucha, which was located in what is now Xinjiang, paying particular attention to the site of Kizil. Based on multiple Carbon-14 results spanning thirty years, historical and religious documents, and the author’s in situ research, the dating proposed is earlier than the traditional one, considered to be circa 500 AD. The latter was formulated, close to a century ago, by the scholar-explorer Ernst Waldschmidt on the basis of the “Indo-Iranian” style and is still used in art historical literature. Relying especially on Kucha’s comprehensive history, this paper suggests that the earliest cave paintings might have been coeval with the flourishing of Buddhism in Kucha during the fourth century. Given the centrality of the Tocharian language to the Sarvāstivādin Buddhist school associated with Kucha’s monasteries and the relative stylistic independence of Kucha from India, the author recommends adopting the term “Tocharian style” rather than “Indo-Iranian style” to describe artistic production in Kucha prior to the Tang.

Keywords: Tocharian, Central Asia, Caves

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All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.

To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-sixth issue: "The Imagery of House Geckos and Tokay Geckos in Imperial Era Chinese Literature," by Olivia Anna Rovsing Milburn.

Keywords: House geckos; Tokay geckos; Chinese literature; virginity tests; magic; rain-making