Some recent articles on language and linguistics
« previous post | next post »
- "What Is Laughter?" Almeida, Abilio. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (May 9, 2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07432-4.
- "A Sentence Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Can Large Language Models Understand Hum4n L4ngu4ge and the W0rld behind W0rds?" Leivada, Evelina et al. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 384, no. 2320 (May 14, 2026): 20250008. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article/384/2320/20250008/481681/A-sentence-is-worth-a-thousand-pictures-can-large.
- "Introduction to the Special Issue: Multidialectism in the Multilingual Turn." Walter, Daniel et al. L2 Journal 18, no. 2 (May 7, 2026). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7n93x63x.
- "Going beyond Description: Multilingual Topic Modelling and Theoretical Integration in Comparative Media Analysis." Wang, Weili et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (May 15, 2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07642-w.
- "The Language of Scents: A Corpus-Based Study of Chinese Perfume Descriptions." Zhou, Han et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (May 9, 2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07494-4.
[Thanks to Ted McClure] — we linguists and language specialists are the beneficiaries of a librarian.
Stuart Luppescu said,
May 16, 2026 @ 9:39 pm
I found this article interesting, and worth sharing with your readers.
https://unseen-japan.com/japanese-girls-boku-pronoun/
Victor Mair said,
May 17, 2026 @ 7:05 am
Thank you, Stuart. Much appreciated.
——————–
【僕】S
[noun] [from 1780s] manservant, servant
[pronoun] [from 1760s] (men's speech) I; me (personal pronoun; usually used by males; implies that the speaker is a young boy or otherwise boyish)
[pronoun] you, he, she (only used in reference to a person who uses this term to refer to themselves, or is one who is assumed to use it, such as a young boy)
Alternative spelling
ボク
(Wiktionary)
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
May 18, 2026 @ 7:24 am
From "What is Laughter":
"It is proposed that: In the Classical View, laughter is seen as an expression of human superiority over animals, but inferiority before the gods, and should be avoided by the wise people; In the Medieval View, laughter is seen as one of the many things of the Devil, opposing the will of God, and therefore should be avoided by people of faith; In the Modern View, laughter loses its previous chronic negativity with evolutionary theory and comes to be seen as merely one of the many innate characteristics of all human beings."
Ah, yes, come to think of it, just the other day I happened upon a priest rehearsing an Aristophanes play — thank Jove there happened to have been an evolutionary biologist nearby to help me laugh, or else I don't know what I'd've done.