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Was rongorongo an independent invention of writing?

Below is a guest post by Kyle Gorman and Richard Sproat: Ferrara et al. [1] report on the results of a study of several specimens of kohau rongorongo, the enigmatic, undeciphered texts of Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui). These texts, inscribed on wood—mostly driftwood that washed ashore on the island—may have numbered in […]

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Sino-Iranica and Sino-Arabica

Coming soon. https://t.co/mHuBzXyGrx pic.twitter.com/V2dTUkbAWt — Jeffrey Kotyk (@JeffreyKotyk) March 20, 2024

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Symposium on Indo-European food

Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) Symposium on April 11, 2024 Registration by 4th April at the latest 11 April, 11:15 a.m. SYMPOSIUM Indo-European Food: Linguistic, Archaeological and Biomolecular Perspectives ABSTRACT: The symposium Indo-European Food – Linguistic, Archaeological, and Biomolecular Perspectives aims to explore the intricate relationships between the spread of Indo-European languages, the archaeological […]

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Whimsical surnames

Preface Because surnames of immigrants in a melting pot like America often end up getting distorted, bowdlerized, prettified, and otherwise transformed from what they were in their original homelands, we cannot take their current form as gospel linguistic truth.  Nonetheless, people who encounter them cannot avoid taking them at their face value, which may cause […]

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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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Artificial Conversational Intelligence?

It seems that ChatGPT still has a few things to learn, about conversational dynamics as well as about interlocutor modeling: @risthinks ChatGPT chatting each other about AI ! #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #TechTalk #FutureTech #Conversations #Innovation ♬ original sound – RisThinks

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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 […]

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Words for Water Being Sent to the Moon Europa

"Water", "water", everywhere — and it's pronounced differently wherever you go. See the dozen or so US and UK phonetic and phonemic transcriptions and audio clips provided by Wiktionary here.  The last of the US audio clips even has the trace of an initial "h", as some people pronounce "wh-" interrogatives. ——————- From Marc Sarrel […]

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When is research "deemed not research", and why?

This post is going to delve into one aspect of a recently-published article from the Centers for Disease Contol: DeCuir J, Payne AB, Self WH, et al. Interim Effectiveness of Updated 2023–2024 (Monovalent XBB.1.5) COVID-19 Vaccines Against COVID-19–Associated Emergency Department and Urgent Care Encounters and Hospitalization Among Immunocompetent Adults Aged ≥18 Years — VISION and […]

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Shoebox skull: an old neologism

"Bones from German cave rewrite early history of Homo sapiens in Europe", by Will Dunham, Reuters (1/31/24) Bone fragments unearthed in a cave in central Germany show that our species ventured into Europe's cold higher latitudes more than 45,000 years ago – much earlier than previously known – in a finding that rewrites the early […]

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At the rind of the debate

Here are a couple of puzzling word-choices from Charlatan Magazine, sent to me by someone who was somehow put on their mailing list. This one is from "The Politics of Immigration", 3/3/2024 [emphasis added]: While Biden patrols the Texas border (taking a wide berth around the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas) he assuages […]

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"She can talk however she wants!"

A fun interview about acting, contact, accommodation, and identity: @max_balegde My favourite interview of all time. She was so sweet and she can talk however she wants!!!! Damsel is out now! @Netflix #milliebobbybrown ♬ original sound – Max_Balegde

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La francophonie triomphe

…by virtue of the global spread of English. At least, that's what we can conclude from the click-bait title of a book recently published in France, "La langue anglaise n'existe pas". C'est du français mal prononcé (= "The English language doesn't exist". It's badly-pronounced French). The author, Bernard Cerquiglini, has some serious credentials, to which […]

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