Linguistics

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Buddhist Dictionary of Pali Proper Names - http://www.palikanon.com/english...

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"Most of the entries have been taken from the "Dictionary of Pali Names" by G P Malalasekera (1899-1973), which is available as printed version from "The Pali Text Society, London"." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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List of Parting phrases - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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"...Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow." Juliet - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Sweet dreams :) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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3quarksdaily: Noam Chomsky on 50 years of Linguistics at MIT - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarks...

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The present-day distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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It's interesting that the most spoken language in the world is English (apparently), which in turn is actually a Germanic language. ~ Quote: "I thought British policy was make the world England? Sir." Major Duncan Heyward, Last Of The Mohicans - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Romani exonyms | Christopher Culver’s Linguistics Weblog - http://www.christopherculver.com/linguis...

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"In Romani: a linguistic introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Yaron Matras gives several examples of how the Roma people have been very inventive with names for the countries and people encountered on their westward migration (pp. 26–27):" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"Characteristic of Romani is – alongside replications of nations’ self-ascription (e.g. sasitko ‘German’, njamco ‘German’, valšo ‘French’) – the widespread use of inherited or internal names for nations. Thus we find das ‘Slavs’ (cf. OIA dāsa- ‘slave’), a word play based on Greek sklavos; xoraxaj/koraxaj of unclear etymology, in the Balkans generally ‘Muslim, Turk’ and elsewhere ‘foreigner’ or ‘non-Rom’; gadžo ‘non-Rom’. Other inherited words for non-Rom include xalo (‘meagre, shabby’), also in the diminutive xaloro ‘Jew’, balamo and goro ‘Greek, non-Gypsy’; biboldo ‘Jew’ (‘unbaptised’), chindo ‘Jew’ (‘cut’ = ‘circumcised’), trušulo ‘Christian’ (cf. trušul ‘cross’), džut ‘Jew’ (possibly Iranian). Names attached to foreign countries by individual Romani groups often refer to incomprehensible speech, based on either lal- ‘dumb’ or čhib ‘tongue’: lallaro-temmen ‘Finland’ and lalero them ‘Bohemia’ (= ‘dumb land’), lalero ‘Lithuanian’, čibalo/čivalo meaning ‘Albania’ among Balkan Rom, ‘Bavaria’ among German Rom, and ‘Germany’ among Yugoslav Rom. More recently, barvale thema (lit. ‘rich countries’) has emerged as a designation for ‘western Europe’, lole thema (lit. ‘red countries’) for ‘eastern, communist Europe’." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Antonymy in Humor: Part 2 | The Fun of Language and the Language of Fun - http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012...

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"In the previous post, we began to discuss the role of antonymy in humor creation. We stopped with the relation of taxonomic sisterhood, i.e. with those antonyms that appear on the same level in a taxonomy, like dog and cat, or terrier and spaniel. Here is another joke that makes use of this relation:" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Language Log » Gnostic crash blossom - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll...

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""Does Donald Trump support matter?", Special Report w/ Bret Baier, Fox News 2/2/2012. John Crowley's reponse:" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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:D - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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WordChorus - Searching for Patterns in Ancient Greek Texts! - http://www.wordchorus.com/Default...

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"WordChorus is a tool specifically designed to find patterns in Ancient Greek texts. Have you ever wondered how many verses in the Iliad begin with a rough breathing? Or how many words in Antigone end in the phoneme group οι, ει or αι? Do you want to count the number of accents in the Argonautica? If so, you have come to the right place!" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

^ - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Canadianism: I’m done this blogpost | Ganesha's Scarf - http://shubhabala.com/archive...

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"I love finding out about Canadianisms that go beyond the obvious – eh, aboot, ketchup chips, etc. This one is huge." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"Yesterday Libby informed me that for the past YEAR she has thought that I had some grammar problem because I kept saying I was done things… “I’m done work,” I’m done my sandwich,” I’m done Bossypants so now you can take it”, etc. Apparently she didn’t want to point it out lest she embarrass me, until the other day when she heard another Canadian interviewed who kept saying the same thing. (btw for everyone who has no clue what’s wrong with these quotes, apparently most people would say “I’m done with work” “I’m done with my sandwich”" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Entomology-Man « Memiyawanzi - http://memiyawanzi.wordpress.com/2012...

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"Cf. Aristotle’s Historia Animalium 487a: Καλῶ δ’ ἔντομα ὅσα ἔχει κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἐντομάς, ἢ ἐν τοῖς ὑπτίοις ἢ ἐν τούτοις τε καὶ τοῖς πρανέσιν. “I call them ἔντομα (lit. neut.pl. ἐντομος things-cut-in-pieces) as so they have segments (ἐντομή) for the body, either on the belly or there and on their backs also.”" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"ἔντομος ‘cut in a pieces’ can be further broken down into the preposition ἐν plus the root *temh₁- and the Caland adjective suffix *-mo- . The same is found in Greek τέμενος ‘sacred precinct ‘ < *témh₁-no- which originally meant a patch of land ‘cut-off’ and dedicated to a god. Although, the same word te-me-no also occurs in the Linear B tablets and doesn’t necessary have to be the area cut off for a god, but can be, for instance wa-na-ka-te-ro te-me-no (PY Er 312) /wanakteron temenos/ ‘the official domain of the king’. The same root in a different Caland formation, but with similar semantics to τέμενος in Classical Greek gives us Latin templum (< *temh₁-lo-) which was borrowed into English as temple." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Everlasting permanence | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp...

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"By this point you have probably read about Jonathan Franzen’s comments about digital books. For example: “I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.” This seems to be a recapitulation of the Lee Siegel’s attack on the internet from a few years back. I don’t think Franzen was copying Siegel, rather, he’s channeling a meme which seems to be prevalent in a certain cultural milieu. Carl Zimmer does a excellent job dispatching Franzen’s assertions on the merits. But I think we might benefit from a little historical perspective when evaluating these sorts of claims. After all, the book as we know it is the last in a long line of vessels for literacy." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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It's not e-books per se that will destroy literature. It's the DRM :) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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xkcd: Etymology-Man - http://xkcd.com/1010/

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'I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish Aquaman were here instead--HE'D be able to help.' - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Aquaman is dead to me since TBBT's season 4, episode 11. :) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Polysemy in Winnie-the-Pooh and Other Stories | The Fun of Language and the Language of Fun - http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012...

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"The previous posts, we have discussed the relation of homonymy. Polysemy is another relation that involves identity in sound but not in meaning. But this time, we don’t deal with different words, but rather with the same word that has different, but related, meanings. An example would be multiple meanings of the noun key: a device used to open or close a lock; a clue, a list of answers or explanations; musical key. The relation of polysemy serves as the basis for numerous jokes. Although I don’t know whether such a statistics exists, from my observations I would say that there are even more jokes involving polysemy than homonymy. Maybe that’s because there are more instances of polysemy in a language? After all, if you look in a dictionary, you’ll see that most words are given more than one meaning. But in general, humor seems to like this idea of same sound – different meanings; it cares much less whether polysemy of homonymy is involved." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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AWOL - The Ancient World Online: Coming Soon from Arachne: Digitized Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) - http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2012...

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"The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions from all corners of the Roman Empire. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history. The Corpus continues to be updated with new editions and supplements by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en... ; title="http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en... ; <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en... ; title="http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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CIL Open Access <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.arachne.uni-ko... ; title="http://www.arachne.uni-ko... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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World Wide Words E-magazine: 28 Jan 2012 : Weird Words: Fandangle - http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl...

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"A fandangle may be a useless or purely ornamental thing. It may also refer to something nonsensical, foolish or silly: A big white wedding is a huge fandangle for not much return. The guests carp about their placement; the vicar, it turns out, would rather be at a funeral; and the happy couple are either rigid with stress or flaccid with drink. Sunday Telegraph, 8 Aug. 2010." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"One of my dictionaries describes it as archaic, but nobody seems to have told its users, who continue to find it the right world for any situation that implies confusion or fatuousness. This is from a New Zealand book review: “There’s a sense of déjà vu about so much of the plot. And the whole fandangle could have been at least 100 pages shorter.” And this from the US: “Feuding politicians in Washington continue their endless fandangle on possible changes to the evermore complicated federal tax code.” It seems still to be known, to some small extent, almost everywhere English is spoken. A plausible suggestion for its origin is the Spanish dance called the fandango, known from the eighteenth century but whose name in English by the early nineteenth century had taken on the same senses of foolish nonsense or useless ornament that were later transferred to fandangle. Was this a Puritan reaction to the dance, perhaps?" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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spiel - http://www.etymonline.com/index...

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spiel (n.) "glib speech, pitch," 1896, probably from verb (1894) meaning "to speak in a glib manner," earlier "to play circus music" (1870), from Ger. spielen "to play," from O.H.G. spilon (cognate with O.E. spilian "to play"). The noun also perhaps from Ger. Spiel "play, game." ~ extra link <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wiktionary.org/... ; title="http://en.wiktionary.org/... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

something I'm guilty of doing on ff a lot :-P - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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OUPblog » Blog Archive » Monthly Gleanings: January 2012 - http://blog.oup.com/2012...

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"1. In Sackcloth and Ashes. In the post on the C-word, I made two mistakes, for both of which I am sorry, though neither was due to chance. In Middle High German, the word kotze “vagina” existed, and I was going to write that, given such a noun, the verb kotzen “copulate” can also be reconstructed. Instead, I wrote that Modern German klotzen has such a meaning, though I knew only too well that klotzen means “puke, barf.” The modern verb seems to have a different origin; however, the available information is meager and not fully convincing. I also misspelled the name of the author in the picture. The illustration at the bottom of this post will reveal the full depth of my contrition. 2. Use and origin. One of our correspondents was told that in British English the C-word does not necessarily have offensive connotations when applied to women. This will be news to most of us. Perhaps the source of the information was the OED. In the past, c**t could indeed be used more freely. The same holds for the F-word (compare windfucker), but no conclusions follow for the present, as explained (quite correctly, to my mind) in a comment by another correspondent. The word was unprintable for a long time, and even now people usually avoid it. As for its origin, final -th in the protoform is impossible, for it would either have been preserved as -th or become d. Also, if the word had ended in -nth, the modern vowel would have been long, as in uncouth or in south. Like one of our correspondents, I also think that fuzzy-muzzy was coined on the analogy of fuzzy-wuzzy, alluding to pubic hair. Finally, beware of knowing little or no Italian. When English speakers, ignorant of the language, come to Italy and see some drink called caldo, they are surprised to get hot tea or hot coffee. I thought of this dilemma, while leafing through the old issues of the Italian journal Filologia antica e moderna in search of publications for my database. The title “Anatomia dell’eros ne Lo cunto de li cunti di Giambattista Basile” caught my fancy. The book by Basile is the famous Pentamerone, an early collection of Neapolitan fairy tales. It is known in English as The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones. Cunto (compare Modern Italian racconto and French conte) means “tale” in Basile’s seventeenth-century dialect. Quite a different word is the noun cunta “delay,” from Latin cuncta. Those who have read the history of the Second Punic War will remember Fabius Maximus, the cunctator (“delayer”). English dictionaries give the noun cunctation “delay,” a nice word to use in casual conversation. So much for cunto, cunta, and their English look-alike." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

I never understood the need to exchange a couple of letters in a word we don't like with stars. It seems so silly. It only works if we all know which letters the stars represent anyway. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Contrastive Focus Reduplication in English (The Salad-Salad Paper) - https://docs.google.com/viewer...

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"The semantic effect of this construction is to focus the denotation of the reduplicated element on a more sharply delimited, more specialized, range. For instance, SALAD–salad in (1a) denotes speciﬁcally green salad as opposed to salads in general, and, in the context in which (1e) was used, AUCKLAND–Auckland denotes the city in New Zealand as opposed to other cities that may happen to have this name. For a ﬁrst approximation, we characterize this effect as denoting the prototypical instance of the reduplicated lexical expression." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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:-) The Out Out Tour, that is cool. :-) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Ottoman - http://www.etymonline.com/index...

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Ottoman 1580s, from Fr. Ottoman, from It. Ottomano, from Arabic 'Uthmani "of or belonging to Arabic masc. proper name 'Uthman," which in Turkish is pronounced Othman (see Osmanli), name of the founder of the dynasty and empire. Ending altered in Italian by formation of a new false singular, because -i was a plural inflection in Italian. Byron used the more correct form Othman, and a few writers have followed him. The type of couch so called (1806) because one reclined on it, which was associated with Eastern customs (see couch). - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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I don't know much about him, despite one of my lecturers going on and on about him :D He did identify very strongly with the Hijaz Arabs, and by all accounts was angry at the post-war settlements. He died in a motorcycle accident, I believe. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Steven Piantadosi et al. :: Communicative function of AMBIGUITY in language (2010 pre-print) . [2012 Cognition 122(3):280-91] - https://docs.google.com/viewer...

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We want to be precise in our communications -- but that must be balanced with the need for efficiency. The paper above uses information theory to argue that ambiguity is necessary in any efficient communication system when content is informative about meaning. Also @amirask refers to another interesting paper, Compression without a common prior by Brendan Juba et al. (Proceedings of ICS 2011, 79-86), in which speaker and listener have different prior beliefs about what a speaker may say. Again, information theory shows why ambiguity is necessary for the purpose of efficient communication (compression): <a rel="nofollow" href="https://docs.google.com/v... ; title="https://docs.google.com/v... ; - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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That's great, thanks :-) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Native American Audio Collections | American Philosophical Society - http://amphilsoc.org/exhibit...

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"The American Philosophical Society has been collecting and working to preserve Native American languages since the time of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson collected a word list of the Unkechaug language on Long Island, a language that Jefferson believed to be on the brink of extinction. In 2010, the Unkechaug contacted the APS and requested a copy of the vocabulary list in order to begin the process of revitalizing their language. It is this long and proud heritage of preservation, partnership, and revitalization that this digital exhibit celebrates." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"The APS is currently in the process of digitizing and extensively cataloging over 3000 hours of endangered Native American languages. These recordings include music, origin stories, historical accounts, linguistic material, and conversations with elders in both English and indigenous languages. Many of these recordings were originally made on obsolete technology such as wax cylinders, wire, or aluminum discs. The concept of revitalization thus applies not only to saving Native languages from extinction, but making the work of distinguished anthropologists available to modern day scholars and students." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Tobar an Dualchais - index - http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en...

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"This website contains over 26,000 oral recordings made in Scotland and further afield, from the 1930s onwards. The items you can listen to include stories, songs, music, poetry and factual information." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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refute - http://www.etymonline.com/index...

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refute 1510s, "refuse, reject," from L. refutare "drive back, repress, repel, rebut," from re- "back" (see re-) + -futare "to beat," probably from PIE base *bhat- "to strike down" (cf. beat). Meaning "prove wrong" dates from 1540s. Since c.1964 linguists have frowned on the subtle shift in meaning towards "to deny," as it is used in connection with allegation. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Weird types, those frowning linguists. Or self-appointed language guards? There isn't a long way from the meaning "repel" to "prove wrong" to "deny" imo. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee"): Word for the day: Rhyton - http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2012...

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"A rhyton is an elaborate drinking vessel, common in ancient Persia and later popularized in Greece:" - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"The word is believed to be derived from Greek rhein*, "to flow".... Many vessels considered rhytons featured a wide mouth at the top and a hole through a conical constriction at the bottom from which the fluid ran. The idea is that one scooped wine or water from a storage vessel or similar source, held it up, unstoppered the hole with one's thumb, and let the fluid run into the mouth (or onto the ground in libation) in the same way wine is drunk from a wineskin today." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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List of German expressions in English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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Maitani :) - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Wow. I love that Pennsylvania Dutch English. "Make wet?" = "Is it going to rain?" "It wonders me." = "It makes me wonder." Many of these phrases are really German in disguise. :D :D :D - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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