Ekaterina Lyutikova on the Architecture of Grammar

Nov 19, 2015 by

Ekaterina Lyutikova on the Architecture of Grammar

[Note to Readers: the following is my translation from Russian of Ekaterina Lyutikova’s video lecture posted on PostNauka.ru, posted here with her permission. Some Russian examples have been replaced by corresponding English...

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What Is Linguistic Complexity and How to Measure It?

Nov 19, 2015 by

What Is Linguistic Complexity and How to Measure It?

[Note to Readers: the following is my translation from Russian of Alexander Piperski’s lecture posted on PostNauka.ru, posted here with his permission.]   We all have some ideas about what languages ​​are simpler and, conversely,...

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Mohawk’s Challenging Grammar

Aug 4, 2015 by

Mohawk’s Challenging Grammar

As mentioned in the previous post, an article by Judith Thurman, titled “A loss for words”, published in the March 30, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, does a good job discussing issues of language endangerment and revitalization....

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The Fast-Disappearing Ninilchik Russian of Alaska—And Some of Its Ling...

Apr 6, 2015 by

The Fast-Disappearing Ninilchik Russian of Alaska—And Some of Its Linguistic Peculiarities

Several followers of this blog and I have been discussing an article about the work of Andrei Kibrik (Moscow State University) and Mira Bergelson (The Higher School of Economics, Moscow) on “an antiquated dialect of Russian … still...

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Simple Verb Tenses in Old Church Slavonic

Feb 4, 2015 by

Simple Verb Tenses in Old Church Slavonic

Verbs in Old Church Slavonic (OCS) are inflected for person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) and number (singular, dual, or plural). There are three simple tenses (present, imperfect, and aorist) and three compound tenses (perfect, pluperfect, and...

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Introduction to Old Church Slavonic Conjugation

Feb 4, 2015 by

Introduction to Old Church Slavonic Conjugation

While nominal parts-of-speech, such as nouns and adjectives, decline, verbs conjugate. Each verb has a number of different forms, both tensed and non-tensed. There are three tenses in OCS: present, imperfect, and aorist. Note that...

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