Evidential markers in Yukaghir languages

Oct 10, 2014 by

Evidential markers in Yukaghir languages

[This post was originally published in April 2012] When a character in an English-language mystery novel says “The butler did it!”, we do not know if this person witnessed the crime, heard someone else make the accusation, or infers...

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Kusunda, a language like no other?

May 25, 2012 by

Kusunda, a language like no other?

Kusunda is a dying isolate language. Gyani Maiya Sen, a 75-year-old woman from western Nepal, is its last known speaker. There are some 100-160 people in the Kusunda tribe, and some of them know a few words of the language, but...

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The Pirahã Controversy — Part 1

Mar 21, 2012 by

The Pirahã Controversy — Part 1

Two articles have recently appeared in the popular press addressing the so-called Pirahã controversy, one in The Economist and another in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The authors of these two pieces, especially Tom Bartlett,...

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Bob’s your uncle

Mar 8, 2012 by

Bob’s your uncle

In an earlier post, we have discussed how kinship terminology differs from language to language. Where one language may have an umbrella term for several different relations, another language make have a more detailed network of...

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More on geographic determinism and language

Jan 5, 2012 by

More on geographic determinism and language

In a recent post, I’ve discussed the issue of geographic determinism, that is the hypothesis that certain kinds of terrain or weather favor certain structural features in languages. As I have shown there, this simple-minded version...

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On geographic determinism and nasal vowels in French

Dec 30, 2011 by

On geographic determinism and nasal vowels in French

In a recent post, I discussed one example of geographic determinism applied to linguistic typology. The thinking behind geographic determinism is as follows: certain kinds of terrain or weather favor certain structural features in...

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