I was looking at my Gordon book the other day and finally took the time to read on the Grammar parts. Amongst it was this nice little section about the Norse language in England and how from what little we have of it we can tell what phonological changes that are present in Old Norse (aka 13th c. Icelandic) are not in the Norse preserved in ( Read more... )

Bare or Bear, or, the Story of Berserk, found on Anatoly Liberman's blog.

And the first animal on Earth was...

Language Log: The evolutionary psychology of irregular morphology (or Bush Said Something Weird Again...Why?)

Orchid's sexual deception triggers ejaculation (or Mommy, what's that wasp doing to that flower?)

...outside my Syntax II class.

"Let's dress up as complementary distribution and never be in the same room!"

Pachabel's Rant
And by the same hilarious musician/comedian: A Friends Theme and Sugar Ray


( Read more... )

Russian and English, language and color: how your language affects how you see the world

So, there's this vowel: æ. In Anglo-Saxon it's pronounced like the vowel in 'cat'. This is also the value of it in IPA. In Modern Icelandic it's pronounced like the vowel1 in 'high'. Problem with taking the Icelandic pronuncation at face value is that there has been a vowel shift in the long vowels and the more unusual ones like ö and y. Well ( Read more... )

"What's it called when a vowel goes from Low to High?"
"Raising."
"High to Low?"
"Lowering."
"Back to front?"
"Backing."
"Monothong to diphthong? ...Diphthongization. Make it up! It should be right."