#language classification

[possessivesuffix]

Reading Güldemann's recent ~400-page handbook review on the classification of the languages of Africa; so far seems like fair treatment & in decent detail. Already the introduction has good underlining of basic methodological points like

where substantial shared material exists, one should default to a relationship and not propose mass loaning / creolization / "mixing" without further arguments

correspondence sets without proper reconstruction can be almost as important for tracing external relationships as fully reconstructed proto-forms

not every language has numerals and thus not every relationship involves them either

lack of proper documentation is an obstacle for proper classification

[possessivesuffix]

To add a bit more: there are reasons to think there have been at least two substrate languages that left a trace in Sami! A 2012 paper from Ante Aikio calls them "Paleo-Lakelandic", a more southern substrate that forms a common heritage in all Sami languages; versus "Paleo-Laplandic", a more northern substrate or substrate family that has left individual effects in each separate Sami language.

(For what it's worth, there might be hints of Paleo-Lakelandic or at least some language in that area being some early branch of or distantly related to Uralic — I've talked about this in a paper just this summer and a few other people have had suggestions to this effect too. It's still very scanty data though and is going to be hard to tell for sure, could be easily also e.g. old Uralic loanwords into an unrelated substrate language.)

OP's map could be likely extended also with some other languages that are not really pre-Indo-European as much as pre-Uralic, such as the "Agricultural Substrate" leaving traces in the more southwestern Uralic groups (Finnic, Mordvinic, Mari, Permic). "Europe" does include also Russia west of the Urals, contrary to what business-of-the-day cartography often may imply!

Interestingly also, the last-mentioned substrate probably was still passed thru the Corded Ware culture that once extended over the same area, which likely was some lost variety of Indo-European… something like a third branch of Balto-Slavic or a dialect intermediate to B–S and Indo-Iranian. So likely originally a "pre-Indo-European" substrate after all, even if it then comes to our attention as pre-Uralic.

Paleo-European languages

Before the Celtic and Germanic languages, before Latin and Greek, before any Indo-European languages whatsoever, Europe was populated by speakers of dozens if not hundreds of languages, most of which left little or no trace. These are called Paleo-European languages.

The only known surviving Paleo-European language is Basque, but we have ancient written inscriptions from a number of others, such as Aquitanian, Etruscan, Iberian, Minoan, and Tartessian.

Roman writing with ancient Basque names, found in Lerga, Navarre.

There are also traces of other lost Paleo-European languages in many place names and borrowings from those languages into the Indo-European languages that came later. Moreover, the Paleo-European languages influenced the grammar and pronunciation of the Indo-European languages, sometimes creating a new branch of Indo-European entirely.

When a language influences the language that replaces it like this, it is called a substrate language. It is hypothesized that the development of the Germanic languages was caused by such a substrate, which gave the Germanic languages about a quarter of their vocabulary.

More broadly, any language that was displaced or existed in Prehistoric Europe, Asia Minor, Ancient Iran, and Southern Asia before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans is called a Pre-Indo-European language. More of these are attested or recognized as substrates than for Paleo-European, but little is known about them overall.

Known Pre-Indo-European languages

Want to learn more about the history of the world’s languages? I recommend one of my favorite pop linguistics books, Empires of the word: A language history of the world:

[divorcetual]

crazy that indonesian isnt even top 29 help??? its 56(?)

IKR??? esp bcs Indonesia is like the fourth modt populated country in the world ,,, like obv mandarin and english n hindi wld be above it, then spanish n arabic bcs its got so many countries, but its wildddd its so low for native speakers. Even if u include non native speakers its only 11th :0

[house-of-soft-pink]

You can't say that this inanimate monstrosity, the Fiat Multipla, is a car, but that a beautiful-inside-and-out trans woman isn't a woman.

Even if you put eyelashes on its six headlights 💁‍♀️

[possessivesuffix]

today in "Standard Average European is a language area that is only coincidentally made up of Indo-European languages mostly"

I understand your point but Basque being a non-IE makes it harder to learn than any other IE language

Well then, anon, good luck with easy languages like Albanian, Icelandic, Armenian, Latin, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Irish, or Nepali to name a few. I'm sure you'll be able to master them in no time since you speak another IE language.

[appreciatingtokrev]

every day i think abt this tumblr post in which a us-american was incredibly fascinated by two girls they saw who were speaking english & japanese interchangably. because, like, i speak three languages interchangably on the daily. that’s normal to me. i’m not even fluent in french (been learning it at school for 10 years now tho lmao) but there’s enough french words & phrases i use on the daily. if i can’t remember a (swiss) german word/saying/etc while talking in german i just substitude with english because most people i talk to are fluent in both anyways. i greet my little brother in french and then go on to ask if he wants to go and by ramunae with me sometime, in swiss german, in the same breath, and i answer overmorrow when he asks me when because i think it’s a funkier word than übermorn.

i think about that post every day and i genuinly wonder how someone can grow up and never learn another language. how do you live without this? without the pressure to speak at least two of your country’s four official languages? without the pressure of learning the world’s language as a second/third? without ever seeing all the beauty in knowing more than one language, and being able to understand so much more of the world?

[proto-language]

btw if i don't meet the conditions for my preferred mphil offer it's rosemary sutcliff's fault

[possessivesuffix]

Areal innovations in Cushitic

A small collection of innovations across Cushitic that don't seem to establish any coarser subclassification: broad phonological changes, plus one of the more prominent grammatical divisions — loss vs. preservation of the prefix conjugation, thought to be already old Afrasian inheritance. This already suffices to distinguish every unambiguous group from each other, even though none of the features are unique to some single group! Hopefully this will illustrate the relative heterogeneity of South and especially East Cushitic.

Loss of pharyngeals and ?introduction of labialized consonants indeed continue to Ethio-Semitic, as shown. (Loss of lateral obstruents, again supposedly Afrasian inheritance, however is not quite areally shared between the two: Cushitic has mainly *ɬ > l, Ethio-Semitic *ɬ > s.) To reiterate, it would be also nice to compare further with North Omotic eventually, it already features prominently in any papers on the Ethiopian Sprachbund; but I've not seen thorough enough comparative coverage to assemble anything analogous to this.

The arrangement of the Cushitic subgroups is roughly geographic, in terms of what's adjacent to what. This ends up kind of showing also the large range of Oromo and Somali, not in a way proportional to the real geography though, e.g. HEC + Konsoid + Dullay + Arboroid are actually all cramped in an area smaller than that of just Beja or just Afar, and Agaw is really multiple language islands mainly within the range of Ethio-Semitic, instead of forming a neat cluster between Oromo and Beja. If I had put Ethio-Semitic in here geographically too, all of it would go in the same area where Agaw is now: between Beja, HEC, Oromo and SA.

Crossfading-to-white for Agaw, Konsoid, Dullay indicates that some of these languages, but not all, have *kʼ > qʼ ~ q ~ ʛ. Dashed lines mark the fairly often proposed Arboroid–Somaloid (Omo–Tana) and Konsoid–Oromo groupings and the possible inclusion of Yaaku in Arboroid.

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

I'm sorry, I have to say it, as a certified fan of RiD'01, RiD Scourge is not a Scourge of this same variety. He's essentially a Nemesis Prime to me in both looks and the fact that he was made from a scan of Optimus. I think he's hot, sure, but having him up against the other Scourges is just a species misidentification to me...

I mean Unicron Trilogy bulkhead was absolutely nothing like the later iterations of bulkhead and I always felt rid 01 brawn was more Ironhide than anything, but the fact remains that hasbro named him scourge and thus he remains tied to all the other scourges. Generally, if it's not a case of a character being named after another character from the same continuity in-universe (like with the case of beast era Megatron) I have to consider them in the same group. If I didn't, things could get messy with semantics and how similar in character two bots with the same name have to be before they qualify as a different species.

[cigaretteparfum]

made a new sideblog for personal textposts lol mutuals dm me if yous want to peep.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

me making four swords art and fic has the same energy as me making food for my irl friends and family. like pssst the secret is yeah i love creating/cooking, but i also do it bc i'm bad at directly verbalizing my feelings towards people, and want to express how glad i am that you're a part of my life in even the smallest capacity

[possessivesuffix]

This is a fun one, 'cos there's at least three ways to read this question:

it's almost consensus that Chinese and Tibetan are in a common language family, though I know there's been at least up to a few decades ago still curmudgeons who think it hasn't been demonstrated by state-of-the-art methodology (they would presumably think a case of something like a massive Proto-Sinitic loanword layer into Proto-Tibeto-Burman is not off the table; or maybe that Sinitic is still related but is more closely related to something else like Austronesian);

the name "Sino-Tibetan" in the first place reflects a traditional view that the family has two main branches, Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman; this is definitely not well-demonstrated, plenty of people by now default to skepticism where Sinitic would be just one out of ~20–30 certain branches (goes often with renaming it "Transhimalayan" or sometimes altogether "Tibeto-Burman"), and at least one subgrouping theory has claimed that Sinitic and Tibetic are actually in a common shallow branch;

the full boundaries of the family seem very leaky; the big members are agreed on, but especially in Arunachal Pradesh there are plenty of poorly studied small groups of languages, where the affiliation seems to have been decided on the basis of something like "oh well the 1PS pronoun and the number 5 both have the shape NV, that's good enough for us"; at least 2 or 3 of them have been explicitly argued to be really isolates or small unrelated language families, just with plenty of loanwords from their ST neighbors.

@yeli-renrong I think I've asked you this before, but is Sino-Tibetan real? I heard somewhere that it's maybe not real.

[softgrungeprophet]

people will say things like "don't study cinematography cause it will ruin movies for you" which i wholeheartedly disagree with, it just adds another fun layer for analysis imo, but i can say if you major in language studies and/or linguistics it will make every language post you see on the internet that much more annoying cause people just Say Things with all the confidence of someone who does not know what they're talking about even a little bit lol

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Natural Kinds

The philosophy of natural kinds deals with the classification and categorization of objects, entities, and phenomena in the natural world. It explores the concept of natural kinds as groups or categories that reflect the structure of reality, rather than arbitrary or human-made classifications. This area of philosophy is central to metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language.

Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Natural Kinds:

Definition of Natural Kinds:

Natural vs. Artificial Kinds: Natural kinds are categories that exist independently of human thought or social conventions. They are contrasted with artificial or conventional kinds, which are categories created by humans for practical purposes. For example, "water" and "gold" are considered natural kinds, while "furniture" or "vehicles" are seen as artificial kinds.

Essential Properties: Natural kinds are often thought to have essential properties, which are the characteristics that all members of the kind share and that define what it means to belong to that kind. For instance, the chemical structure H₂O is an essential property of water.

Realism about Natural Kinds:

Metaphysical Realism: Realists about natural kinds argue that these kinds exist independently of human beliefs, language, or practices. According to this view, natural kinds reflect the objective divisions in nature, and science discovers these kinds rather than inventing them.

Essentialism: Some realists hold an essentialist view, which suggests that natural kinds have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions (essential properties) that determine their membership. For example, the essence of a species like "tiger" includes certain genetic and biological traits.

Nominalism and Conventionalism:

Nominalism: Nominalists, on the other hand, deny the existence of natural kinds as objective features of the world. They argue that categories are constructed by humans and do not reflect any inherent divisions in nature.

Conventionalism: Conventionalists believe that the categories we use to classify the world are based on human conventions and practices rather than on any intrinsic structure of reality. According to this view, what counts as a natural kind is largely determined by social or linguistic conventions.

Philosophical Issues:

Inductive Inference: Natural kinds are often linked to the problem of induction in philosophy. The idea is that if natural kinds are real, they can support inductive inferences—generalizing from a sample of observations to broader conclusions. For example, observing that all samples of water boil at 100°C (under standard conditions) allows us to infer that this is a property of the natural kind "water."

Scientific Classification: The philosophy of natural kinds has significant implications for scientific classification. Scientists rely on the notion of natural kinds to group entities in ways that reflect underlying natural structures, which is crucial for forming scientific laws and theories. For example, the periodic table in chemistry is a classification of elements based on their natural kinds.

Challenges to the Concept of Natural Kinds:

Biological Species Problem: One of the major challenges to the idea of natural kinds is the problem of biological species. In biology, species are often seen as fluid and not always fitting neatly into natural kinds because of evolution, gene flow, and hybridization. This challenges the idea that species have essential properties or that they are fixed natural kinds.

Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) Theory: In response to such challenges, some philosophers propose the HPC theory, which suggests that natural kinds are not defined by a single essence but by a cluster of properties that tend to co-occur due to a stable underlying mechanism. For example, a species might be defined by a cluster of genetic, morphological, and behavioral traits that are maintained by evolutionary processes.

Natural Kinds in Chemistry and Physics:

Chemical Elements: The concept of natural kinds is perhaps most straightforward in chemistry and physics, where elements and fundamental particles are seen as paradigmatic examples of natural kinds. Each element on the periodic table is classified based on its atomic number, which is considered an essential property of that kind.

Subatomic Particles: In physics, particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons are also treated as natural kinds, with specific properties (e.g., charge, mass) that define their identity.

Natural Kinds in the Social Sciences:

Debate on Social Kinds: The application of the concept of natural kinds to the social sciences is more contentious. Some argue that categories like race, gender, or mental disorders should be treated as natural kinds, while others see them as socially constructed and not reflecting natural divisions in the world.

Social Kinds as Natural Kinds: Some philosophers propose that certain social kinds could be considered natural if they are stable and have causal powers similar to those of natural kinds in the physical sciences. For instance, certain mental health conditions might be seen as natural kinds if they consistently manifest specific symptoms and respond to particular treatments.

The philosophy of natural kinds is an exploration of how we categorize and understand the world around us. It raises important questions about the nature of reality, the basis of scientific classification, and the extent to which our concepts reflect objective divisions in the natural world. Whether natural kinds are real or constructed, essential or cluster-based, the debate continues to shape our understanding of science, language, and reality itself.

[townpostin]

Adivasi Sengel Abhiyan Stages Protest on Hul Divas in Jamshedpur

Group submits 7-point demand letter to President through Deputy Commissioner Calls for Sarna religious code, tribal language promotion, and development initiatives JAMSHEDPUR – The Adivasi Sengel Abhiyan held a demonstration outside the East Singhbhum district headquarters on Sunday, marking Hul Divas with a list of demands for tribal welfare. Key demands presented to the Deputy Commissioner…

[possessivesuffix]

Taxonomy is just hard in general, in some ways harder than the reconstruction of clear bottom nodes. Serious taxonomic difficulties are all over the place even just in Indo-European. Does Tocharian branch second? Is Italo-Celtic real? Is Greco-Armenian? Indo-Slavic? West Iranic? Insular Celtic?

though phonology also gets much harder, once you go beyond "this is a closely knit dialect continuum" or "we present a reconstruction based on 100 basic vocabulary items"; mainly because etymological validity starts being a major problem. Is it tenable to analyze this unaccounted-for syllable as a suffix? Is this a reasonable semantic shift? Is this a loanword from one branch into another? Whoops this etymon was a loanword from a major contact language, do I now need to also learn Arabic / Fula / Mandarin / Tok Pisin / etc. to be sure there aren't a dozen more of these in my data?

I'd also love to see a review article or database or something of what exactly is the state of reconstruction in various language families. First-pass-done from all main varieties (e.g. Kartvelian), first-pass-done from some varieties (e.g. Dravidian), not done but underway with many partial results known (e.g. Kra-Dai), "done" but not published widely in any form (e.g. North Bougainville), "done" in someone's largely inaccessible thesis from 1973; not done but readily doable from current data, not done and documentation situation unclear, not done and definitely needs more fieldwork, too fragmentedly attested to be ever well-doable…?

my dream job–and i mean “job” loosely, i would do this for no pay–would be reconstructing protolanguages for families that are pretty well established, but who still need somebody to obsessively crawl through their lexicons and grammars to work out the exact sound correspondences