Historical Linguistics

Is Basque related to the African language Dogon?

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Today is International Day of the Basque Language, which we celebrate at Lingoblog with an article by Peter Bakker.

One person in Spain has claimed that Basque is related with the Dogon language spoken in Mali in Africa. Does that claim make sense? It sounds unlikely, but it is important not to reject the idea without checking the evidence.

Background information:
Languages are classified into language families. The languages of a family have been proven to be related, i.e. scholars are certain that these languages descend from the same ancestor language, which was perhaps spoken many millennia ago. Some families are as small as one language, for instance Basque. A language like Basque is therefore strictly speaking not a family, … ↪

Phono-Semantic Matching

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Phono-Semantic Matching (henceforth, PSM) is a camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign lexical item is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root. The neologism resulting from this source of lexical expansion preserves both the meaning and the approximate sound of the reproduced expression in the Source Language (SL) with the help of pre-existent Target Language (TL) elements. (Neologism is used here in its broader meaning, i.e. either an entirely new lexical item or a TL pre-existent word whose meaning has been altered, resulting in a new sense.) The following figure is a general illustration of this process:

Figure 1

Such multisourced neologization is common inter alia in two key language groups:

(1) languages using a phono-logographic script that … ↪

A new book about the history of English

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More than 50 years ago, Barbara Strang published her highly innovative book A History of English (1970, Methuen £2.25) which, daringly, began its chronological treatment of the English language in the (then) present-day, with “Changes in living memory” (Strang was born in 1925), and then worked its way backwards. The first chapter in the chronological sequence was devoted to “1970-1770”, and the final chapter covered the period “Before 370”.

The obvious advantage of this strategy is that you can start readers off in a place they are familiar with, and then take them on a journey to increasingly remote and less familiar periods of time. Strang’s way of dealing with this material was an intriguing and attractive one, and in … ↪

The Swedish Romani language, historically and today

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Today it is World Romani Day. Jon Petterson contributes an article about his variety of Swedish Romani. 

The first known source of Romani speakers is a document describing a traveling party of a people never seen before arriving Stockholm in 1512. Originally mistaken for being Tartars they came to be called Thatra. Today the term tattare is still in use in Scandinavia. In Sweden it’s considered to be a disparaging term, but in Norway it is used as a self-definition for Romanies.

From the 16th and 17th century, the sources mentioning Romanies with the synonymous terms tartare and ziguenare are very few. In 1637 a royal decree proclaimed that Romanies should settle or leave the country within three months.

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Karl Verner, world-famous linguist – a former student at the Aarhus Cathedral School. Part 4

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Lingoblog is celebrating the summer with a biography about the world-famous linguist Karl Verner in four parts. In case you missed the first three parts, follow the links here, here and here. Look forward to many more interesting posts after the summer break.

Professor in Copenhagen

When Karl Verner’s teacher, Professor Smith, died in 1881, Verner decided despite great hestitation to apply for a position at Copenhagen University as an associate professor in Slavic studies. From April 1888 he was appointed extraordinary professor. The same year he was – reluctantly – made part of The Royal Danish Society of Sciences, even though he had despised fancy company throughout his life. He preferred the company of the common people … ↪

Karl Verner, world-famous linguist – a former student from Aarhus Cathedral School. Part 3

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karlverner

Lingoblog is celebrating the summer with a biography of the world-famous linguist Karl Verner in four parts. In case you missed the first two parts, you can follow this link and this link. Don’t forget to read the last part of the series next week.

Back to Aarhus – the location of the great discovery

After finishing his studies, Karl Verner had to return to his hometown Aarhus. There were no financial possibilities for him to stay in Copenhagen. In the Aarhusian carpenter home, Karl Verner had to manage with his family’s help. He earned a bit with bookkeeping and administration for the family store. But most of all, he spent his time on his own studies. In a … ↪

Karl Verner, world-famous linguist – an former student of Aarhus Cathedral School. Part 2

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karlverner

Lingoblog is celebrating the summer with a biography of the world-famous linguist Karl Verner in four parts. In case you missed the first part of the series, you can follow this link. Read along next week where you can read more about Verner’s professional life.

Shortly after making his discovery, Verner shared it with Vilhelm Thomsen (1842-1927) who was an editor for a Danish scientific journal. A linguist himself, Thomsen later became an internationally highly regarded specialist within the field of Indo-European linguistics. He thought the discovery to be true and encouraged Verner to send a manuscript to a German journal so that the groundbreaking discovery could be distributed to a larger audience. Because of this, Karl Verner had … ↪