Freelance reconstruction

1 min read 2021-09-08 19:33:16

Phonology squib: *ë in Kamassian

Another word of previously notably unknown etymology recently has a new lead for it: Finnic *sana ‘word’, suggested by one Otso A. Bjartalíð

1 min read 2021-07-16 02:19:18

Back in 2009, a very interesting paper was put out by Jaakko Häkkinen, then an early-stage PhD student: [1] “Kantauralin ajoitus ja paikannus:

1 min read 2021-07-11 22:59:50

There are broadly two commonly seen ways of thinking about progress in science. The first is the “naive” Science Marches On narrative where we

1 min read 2021-07-10 00:51:03

I have been having a simmering discussion with commentator “M.” under the post on what’s important for what in historical Uralistics. One

1 min read 2021-07-04 00:31:31

Recently when tracking a variety of citations back into early literature, I was directed to Zsigmond Simonyi, 1901: “Az Ábel-féle szójegyzék”

1 min read 2021-05-17 02:38:54

A recent open access paper by half a dozen Leiden Indo-Europeanists: Palmér, Jakob, Thorsø, van Sluis, Swanenvleugel & Kroonen,

1 min read 2021-04-21 03:54:47

In the recent years, Tamás Janurik has been releasing online numerous papers, small surveys and reference materials on the Uralic languages,

1 min read 2021-03-10 06:06:48

While my blogging here has been firmly within historical linguistics, every once in a while I do go poking around self-styled formal linguistics

1 min read 2020-11-27 23:34:09

On a whim I have started reading the Oxford Handbook of Historical Phonology. At about two and a half chapters in I have finally reached some

1 min read 2020-10-28 01:17:04

(By current standards this perhaps should be “Mansilogy” or “Mansi Studies”, but “Vogulology” just has a good sound to my ear.) 1.

1 min read 2020-09-14 23:09:25

The following is, currently, more of a hypothesis I wish to record than an actual result. Out of the two Mordvinic languages, Erzya shows the simple

1 min read 2020-08-29 09:32:04

I recently read “Deconstructing ‘height dissimilation’ in Modern Greek” (Journal of Greek Linguistics 3, 2002) by Julián Méndez Dosula. I

1 min read 2020-07-18 23:00:03

In the last post I parenthetically mentioned a PU root “*täsə (UEW: *tisɜ)” ‘birch bark covering for a teepee’. This has been previously

1 min read 2020-07-16 00:01:29

The Proto-Finnic word for ‘birch bark’ was *toohi (consonant stem: *toohë-, partitive *tooh-ta), continued directly in Finnish and Karelian

1 min read 2020-04-05 02:38:48

The history of Proto-Finnic *h provides several illustrative examples of the diachronic development of “laryngeal” consonants. The primary