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Gopalakrishnan R

@cobbaalt.bsky.social

Aspiring linguist

122 Followers  |  215 Following  |  245 Posts  |  Joined: 25.12.2024
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Posts by Gopalakrishnan R (@cobbaalt.bsky.social)

Instead of the article title, which is "*ʢʷneHª- in Greek" JSTOR has (highlighted) "Math input error in Greek"

Instead of the article title, which is "*ʢʷneHª- in Greek" JSTOR has (highlighted) "Math input error in Greek"

Eric Hamp broke JSTOR lmao

04.03.2026 23:21 — 👍 34    🔁 10    💬 3    📌 0
05.03.2026 05:15 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

>No ginger in black tea

Instructions read and summarily dismissed

04.03.2026 15:41 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Just occurred to me that Καρχηδών is metathesized from *Καρθηγών. *karthāgōn > *karthēgōn > karkhēdōn. Seems kinda obvious now but I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere.

03.03.2026 03:00 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Metathesising only the places of articulation but maintaining the phonation 🧐🧐

03.03.2026 06:10 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I teach classes on language evolution. Something interesting that I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to have a pretty strong idea that what makes language different from other species' communication, and a key part of what allows us to have language, is abstract concepts. 1/

26.02.2026 14:30 — 👍 8    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 2
Preview
Austroasiatic linguistics YouTube channel Some resources from the recent conference on Austroasiatic languages

We started an Austroasiatic Linguistics youtube channel! Most of the talks from the recent ICAAL conference are available to view, and I have some thoughts about it in a recent blog post: www.hiramring.com/blog/2026-02...

27.02.2026 04:34 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Something about self-referencing jokes like these makes me love them

26.02.2026 05:27 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Sands 2020

24.02.2026 15:37 — 👍 15    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 1

i have a Serious Linguistics Question that i will introduce with an anecdotal datum:

our toddler, when her auntie just now said (about a toy car on tv) "se parece al tuyo" [it looks like yours], responded "no it isn't."

personally (as a spanish learner and general language overthinker) ..

20.02.2026 00:22 — 👍 11    🔁 3    💬 3    📌 1

Not a character but close enough

20.02.2026 05:28 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I know of several for just so-called "brown" people lol

18.02.2026 05:35 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Preview
Rethinking linguistic feedback: A modality-agnostic and holistic approach to multimodal addressee signals in spoken and signed dyadic interaction In this paper, we investigate multimodal recipient feedback in casual dyadic conversation in four languages: German Sign Language, Russian Sign Language, spoken German, and spoken Russian. Taking a mo...

Bauer, A. & Gipper, S. & Herrmann, T.-A. & Hosemann, J.. 2026. Rethinking linguistic feedback: A modality-agnostic and holistic approach to multimodal addressee signals in spoken and signed dyadic interaction. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 11(1), 1–50.
DOI: doi.org/10.16995/glo...

16.02.2026 08:53 — 👍 6    🔁 5    💬 1    📌 0
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new book! i wrote chapter 11

12.02.2026 02:08 — 👍 21    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0
text, as follows

A truly embarrassing example of how the etymological method can backfire is the following. In the early 1900s a ring was unearthed near Shkodër in Albania with three words on it that were averred to be Illyrian; nearly identical forms were known from Messapic, and on their basis the inscription was given an interpretation: “To the goddess Oethe.” But the ring later turned out to be from the Byzantine period and written in Greek – it had been read backwards.

The point of the foregoing is not to disparage speculation and imaginative thinking; any science needs both to move forward. The problem arises when such speculations harden over time into facts in people’s minds and become the sole basis for further and far-reaching theories (such as the establishment of sound changes or linguistic filiation). In dealing with these fragmentary languages, it is important to distinguish at all times what is known for certain from what is only guesswork.

text, as follows A truly embarrassing example of how the etymological method can backfire is the following. In the early 1900s a ring was unearthed near Shkodër in Albania with three words on it that were averred to be Illyrian; nearly identical forms were known from Messapic, and on their basis the inscription was given an interpretation: “To the goddess Oethe.” But the ring later turned out to be from the Byzantine period and written in Greek – it had been read backwards. The point of the foregoing is not to disparage speculation and imaginative thinking; any science needs both to move forward. The problem arises when such speculations harden over time into facts in people’s minds and become the sole basis for further and far-reaching theories (such as the establishment of sound changes or linguistic filiation). In dealing with these fragmentary languages, it is important to distinguish at all times what is known for certain from what is only guesswork.

98% of the way through "Indo-European Language and Culture" and it continues to demonstrate why it's my first 5-star read of 2026 @thestorygraph.com #Reading #Booksky #linguistics

10.02.2026 11:14 — 👍 12    🔁 2    💬 2    📌 0

Some languages, like Sentinelese, ought best to remain unknown

09.02.2026 18:12 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Stop Borrowing! Anatolian/Indo-European Stops, Voice, and Northwest Semitic Loans – With Notes on Ugaritic grdš, ztr, dġṯ and Other Words The article discusses interrelated pieces of knowledge that can be gleaned by studying loans from Anatolian Indo-European (Hittite and Luwian) into North-west Semitic (mainly Ugaritic) for (a) the rec...

My article in which I posit (based partly on Semitic transcriptions and partly on typology) a triad of unvoiced-but-long, preglott./creaky, and breathy for PIE. I argue an idea of "balance of length" for the three.

www.academia.edu/117830047/St...

09.02.2026 17:03 — 👍 11    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0

Man, Dark Side of the Moon never ages. Amazing no matter how many times you listen to it

08.02.2026 09:33 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Executive dysfunction disorder is really the best term for it IMO. It was great learning of that term, everything boils down to that one thing.

07.02.2026 11:17 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

But of course, these are used much broadly as well. E.g., Basava and Mahādēvi (Kannada Vīraśaiva saints) are often called Basavaṇṇa and Mahādēviyakka (or Akkamahādēvi).

07.02.2026 11:01 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Yeah, you're supposed to address your elder cousins with a suffixed aṇṇa (Tamil/Kannada) or anna (Telugu) 'elder brother', or akka (all three) 'elder sister'. Elder ones address younger ones with just the name.

07.02.2026 10:58 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

The verb pɾeːmint͡su 'to love' in the first sentence is formed from the borrowed nominal pɾeːmam 'love' (< Skt prēma), plus the causativiser -int͡su.

07.02.2026 10:34 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Not a native telugu speaker but I think a more natural way is something like,

naː-ku nuʋːu t͡saːla iʃʈam
1SG-DAT 2SG very affection

or,

naː-ku nuʋːu t͡saːla natː͡s-æː-ʋu
1SG-DAT 2SG very be_liked-PST-2SG

(The "Past" in the 2nd is used in a stative perfect sense.)

07.02.2026 10:31 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

GoogleTranslate will give you calquey translations for "I love you" into Telugu/Tamil/Kannada/Malayalam, like the one below in Telugu, but the more idiomatic way is to use a dative-subject attitude predicate.

neːnu nin-nu pɾeːm-is-t̪=unː-aːnu
1SG 2SG-ACC love.NOM-CAUS-NPST=COP.NFUT-1SG
'I love you.'

07.02.2026 10:31 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Yknow, when someone posits a really wild etymology that sounds unbelievable, it's worth keeping in mind that "lingcel" is a valid word in English and that etymologically, it is "linguistically celibate" or something.

I love how english keeps grammaticalising suffixes like -cel, tard, -oid, etc

07.02.2026 10:12 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Dictionnaire Judéo Marocain – Parlers arabes des Juifs du Maroc

Just saw on the other platform that Jonas Sibony has published his online dictionary of the Arabic Varieties of the Jews of Morocco

www.jonas-sibony.com/djm/

07.02.2026 08:19 — 👍 34    🔁 15    💬 2    📌 2

Huh, I thought "cousin brother/sister" was an Indian thing. I guess it's generally a thing when one's language/culture doesn't have a word for "cousin"? In Tamil/Telugu/Kannada/Hindi, it's just "son/daughter of mother/father's older/younger sibling".

07.02.2026 10:09 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Most of the 4channic influence is in the lexicon and idioms, especially the latter. I don't think there is any syntactic influence on either Redditic or Twitteric.

07.02.2026 09:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I believe people are forgetting the 4channish superstrate influence across Redditish and Twitterish.

07.02.2026 09:37 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I don't get that, I'm afraid

06.02.2026 19:36 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0