I have a principle that applies quite often when working with quantity-over-quality mass comparative dictionaries (papers, databases, etc.): what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. The UEW is, unfortunately, a repeat offender on assertions without evidence. This…
One minor phonological innovation in Finnish is mentioned in historical overviews far more often than could be expected from its lexical frequency: the loss of a palatal semivowel *j when preceding its vocalic counterpart *i. This is probably because the shift…
Assigning meanings to Finnish derivational suffixes can be a pain. Plenty of them show a fairly scattershot selection of meanings. One example is -kko (-kkö); in modern Finnish, following Hakulinen in SKRK (54.15, 56.8 §§), six main functions can be…
Several bits of additional evidence in favor of (or, if you will, additional bits of data explainable by) Aikio’s new model of the Proto-Uralic root type *a-ə seem to be found in word derivation. 1. In the appendix of his…
