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 discussion of practical questions in some detail, and the first claim to have struck…
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 vowel inventory /i e a o u/ (plus a recent marginal /ɨ/ phonemicized by…
I recently read “Deconstructing ‘height dissimilation’ in Modern Greek” (Journal of Greek Linguistics 3, 2002) by Julián Méndez Dosuna. I don’t really dabble in Modern Greek dialectology, but this struck me as an interesting paper for its methodology regardless, and…
Freelance reconstruction 
Will Someone Please Reconstruct Proto-Kurdish Already
Some things about comparative linguistics you might just take for granted in your own little corner of a particular language family, until you start looking at how they do things in others. In Uralic studies, we’ve known for 200+ years,…
Posted in Commentary, Methodology