Posted in Links on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Chinese Etymology: 宝, 寶
the word for "treasure" is etymologically rendered as "jade (玉), cowries (贝) and pottery (缶) under my roof (宀)"
(tags: chineseetymology linguistics erosionofmeaningthroughmodernization 中文)
Chinese Etymology: 显
look at these changes!
(tags: chineseetymology erosionofmeaningthroughmodernization 中文 linguistics)
Chinese Etymology Home Page
I am now obsessed with this website
(tags: etymology linguistics 中文 reference chinese visualization history dictionary chineseetymology)
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Posted in Links on April 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
How To Predict The Future Of The Past Tense
In which some Harvard mathematicians conceive of linguistic development in terms of natural selection. "Just as genes and organisms undergo natural selection, words — specifically, irregular verbs that do not take an '-ed' ending in the past tense — are subject to powerful pressure to 'regularize' as [...]
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Posted in Miscellany on April 8, 2009 | 8 Comments »
I went to a fascinating seminar some time back at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore, given by Dr Uri Tadmor on the subject of Malay and Indonesian loanwords. Loanwords, by their nature, can often be strong evidence of sustained cultural interaction — ephemeral contact is often not enough to stimulate widespread borrowing — but [...]
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