Search results for "Indo-European languages"
showing 10 items of 15 documents
Measures of native and non-native rhythm in a quantity language.
2005
The traditional phonetic classification of language rhythm as stress-timed or syllable-timed is attributed to Pike. Recently, two different proposals have been offered for describing the rhythmic structure of languages from acoustic-phonetic measurements. Ramus has suggested a metric based on the proportion of vocalic intervals and the variability ( SD) of consonantal intervals. Grabe has proposed Pairwise Variability Indices (nPVI, rPVI) calculated from the differences in vocalic and consonantal durations between successive syllables. We have calculated both the Ramus and Grabe metrics for Latvian, traditionally considered a syllable rhythm language, and for Latvian as spoken by Russian l…
Linguistic Analysis and Ancient Indo-European Languages
2015
Using modern linguistic theory to describe ‘dead’ languages is one of the theoretical and methodological challenges in contemporary linguistic research. In fact, theories of the twentieth century mostly aimed to account for speakers’ linguistic competence, thus basing their analysis on live speakers and their intuitions. However, drawing on evidence from languages such as Vedic, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Gothic, Celtic and Proto-Indo-European itself, the relevance of the ancient Indo-European languages to contemporary linguistic theory has been constantly shown, since the rise of the linguistic sciences in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the observation of ancient Indo-European language…
The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations
2021
Summary The Cycladic, the Minoan, and the Helladic (Mycenaean) cultures define the Bronze Age (BA) of Greece. Urbanism, complex social structures, craft and agricultural specialization, and the earliest forms of writing characterize this iconic period. We sequenced six Early to Middle BA whole genomes, along with 11 mitochondrial genomes, sampled from the three BA cultures of the Aegean Sea. The Early BA (EBA) genomes are homogeneous and derive most of their ancestry from Neolithic Aegeans, contrary to earlier hypotheses that the Neolithic-EBA cultural transition was due to massive population turnover. EBA Aegeans were shaped by relatively small-scale migration from East of the Aegean, as e…
Reading and Spelling Development Across Languages Varying in Orthographic Consistency: Do Their Paths Cross?
2020
We examined the cross‐lagged relations between reading and spelling in five alphabetic orthographies varying in consistency (English, French, Dutch, German, and Greek). Nine hundred and forty‐one children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and were tested on word and pseudoword reading fluency and on spelling to dictation. Results indicated that the relations across languages were unidirectional: Earlier reading predicted subsequent spelling. However, we also found significant differences between languages in the strength of the effects of earlier reading on subsequent spelling. These findings suggest that, once children master decoding, the observed differences between languages are not…
Masked associative/semantic priming effects across languages with highly proficient bilinguals
2008
One key issue for models of bilingual memory is to what degree the semantic representation from one of the languages is shared with the other language. In the present paper, we examine whether there is an early, automatic semantic priming effect across languages for noncognates with highly proficient (Basque/Spanish) bilinguals. Experiment 1 was a between-language masked semantic priming lexical decision experiment. Results showed a significant between-language semantic priming effect for both Basque–Spanish and Spanish–Basque pairs. Experiment 2 showed that the magnitude of the between-language and within-language masked semantic priming effects was quite similar. Experiment 3 replicated t…
Verb inflection in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and auxiliation patterns in French and Italian. Forms, functions, system
2009
This paper deals with the complex interaction between form and function in the verb morphosyntax of four Indo-European languages (French, Italian, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit). Beyond the difference in form, auxiliation patterns in French and Italian, and verb inflections in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit correlate, thanks to the agreement for number and person, to the expression of the relationship with the Subject. The different auxiliation patterns (sum and habeo) and the different inflections (middle and active) correlate to different properties of the Subject. In particular, these forms depend on the syntactic opposition between middle and non-middle. The ways of this dependency are regulat…
Ancient Greek οι-stem
2019
Abstract The semantics of ancient Indo-European noun stems has not yet received enough attention from scholars. However, the noun stems exhibit an inner semantic coherence arranged in accordance with the basic linguistic principles of categorisation. My aim in this paper is to demonstrate the internal semantic coherence of the Ancient Greek οι-stem noun category and to compare it with other well-studied morphosemantic categories in order to suggest a particular meaning structure.
Naming pseudowords in Spanish: effects of syllable frequency.
2003
Three naming experiments were conducted to examine the role of the first and the second syllable during speech production in Spanish. Facilitative effects of syllable frequency with disyllabic words have been reported in Dutch and Spanish (Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994; Perea & Carreiras, 1998). In both cases, the syllable frequency effect was independent of-and additive to-the effect of word frequency. However, Levelt and Wheeldon (1994) found that words ending in a high-frequency syllable were named faster than words ending in a low-frequency syllable, whereas Perea and Carreiras (1998) found a facilitative effect of syllable frequency for the initial syllable. In Experiments 1-2, we manipulate…
Old Frisian skalk: A ‘Servant’ or a ‘Rogue’?
2017
The Old Frisian wordscalc, scalch, schalcis usually used in the sense of ‘servant, slave’. However, the word evidences a pejoration in meaning, being also attested in the Frisian written tradition in the sense of ‘ill-mannered person, villain, a bad guy’. The investigation of the occurrences ofskalk–along with a comparison of its Germanic cognates–will allow us to draw a picture of the semantic development of this word from medieval times to the Modern stage of the Frisian language. In the author’s opinion, the negative connotation ofskalkas an offensive epithet is the final result of a range of different causes, whose origin should be searched both in Frisian-Scandinavian contacts during t…
Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
2015
We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost four hundred thousand polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of western and far eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, ~8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in G…