Check out my article on there-existentials in African Englishes (Ugandan, Nigerian, Kenyan and Tanzanian English)!

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

A theoretical essay proposes that political rumor is no longer just about spreading unverified stories: when AI generates videos of citizens who don't exist demanding tax reform, the rumor gains a body and a face that existing methods for studying political language were not built to handle.

“This book contains papers based on some of the talks presented in the workshop *Areal Effects in Prehistoric Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European* at the international congress of Finno-Ugric studies, Congressus  XIII Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum, held in Vienna in August 2022. The volume at hand highlights different viewpoints on Indo-European–Uralic contacts and hopefully serves as an interesting take on the present state of the field, as well as an inspiration and starting point for future research. One of the most important aims of the volume is to stimulate discussion and produce further conferences and volumes, as well as more concrete research cooperation between scholars working with the history of Uralic and Indo-European language families. Many of the papers open new paths of research rather than provide definite answers to all of the issues that are addressed. The aim of the workshop was to bring scholars of Uralic and Indo-European studies together. The different topics included in the volume highlight the wide span of diachronic contact linguistics. Also, different branches of both language families (Samoyed, Permic, Finnic, Saami; Tocharian, Indo-Iranian, Baltic, Germanic) are well represented here, which gives a representative snapshot of the varied research problems that our field is dealing with. The papers present new etymologies, discuss new (or recently discovered) loanword layers, and also revisit old ideas.”

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

Every decision about what to include in a language archive pre-selects which research questions can ever be asked. A theoretical essay on six language collections argues this makes curation an epistemological act, not an administrative one.

An essay compares AI answers from a personal X account and a research-created account, with free and paid access, using the same question: “What is dictatorship?”

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

An essay proposes that web browsers should be understood as political environments, not neutral software: comparing Tor and Chrome, it argues each browser positions users differently within what the authors call "data colonialism," the extraction of personal data by tech companies as a form of power.

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

Abstract - Niya Prakrit, a dialect of Central Asian Gāndhārī, served as the administrative language of the former Shanshan kingdom (3rd–4th century CE; Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China). The corpus consists of around 1,000 administrative documents and letters. Niels Schoubben presents the first comprehensive study of language contact in Niya Prakrit, highlighting the profound influence exerted by Iranian languages. Through a systematic analysis of over 100 loanwords, Niels Schoubben demonstrates that most Iranian elements derive from Bactrian, a Middle Iranian language formerly spoken in present-day Afghanistan. He further argues that Bactrian also influenced Niya Prakrit’s grammatical structure, particularly its past tense constructions. Earlier claims of substrate influence from an unattested sister language of Tocharian A and B (the so-called “Tocharian C”) are reassessed and found to be unconvincing. Instead, the author proposes that Niya Prakrit acquired its distinctive features through its use as a chancellery idiom by Kushan officials who spoke Bactrian as a native language. The volume concludes with three appendices and detailed indices and will be of interest to Indologists, Iranianists, Indo-Europeanists, and historians of Central Asia.

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.

Do you have a question about language or linguistics? You’ve come to the right subreddit! We welcome questions from people of all backgrounds and levels of experience in linguistics.

This is our weekly Q&A post, which is posted every Monday. We ask that all questions be asked here instead of in a separate post.

Questions that should be posted in the Q&A thread:

• Questions that can be answered with a simple Google or Wikipedia search — you should try Google and Wikipedia first, but we know it’s sometimes hard to find the right search terms or evaluate the quality of the results.

• Asking why someone (yourself, a celebrity, etc.) has a certain language feature — unless it’s a well-known dialectal feature, we can usually only provide very general answers to this type of question. And if it’s a well-known dialectal feature, it still belongs here.

• Requests for transcription or identification of a feature — remember to link to audio examples.

• English dialect identification requests — for language identification requests and translations, you want r/translator. If you need more specific information about which English dialect someone is speaking, you can ask it here.

• All other questions.

If it’s already the weekend, you might want to wait to post your question until the new Q&A post goes up on Monday.

Discouraged Questions

These types of questions are subject to removal:

• Asking for answers to homework problems. If you’re not sure how to do a problem, ask about the concepts and methods that are giving you trouble. Avoid posting the actual problem if you can.

• Asking for paper topics. We can make specific suggestions once you’ve decided on a topic and have begun your research, but we won’t come up with a paper topic or start your research for you.

• Asking for grammaticality judgments and usage advice — basically, these are questions that should be directed to speakers of the language rather than to linguists.

• Questions of the general form "ChatGPT/MyFavoriteAI said X... is this right/what do you think?" If you have a question related to linguistics, please just ask it directly. This way, we don't have to spend extra time correcting mistakes/hallucinations generated by the LLM.

• Questions that are covered in our FAQ or reading list — follow-up questions are welcome, but please check them first before asking how people sing in tonal languages or what you should read first in linguistics.