Using Phylogenetic Networks to Model Chinese Dialect History

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann-Mattis List ◽  
Nelson-Sathi Shijulal ◽  
William Martin ◽  
Hans Geisler
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Networks ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Tree Model ◽  
Good Test ◽  
Language History ◽  
Primary Model ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Dialect ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Dialect Classification

The idea that language history is best visualized by a branching tree has been controversially discussed in the linguistic world and many alternative theories have been proposed. The reluctance of many scholars to accept the tree as the natural metaphor for language history was due to conflicting signals in linguistic data: many resemblances would simply not point to a unique tree. Despite these observations, the majority of automatic approaches applied to language data has been based on the tree model, while network approaches have rarely been applied. Due to the specific sociolinguistic situation in China, where very divergent varieties have been developing under the roof of a common culture and writing system, the history of the Chinese dialects is complex and intertwined. They are therefore a good test case for methods which no longer take the family tree as their primary model. Here we use a network approach to study the lexical history of 40 Chinese dialects. In contrast to previous approaches, our method is character-based and captures both vertical and horizontal aspects of language history. According to our results, the majority of characters in our data (about 54%) cannot be readily explained with the help of a given tree model. The borrowing events inferred by our method do not only reflect general uncertainties of Chinese dialect classification, they also reveal the strong influence of the standard language on Chinese dialect history.

PIG, TONE SANDHI AND WUMIN

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
William L. Ballard
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Historical Relationship

Several scholars have made various remarks about the language history of the Wu and Min areas. Some of these remarks concern non-Chinese languages that may have been spoken in the area(s) and that may have left some traces in the forms of Chinese spoken there now (substrata). Other remarks concern the possible prehistory of what appear now to be transitional or mixed forms, or features that may be present due to some ancient influence or borrowing. In considering such matters it is important to keep in mind the basic principles (and biases) of historical linguistics, and of the potential role of philological materials in the discussion. My fieldwork in China this spring, as well as my research in the past, point to some special historical relationship between southern Wu and northern Min. This appears to mean that the boundaries between the northern and southern types of each of the two dialect groups are stronger than they have been portrayed in the past, and that the traditional boundary between Wu and Min is considerably weaker than has been supposed. The total sum of dialect facts cannot be ignored in trying to ascertain the language history of this area; it would appear that various elements of the traditional view of the history of the southern dialects are in error in various ways. In particular, it is at least possible that Wu and Min, in some sense, share a common ancestor not common to any other Chinese dialects.

In quest of the universal language

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Stillman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
Good Test ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
Philosophical Language ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

The new English translation of Paolo Rossi’s now classic study, Logic and the Art of Memory, presents a useful opportunity to examine contemporary efforts to understand what its subtitle calls “the quest for a universal language.” At the same time, an old seventeenth-century philosophical romance, Thomas Urquhart’s Jewel, affords a good test case for evaluating the success of those contemporary critical efforts — including Rossi’s own. First among contemporary scholars, Rossi made it possible to study seriously the seventeenth-century universal language movement by recovering the history of an idea — the pursuit of the so-called clavis universalis, the universal key to knowledge, from the ancient arts of memory to the Enlightenment’s philosophical language projects. While Rossi’s study has clearly withstood the test of time, since it still has much to teach us about the history of an idea — what Urquhart would call “pure eloquence” — his study has less utility in clarifying the status of that idea in history. Understanding Urquhart’s Jewel requires, I argue, two different forms of history whose interplay is always complicated: the history of ideas and the history of those politically charged engagements with ideas by authors whose situation at a specific time and a specific place brings meanings to their work that transcend epistemological concerns alone.

LANGUAGE SYSTEM IN THE GENETIC LANGUAGE SCIENCE OF THE 70-s IN THE 19TH — BEGINNING OF THE 20TH cc.: O. POTEBNIA’S CONCEPT OF «QUANTITATIVE CHANGES OF CONSONANTS»

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (30) ◽  
pp. 152-165
Author(s):  
Viktoriia Sviatchenko
Keyword(s):  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
Speech Stream ◽  
Language System ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Language History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Quantitative Changes ◽  
Systemic Nature

The article provides a thorough account on A. A. Potebnia’s views on the systemic nature of the language presented in his works on historical phonetics of the Eastern Slavic languages. The practical implementation of his ideas in this respect is studied. The comprehension of the systemic character of phonetic changes of the Khrakiv linguistic school representative has urged the search of their interrelations as well as the attempt to identify homogeneous phonetic laws that share a common cause and act in a certain period of the language history, which is emphasized by the author of the article. It is noted that A. A. Potebnia focused on consonant changes that took place in different conditions. The causes of phonetic laws mentioned in the article can not be reduced to the interaction of sounds in a speech stream, the material provided by A. A. Potebnia proves that they are to be found within the phonetic system itself. The author of the article shares the views of V. A. Glushchenko that Potebnia’s investigations embrace all phonetic laws in the history of the Eastern Slavic languages’ consonant systems. The relevance of Potebnia’s research on the systemic nature of the language that has retained their value for the linguistics of the XX — beginning of XXI century is identified.

The Path of Standard Albanian Language Formation

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-115
Author(s):  
Sindorela Doli Kryeziu
Keyword(s):  
Single Unit ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Language History ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors ◽  
Cultural Body ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Language Literature

Abstract In our paper we will talk about the whole process of standardization of the Albanian language, where it has gone through a long historical route, for almost a century.When talking about standard Albanian language history and according to Albanian language literature, it is often thought that the Albanian language was standardized in the Albanian Language Orthography Congress, held in Tirana in 1972, or after the publication of the Orthographic Rules (which was a project at that time) of 1967 and the decisions of the Linguistic Conference, a conference of great importance that took place in Pristina, in 1968. All of these have influenced chronologically during a very difficult historical journey, until the standardization of the Albanian language.Considering a slightly wider and more complex view than what is often presented in Albanian language literature, we will try to describe the path (history) of the standard Albanian formation under the influence of many historical, political, social and cultural factors that are known in the history of the Albanian people. These factors have contributed to the formation of a common state, which would have, over time, a common standard language.It is fair to think that "all activity in the development of writing and the Albanian language, in the field of standardization and linguistic planning, should be seen as a single unit of Albanian culture, of course with frequent manifestations of specific polycentric organization, either because of divisions within the cultural body itself, or because of the external imposition"(Rexhep Ismajli," In Language and for Language ", Dukagjini, Peja, 1998, pp. 15-18.)

scholarly journals Is there enough star formation in simulated protoclusters?

2020 ◽  
Vol 501 (2) ◽  
pp. 1803-1822
Author(s):  
Seunghwan Lim ◽  
Douglas Scott ◽  
Arif Babul ◽  
David J Barnes ◽  
Scott T Kay ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Star Formation ◽  
Galaxy Formation ◽  
Star Formation History ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Numerical Resolution ◽  
Formation History ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hydrodynamical Simulations ◽  
Formation Efficiency

ABSTRACT As progenitors of the most massive objects, protoclusters are key to tracing the evolution and star formation history of the Universe, and are responsible for ${\gtrsim }\, 20$ per cent of the cosmic star formation at $z\, {\gt }\, 2$. Using a combination of state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations and empirical models, we show that current galaxy formation models do not produce enough star formation in protoclusters to match observations. We find that the star formation rates (SFRs) predicted from the models are an order of magnitude lower than what is seen in observations, despite the relatively good agreement found for their mass-accretion histories, specifically that they lie on an evolutionary path to become Coma-like clusters at $z\, {\simeq }\, 0$. Using a well-studied protocluster core at $z\, {=}\, 4.3$ as a test case, we find that star formation efficiency of protocluster galaxies is higher than predicted by the models. We show that a large part of the discrepancy can be attributed to a dependence of SFR on the numerical resolution of the simulations, with a roughly factor of 3 drop in SFR when the spatial resolution decreases by a factor of 4. We also present predictions up to $z\, {\simeq }\, 7$. Compared to lower redshifts, we find that centrals (the most massive member galaxies) are more distinct from the other galaxies, while protocluster galaxies are less distinct from field galaxies. All these results suggest that, as a rare and extreme population at high z, protoclusters can help constrain galaxy formation models tuned to match the average population at $z\, {\simeq }\, 0$.

Typological shift in lexicalizing motion events: The case of Wenzhou

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingxia Lin
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Head Motion ◽  
Motion Events ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Chinese Dialect ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Motion Verb ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Modern Standard

AbstractTypological shift in lexicalizing motion events has hitherto been observed cross-linguistically. While over time, Chinese has shown a shift from a dominantly verb-framed language in Old Chinese to a strongly satellite-framed language in Modern Standard Mandarin, this study presents the Chinese dialect Wenzhou, which has taken a step further than Standard Mandarin and other Chinese dialects in becoming a thoroughly satellite-framed language. On the one hand, Wenzhou strongly disfavors the verb-framed pattern. Wenzhou not only has no prototypical path verbs, but also its path satellites are highly deverbalized. On the other hand, Wenzhou strongly prefers the satellite-framed pattern, to the extent that it very frequently adopts a neutral motion verb to head motion expressions so that path can be expressed via satellites and the satellite-framed pattern can be syntactically maintained. The findings of this study are of interest to intra-linguistic, diachronic and cross-linguistic studies of the variation in encoding motion events.

scholarly journals “Liberating the Small Devils”: Red Guard Newspapers and Radical Publics, 1966–1968

2021 ◽  
Vol 246 ◽  
pp. 354-373
Author(s):  
Nicolai Volland
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Early Research ◽  
Test Case ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Red Guard ◽  
And Function ◽  
Chinese Public

AbstractRed Guard newspapers and pamphlets (wenge xiaobao) were a key source for early research on the Cultural Revolution, but they have rarely been analysed in their own right. How did these publications regard their status and function within the larger information ecosystem of the People's Republic, and what is their role in the history of the modern Chinese public sphere? This article focuses on a particular subset of Red Guard papers, namely those published by radical groups within the PRC's press and publication system. These newspapers critiqued the pre-Cultural Revolution press and reflected upon the possible futures of a new, revolutionary Chinese press. Short-lived as these experiments were, they constitute a test case to re-examine the functioning of the public in a decidedly “uncivil” polity. Ultimately, they point to the ambiguous potential of the public for both consensus and conflict, liberation and repression, which characterizes the press in 20th-century China.

scholarly journals Flurbiprofen: A Study of the Behavior of the Scalemate by Chromatography, Sublimation, and NMR

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 543
Author(s):  
Magdalena Kwiatkowska ◽  
Alicja Wzorek ◽  
Anna Kolbus ◽  
Mariusz Urbaniak ◽  
Jianlin Han ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Relaxation Time ◽  
Preparative Thin Layer Chromatography ◽  
Transverse Relaxation Time ◽  
Size Exclusion ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Ionization Mass ◽  
Chiral Drugs ◽  
Good Test ◽  
Exclusion Chromatography ◽  
Medium Pressure Liquid Chromatography

2-(2-Fluoro-4-biphenyl) propionic acid (flurbiprofen), from the phenylalkanoic acid family of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s), is currently on the pharmaceutical market as a racemate. This racemic compound was tested for its propensity to undergo the self-disproportionation of enantiomers (SDE) phenomenon by various forms of chromatography (SDEvC), such as routine gravity-driven column chromatography, medium-pressure liquid chromatography (MPLC), preparative thin-layer chromatography (PTLC), and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), as well as by sublimation (SDEvS). Furthermore, examination by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in various solvents found that flurbiprofen exhibited the phenomenon of self-induced diastereomeric anisochronism (SIDA). By measurement of the diffusion coefficient (D), the longitudinal relaxation time (T1), and the transverse relaxation time (T2) using NMR, as well as by electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) examinations, the preferred intermolecular association was found to be solvent dependent, e.g., heterochiral association was preferred in toluene, while homochiral association was preferred in more polar solvents. This study also attempted, unsuccessfully, to correlate the NMR measurements of flurbiprofen with chromatographic outcomes for the rationalization and prediction of chromatographic results based on NMR measurements. Because the intermolecular hydrogen bonding of the acid groups in flurbiprofen overwhelmingly predominates over other intermolecular interactions, flurbiprofen seemed to represent a good test case for this idea. The behavior of scalemic samples of flurbiprofen is important, as, although it is currently dispensed as a racemate, clinical applications of the R enantiomer have been investigated. SDEvC and SDEvS both have ramifications for the preparation, handling, and storage of enantioenriched flurbiprofen, and this concern applies to other chiral drugs as well.

scholarly journals Interrogating the Egypto-Sudanic Arabic Connection

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Leddy-Cecere
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Verbal Inflection ◽  
Segmental Phonology ◽  
Language Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Dialect Classification ◽  
Arabic Speaking

The Arabic dialectology literature repeatedly asserts the existence of a macro-level classificatory relationship binding the Arabic speech varieties of the combined Egypto-Sudanic area. This proposal, though oft-encountered, has not previously been formulated in reference to extensive linguistic criteria, but is instead framed primarily on the nonlinguistic premise of historical demographic and genealogical relationships joining the Arabic-speaking communities of the region. The present contribution provides a linguistically based evaluation of this proposed dialectal grouping, to assess whether the postulated dialectal unity is meaningfully borne out by available language data. Isoglosses from the domains of segmental phonology, phonological processes, pronominal morphology, verbal inflection, and syntax are analyzed across six dialects representing Arabic speech in the region. These are shown to offer minimal support for a unified Egypto-Sudanic dialect classification, but instead to indicate a significant north–south differentiation within the sample—a finding further qualified via application of the novel method of Historical Glottometry developed by François and Kalyan. The investigation concludes with reflection on the implications of these results on the understandings of the correspondence between linguistic and human genealogical relationships in the history of Arabic and in dialectological practice more broadly.

25 years of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 226-235
Author(s):  
Marina M. Valentsova ◽  
Elena S. Uzeneva
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
25Th Anniversary ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Language History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Slavic Studies

The essay was written to mark the 25th anniversary of the Slavic Institute named after Jan Stanislav SAS (Bratislava). The Institute was founded to conduct interdisciplinary research on the relationships of the Slovak language and culture with other Slavic languages and cultures, as well as to study the Slovak-Latin, Slovak-Hungarian, and Slovak-German cultural and linguistic interactions in ancient times and the Middle Ages. The article introduces the main milestones in the formation and development of the Institute, its employees, the directions of their scientific work, and their significant publications. The main areas of research of the Slavic Institute (initially the Slavic Cabinet) cover linguistics (lexicography, history of language), history, folklore, cultural studies, musicology, and textology. Much attention is paid to the annotated translation of foreign religious texts into Slovak. A valuable contribution of the Institute to Slavic Studies is the creation of a database of Cyrillic and Latin handwritten and printed texts related to the Byzantine-Slavic tradition in Slovakia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document