Linguistics Research Center

It’s here! UT’s (semi?)annual funding drive: 40 for Forty. I guess it’s really “40 Hours for the Forty Acres”. That means it’s 40 hours where you have to endure people begging for donations. I know it’s a little galling, given that The University of Texas doesn’t seem exactly to be short of money.

https://40for40.utexas.edu/giving-day/46023/department/46180

The LRC, however, does need to ask for your financial support. As it turns out, at a modern research institution in the age of cryptocurrencies, self-driving cars, climate change, and… well… all-out war, it can be hard to make the case for supporting a center that creates materials on ancient and underrepresented languages and gives them away online for free. We know *you* see the value in this. But let’s just say it’s hard for an outfit like the LRC to make it on the priority list at a university with such a vast array of fascinating and useful research going on.

In the meantime, as the world seems to be shifting beneath our feet, you might enjoy learning about what the documents of the earliest Southern Slavs (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/ocsol) and of the earliest Eastern Slavs (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/oruol) say in their own languages. Or you might like to learn about the oldest documented Germanic language, Gothic (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/gotol), and how it possibly resurfaced centuries later in the Crimea of all places! Or perhaps you’re interested in the language of the Vikings (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/norol) traveling through the land of the Eastern Slavs all the way to Istanbul (not Constantinople)... then again, maybe it’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.

But if you happen to make a donation on your path exploring any of these topics, we’d be eternally grateful.

40 Hours for the Forty Acres Together We Can Change the World

How do sign languages change over time? How can we decide if two sign languages are related to one another?

If we discuss non-signed languages, languages of sound, scholars have a very clear method for answering these questions. The so-called Comparative Method looks first at how sounds change over time within a given language. For example they study how the sounds in an Old English word like *hūs* (rhymes with "moose") change over time to give the modern *house* (rhymes with "mouse"). Then they look at how the sounds of the earliest forms of a language correspond with sounds in apparently similar words in other nearby languages. For example, they note how German *fünf* begins with the same *f* of *five* in English, while Greek *pénte* 'five' starts with a *p*; and yet German *Vater* and English *father* both begin with the sound of *f*, and Greek *patér* 'father' begins again with a *p*. Finally scholars posit a common origin for such words and show how to derive the data systematically from that source: for example the German, English, and Greek words for 'father' derive from a parent *pHtér* 'father', and while Greek preserves that initial *p* over time, Germanic languages slowly shift that *p* to *f*.

It's a fascinating artifice of historical sleuthing. And with these techniques we can reconstruct languages that existed perhaps millennia before their cultures adopted writing. But no one has systematically applied these methods to the evolution of signed languages. Until now.

The Sign Change project, created by scholars affiliated with the LRC, represents the first systematic attempt to trace the lineages of, and interrelations among, the world's signed languages.

If you have a minute, check out their introductory video, made especially to serve viewers who use ASL, and others.

Sign Change: Understanding the History of Signed Languages As we look at English, we can see it has changed since Shakespeare's day. It has changed yet more since the time of Chaucer before him. And the Old English...

"Although my professional expertise is in the artificial world of computer languages, I have always found natural languages absolutely fascinating. Using the LRC’s Early Indo-European online facilities offers a engrossing glance into the way natural languages have evolved, as well as providing information about other cultures. For me it is quite interesting to compare the maturation and divergence of natural languages to that of computer languages. Computer languages and natural languages share so many concepts such as syntax, metaphor, etc."
-User Testimonial

https://hornraiser.utexas.edu/project/20946/donate

The LRC is expecting budget cuts despite a more than 30% increase in people from all over the world using the our freely available online lesson series on 19 ancient Indo-European languages. Please help us keep our resources available! You can donate here: https://hornraiser.utexas.edu/project/20946/donate