#mpi-eva

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Topic day #219: Ket and the Dené-Yeniseian connection

Edward Vajda’s birthday was last week, and I want to honor that by making a topic day on something he had been working on when we both were based at Camelot MPI EVA in Leipzig. I witnessed him developing his theory back then, when he firstly presented it in “work in progress” talks.  Hope you enjoy!

Try to find Ket in this map of languages of the Russian federation. (Hint: a little to the right of the center.)

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The institute's aim is to investigate the history of humankind with the help of comparative analyses of different genes, cultures, cognitive abilities, languages and social systems of past and present human populations as well as those of primates closely related to human beings.

Linguistics is returning to MPI EVA, and they are hiring!

Position in Phylogenetics and Language/Cultural Evolution

Deadline for applications is the 1st of October 2020.

The Comparative Oceanic Languages Project in the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution is offering PhD and postdoctoral positions to researchers with strong backgrounds in computational linguistics, historical linguistics, anthropology, evolutionary biology, or related disciplines.

The Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution aims to answer big picture questions about human history. Our focus is on describing and explaining the major patterns of linguistic and cultural variation across the globe. We tackle these questions by developing novel language documentation methods, global linguistic and cultural databases, and analyses using evolutionary theories and computational methods.

As a researcher in this project, you will have the chance to explore human prehistory, to actively assist the development of new methods for quantitative historical linguistics and typology, and to shed light on general processes of language change and evolution among Pacific cultures.

Possible topics include:

* Comparative and computational phylogenetic analysis of language families to infer human prehistory in the Asia-Pacific region. * Comparative analysis of cultural and linguistic paradigms to infer human prehistory in the Asia-Pacific region. * Testing hypotheses about large-scale processes shaping linguistic diversity. * Developing new quantitative or phylogenetic methods for modelling, investigating, and understanding language evolution and human prehistory.

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Mazanderani

Linguistic Diversity Challenge — Regional Edition Post # 4 / 12: Central and West Asia

What is the language known as to linguists, and by the speakers themselves? Mazandarani, Mazanderani, زبان مازندرانی [fa], لغة طبرية [ar], مازرونی زیوون [mzn], Tapuri, Tabri, Tabari, Sari, endonyms:  طبری‎ (Tabari), مازرونی‎ (Mazuroni)

Where is the language spoken? Iran (Province of Mazandaran and parts of the provinces of Alborz, Tehran, Semnan and Golestan), South coast of the Caspian Sea

How many speakers does the language have? 2,340,000 (2016), decreasing. Some monolinguals in rural areas (Ethnologue)

What are some of the languages relatives and is it part of a contact area? Its neighbors are mostly but not exclusively other related Iranian languages, there has been contact with Caucasian and Turkic languages via the Caspian Sea open Mazanderani  expand all  collapse all Indo-European >> Indo-Iranian >> Indo-Aryan >> Iranian >> Central Iranian PBS >> Central Iranian PB >> Northwestern Iranian >> Caspian >> Mazanderani-Shahmirzadi >> Mazanderani

Is the language written? If it is, with what script? Persian script, at least since the 15th century

What is the language like grammatically? Mazanderani is an inflected and genderless language. It is SOV, but in some tenses it may be SVO, depending on dialects however.  The Gilaki and Mazandarani languages (but not other Iranian languages) share certain typological features with Caucasian languages (specifically South Caucasian languages), reflecting the history, ethnic identity, and close relatedness to the Caucasus region and Peoples of the Caucasus of the Mazandarani people. Like other modern Iranian languages there is no distinction between the dative and accusative cases, and the nominative in the sentence takes almost no indicators but with word order (depending on dialects it may end in a/o/e). Since Mazanderani lacks articles, there is no inflection for nouns in the sentence (no modifications for nouns). For definition, nouns are added with e at end (me dətere meaning The daughter of mine while me dəter means my daughter). The indefinite article for single nouns is a-tā with tā for determination of number (a-tā kijā meaning a girl). There are some remnants from old Mazanderani that female nouns in nominative were ending with a and male nouns in nominative were ending with e (as in jənā meaning the woman and mərdē meaning the man) grammatical gender still exists in other present-day close languages such as Semnani, Sangesari and Zazaki. [Wikipedia]

What is the language like phonologically? I’d say it sounds typical for a language of the region; I am bad at describing that. Listen: 

What made you choose the language? It is one of the many languages of Iran that Don Stilo had been working on when he was at MPI EVA in Leipzig while I was there, too. I don’t know, i just loved listening to this language and its neighbors. I don’t understand a word and it’s completely unprofessional, but I just love their sound. 

Resources:

https://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_mzn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazanderani_language

http://www.language-archives.org/language/mzn

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/mzn

https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/maza1291

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Wait wait wait you did your PhD with Haspelmath???

Yep. 2008 in Leipzig.

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Mammals communicate with each other using olfactory cues. This way they recognize relatives or friends or find a genetically suitable mate. However, to collect smells, especially in the wild, is anything but easy to accomplish. A team of researchers from the University of Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now succeeded in adapting a method that has previously been used in plant ecology for collecting body odour samples of captive meerkats. In the future this method can be used to collect body odour samples from mammals living in the wild.

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Creole Languages of the World