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Gopalakrishnan R

@cobbaalt.bsky.social
172 followers 292 following 399 posts

Linguist and sometimes shitposter | Linguistics PhD student at UMass Amherst

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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Tfw when it's neither conference registration or travel but accommodation costs that you've to worry about
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Conférence très intéressante sur l'écriture de l'Indus. Very interesting talk on the Indus script. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i9q...
youtube.com
Ongoing decipherments : Writing in the Indus Civilization - by Dennys Frenez
YouTube video by ILARA
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
If you want to listen to some beautiful poppy Ossetian (Digoron dialect) ejectives, Cærikʼati Rimmæ has got you. www.instagram.com/reel/DeHjEoA...
instagram.com
РИМА ЦАРИКАТИ on Instagram: "«Дигорон авзаг, ма зарда» Хохойти Федар»да капекк райса…😁#чикола #дигоронавзаг #актриса"
114 likes, 8 comments - rima_tsarikati_iron_teatr on October 5, 2026: "«Дигорон авзаг, ма зарда» Хохойти Федар»да капекк райса…😁#чикола #дигоронавзаг #актриса".
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Anastasia Bauer @anastasia-bauer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I am thrilled to be a co-author on the paper "Kinematics of Negative Headshake in Seven Sign Languages"! 🎉 A big thank you to my colleague Vadim Kimmelman for the fantastic collaboration! 🙌 doi.org/10.1162/OPMI... #SignLanguages #Linguistics #ComputerVision #Negation #Headshake
doi.org
Kinematics of Negative Headshake in Seven Sign Languages
Abstract. In sign languages, negative sentences are often accompanied by nonmanual markers of negation, including headshake. In some sign languages, nonmanual markers alone can express negation, witho...
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I realise I haven't said this yet: I've started my PhD Linguistics this month at UMass Amherst. I am definitely dreading the weather in another month or so.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is really so cool, a speaker A can signal that A considers some information X to be common knowledge, all the while A knows that X is new knowledge to the addressee(s), so A wants the addressee(s) to just accommodate X. It's like a meta use of accommodation, or something. Nice stuff.
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Maarten Kossmann @maartenkossmann.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
As you all know, the Musulami were the important Gaetulian group to which Tacfarinas belonged. There may be one stela that commemorates a member of this group, RIL 808. It comes from the ruins of Sila in the region of Sigus, south of Constantine in Algeria, and looks like this ⬇️
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Any Hungarian speakers here? I need help with grammaticality judgements on 2-3 sentences.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Do economics classes study the American mobile phone network industry as an example of a classic cartel? Because this whole industry is just racketeering.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Gotta try to get funding for vacations by claiming to conduct fieldwork on the local language(s). Could say I'm working on dialectology, so I just _have_ to travel to all these cities, which just conveniently happen to have historical sites...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
“Two /h/s. On debuccalisation in Ancient Greek” by Adèle Jatteau (July ’26) radical.cnrs.fr/jatteau-two-...
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
budd̤ɐm sɐɾɐɽ̃ɐm ɡɐtt͡ɕäːmi?
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Working with native Abkhaz speakers has so long been a dream of mine and I get to do this now. :) The most based interaction: Abkhaz granny: Are there Abkhaz speakers in India? Me: No. Abkhaz granny: Now there will be.
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Lameen Souag @lameensouag.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
My first proper foray into Afroasiatic-level reconstruction just came out in BJALL: "Disentangling Afroasiatic *t-morphemes: No path from middle to imperfective" brill.com/view/journal... Sadly not open access, but I'd be delighted to send a copy to anyone who asks me for one (myfirstname@gmail)
brill.com
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I don’t know if I’ll have time to read this any time soon, but a very cool monograph on how the Japanese in the 18th century understood Dutch grammar. www.lotpublications.nl/dutch-gramma...
lotpublications.nl
Dutch Grammar in Japanese Words
Lorenzo Nespoli: Dutch Grammar in Japanese Words - Reception and Representation of European Theory of Grammar in the Manuscripts of Shizuki Tadao (1760 – 1806)
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
This has to be a phishing attempt, no?
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
If anyone has access to this book chapter, please let me know. link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
link.springer.com
The Final Glottal Stop of the Kuṛux Verb Bases
Kur ̣ux has many verb bases ending in ʔ. While y corresponds to ʔ in some cognate Malto verb bases, such as Kr ̣x. ciʔ- vs. Mlt. ciy- ‘give’ and Kr&#82...
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Elisabeth J. Kerr @elisabethjkerr.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
It's a Bantuist convention, though some authors do say e.g. "Gender A, Gender B". The advantage of the traditional system is comparative-historical; labels are consistent across Bantu. Also, while often the even number is the plural of the preceding singular (e.g. 3/4), you also get mixes, e.g. 9/6
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Lizzie Coppock @lizzieloo.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
In Newar, saying "one-one fish" means each person got one fish. But "one-one letter is correct" means every letter is correct — no licensor needed. How does reduplication of one become every? New paper draft! #linguistics #semantics #fieldwork #reduplication #numerals eecoppock.info/SULAAAA-proc...
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Some skeletal notes on how Georgian historical morphology may inform our understanding of that in Ossetic. avzaagzonunaada.wordpress.com/2026/06/13/g...
avzaagzonunaada.wordpress.com
Georgian and Ossetian — a non-rigorous diachronic account of plural-marking
Both Georgian and Ossetian lost their case-number syncretized suffixes and replaced them with agglutinating plurals (-ებ & -т(ӕ), respectively) preceding the (singular) case suffixes. In Old Ge…
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kobayashi ḫamṭu @mattboot.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Massachusett word of the day: anogqs */anākʷs/ "star" animate plural: anogqsog */anākʷs-ak/ mish(e )anogqs */məš(ī )anākʷs/ "the morning star" (lit. great star)
anógąs, n. an. a star; pl. anoggsog, El.
Gr. 9; 1 Cor. 15, +1; Job 22, 12; mis-hánogkus [mishe unoggs, great star], the morning or day star, 2 Pet. 1, 19. For anóggussu, he appears, shows himself.
In distinction from the sun, which rises or comes forth (paspishau) and sets (goes away, wayau), the stars appear in their places when the absence of the sun and moon makes them visible.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
In addition to having uvulars, Malto has switch reference. There is an invariant converb suffix when the matrix & converb subjects are different. When they're the same, there is a distinct converb suffix that agrees with that subject. It's with _same subject_ that the CVB has agreement.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Problem when learning two languages that are related, you end up saying something like — a) nā-ku gott‿illa or b) nan-ge teliy-adu for ‘I don't know’. Only issue is that ‹nan-ge gott‿illa› is Kannada and ‹nā-ku teliy-adu› is Telugu.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Glossing is an art and for some reason many linguists seem to be bad glossers
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David Mihalyfy @mihalyfy.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Up now on my blog! A dialogue with the recent work of Marwan Kilani, on resystematizing the Egyptian verb. #Egyptology #Linguistics #LangSky egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2026/06/on-r...
egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com
On Resystematizing Major Aspects of the Egyptian Verb: A Dialogue with the Recent Work of Marwan Kilani
The following consolidates interrelated aspects of both past work and some ongoing research that will be submitted for peer review.  . . ....
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Benjamin Suchard @bnuyaminim.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Have to read this new paper by Na'ama Pat-El in more detail later, but it seems like a good way out of the impasse of Assyriologists blaming #Aramaic for Neo-Assyrian #Akkadian using ana 'to' to mark direct objects and Aramaicists blaming Neo-Assyrian for the same use of l- 'to' in East Aramaic. 🐦🐦
academia.edu
The origin of the Neo-Assyrian Direct Object Marker ana
During its long history, Akkadian typically did not mark its direct objects syntactically, until Neo-Assyrian. This dialect inconsistently marks direct objects with the preposition ana, a preposition ...
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Adam Bremer-McCollum @acbm.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
And a practical phrase from the same letter (13.11): ܣܢܝܩ ܐ̄ܢܐ ܥܠ ܢܦ̈ܩܬܐ /sniq-nå ʕal nep̄qåṯå/ "I need some funds!" 💰💰💰
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Linguist List @linguistlist.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Books: Indigenous Languages of the Americas and Their Structures: The Saguaro Group (ed.) (2026)
dlvr.it
Books: Indigenous Languages of the Americas and Their Structures: The Saguaro Group (ed.) (2026)
What do people mean when they talk about the sound pattern of a language—what linguists call phonology? This book explores that question in a hands-on way, with a focus on applying the knowledge in language revitalization and community language work. The book introduces basic ideas and analytic strategies using examples from Indigenous languages across North and South America. Short comprehension checks invite you to test your understanding, and language explorations encourage you to apply what
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kobayashi ḫamṭu @mattboot.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
claidheamh "sword" is from Old Irish (bzw. Old Gaelic) claiḋeḃ /ˈklaðʲəβ/, from Proto-Celtic *kladiwos (which was loaned, via Gaulish, into Latin as _gladius_)
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kobayashi ḫamṭu @mattboot.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
i am now the proud owner of a Scots grammar WRITTEN IN SCOTS

is tae say tirst person + third person. Then again it michele aw o us thegither. Tak tent whan ye're scrievin tae makin
clear wha ye mean.
Demonstrative pronouns
pyntin at it.
We yaise them tae replace a noun phrase as if we were
Singular this
plural thir
that thon (yon)
thae
(near)
thon (yon)
(far)
(further)
ower an done wi.
I can reach this. Throw that ower tae me. Thorn is a
TAX/
The taxi I haed ordered earlier wis waitin at the station.
Relative pronouns
These are wha, wham, which (whilk and that. They care
" like the wife in the chip shop gies me extra chips.
yaised tae jyne sentences an avoid repeatin yerse. Was al
'Ihaedna richt tichtened the wheel fell aff.
wham are yaised for people. Which is yaised for animal al things. Whilk can be yaised for baith but it is na aften
The pairt o the sentence introduced by the relative pronoun
heard.
is cried a relative clause.
That can be yaised for baith.
The taxi wis waitin at the station. I haed ordered the tan
earlier.
The taxi which I haed ordered earlier wis waitin at toe station.
The taxi that I haed ordered earlier wis waitin at the suit
Exercise 16
Jee this sentences wi a relative pronoun. The noun phrase ae be replaced is in bold print tae help ye. sante annoyed the coo. The coo chased a fairmer.
The farmer chased Jamie. The coo haed chased the fairmer. mie fund a deid squirrel. He tuik the squirrel hame tae bis
cat.
I like the wifie in the chip shop. The wife in the ding sin gies me extra chips.
I like the wifie in the chip shop wha gies me extra chis.
I baedna richt tichtened the wheel. The whe l of.
I haedma richt tichtened the wheel which fell aff.
jamie wis taen aback by the reaction o the cat. The cat didna speak tae him for a week.
Jamie sprayed the cat tae kill the fleas. It got the fleas fae the squirrel.
Jamie buried the squirrel in the gairden. The squirrel baed begun tae smell.
Jamie haed
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ʤan~ʤɑn~ʤɔn @languagedoodad.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
I revamped my Wiktionary Audio chrome extension. If you do any phonetic/phonological work and use Wiktionary audio this let's you bulk download it and converts it to a .wav so you can pop it right into Praat.
github.com
GitHub - jhnwnstd/wiktionary-audio-extension-chrome: Save Wiktionary pronunciations. Optional WAV conversion runs in-browser.
Save Wiktionary pronunciations. Optional WAV conversion runs in-browser. - jhnwnstd/wiktionary-audio-extension-chrome
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Gondi has a verb form called the "Future", but it's clearly a modal form perhaps better termed the "Subjunctive". It uniquely has different markers in different persons: -k- in 1p & 2p, -n- in 3p. It's also most likely an old non-past that has been gradually replaced by the new(er) Non-Past.
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langscipress.bsky.social @langscipress.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Just published "Indigenous languages of the Americas and their structures: Sounds" edited by The Saguaro Group #tbls #openaccess langsci-press.org/catalog/book...
book cover
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
New book on language-contact between Niya Prakrit and Bactrian (link to PDF). I wonder how Tarim Prakrit would end up today had it survived. Separation from the IA continuum resulted in massive typological restructuring in Sinhalese and Maldivian, so, ... www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/ddo/artikel/...
harrassowitz-verlag.de
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ʤan~ʤɑn~ʤɔn @languagedoodad.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
let's see Paul Allen's latex preamble
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Dr Danny Bate @dannybate.com · 20/05/2026
A lovely ancient etymology is that Akkadian had the word unnedukku for 'letter' (the kind you send), borrowed from Sumerian – not a Sumerian word, but rather a phrase meaning 'may you say to them'. It was a common initial request to a fellow scribe, for them to read out the letter to its recipient.
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Cambridge University Press - Linguistics @cambup-linguistics.cambridge.org · 20/05/2026
Voice and Argument Structure in Basque by Ane Berro and Beatriz Fernández Including a wide range of examples, this book provides a meticulous examination of Basque's argument structure and voice. #LangSky 🐦🐦 📚 cup.org/4rJ2TVF
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
“Stress placement variability and acoustic stress correlates: The case of Northern Kashubian” by Andrzej Żak (May ’26) www.isca-archive.org/speechprosod...
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andrew phillips @herfst.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Akkadian idiom (in Old Babylonian legal tablets): 𒅖𒌅 𒁉𒂊 𒀀𒁲 𒆬𒄀 ištu pê adi ḫurāṣim ‘from chaff to gold’, i.e. everything būšûša u warkassa ša Ḫunnubtum mala ibaššû ištu pê adi ḫurāṣim ša Lamassīma Ḫunnubtum, her property and estate, all that there is from chaff to gold, is Lamassi’s [her daughter]
Cuneiform text, transliterated: iš·tu pé·e a·di KÙ·SIG₁₇
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
TFW when you're reading a formal syntax paper with an egregiously false claim about etymology in a footnote. Why even discuss etymology if you don't know anything about it...
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Always gotta love a good haplogy!
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David Mihalyfy @mihalyfy.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Can anyone think of a language besides #Coptic with adverbial phrases composed of: 1) adposition; 2) indefinite article; and 3) substantival adjective. The purported Coptic phenomenon is Ϩ︦ⲚⲞⲨⲘⲈ "truly" (lit. "in a true [thing]"): 1) Ϩ︦Ⲛ "in" 2) ⲞⲨ "a" 3) ⲘⲈ "true (thing)" #LangSky #Linguistics
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Endangered Languages Project @e-l-p.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Join us Friday for the next "Stories from the Heart," and hear real-life stories of #languagerevitalization worldwide! Dr. Netra Mani Rai will share about his work to grow writing and speaking in Dumi, a critically endangered language in #Nepal. ⁠📚️ May 15, 5:45 pm Pacific bit.ly/stories-from...
Orange and cream graphic showing illustrations of hills, a bird, and flowers. Text reads "Stories from the Heart: Community Language Projects from Ready to Revitalize." Below is a photo of Netra Mani Rai wearing a suit jacket and traditional hat. Text reads "Dr. Netra Mani Rai, Vice-Chancellor, Kirat Rai Academic Council, Dumi Kirat Rai, Nepal. 'Bridging the Gap - How Speaking and Writing Can Save the Endangered Dumi Language.' Dr. Rai will talk about the Dumi Language Revitlization Project, which aims to preserve this critically endangered language of Nepal, with fewer than 1,000 speakers. By writing stories, developing resources, and working with communities, this project creates pride by promoting speaking and learning of the Dumi language. May 15, 5:45 pm Pacific (UTC-7). Free and online. Register: http://bit.ly/stories-from-the-heart."

At the bottom is a QR code to register, and the logos of the Endangered Languages Project and International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
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Safaitic @safaitic.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Very important interview with Dr. Hythem Sidky - Mathematics and Manuscripts - reconstructing the Quran of Mohammed's time www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtMQ...
youtube.com
CAN WE RECONSTRUCT THE PROPHET'S QUR'AN? Dr. Hythem Sidky on Manuscripts, Memory, and Mathematics
YouTube video by Near East by Midwest Podcast
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Mark Hudson @barbarianniche.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
New paper published today. Although the Okhotsk culture in Hokkaido has been associated with the Nivkh since at least Kikuchi (1978), we provide the most detailed linguistic and archaeological evaluation attempted so far. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Tracing the medieval expansion of the Amuric language family through linguistics and archaeology
Amuric (also known as Nivkh) is a language family found in the Lower Amur Basin and on Sakhalin Island. While geography suggests that the roots of Amu…
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
South-Central Dravidian languages underwent process where, in a word with an unstressed 1st syllable and a stressed 2nd syllable, the 1st lost it's nucleus due to metathesis, thus bringing stress to the new 1st syllable. Hence for Telugu ‹narambu› ‘vein’, you have Kui ‹ḍrāmbu› ‘sinew’.
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Kathmandu Newar has a native word for ‘book’: /sʌpʰuː/ (/sʌpʰuli-/). It’s classically attested as well. Not attested by Genetti in Dolakha Newar. Pahari Newar uses /bʱoː/. The oblique stem for this isn’t attested by Shrestha, but I think cognate to Kath. /bʱwʌ̃ː/ (/bʱwʌ̃tʌ-/) ‘paper’, Dol. /bõɾ/.
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
youtu.be/LWJzirlCv8I?... I was watching this video on how Fibonacci's original book was really just a practical treatise meant to introduce the decimal numeral system to Europe. There was a similar Tamil treatise published in 1825, meant to do the same, i.e., introduce the decimal system.
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
This reminds me of a cute little thing Hunza Burushaski does. The #Burushaski consecutive converb (functional equivalent to Gondi -si) is a prefix n-, but this shows up as a suffix -n if the verb is d-prefixed (a lexically fossilized morpheme that probably had diathetic uses in the past), and ...
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Gopalakrishnan R @cobbaalt.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
#TIL Images from Wiktionary article on Proto-Japonic *kamui. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconst...
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