iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Two-year Mellon Post-doc in Linguistics at Cornell. Historical linguists strongly encouraged to apply! societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu/mellon-postd...

societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships 2027-29

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Yes, I'm sure that would greatly improve our reconstructions!😀 and we can also rewrite Hund as $§¡¢ while we are at it.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

I haven't read it yet, but it does contain a lot of interesting material on 19th and 20th century views on "Aryanism". But why is it also necessary to deny the existence of cognates and maybe language?

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Demoule's translation is also an OUP publication.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

"The relationship between the two words depends on a set of complex judgments about similarity and difference, in terms of sound and meaning, and in relation to methodologies of identifying systematic as opposed to unsystematic similarity." Comparative method is dumb and uncool.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

"Firstly, what are these entities that are alleged to be related, and how do we define them? The written citation form is itself the product of a set of representational conventions with their own history." What we just elicited these items from speakers? Still no good?

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

C. Hutton 2025 The People that Never Were OUP: "The proposition that the German word Hund and the English word hound are cognate or related etymologically or, to use William Jones’s words, “sprung from some common source,” is difficult to sustain on close examination." So no cognates. Got it.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Semiticists, is there a more recent treatment of the "middle affricate hypothesis" than Kogan's discussion in Weninger 2011? Is it now communis opinio that "zayin" was an affricate in PS or in Canaanite? I'd be grateful for any pointers. @phdnix.bsky.social ky.social, @bnuyaminim.bsky.social

ky.social

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Thanks for given me the opportunity to help!

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

There's a little bit of cheating (e.g. αἰ is not Attic or Koine, μιν is a poetic form), but it's a good job. See M. Treu. 1896. Antistoicheion, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 5: 337-8.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

καὶ γὰρ οὖν πέπωκα καὶ *ἐρρύμμην* καὶ ἀνέψυξα καὶ ἐμαυτὸν θανάτου *ἐρρυμην*. Then I drank, washed, and refreshed myself and saved myself from death. ταῦτα δὲ πάντα οὐκ ἂν μοι συνέπεσεν, *αἰ ῥύμην* ἐβάδιζον πόλεως. All these things wouldn’t have happened to me if I were walking a street of a city.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

πηγὴν μέντοι πλησίον οὖσαν αἰσθόμενος μόλις τε πρὸς αὐτὴν εἵρπυσα κἀκεῖθεν αὖθις ἀναστὰς ὡδοιπόρουν. But perceiving that there was a spring nearby I creeped toward it and then getting up again I walked.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

καύματος οὖν ἐπιγενομένου κατὰ γῆς τε *ἐρρίμμην* καὶ ἀπεγίνωσκον, πῶς ἂν ἐκεῖθεν *αἰροίμην*. When the heat of the day came I fell to the ground I was at a loss as to how I could lift myself up from there.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

καὶ δὴ τὴν ὡς ἐκεῖνον φέρουσαν ἀγνοῶν πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν ἔλεγον· 'εἰ μη τις *ἐρεῖ μιν* *αἱροίμην* ἂν καταδεδικασθαι μᾶλλον ἢ πλανᾶσθαι ἀνήνυτα'. And indeed not knowing the way leading to him I said to myself, if nobody will tell me this, I would prefer to be sentenced than to wander vainly.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

*ἐρήμην* ποτὲ καταδικασθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸν δικαστὴν ᾔειν καὶ οὐχ εὗρον ὃν ἂν *ἐροίμην*, τίς ποτε χῶρος *αἱρεῖ μιν*. Once having been sentenced to a default judgment, I was going to the judge and I didn’t find any one I could ask which place held him.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Α linguistic joke from Maximus Planudes (1260 – c. 1305). The joke is that the 10 highlighted words are all pronounced /erimin/!

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Uh-oh! Now the cranks will know I think they are cranks. I think Celtomania is the original -mania.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

There are no Attic texts which still employ the letter qoppa and write the sequence /ky/ as κυ. As far as I know, and I could have missed something, all instances of the sequence /ky/ or maybe /ku/ were written ϙυ in alphabets still employing qoppa.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

From texts dating before 525 one finds Ϙυδίμαχ[ος] (600-575 BCE, Agora 21 D 12) ϙύτ[ρας] (Agora 21 K 2, 6th cent.) and Κϙυελνιος = Κυλλήνιος (AVI 2211, Cerveteri, 560–550) which may indicate uncertainty about which sign to use.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

For Attic this is simply not true. The letter qoppa went out of use in Attic after 525 and was replaced by kappa. Thus only Attic texts from before 525 can potentially be informative.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

An oft-repeated argument in favor of a fronted value for υ in Attic and East Ionic is the “fact” that the letter κ, not ϙ, is used before υ, since it no longer symbolized a back vowel— Qoppa supposedly was only used before back vowels or l plus a back vowel. So Allen Vox Graeca p. 67, n. 11.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Yes, the non-rhotacism in caesaries is similar to that in miser, but the survive of short a in a medial syllable is maybe more of a mystery. It should be †caeseries.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

"Too many wordy explanations relating to Sanskrit and Buddhist writing, without the basic, fundamental of a chart of the declensions and conjugations. Very disappointed." Skid Kid, if you are listening, check out Appendix: Paradigms 252-275 where declensions and paradigms are given in gory detail😀

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Amazon review of Kuśiññe Kantwo by Skid Kid: "If you have studies Sanskrit and Buddhism, these would work well. For someone just wanting an elementary book of Tocharian, it is terrible."

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

‪Dennis, you are probably right but I was trying to capture the verbal abstract. @davidstifter.bsky.social why is dánugud better?

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

THT is for Tocharische Handschriften aus den Turfanfunden. āyor is the verbal noun from the verb ai- 'give' which is cognate with Gk. αἴνυμαι 'take' and αἶσα 'lot'. saim is derived from the verb sai- 'support' which is unclear. ste is from *h1sk'e-to an iterative mid. of *h1es- 'be' (cf. Lat. escit)

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

There are two fake Old Irish sentences in there!

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Quite a few signs look like elder futhark

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Update: Our site is currently experiencing an unexpected outage due to hardware failure. Our team is actively working on repairs to bring everything back online as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Estimated time to resolution: 3 hours

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

packhum.org is down. Does anybody know anything about this?

packhum.org

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Reposted by Michael Weiss

Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Here are the criteria I use when reviewing Voynich decipherment articles, developed as part of teaching about the Voynich manuscript in linguistics classes. They are independent of any particular language, person, or approach, except that it's for solutions that claim there's underlying meaning

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

I believe he thinks it's an s-mobile form of the 'cut' root *temh1-, but the it would indeed be a lot more straightforward without the final laryngeal.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

The idea is that the laryngeal was deleted in the strong (o-grade) cases of the acrostatic paradigm by Saussure-Hirt and then the mm would be simplified. The original oblique *stemh1mn- would have given PIr. *stammn- and the geminate could have been leveled after the single m of the strong stem.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Maybe a *stmh1- would do the trick though where they extracted such a stem isn't obvious. Or a regularized PK *stemh1mn gave stamaman by Joseph's rule?

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

S. Neri reconstruct *stomh1mn̥ 'aperture' > *stommn > stomn > στόμα. Av. staman- can be from a case with a ø-grade suffix e.g. inst. *stomneh1 > stamnā, or it could an e-grade expected in an acrostatic. Hitt. istaman- 'ear' is straightforward. The Celtic forms are difficult.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

sūris is 'cheese'. pelė is 'mouse'. Fr. souris is from Lat. sorex 'shrew'. Lithuanian sūris is cognate with Engl. sour and pelė is etymologically 'gray'.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

In Central and Southeastern Middle French intervocalic r > z and this made it into Stand. Fr. in chaise 'chair' < chaiere < cathedra. It was heard in Paris in the 15th c. where Erasmus noted "the little women" of Paris say Masia for Maria and ma mese for ma mere. See Pope From Latin to French 157-8.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

The normal greeting in Plautus is salve. ave only shows up in Cic. Catullus and Sallust. So all in all, the Phoenician borrowing seems more likely to me.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

(2) Quintilian 1.6.21 says a pedant pronounced avē when the norm is havĕ (3) as Danny mentioned, we have havo in Plaut. as a sg. and pl. which would match Phoen. form (4) Though we do find forms like avete according to the TLL almost all grammarians note that it cannot properly be declined.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

@dannybate.bsky.social IMO Phoen. origin is likely. (1) aveo means 'be eager'. ipv. 'be eager!' seems an odd greeting. (2) we have 11 instance of (h)ave in republican inscriptions. 6 have h. That's a high number for erroneous aspiration. The TLL is wrong in saying the oldest have ave.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

In τόλμα we have an example of the Saussure-Hirt phenomenon (loss of laryngeal in the environment oRHC, if you believe in that as I do). In τέλος wouldn't expect a trace before a vowel. But in any case, I'm not sure about the connection with *telh2-.

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Michael Weiss @mweissohcgl.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Of course, τῆλε definitely does come from *kwelh1- and is there as we expect in Mycenaean as MN qe-re-qo-ta-o /kwēle-kwhontā-/ ‘who smites from afar’ and with a labial reflext in Boeot. Πειλεμαχω (IG 7.2420) = Τηλέμαχος, Att.-Ion. τηλοῦ ‘far from’, ‘long ago’ vs.

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