For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural change. Here we sequence the genomes of 137 ancient humans (about 1× average coverage), covering a ...period of 4,000 years, to understand the population history of the Eurasian steppes after the Bronze Age migrations. We find that the genetics of the Scythian groups that dominated the Eurasian steppes throughout the Iron Age were highly structured, with diverse origins comprising Late Bronze Age herders, European farmers and southern Siberian hunter-gatherers. Later, Scythians admixed with the eastern steppe nomads who formed the Xiongnu confederations, and moved westward in about the second or third century BC, forming the Hun traditions in the fourth-fifth century AD, and carrying with them plague that was basal to the Justinian plague. These nomads were further admixed with East Asian groups during several short-term khanates in the Medieval period. These historical events transformed the Eurasian steppes from being inhabited by Indo-European speakers of largely West Eurasian ancestry to the mostly Turkic-speaking groups of the present day, who are primarily of East Asian ancestry.
The paper presents an overview of Fula and Wolof numeral systems. Fula is represented by six major lects, for which cardinal, ordinal, distributive, fraction, and human forms of numerals are ...analyzed. Wolof is the closest relative of Fula, and for this language cardinal and ordinal numeral systems are also analyzed. Apart from the numerals themselves, the syntax of the noun phrase which contains a numeral is analyzed for each language. The language contacts and borrowings are also included in the analysis.
Tjhauba, spoken in northwestern Botswana, is a regional variety of the Bantu language Kgalagadi. Tjhauba exhibits a number of striking linguistic differences with respect to other, previously ...described Kgalagadi varieties, some the result of language-internal changes, but mostly due to contact with different surrounding Khoisan and Bantu languages. Making use of newly collected field data, this paper shows that Tjhauba has an extensive inventory of click phonemes, contrasting different click accompaniments and, in the speech of elderly speakers, also different click types. Tracing the sources of Tjhauba click words shows that these originate in different Khoisan languages, but also in the Bantu click language Yeyi. Semantically, click words, but also loanwords that do not contain clicks, cluster in the domain of flora and fauna, particularly species found in or close to water. These linguistic findings also shed light on the history of Tjhauba speakers. The adoption of a large number of click phonemes suggests intensive language contact, as still evidenced by ongoing Tjhauba/Khwe bilingualism. A number of the likely source languages for Tjhauba click words are no longer spoken in the area, suggesting contact situations that are no longer ongoing. Furthermore, clicks occur in loanwords, but unlike in neighbouring Bantu click languages, there is no evidence that clicks were also extended to inherited Tjhauba words. This suggests that the sound symbolic or identity marking functions of clicks as posited for other Bantu click languages do not play a role in Tjhauba.
This study investigates Amis language use and Amis-Chinese code-mixing using naturally occurring data and inferential statistics. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant ...difference between age and language use. The younger an Amis person is, the less Amis he or she speaks. This shift becomes apparent from the birth cohort of 1961 to 1970, and their language ability in Amis and their frequency of speaking Amis sharply deteriorates as age decreases. Among all types of code-mixing defined by Muysken (2000), insertion is the most common among Amis-Chinese bilinguals, irrespective of their age or generation. This is typical for two typologically different languages as Amis and Chinese. The insertion of Chinese into Amis structure is more prevalent than inserting Amis into Chinese structure, and a significant difference is found between age and preferred structure. The most typical elements used in noun phrases referring to things, followed by name, time, and kinship.
Cette étude analyse les erreurs lexicales dans la production écrite de lycéens maltais étudiant le français L2 aux niveaux B1 et B2, en se focalisant sur les erreurs attribuables à l’influence de la ...L1, qui, à Malte, comprend le maltais, l’anglais et l’italien. Des réflexions sont faites sur la difficulté d’admettre une idéologie translinguistique, tolérante de l’appui fourni par la L1 dans l’écriture en L2, dans le contexte d’un examen à un niveau avancé, avec ses normes de correction linguistique. Un corpus de copies d’examen aux niveaux Avancé et Intermédiaire est fouillé pour les possibilités de phénomènes de transfert, catégorisés en cinq types, émanant de difficultés orthographiques, de choix de mots, ou sémantiques, ces dernières provoquant l’utilisation des faux-amis. Les résultats sont comparés aux conclusions d’études faites dans les cadres maltais et international. La fréquence des contacts linguistiques dans le corpus est probablement attribuable tant à l’alternance codique, comportement omniprésent à Malte, qu’à la nature même de la rédaction en L2, activité forcément bilingue. Des calculs statistiques permettent des comparaisons des fréquences de contact aux niveaux Avancé et Intermédiaire, entre les copies mieux notées et les moins bien notées, comme entre les tâches plus exigeantes et les tâches plus simples.
Nous pouvons faire de “sightseeing” ensemble: language contact on the lexical level in Maltese Sixth Form learners’ writing in French L2
. This study analyses lexical errors in French L2 writing tasks carried out by Maltese students studying French at B1 and B2 level, focusing on errors attributable to L1 influence, including, in the Maltese context, transfer from Maltese, English and even Italian. Reflections are made concerning the difficulty to adhere to a translingual ideology, tolerant of L1 support in L2 writing, in an advanced language examination setting with its norms and demands of accuracy. A corpus of Intermediate and Advanced Level examination scripts is searched for occurrences of possible transfer phenomena, which are categorized into five different types, stemming from orthographic uncertainty, knowledge gaps on the level of word choice, and difficulties regarding meaning, instigating a tendency to resort to false friends. Results are compared with findings in the local and international literature. The frequency of language contact phenomena is probably attributable both to the ever-present code-switching behaviour in the Maltese bilingual context, as well as to the nature of L2 writing, in itself a bilingual activity. Basic statistical calculations allow comparisons and interpretations of frequencies of contact between the Advanced and Intermediate sub-corpora, between higher and lower proficiency levels, as well as between more and less demanding tasks.
Anglicisms in the Albanian language is a domain not much and sufficiently frequented by Albanian linguists; false anglicisms or Pseudo-anglicisms are much less. Therefore, the focus of this paper is ...primarily the identification of Anglicisms and Pseudo-anglicisms in the Albanian language, how we distinguish and provide the ground for drawing the line between these two different but interconnected categories, and then introducing and analyzing several examples of Pseudo-anglicisms in Albanian. Transformations of English loans or the native words (in terms of morphological, semantic, orthographic, phonetic, etc., features) or the coinage of new words in the Albanian language under the influence of English language (the resemblance to English being the only connection to English language) are processes that produce the so-called ‘false loans’ or ‘Pseudo-anglicisms’. Pseudo-anglicisms in Albanian can not be studied separately from other European languages as they share most of their features with Pseudo-anglicisms in French, Italian, Spanish, German, etc.
The present paper gives a description of the forms and functions of the imperfect in Resian, a Slovene-based micro-language spoken in northern Italy, which has been in a situation of language contact ...with Romance varieties for centuries. The comparison between the imperfects found in the oldest documents (eighteenth and nineteenth century) and those used in modern Resian shows a significant shift of its functions. The imperfect, in fact, has lost its original aspect-temporal values, now expressing mainly counterfactuality and the future in the past. Our analysis includes a discussion on the possible role of foreign influence in these developments.
PDF
