"Speakers of German enjoy forming compounds and the German language is infamous for long words like 'Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz". Even though compound formation is an easy task for speakers, the linguistic analysis of the semantic relations of the stems of a compound is a complex task. This talk will discuss possibilities of how we can use compound analysis for a deeper understanding of cultural change, discuss data-driven methods, and present empirical evidence from large German newspaper corpora. The talk will present: 1. a quick overview of the different word formation processes in German, 2. different heuristics for the semantic analysis of compounds, 3. analysis of distributional patterns of stems in large corpora, and 4. possibilities of a data-driven identification of the semantic relations between the stems."
When University of Kentucky student Erica Mattingly enrolled in one of Andrew M. Byrd’s linguistics courses, she had no idea she would be rewriting history — or at least re-speaking it.
Proto-Indo-European, which Dr Byrd studies, is the prehistoric ancestor of hundreds of languages, including English, Spanish, Greek, Farsi, Armenian, and more.
Dr. Barrett will talk about Maya understandings of the dead, funerary practices, and ways of communicating with the ancestors, and then discuss the emergence of rock and hip hop music performed in Mayan languages and the ways they emphasize the ancestors in their music.
El Dr. Barrett explicará como los Mayas se comunican con sus ancestros, las prácticas funerarias que los mayas tienen y sus pensamientos en cuando a los muertos. También hablará sobre como los ancestros tienen un rol en la inspiración de la música Maya y como el rock y hip hop ha influenciado a esta cultura.
Just recently, the Linguistics Program's Andrew Byrd was interviewed by the BBC's Newsdayradio series. The interview served to highlight Byrd's work studying the "Proto-Indo-European" language which dates back thousands of years. In the interview, Byrd gives listeners a glimpse of the language's history and a chance to hear the language given breath.
A special thanks to the BBC World Service and The World Today as well as the College of Arts & Sciences and the Linguistics Program for making this podcast possible.
