Sidwell introduces the complexities of classification and conflicting views ofscholars who have attempted it, especially the relationship holding betweenvarious Austroasiatic branches and the chronology and extent of diversity within Austroasiatic, and ways to remedy those problems. Logan as the first recognition of Austroasiatic who later posited a Mon-Annam formation, which apart from a fewodd inclusions contained the entire Austroasiatic phylum as we know it today.
Unresolved areas include: (a)a lack of proto-Austroasiatic reconstruction, limiting what we know aboutretention or innovation, (b) a lack of consensus about how Austroasiatic shouldbe split between Munda and other languages, (c) variation within branches, (d)lack of adequate resources, survey works, compilations, etc. Sidwell credits Logan with recognizing what came to be known as the conservativenature of Munda.
There are four special courses which do not specifically belong to any of the other programmes: Sumerian (Jagersma), Dutch for beginners (Pronk-Tiethoff), History of Linguistics (de Jonge, Lubotsky, Verhagen), and Lexicostatistical Methods in Historical Linguistics (Starostin).
The problem of automatic identification of cognates arises in language reconstruction and bitext-related tasks.
The evidence of cognation may come from various information sources, such as phonetic similarity, semantic similarity, and recurrent sound correspondences.
Level Students need to be familiar with basic linguistic terminology, but previous knowledge of Sumerian or the cuneiform script is not required.
Saskia Pronk-Tiethoff (Leiden) Course outline During this course, students will learn the basics of the Dutch language, including vocabulary, spelling and grammar.
Sumerian is a language isolate and its position in a remote corner of the Near East shows it to be a last remnant of the languages that preceded the arrival of Semitic languages in the area.
Course outline The first day we will look at the basic principles of the Sumerian script and spelling, and what they tell us and do not tell us about the Sumerian language and its pronunciation.It is unclear how I can define my new approach in terms intelligible to an academic linguist, though there is no reason why an academic linguist should not be able to understand what I have done.It is much more difficult for the average reader to understand the ideas current in academic linguistics.Any lack of coherence in human genetics reflects their misguided but honest attempts to reconcile genetic results with obsolete linguistic theory promoted by historical linguistics.The lack of coherence in historical linguistics reflects their addiction to a form of civil war in which each individual is preoccupied with defending his own, usually novel, ideas.The emphasis of the course will be on communicating in Dutch in everyday situations.