Sister language

Abstract: Laz, a sister language of Georgian spoken on the southeastem coast of the Black Sea, is the only member of the South Caucasian family which is spoken primarily in Turkey Due to the socio-political circumstances all Speakers of Laz living in Turkey are bilingual and use Laz primarily in private communication Using these observations as a starting point, the paper looks at the question of whether Laz is an endangered language In order to clarify the sociolinguistic Situation of Laz in Turkey, the different levels involved in the process of gradual language loss (language-extemal factors, speech behaviour and structural consequences within the language system) are dealt with in detail To determine which data should be taken as basis for the documentation of the language, the paper also discusses linguistic criteria for differentiating between fully competent Speakers of Laz and Speakers who show signs of language attrition

Abstract: In this paper, I propose a hypothesis reconciling Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in the Japanese language, explaining the spread of the Japanic languages through farming dispersal. To this end, I identify the original speech community of the Transeurasian language family as the Neolithic Xinglongwa culture situated in the West Liao River Basin in the sixth millennium BC. I argue that the separation of the Japanic branch from the other Transeurasian languages and its spread to the Japanese Islands can be understood as occurring in connection with the dispersal of millet agriculture and its subsequent integration with rice agriculture. I further suggest that a prehistorical layer of borrowings related to rice agriculture entered Japanic from a sister language of proto-Austronesian, at a time when both language families were still situated in the Shandong-Liaodong interaction sphere.

Abstract: Yonaguni Ryukyuan, Dunan munui in the vernacular, is spoken on Yonaguni Island (Dunan ccima), which belongs to the Yaeyama district of the Okinawa prefecture, Japan. The island is the westernmost one in Japan and is located halfway between Taiwan and Iriomote Island. The Dunan language belongs to the Macro-Yaeyama subgroup of Southern Ryukyuan, and it is thus a sister language of Yaeyama Ryukyuan. All Dunan speakers are in their mid-fifties or older, and all of them are bilingual in both Standard Japanese and Dunan, while younger generations are usually monolingual in Japanese. The total number of Dunan speakers can be roughly estimated to be around 400.

Abstract: One group of signs in French Sign Language (LSF) is described in the Dictionnaire des sourds-muets at the end of the 18th century as having in common the form of a cross, placed in front of the face. All of these signs have negative connotations. We identify the etymon of the signs as an emblematic gesture of hostility used by hearing people since the 15th century. Inherited from the hearing milieu, the gesture evolved into an important lexical family in use by the deaf in both LSF and its sister language, American Sign Language (ASL). At each step in the gesture’s evolution, two conceptual mechanisms explain changes in both form and meaning: economy of articulation and metaphorical abstraction. We show that latent meanings have been invested in the signs’ handshapes, placements, and movements, all of which were inherited from gestures of the hearing world.