In Scandinavian folklore, there is a story about a lethal pig, the Gloso (‘glowing sow’), which kills lonely hikers on their way home at Christmas Eve. The pig is black with glowing, red eyes, and its back is a sharp saw: running between humans’ legs, the

I have decided to move the updating of this blog to even weekends instead of Thursdays. Thursday is very often an extremely busy day, with no time left to update or complete blogposts for publication. In this blogpost I will continue the previous topic o

I was asked by my friend and colleague Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania) to come up with my 'safe list' of loans from and into Tocharian. This is a very interesting and challenging topic, which I will continue working upon in a couple of coming pos

I am currently travelling, so this blogpost will only very briefly discuss the topic of my current research in grammar reconstruction: the role of marking hierarchies in language change. The notion of marking hierarchies has it roots in the markedness the

This blogpost will give an overview of my popular lecture earlier this week on the role of patterns in syntax, grammar and literature for the deciphering of ancient languages (link to the lecture below, in Swedish). My own experience on ancient language

This week's blogpost will continue the thread about grammatical reconstruction, with some thoughts on lineage versus areality in grammar change.  In general, change of grammar is supposedly cyclic (or spiralic according to some researchers): over ti

The current post is about something that I am involved in right now: the reconstruction of grammar. In comparative linguistics, grammar can be reconstructed to a proto-language on the basis of the forms and functions in daughter languages. For instance, i

Currently, at least if you are in the northern hemisphere, the darkest time of the year is approaching. This is also when we celebrate one of our most awaited festivities, which in English goes by the name Christmas. How old is this custom? It is highly l

This post is related to what I am currently busy with: preparing and introductory course on Tocharian. There is a long-debated dilemma in Tocharian studies, which concern the position of Tocharian within the Indo-European language tree. Due to its status

I have not shared anything in a month, since I have been on a 'road-trip', first to Arizona for the CES conference, and then to Beijing and Changsha (Hunan Province) for a lecture series on historical and evolutionary linguistics.In Arizona, we (with Hara