docoflove1974

The world of Indo-European linguistics lost a friend last week. Prof. Mark R.V. Southern was a Visiting Professor at Middlebury College (Vermont), but was at the University of Texas for years. The man was a genius in Indo-European linguistics...a regular encyclopedia of knowledge about several different IE families, including Romance. He taught courses on PIE and Hittite. But he's most remembered for his absolute passion--in research, in teaching, in being a human being. When the Germanic Studies dept. at Texas decided not to give him tenure, based solely on the fact that he did not purely do 'Germanic linguistics', there were letters written, petitions signed, and demands made by professors and grad students in 10 different departments on our campus alone. But he found a temporary home in Middlebury, where his talents would be appreciated. He would teach anything to anyone...would go out of his way to make sure you understood the given topic, and would bend over backwards to give you references on topics far and wide. If you needed a resource for a topic, he'd give you 20-30 in a matter of an afternoon, all of which he would have read, critiqued, and memorized. He introduced me to a couple of theories of language change which were on the periphery, but which will be included in my dissertation...if not for him, I might not have known about them, let alone had anyone to discuss them with. He had a wickedly dry sense of humor (good Englishman that he was), and absolutely got great joy from teaching. But he got greater joy from his family. Just bring up the topic of his girls, and he lit up brighter than the North Star. He was one of my mentors. He was a colleague. He was my friend. Thanks, Mark...see ya on the other side, buddy. _____________________________________________________________________________________ MARK RODERICK VENDRELL SOUTHERN MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - Mark Southern, 45, Visiting Assistant Professor of German and Linguistics at Middlebury College, died Wednesday, March 15, 2006, at his home in Middlebury. Mark was known to friends and professional colleagues as a brilliant linguist and scholar whose far-ranging mastery of languages included Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hittite, Old Persian, Classical Armenian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Norse, Old English, Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Irish, Breton, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian and whose research and teaching interests spanned the fields of Linguistics, Classics, Literature, Near Eastern Studies, and Religion. Mark specialized in historical and Indo-European linguistics, language contact and sociolinguistics, Greek and Latin linguistics, the pre-Islamic Middle East, and Sanskrit. Mark seemed to have a hidden underground connection to a deep and natural wellspring of joy and intelligence, and his natural state was to be brimming over with ebullience and high spirits. This in combination with tremendous natural generosity, vast and living knowledge, and a keen sense of humor and sense of the ridiculous made him an almost physical source of light for those around him. Born in Cambridge, England in 1961, to Eric and Elda (Moore) Southern, Mark attended Eton as a prestigious King's Scholar and graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an Honors B.A. in Classics in 1983. From 1986 to 1989, he attended Harvard University as an Exchange Scholar in Linguistics. He earned his doctorate in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton in 1997, with a dissertation on "The Wandering S: The Problem of the s-Mobile in Germanic and Indo-European." Before coming to Middlebury College in 2003, Mark served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas, Austin; as Assistant Professor of German and Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin; as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University; and as a Teaching Fellow in Arts and Literature at Harvard University. While at the University of Texas, he held concurrent appointments at UT's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for Asian Studies and held concurrent memberships in the Foreign Language Education Program, the Department of Asian Studies, and the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. His passionate teaching style and intellectual dynamism brought him a devoted following among his students. At UT, he won the Jean Holloway Award for Excellence in Teaching, was selected as Fellow to the Wakonse-South Conference on College Teaching, nominated to the Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship, awarded the President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award, and selected for inclusion in Who's Who Among America's Teachers, 6th ed. Mark's Contagious Couplings: Yiddish shm- and the Contact Driven Transmission of Expressives appeared in 2005 (Greenwood Heinemann). His Sub-grammatical Survival: Indo-European Movable s and Its Regeneration in Germanic (Institute for the Study of Man) appeared in 1999. His History of the German Language is under consideration at Cambridge University Press. Mark published widely in scholarly journals and gave papers at numerous conferences. Mark is survived by his wife, Lauri London, and daughters Maya and Zara, ages 9 and 7; his father, Eric Southern of Cambridge, England; his sister, Jane Southern, of Bedford, England; and nieces Eleanor, Matilda, and Julia. Our world will be a little darker without him.

I was thinking that when listening to the various Scottish representations...I could understand them clearly, so I knew there was something wrong Seriously...it's a great start, but it does need stronger examples of lots of areas.

I find the Texas ones to be lacking...and the California ones only from the LA area! Gotta find a way to submit a recording to get NorCal represented! Otherwise...ugh...I could spend DAYS on this site...awesome!

And as the good half-breed-Italian that I am, I had roasted chicken and artichokes :giggle: I still had a black and tan beforehand, tho. Let us all be Irish for a day!

And with that ^^ in mind, I wish everyone a St. Paddy's Day...let the whole world be Irish! *cracks a Guinnesss*

And I can't exactly disagree with you. We have so little of Ligurian and Lepontic, I doubt we'll ever truly know. Dammit, Mr. Peabody...hurry up with that time machine!

They are all Altaic languages, yes...although people do question this, as it seems that the gulf between Turkish on the one hand and Japanese and Korean on the other is about as big as the Atlantic Ocean.

Also, just to post what Beekes says about Celtic:

According to Robert Beekes' Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (1995), Ligurian was probably IE, but is not certain. Venetic is definitely IE, and either considered to be part of the Italic group or on its own...perhaps the same is true for Ligurian. The exact quote of the whole thing (p. 26): I know that goes a little more than you originally asked for, but it just gives a bigger picture.

This does even enter the fact that the British Isles were constantly harrassed and raided by the Vikings...I'm sure there's some of that showing up in the blood work!

Needs more Capricorn around here lol Happy Birthday, PP...enjoy your day!

As far as I know (and I can definitely be wrong on this), the language of the Ligurians was indeed a form of Leptonic...but I don't know that we have much of anything in the way of evidence. I'm also curious about this discussion...with Romance and Celtic being closely related in the IE tree, I definitely want to know more!

They're kinda one and the same...in fact, I can't tell the difference, esp. since Johnny Marr usually played on Morrissey's solo tracks. Go fig. If we go 80s synth-pop or alternative/progressive/modern rock (depending on what it was called in your area), then I would suggest any of the following: The Cure New Order Joy Division The Smiths Morrissey The Clash (a bit of punk never hurt anyone, right?) Depeche Mode (before Violator) Erasure (less depressing, but definitely of the era...Chorus is a fav CD) And there are so many others...and I'm blanking...but that's a starter list.

Very true...there could be much worse alternatives!

Dude, they're stoned!!! Pass the dutchie on the left-hand side...

Makes sense...thanks for the info, guys!

In reading the Byzantium Empire thread, you guys keep using the term 'Romanion' for that period, too. At least, I think...I've never heard that before. What exactly does it refer to? Thanks!

I guess this is the Roman version of the Amazon women? Who knows...either way, it's funny.

Now what fun is that...honestly! These women were clearly not Italian lol

Fine Young Cannibals were known as that in the US; "English Beat" I believe was the US name for the UK group "The Beat. And I agree with "She Drives Me Crazy"...always gets me bebop'ing in my seat.

A thought just sparked in my head: marscapone cheese. For those not familiar with it, it's a soft Italian 'cheese' with the consistency of butter, and tastes damn close to it. Personally, I love spreading it on bagels (never was much of a cream cheese fan) and putting it in certain pasta dishes to achieve a creamy sauce. It's also a cows' milk cheese. Perhaps there was something similar in Greek gastronomy, and so they could make the leap? Just a thought...now back to my tiramis

Na, I can have a callow appreciation of words from time to time without taking up formal study! You weren't gonna fall for that one, huh?

I love expanding my vocabulary. Heh, that is a good word. Lots of potential. Cute, guys...next thing you guys will say, I guess, is that you want to be linguists, too? ^_^

Same thing that I was talking about above: different gender for mass/collective nouns. At least, that's on the surface...like I said, I desperately want to go back on my findings and comments and revise some things. They're not so much Latinisms as differences in dialect, although [is] for 'him' is kinda interesting. I know Sardinian continues to use forms of ipse/ipsa for pronouns and articles, and it would make sense that some Italian dialects would do the same. 'Fradre' doesn't shock me at all, nor 'a logh'. The extremely little of the Lombardese dialect that I know from my family is pretty much limited to the names of the fingers: didin 'little finger'; spozin 'marriage/spouse finger' > 'ring finger'; did