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Sāmapriyavasuḣ

@avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social

1.7K followers 590 following 1.5K posts

Interested in descriptive, historical & contact linguistics. I like Caucasian and Indo-Iranic languages, and dabble (in decreasing order of oftenity) in the languages of the Pacific Northwest, the Himalayas and along the Nile. rẓ́w fan.

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 10h

*was* — she passed away in 2016 it looks like

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 10h

She has a page on North Frisian Wiki: frr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_H...

Karen Heide Ebert – Wikipedia

frr.wikipedia.org

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 10h

... the 70’s & 80’s on Fering by one “Ebert, Karen H.” and I was like, wait, that name sounds familar??

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 10h

Karen Ebert, who I always knew for her work on Chamling (and other Kiranti languages of the central Himalayas) is a native-speaker of Fering (close sister of Öömrang) North Frisian!!

I accidentally found this out today on a flight because some Frisian stuff I was reading referenced some work in ...

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Reposted by Sāmapriyavasuḣ

Its ruaa @itsmeio.bsky.social · 13h

IF YOU CARE PLEASE SHARE.

Gaza today is emerging from a war that has exhausted it with no jobs, no homes, and no sources of livelihood. We have lost almost everything, and prices have risen to unprecedented levels.

At such a time, please do not leave us alone to face the cold and hunger.

Its ruaa @itsmeio.bsky.social · Sep 6

We are in urgent need of protection and a safe place to live. We’re raising support to help us escape danger and rebuild our lives in safety. Every contribution, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to security and hope. 💛
kindly give :
#BringRuaaHome #SafetyForRuaa #HumanitarianAid

Project Bring Ruaa and Her Family to Safety

I'm helping my friend, Ruaa Naji, raise funds to help her family survive.

chuffed.org

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 13h

Wow! That explains it.

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 13h

Looks like it is a conflation of two roots in English.
bsky.app/profile/vonp...

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 19h

huh😮

The current form with t- /t/ rather than etymologically-expected th- /θ/ arose in Middle English under the influence of the etymologically-unrelated verbs tighten and tight, which come from a different Proto-Indo-European root (starting with *d- and thus regularly having t-).

Etymology

Synchronically equivalent to tight +‎ -en, but actually derived from Middle English tighten, from Old English tyhtan, thus originally unrelated to tight (Old English *þiht).

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *tuhtijan (“to tow, pull, discipline”), from Proto-Germanic *tuhtiz (“pulling, discipline”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to lead, draw”), equivalent to tyht +‎ -an. Cognate with Old High German zuhten (“to raise, bring up”).

Pronunciation

IPA: /ˈtyx.tɑn/, [ˈtyç.tɑn]

Verb

tyhtan
1. to draw, stretch, pull
2. (transitive) to invite, incite, instigate, provoke; to talk over, discuss, persuade, solicit, urge; to attract, lead astray, seduce
2.1. taking accusative object followed by preposition on or tō and its object, towards something
2.2. preceding a dependent clause, the condition being urged
3. to suggest, bring to mind; to teach, train
4. to accuse

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 20h

High German dicht, Öömrang Frisian sacht, but English tight and not thight?

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 4d

Hansel & Gretel in Öömrang

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 4d

The Grimm tales in Öömrang & Fering Insular North Frisian.

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 7d

BlueSky, we got gray sky in North Frisia. Here’s the island church of Oomram — „sark“ if you will — under it.

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 8d

Anglo-Frisian gin

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 10d

Stay in Poznań over. Glad to meet several amazing colleagues (including Ronalld Kim & Henrik Liljegren!!) and hearing about lots of interesting research being done.

(Pic by Sakura Ishikawa of the title of my talk on Shina(ic) & Gawri historical accentology.)

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 13d

The Narts immigrated from the Caucasus to Poland. Their lair.

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 16d

... though problematic cases like ávi- ‘sheep’ and áhi- ‘snake’ do famously exist.

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 16d

It doesn’t look like there is much consensus on the history of that word. Mayrhofer gives several options. I can sort of sea how ‘sea’ may change to ‘wilderness, desert’, but still feels not strongly supported enough. Skt. marú- is difficult to derive from *mor-u- because of Bruggmann’s Law, ...

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Reposted by Sāmapriyavasuḣ

Gasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 18d

is also more difficult for the models.

For methodology on how to analyze internal layers in tone learning, see the paper with the amazing Kai Schenck:

arxiv.org/abs/2509.17859

Unsupervised Learning and Representation of Mandarin Tonal Categories by a Generative CNN

This paper outlines the methodology for modeling tonal learning in fully unsupervised models of human language acquisition. Tonal patterns are among the computationally most complex learning objective...

arxiv.org

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

მადლობა

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

Hah, I had no idea!! Is the author a Japanese mathematician?

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

I kind of desperately want to take this survey, but I am not a native-speaker of English and don’t want to mess up their research. :(

Kirby Conrod @kirbyconrod.bsky.social · 19d

Please boost! #linguistics student here at Swarthmore is running a survey for English speakers (who don't know Mandarin / any other tone languages) about how we learn tones. Take a few minutes to help out with this student research!
swarthmore.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Online Survey Software | Qualtrics Survey Solutions

Qualtrics sophisticated online survey software solutions make creating online surveys easy. Learn more about Research Suite and get a free account today.

swarthmore.az1.qualtrics.com

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

Is this open to statisticians in North America?

Reposted by Sāmapriyavasuḣ

Robin Ryder @robinryder.bsky.social · 19d

I'm super excited to announce that ISBA @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has voted to start a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences! It will be a great way to further collaborations with many disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

bss-isba.github.io

Home - BSS-ISBA

bss-isba.github.io

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

More seriously, it is interesting that English speakers prefer to not use their BUT vowel when pronouncing foreign words. To my ears, the “short a” of Indian languages is much closer to that than to any other English vowel.

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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

The human ideal is to call the language Canarese like the English prioneers decided and the country yändátaʼ /çäˈⁿdäːtäʔ/ as in the original Huron-Wendat.

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 19d

I say Canarese. :)

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