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Day: December 17, 2016
Why are OSV order languages so rare?
Brian Collins says: Those are the type of questions only a few people like Bob Dixon are willing to touch with a 17ft pole. Only Dixon, may his soul be blackened (or indeed blacklisted)? Surely not. Surely we haven’t run out of functionalists in Australia! Here’s a functionalist take, though it will have some holes […]
What is the relationship between Greek nationalism and the Greek Orthodox Church?
Before the Greek War of Independence: the Orthodox Church was hostile to nationalism. Nationalism was this newfangled, godless French thing that set the people against their god-appointed ruler. The Patriarchate was particularly outspoken against it, and described it as a heresy. That’s nationalism. Yes, you can say the Orthodox church helped preserve a notion of […]
How have English punctuation conventions changed over the centuries?
David Crystal’s recent book Making a Point has a rundown of the changes and a very clear framework for discussing them. I’m not going to do it justice, especially because I don’t remember every bit of it. But: There has been a tussle in the history of English punctuation from the invention of printing on, […]