STEDT

To facilitate the use of the STEDT Database and to gather feedback on the web interface, an informal workshop, focused on "hands-on" practice with the database, will be offered at ICSTLL 45 in Singapore on October 25, 2012.

The database, one of the tools used in the production of the Sino-Tibetan Dictionary and Thesaurus, has now been online via a web interface for nearly a year (http://stedt.berkeley.edu/search). In that time, the database has grown and the software matured, but much remains to be done.

The STEDT Simple Search interface has now been updated to support searches on the form of an etymon or reflex. Check it out!

The STEDT database now contains 5,925 lexical items from the Phula languages, courtesy of Jamin Pelkey!

When encountering unexplained variation in a particular language or subgroup, reconstructed PTB allofams (word families) are a vital tool for determining whether the origin of that variation can be located as far back as PTB.

The Ao languages of Nagaland (Mongsen & Chungli), for example, show intra- and inter-lingual variants of 'seven(ty)' that cannot be explained by regular sound change from a single Proto-Ao form. As it turns out, this variation can be understood as the preservation of two allofams of PTB *s-ni-s SEVEN:

45th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 26 - 28 October 2012

20 Feb 2012: First Circular and Call for Papers

15 Apr 2012: Second Circular and Call for Papers

Conference website

The STEDT Simple Search interface has now been updated to support searches within a particular language group. Check it out!

Thanks again to the generosity of Alexis Michaud, the STEDT database now contains 1,534 lexical items from Xiangjiao Laze.

A correspondent asks:

Why is it that some scholars ... consider Chinese and Tibetan part of the same linguistic family even though Chinese is tonal and Tibetan non-tonal; Chinese is written using Chinese characters and Tibetan is written with a Sanskritic alphabet; Chinese uses sentence structures similar to English and Tibetan uses sentence structures similar to Sanskritic languages; and Chinese uses sentence conjugation instead of verb conjugation and Tibetan uses verb conjugation similar to that of the other Sanskritic languages?

Thanks to the generosity of Alexis Michaud, the STEDT database now contains 2,033 lexical items from Yongning Na.