-
Articles (6): Iranian languages
We finally get to dive into the world of split ergativity, where past-tense transitive verbs point to the agent of the action (which is not always the subject). This is a common feature among the Indo-Iranian languages. However, Persian and several other Iranian languages have normalized the subject-verb relationship familiar to western mIE languages. A…
-
Articles (5): Einzelkind languages
Isolate languages are those that have no living relative. A good example is Zuni, a native American language spoken in New Mexico. It has no sister languages. Albanian, Greek, and Armenian are often said to be isolate languages. In terms of an immediate family, this is true. However, they have many living relatives in their…