Category Archives: History

Book Review — The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

Author: David W. Anthony Publisher: Princeton University Press My first love in linguistics is probably the historical variety.  But no one will pay me money to do that so I do all this computational stuff instead.  Still, historical linguistics and … Continue reading

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A Big-Ass Chart of Indo-European Languages

Other people make and eat massive amounts of food over the Thanksgiving weekend. I did that, too, but I also made a chart. A big-ass chart. There are many ways to chart a language family. You can do the traditional … Continue reading

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DNA Test Reveals White Girl Is White

Previously, I’d done some analysis on the results of the DNA test I’d completed recently. That can be found here: (Background | Results). My fiancée asked if I could do a write-up about her results too, so I did, and … Continue reading

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Letting My Spit Do the Talking, part II

Previously on Hapax Legomenon… I ordered a test from 23andMe.com, spit in a tube and sent it back. Six weeks later, I have results in my browser. I had made some educated guesses about what I might find. We’ll see … Continue reading

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Letting My Spit Do the Talking

My recorded family history doesn’t go back more than four or five generations. For thousands of years, Indians didn’t really keep records on genealogy unless you were a king. My family were priests, so most records were transmitted orally… until … Continue reading

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