Lexical diffusion — In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items. For example, in English, /uː/ has… … Wikipedia
Mass lexical comparison — or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among languages in the remote past, which he considered unsuitable for the mainstream comparative method, or… … Wikipedia
WRITING — Written history in Mesopotamia began in the so called Early Dynastic period III (c. 2600–2350 B.C.). At this time, the country was divided into a number of individual cities with their surrounding territories. The first inscriptions were… … Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia
Urra=hubullu — The Urra=hubullu ( ur5 ra=ḫubullu , or ḪAR ra=ḫubullu ) is a major Babylonian glossary or encyclopedia It consists of Sumerian and Akkadian lexical lists ordered by topic. The canonical version extends to 24 tablets. The conventional title is the … Wikipedia
South American Indian languages — Introduction group of languages that once covered and today still partially cover all of South America, the Antilles, and Central America to the south of a line from the Gulf of Honduras to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Estimates of… … Universalium
CRAFTS — Professional specialization was a result of urbanization, which began in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium B.C. Archaic lexical lists record the terms for professions, which include those of craftworkers. They were attached to the “great… … Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia
SCRIBES — Since the invention of writingin the late fourth millennium B.C., scribes were instrumental in the development of the administrativestructures that made Mesopotamian citieseconomically competitive. Literate bureaucrats became a mainstay of… … Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia
EBLA — EBLA, archaeological site in northern Syria, present day Tell Mardikh, located 35 mi. (60 km.) south of Aleppo and excavated by an Italian team of archaeologists starting in 1964. In the 1970s thousands of cuneiform texts dated to the second half … Encyclopedia of Judaism
Pāṇini — For other uses, see Panini (disambiguation). Pāṇini (Sanskrit: पाणिनि, IPA: [pɑːɳin̪i]; a patronymic meaning descendant of Paṇi ) was an ancient Indian Sanskrit grammarian from Pushkalavati, Gandhara (fl. 4th century BC[1] … Wikipedia
URBANIZATION — During the height of the Uruk period (c. 3400–3200 B.C.), so called after the old city of Uruk, southern Mesopotamia had close economic links to northern and eastern neighboring regions. Sites in southern Anatolia, northwest Syria, and eastern … Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia