Review of Justin Watkins (2013): Dictionary of WA (2 vols) With Translations into English, Burmese and Chinese.

This handsome two volume dictionary is the culmination of a more-than-decade long project (see: www.humancomp.org/wadict/), often involving a substantial team of collaborators (named in the Acknowledgements xv-xvi), and supported by funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and support by the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Additionally approval was obtained from officials of the United Wa State Party at Pang Kham

The Khom script of the Kommodam Rebellion

This article describes a previously undescribed script from Laos. The script was used by a political leader as part of his resistance effort against the colonial French, used to symbolize his power more than to communicate factual content. The script is unique in the way it has separate symbols for syllable onsets and codas

Review of Peter K. Norquest, A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (Leiden/Boston, Brill, ISBN 978-9004-30052-1 (E-Book)), 2016

This recent addition to the Brill “The Languages of Asia” series, although outwardly rather arcane, makes an important contribution to the wider field of SEAsian linguistic history that bridges mainland and insular languages at a cross-roads of multiple language families (and especially relates to the Kra-Dai language family). The book is derived essentially unchanged from Norquest’s 2007 University of Arizona PhD dissertation, and I congratulate Brill for rendering it into print - this will ensure it now begins to appear up in academic libraries and online databases worldwide. The e-book edition was provided for this review, but for those who prefer the tactile there is a handsome hardback available. The book is accompanied also by a separate PDF index of “Hlai Language Data and Proto-Hlai Reconstructions” which runs to 192 pages (regrettably the entries are not numbered but there are over 1,000) and this constitutes a fundamental resource for Kra-Dai historical studies that has previously been difficult to access

A lexicostatistical study of the Khasian languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and War

This paper presents the results of lexicostatistical, glottochronological, and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of a 200 word data set for Standard Khasi, Lyngngam, Pnar and War. Very few works have appeared on the subject of the internal classification of the Khasian branch of Austroasiatic, leaving the existing reference literature disappointingly incomplete. The present analysis supports both the strong identity of Khasian as a unitary branch, with an internally nested branching structure that fits neatly with known historical, geographical and linguistic facts. Additionally, lexically based dating methods suggest that the internal diversification of Khasian began roughly between 1500 and 2000 years ago.Copyright Information: Copyright for this paper vested in the authors. Released under Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Maternal Influenza Infection Causes Marked Behavioral and Pharmacological Changes in the Offspring

Maternal viral infection is known to increase the risk for schizophrenia and autism in the offspring. Using this observation in an animal model, we find that respiratory infection of pregnant mice (both BALB/c and C57BL/6 strains) with the human influenza virus yields offspring that display highly abnormal behavioral responses as adults. As in schizophrenia and autism, these offspring display deficits in prepulse inhibition (PPI) in the acoustic startle response. Compared with control mice, the infected mice also display striking responses to the acute administration of antipsychotic (clozapine and chlorpromazine) and psychomimetic (ketamine) drugs. Moreover, these mice are deficient in exploratory behavior in both open-field and novel-object tests, and they are deficient in social interaction. At least some of these behavioral changes likely are attributable to the maternal immune response itself. That is, maternal injection of the synthetic double-stranded RNA polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid causes a PPI deficit in the offspring in the absence of virus. Therefore, maternal viral infection has a profound effect on the behavior of adult offspring, probably via an effect of the maternal immune response on the fetus