An etymology for Galiyao

Argues for an alternate etymology for the name Galiyao, referring to Pantar Island, originating in the term Gale Awa, from the Western Pantar language

Synonym Discovery with Etymology-based Word Embeddings

We propose a novel approach to learn word embeddings based on an extended version of the distributional hypothesis. Our model derives word embedding vectors using the etymological composition of words, rather than the context in which they appear. It has the strength of not requiring a large text corpus, but instead it requires reliable access to etymological roots of words, making it specially fit for languages with logographic writing systems. The model consists on three steps: (1) building an etymological graph, which is a bipartite network of words and etymological roots, (2) obtaining the biadjacency matrix of the etymological graph and reducing its dimensionality, (3) using columns/rows of the resulting matrices as embedding vectors. We test our model in the Chinese and Sino-Korean vocabularies. Our graphs are formed by a set of 117,000 Chinese words, and a set of 135,000 Sino-Korean words. In both cases we show that our model performs well in the task of synonym discovery.Comment: 6 pages, IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2017

Long Trails of Etymology

Sometimes, though we scarcely ever notice it, words give clear evidence of where they came from: arrive makes it obvious that Frenchmen reached the river in this way, while Greek helps one to see that harmony came from making a joint, making things fit together. See if you can name the words whos history is briefly summariezed in each of these cases. Get half of them right and you deserve a medal (originally a metal coin)

On the Etymology of <i>Adel</i>

A light-hearted tour of the historiography of the etymology of Adel, a parish in North Leeds, resisting the twentieth-century concensus of Old English adela (‘filth, dirt, dirty place; foul filth; bilge-water’ and possibly even ‘sewer, privy’) in favour of *Eada-lēah ('Eada's lea')

Answers and Solutiions

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue

The loss of *g before *m in Proto-Slavic

This paper proposes a new sound rule for Proto-Slavic, according to which *g (from PIE *g, *gw, *gh, and *gwh) was lost before *m. This development was posterior to Winter’s law and the merger of voiced and aspirated stop in Slavic. The operation of the rule is illustrated by new etymologies of four Slavic words: *ama, *jama ‘hole, pit’, *těmę ‘sinciput’, *mąžь ‘husband, man’, and *remy ‘leather belt’

Descriptions of new species of the New World genus Perilypus Spinola (Coleoptera: Cleridae: Clerinae)

Thirty-two new species of Perilypus Spinola (Coleoptera: Cleridae: Clerinae) are described; they are Perilypus ancorus, P. angustatus, P. aquilus, P. arenaceus, P. caligneus, P. cartagoensis, P. collatus, P. comosus, P. concisus, P. copanensis, P. copiosus, P. diutius, P. divaricatus, P. elimatus, P. flavoapicalis, P. galenae, P. hamus, P. hornito, P. infussus, P. iodus, P. lateralis, P. latissimus, P. licinus, P. limbus, P. miculus, P. odous, P. orophus, P. patulus, P. punctus, turnbowi, P. violaceus, and P. yasuniensis. Included in this work are 58 line drawings and 32 color habitus photographs of primary types. To facilitate species identification the species included herein are linked to a key to Perilypus species provided in a previous review of the genus