Language study has always played an important role in my life, and that has been true since I was first able to read and begin studying lectures on English and seven other languages in an encyclopedia set my father had. I was born with a gift for learning foreign languages, and at one time, I claimed to read, write, and speak five of them (French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian) and had the test scores to prove it. I no longer make such claims, for lack of opportunity to practice and age- and health-related memory impairment have robbed me of most of my former knowledge of these languages or at least the usage thereof. Besides, one does not have to learn to speak many languages in order to study linguistics, the science of all human languages.
Within linguistics, my real love has long been the branch called historical linguistics, which concerns itself with how languages change over time. The main focus of my historical linguistic interests has been for most of the past 20 years the Austric family of languages. And since I'm the only one who is to my knowledge devoting any significant amount of time to studying the history of Austric, I shall endeavor to present an introduction to this language family, its history, and some issues associated with it.
LV's
Publications
Austric
Austroasiatic
Austronesian
Austro-Tai