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Two Cambridge institutions, the Department of Linguistics and the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics, have merged as of 1 August 2011 to form the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages.

Manuscripts written in Syriac, an ancient language of the Middle East, are peppered with mysterious dots. Among them is the vertical double dot or zagwa elaya. A Cambridge academic thinks that the zagwa elaya is the world’s earliest question mark.

A decommissioned Land Rover ambulance will be home to Cambridge ̽»¨Ö±²¥â€™s Dr Emily Lethbridge from December – as she begins an epic year-long research trip around Iceland investigating the deep-rooted significance of its centuries-old sagas.

Of the world's 6,500 living languages, half will cease to be spoken by the end of this century.

̽»¨Ö±²¥first-hand testimonies of thousands of people who witnessed the bloody rebellion that paved the way for centuries of sectarian conflict in Ireland have been released online.

An endangered Greek dialect spoken in Turkey has been identified by Dr Ioanna Sitaridou as a "linguistic goldmine" because of its closeness to a language spoken 2,000 years ago.

Close scrutiny of text is the bedrock of a research culture that spans practically the whole range of contemporary English studies.

̽»¨Ö±²¥purity and linguistic correctness of the French language has been closely guarded by the French for centuries. Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett is exploring the reasons behind this national preoccupation.

At first glance, reasons for researching locations as different as the Arctic and Mexico are not self-evident. But comparison is at the core of Social Anthropology and, for Dr Barbara Bodenhorn, a dual focus on these remarkably different environments is shaping a cross-cultural exchange programme between young members of three indigenous communities.

Current estimates suggest that a language dies every two weeks. Here, Geoffrey Khan describes the documentation of a group of dialects before they are lost forever.