I seem determined to wait until a later and later month to make my first post of each calendar year. In this case, I'm not even posting a fully self-contained essay on a recently-contemplated topic; rather, this post is a culmination of a personal project that has carried on for longer than the past three years. It feels very satisfying to finally be able to put a cap on it now.
[Heads up: this post ends with a full diagram of language relationships that I constructed and is the part of this post that I put the most work into and am most proud of -- feel free just to scroll to the bottom and check that out if you don't feel like reading the full explanation and commentary and general linguistics geek gushing that I'm about to launch into.]
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