Welcome to Toby Griffen's Web Site

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The following items are either as yet unpublished or published under the author's copyright.

Complete list of Griffen's publications and other research activity


Deciphering the Vinča Script


Here is a paper summarizing this researcher's work in identifying and deciphering the Vinča Script. This script was used in the Balkans in the fifth millennium BCE and represents the first attested writing, well before the developments in Sumer. It also reconstructs the first sentence (found to date) ever written: The Bear Goddess and the Bird Goddess are the Bear Goddess indeed. The paper is an outgrowth of articles in the Journal of Indo-European Studies and the LACUS Forum (see publications) as well as guest lectures at The Citadel and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. It is in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.

Last updated on 1 August 2007 with Addendum II
vinca script vincha script


Climate Change

The Great Famine and the Collapse of the Pax Britannica. (Acrobat PDF File). This is a paper that appeared in the online journal Celtic Studies, which has since gone out of print. It is made available here, because it is a significant study with regard to the current issue of global warming/climate change. While the events of the sixth century were local by comparison, the phenomenal advances in both transportation and weaponry make it quite relevent to the situation today.



Linguistics and Philosophy


Stratificational Grammar and Neoplatonic Time (Acrobat PDF File). Presented to the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States in Claremont, CA in August 2009. This version of the paper was presented before an audience familiar with stratificational grammar. For those without this background, please consider the following paper.
Neoplatonic Time in Stratificational Grammar (Acrobat PDF File). This revision of the paper above provides a very brief introduction to stratificational grammar and is friendlier to the  nonspecialist reader.



Welsh Affricates

The Further Development of Welsh Affricates (Acrobat PDF File). 1 March 2010. This is an unpublished paper that has been languishing in my computer (actually forgotten for quite a while after pressing matters got in the way). It treats issues first addressed by this author in a 1974 article on "The Development of Welsh Affricates" in Lingua.



The Welsh Mutation System

Understanding the Welsh Mutations (Acrobat PDF File). 17 December 2010. This is an unpublished monograph summarizing the researcher's work on the Welsh mutation system within the framework of dynamic phonology. It is broken down into contents, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, and appendix.




Ogam *P


Ogam *P (Acrobat PDF File). 6 May 2010. This article had been accepted for publication in Volume 44 of General Linguistics in 2005. Since that journal ceased operation before the volume was printed, I am making it available here to all those who may be interested.




Ph.D. Dissertation
A New Welsh Consonant Shift:
Description and Implications (1975)


This dissertation has been made available by the University of Florida and can be found at the following URL:

http://www.archive.org/details/newwelshconsonan00grif





saintscover

Celebrating the Celtic Saints
by Toby D. Griffen

Click on the image for a PDF copy of the book.



Celtic Studies





Swabian


Nasalization in Swabian: Studies on the Nasalization Process. This monograph was completed in the late 1980s and was to be included in the Edward Sapir Monograph Series in Language, Culture, and Cognition in October 1994. Indeed, amazon.com even lists it with the ISBN 0933104286 (978-0933104280) and  classifies it as "Out of Print -- Limited Availability." Unfortunately the series was discontinued before this monograph actually appeared. This is a scanned PDF file from a copy of the camera-ready copy that had been forwarded to the editor, and this copy has been in storage for a number of years. Scanning was necessary as the original was produced on a now-obsolete TRS80 computer
Das schwäbische Alphabet: Normalisierte schwäbische Orthographie (The Swabian Alphabet: Standard Swabian Orthography). This was written in 1990 and seeks to provide the various Swabian dialects with a standard orthography in which works from any one dialect can be read and interpreted with the sounds of the other dialects. In addition to the scholarly works in the bibliography, over 300 books in Swabian dialect (including verse, prose, and plays) were consulted. Once again, this is an old, stored copy produced on a TRS80 computer.



harp
Gwenllian's Lament

Gwenllian's Lament, also known as Gwenllian's Cradle Song is a song in honor of Princess Gwenllian. This page includes words, musical notation, and video of a Celtic harp performance by the composer. A CD or cassette of a vocal arrangement
and information on the Princess Gwenllian Society can be found on the Society's website, which can be accessed here.




Dance

THE HAPPY CAMPER!
Click on the Happy Camper to reach a Scouting Resource Page
with a nocturnal and a short vocabulary for German interpreters



FREE NOVEL!!!

 Cadet’s Dream
A Neoplatonic Novel

 Toby Griffen
©2008

In a surreal dream, the protagonist finds himself at a ball in Charleston’s Hibernian Hall, where he witnesses the suffering of the Lady in the Shiny Green Dress. When she looks to him imploringly, he awakes in a panic and realizes that he must come to an understanding of her anguish before he can do ... whatever it is he is supposed to do. In an extended vision, he descends into what he perceives to be Charleston – or rather, some alternative Charleston – of thirty years earlier, and he joins his soul with that of a distraught cadet returning at midnight to The Acropolis, The Military Academy of the South. Here, Cadet undertakes a journey through love and loss, isolation and unity, and confrontation with religious and political bigotry.

Latest Edition: 19 July 2012.

To reach the download page for this free novel, please click on the cover image below:

cover image





hco virtual
          reunion





plotinus




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semifore
created by Toby D. Griffen

e-mail: tdg+at+fanad.net

last modified: 16 October 2024

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