Review of Hill (2019): The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-311
Author(s):  
Giorgio (Georg) Orlandi

Abstract The book under review serves as a significant contribution to the field of Trans-Himalayan linguistics. Designed as a vade mecum for readers with little linguistic background in these three languages, Nathan W. Hill’s work attempts, on the one hand, a systematic exploration of the shared history of Burmese, Tibetan and Chinese, and, on the other, a general introduction to the reader interested in obtaining an overall understanding of the state of the art of the historical phonology of these three languages. Whilst it is acknowledged that the book in question has the potential to be a solid contribution to the field, it is also felt that few minor issues can be also addressed.

1967 ◽  
Vol 71 (677) ◽  
pp. 342-343
Author(s):  
F. H. East

The Aviation Group of the Ministry of Technology (formerly the Ministry of Aviation) is responsible for spending a large part of the country's defence budget, both in research and development on the one hand and production or procurement on the other. In addition, it has responsibilities in many non-defence fields, mainly, but not exclusively, in aerospace.Few developments have been carried out entirely within the Ministry's own Establishments; almost all have required continuous co-operation between the Ministry and Industry. In the past the methods of management and collaboration and the relative responsibilities of the Ministry and Industry have varied with time, with the type of equipment to be developed, with the size of the development project and so on. But over the past ten years there has been a growing awareness of the need to put some system into the complex business of translating a requirement into a specification and a specification into a product within reasonable bounds of time and cost.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Benthall

This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a global moral and political force whose admirable qualities are exemplified in its strong tradition of charitable giving. On the other hand, it suffers from a crisis of authority that cannot be blamed entirely on the history of colonialism and stigmatization to which Muslims have undoubtedly been subjected – most recently, as a result of the “war on terror”. The book consists of seventeen previously published chapters, with a general Introduction and new prefatory material for each chapter. The first nine chapters review the current situation of Islamic charities from many different viewpoints – theological, historical, diplomatic, legal, sociological and ethnographic – with first-hand data from the United States, Britain, Israel–Palestine, Mali and Indonesia. Chapters 10 to 17 expand the coverage to explore the potential for a twenty-first century “Islamic humanism” that would be devised by Muslims in the light of the human sciences and institutionalized throughout the Muslim world. This means addressing contentious topics such as religious toleration and the meaning of jihad. The intended readership includes academics and students at all levels, professionals concerned with aid and development, and all who have an interest in the future of Islam.


Itinerario ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muzaffar Alam

The study of Islam and Muslims in relation to local non-Muslim population and their religious beliefs and social practices in medieval India has often tended to be conducted eventually along two lines, seemingly opposed to each other. On the one hand, there are communal historians who have reduced the history of medieval India into the conflict between Hindus and Muslims, which they have projected as having resulted from their divergent religious outlooks. The period was Islamic in their view, and the state a conversion machinery and an organ to bring Hindus under the hegemony of Islam. This was a mission in which the state could not succeed fully, largely because of ‘Hindu’ resistance. On the other hand, there are a large number of ‘liberal’ historians to whom the hallmark of medieval Indian society has been an amity between the two communities, the various tensions and encounters over economic and political matters notwithstanding. The medieval period, in the opinion of such historians, saw the evolution and efflorescence of a composite culture to which medieval rulers, nobles, sufis and Persian and Urdu poets contributed significantly. The later animosity between Hindus and Muslims and clashes over religious matters, they argued, were the handiwork of the British.


2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 731-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed-Salah Omri

In most Western universities, Arabic literature is rarely studied by itself or for itself. It is subject to disciplinary traffic and intersections, on the one hand, and to what might be called a political predicament, on the other. With this in mind, I outline below some thoughts underpinned by two examples of the state of the art in Arabic literary studies, published four decades apart.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Karrin Hanshew

AbstractThis article makes a case for rupturing the national framework used in traditional narratives of the Federal Republic, and it does so by revisiting the Italo-German relationship in particular. The state of Europe—and of Germans’ place in it—are in flux in the wake of the recent Eurozone crisis and “Brexit.” A study of German-Italian entanglements cannot offer definite answers about whether Germans or Italians feel “European,” but it does demonstrate, on the one hand, that perceptions of national difference do not preclude collaboration and closer relations, and, on the other, that the construction and deployment of difference can actually help create and maintain bonds between populations. Making a case for the importance of a history of German-Italian entanglements, the article offers evidence for how perceived national differences have brought Germans and Italians together, from the beginning of the Federal Republic to roughly the present, with a focus on Germans’ (and Italians’) recent turn to an apolitical or even anti-political lifestyle politics, and on the uncertain consequences that this has for the European project as a whole.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 157-198
Author(s):  
Janusz Oszytko

The article is a new contribution to the local history of Opole of 1933–1945 in the light of not known and not published archival documents about the pre-war Nazi leaders of the Opole Regency and the anti-Hitler opposition as well. Those documents are stored both in the State Archive in Opole (file: Gestapo Oppeln) and in the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN Archive – various archive files). The first part of the article describes the Nazi elite of the Opole Regency in the period of 1933–1945. This interesting and complicated history of Opole and Opole region concerns the operation of the NSDAP monoparty, as well as its affiliated organizations and repressive organs of a totalitarian state. This part of the article was developed mainly from various files from the Institute of National Remembrance. The second part describes the anti-Hitler opposition in the Opole Regency in the period of 1933–1945. Very interesting and also not known in the scientific circulation are materials about political opponents, collected by Gestapostelle Oppeln, which are right now being published by the author of the article, following the previous article about the files relating to the Jews (dealt with in articles by J. Oszytko) and to the Poles (in a book by Dermin and Popiołek) which were kept by the Gestapo in Opole. To summarize, the article casts light on the history of the city, with respect to, on the one hand, the rise of German totalitarianism changing into one-party domination of the NSDAP party, and – on the other hand – the scope of persecution of parties and persons standing in opposition to Hitler’s rule in our city and region.  


Biography is one of the most widespread literary genres worldwide. This book offers the first wide-ranging, multi-authored survey on biography in Antiquity from its earliest representatives to Late Antiquity. It aims to be a broad introduction and a reference tool on the one hand, and to move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art on the other. To this dual end, it addresses conceptual questions about this sprawling genre, provides both in-depth readings of key-texts and diachronic studies, and deals with the reception of ancient biography in subsequent eras up to today. In addition, it approaches the concept of ancient biography more widely than other reference tools on the topic have done: it examines biographical depictions in different textual and visual media and provides outlines of biographical developments in ancient and late antique cultures other than the Graeco-Roman one.


2021 ◽  
pp. 729-745
Author(s):  
Julio de la Cueva

The modern religious history of Spain and Portugal begins with the religious unity between the state and society forged around Catholicism, and ends with the present era epitomized by ongoing secularization and incipient religious pluralism. With some difficulty, the Catholic Church adapted to the trials posed by nineteenth-century liberalism, reaching an accommodation with the constitutional monarchies in both Iberian countries. The first serious challenge came with the arrival of the republics in Portugal in 1910 and in Spain in 1931. The republics did not last long, however; two Catholic dictatorships governed the fate of the Peninsula until the 1970s, though separation of church and state was formally maintained in Portugal. The dictatorships ended in 1974 and 1975, respectively, giving way to the establishment of new democracies, accompanied on the one hand by secularization in both the state and society, and on the other by growing religious pluralism.


Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson

In his somewhat controversial book Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben makes brief reference to Theodor Adorno’s apparently contradictory remarks on perceptions of death post-Auschwitz, positions that Adorno had taken concerning Nazi genocidal actions that had seemed also to reflect something horribly errant in the history of thought itself. There was within such murderous acts, he had claimed, a particular degradation of death itself, a perpetration of our humanity bound in some way to affect our perception of reason itself. The contradictions regarding Auschwitz that Agamben senses to be latent within Adorno’s remarks involve the intuition ‘on the one hand, of having realized the unconditional triumph of death against life; on the other, of having degraded and debased death. Neither of these charges – perhaps like every charge, which is always a genuinely legal gesture – succeed in exhausting Auschwitz’s offense, in defining its case in point’ (RA 81). And this is the stance that Agamben wishes to hammer home quite emphatically vis-à-vis Adorno’s limitations, ones that, I would only add, seem to linger within Agamben’s own formulations in ways that he has still not come to reckon with entirely: ‘This oscillation’, he affirms, ‘betrays reason’s incapacity to identify the specific crime of Auschwitz with certainty’ (RA 81).


1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 301-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Govert D. Geldof

In integrated water management, the issues are often complex by nature, they are capable of subjective interpretation, are difficult to express in standards and exhibit many uncertainties. For such issues, an equilibrium approach is not appropriate. A non-equilibrium approach has to be applied. This implies that the processes to which the integrated issue pertains, are regarded as “alive”’. Instead of applying a control system as the model for tackling the issue, a network is used as the model. In this network, several “agents”’ are involved in the modification, revision and rearrangement of structures. It is therefore an on-going renewal process (perpetual novelty). In the planning process for the development of a groundwater policy for the municipality of Amsterdam, a non-equilibrium approach was adopted. In order to do justice to the integrated character of groundwater management, an approach was taken, containing the following features: (1) working from global to detailed, (2) taking account of the history of the system, (3) giving attention to communication, (4) building flexibility into the establishing of standards, and (5) combining reason and emotions. A middle course was sought, between static, rigid but reliable on the one hand; dynamic, flexible but vague on the other hand.


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