A Basque Nautical Pidgin

1987 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bakker

The paper deals with a Basque Nautical Pidgin from which a number of sentences have been preserved in a seventeenth century Basque-Icelandic word list. These sentences are interesting for several reasons. First, Basque may throw an interesting light on the pidginization process because it is not an Indo-European language and has several unusual features. Second, although the sentences come from a Basque word list compiled by an Icelander, there are also some words from other languages, of which English is the most prominent. It is suggested that the knowledge of an English Nautical Pidgin played a role in the formation of this pidgin. Third, in the current debate on the origin of fu and similar markers as complementizers, many claims have been made. In this Basque Pidgin, twelve of the fifteen sentences contain the lexical item for in diverse functions. The use of for in the pidgin is compared with similar lexical items in four other pidgins. It is argued that there was some transmission of the use of for in these pidgins to the for in creoles.

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-253
Author(s):  
Wu Huiyi ◽  
Zheng Cheng

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.


Corpora ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Yukiko Ohashi ◽  
Noriaki Katagiri ◽  
Katsutoshi Oka ◽  
Michiko Hanada

This paper reports on two research results: ( 1) designing an English for Specific Purposes (esp) corpus architecture complete with annotations structured by regular expressions; and ( 2) a case study to test the design to cater for creating a specific vocabulary list using the compiled corpus. The first half of this study involved designing a precisely structured esp corpus from 190 veterinary medical charts with a hierarchy of the data. The data hierarchy in the corpus consists of document types, outline elements and inline elements, such as species and breed. Perl scripts extracted the data attached to veterinary-specific categories, and the extraction led to creating wordlists. The second part of the research tested the corpus mode, creating a list of commonly observed lexical items in veterinary medicine. The coverage rate of the wordlists by General Service List (gsl) and Academic Word List (awl) was tested, with the result that 66.4 percent of all lexical items appeared in gsl and awl, whereas 33.7 percent appeared in none of those lists. The corpus compilation procedures as well as the annotation scheme introduced in this study enable the compilation of specific corpora with explicit annotations, allowing teachers to have access to data required for creating esp classroom materials.


2006 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Sándor Richter

The order and modalities of cross-member state redistribution as well as the net financial position of the member states are one of the most widely discussed aspects of European integration. The paper addresses selected issues in the current debate on the EU budget for the period 2007 to 2013 and introduces four scenarios. The first is identical to the European Commission's proposal; the second is based on reducing the budget to 1% of the EU's GNI, as proposed by the six net-payer countries, while maintaining the expenditure structure of the Commission's proposal. The next two scenarios represent radical reforms: one of them also features a '1% EU GNI'; however, the expenditures for providing 'EU-wide value-added' are left unchanged and it is envisaged that the requisite cuts will be made in the expenditures earmarked for cohesion. The other reform scenario is different from the former one in that the cohesion-related expenditures are left unchanged and the expenditures for providing 'EU-wide value-added' are reduced. After the comparison of the various scenarios, the allocation of transfers to the new member states in terms of the conditions prevailing in the different scenarios is analysed.


Nuncius ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-77
Author(s):  
MAURIZIO TORRINI

Abstract<title> SUMMARY </title>Contemporary movements, united by their common rejection of traditional knowledge and by their common beginnings and development outside formal school boundaries, libertinism and the new science are often considered, evaluated and classified in the univocal light of modern thought introduced by Descartes. A comparison totally unfavourable to libertinism which did not benefit from the attempt made in some cases to assimilate it to the scientific revolution in the name of a common anti-dogmatic character. The movements were in fact distinct in their aims and motives and their occasional interaction must not make us forget the contemporary presence of different and often contrasting ideas at the dawn of modern thought. The aim of this paper is to overcome the historiographical approach which, by privileging a single access to modern thought, evaluates all the others according to the same measure.The paper, through an examination of the European discussion stimulated by Galileo's Sidereus nuncius, shows the philosophical consequences of the astronomical revolution and the series of projects, hopes and misunderstandings that marked its course. An event that did not encounter the indifference of libertines like Naude, who read in the celestial revolution confirmation of the crisis of terrestrial knowledge. In Italy the bond between libertine thought and the scientific revolution came tragically into being as from the condemnation of Galileo and found its consecration in the Neapolitan trial of the atheists at the end of the seventeenth century, thus reuniting in the name of a single orthodoxy, two different conceptions of nature and knowledge.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Anu Koskela

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus.  


Author(s):  
Alejandro Junquera Martínez

<p>Dentro del estudio de la vestimenta, uno de los campos léxicos más interesantes es el del léxico relativo a los adornos y las guarniciones. Partiendo de los documentos notariales recopilados por el <em>Corpus Léxico de Inventarios </em>(<em>CorLexIn</em>), este estudio pretende ofrecer una descripción y análisis lexicográficos de diversos ítems léxicos concretos alusivos a elementos textiles de adorno que podrían englobarse bajo hiperónimos como <em>flecos</em>, <em>bordados</em>, <em>cintas</em> o <em>pasamanerías</em>.</p><p>Within the study of clothing, one of the most interesting fields could be vocabulary referred to decorations and trimmings. Based on the notarial records gathered by the <em>Corpus Léxico de Inventarios</em> (<em>CorLexIn</em>), this study aims to offer a lexicographical description and analysis of some specific lexical items that refer to textile adornment elements that could be included under hyperonyms such as tassels, embroideries, ribbons or trimmings.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 100 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-436
Author(s):  
T. C. Smout

In seventeenth-century Scotland textiles were made in most districts and marketed widely at home and overseas. Woollens and linens, yarn, cloth, bonnets and stockings, with clear regional specialisations, were manufactured, but they were all of low cost and quality. Comparative advantage came from low rural wages. The wide distribution and character of textile production in the seventeenth century proved of great importance for post-Union success. Among imports the variety and social spread of luxury widened and deepened, though demand was restricted to the upper classes and the middling orders in Edinburgh and other large burghs. The seventeenth century, especially the second half, was a time of widening consumption of exotic articles such as tobacco, sugar and coffee among consumables, Asian silks and cottons (and their imitations) as articles of dress, and wall-hangings and pictures as décor. The social anxiety and economic stress this engendered gave rise to sumptuary laws like that of 1681. These had limited impact, though imports remained sensitive to tariffs. The letters of Andrew Russell, a merchant resident in Rotterdam between 1668 and 1697, demonstrate how this trade was carried out in both directions, and how the market responded to governmental attempts at control.


2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Oshita

This article explores the issue of the psychological reality of null expletives, i.e., the silent counterparts of the so-called dummy subjects such as English it and there. Following Jackendoff’s (1997; 2002) notion of `defective’ lexical item, I define null expletives as extremely `defective’ words with syntactic properties but no semantic or phonological content. By comparing native speakers of pro-drop languages and those of topic-drop languages in terms of their grammatical judgement of and productive use of English, I argue that null expletives are very likely psychologically real to speakers of pro-drop languages but not to those of topic-drop languages. This conclusion is based on observations made in previous second language (L2) studies and the analysis of data obtained from a large corpus of nonnative English. The question of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in L2 grammar and the linguistic characterization of so-called free subject-verb inversion in pro-drop languages are also discussed in relation to the issue of the psychological reality of null expletives.


Author(s):  
David Pharies

A lexical item is described as “playful” or “ludic” when it shows evidence of manipulation of the relation that inheres between its form (signifier) and its meaning (signified). The playful lexicon of any given language, therefore, is the sum total of its lexical items that show signs of such manipulation. Linguists have long recognized that the only necessary link between a word’s form and its meaning is the arbitrary social convention that binds them. However, nothing prevents speakers from creating additional, unnecessary and therefore essentially “playful” links, associating forms with meanings in a symbolic, hence non-arbitrary way. This semantic effect is most evident in the case of onomatopoeia, through which the phonetic form of words that designate sounds is designed to be conventionally imitative of the sound. A second group of playful words combines repeated sequences of sounds with meanings that are themselves suggestive of repetition or related concepts such as collectivity, continuity, or actions in sequence, as well as repeated, back-and-forth, or uncontrolled movements, or even, more abstractly, intensity and hesitation. The playfulness of truncated forms such as clips and blends is based on a still more abstract connection between forms and meanings. In the case of clipping, the truncation of the full form of a word triggers a corresponding connotative truncation or diminution of the meaning, that is, a suggestion that the referent is small—either endearingly, humorously, or contemptuously so. In blending, truncation is often accompanied by overlapping, which symbolically highlights the interrelatedness or juxtaposition of the constituents’ individual meanings. Prosodic templates do not constitute a separate category per se; instead, they may play a part in the formation or alteration of words in any of the other categories discussed here.


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