scholarly journals A Dataset of Metaphors from the Italian Literature: Exploring Psycholinguistic Variables and the Role of Context

PLoS ONE ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. e105634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Bambini ◽  
Donatella Resta ◽  
Mirko Grimaldi
Keyword(s):  
Italian Literature ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables

Between Divinity and Dullness: The Advent of Personal Computers in Italian Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-42
Author(s):  
Eleonora Lima
Keyword(s):  
Personal Computer ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Mass Diffusion ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Personal Computers ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Computer Culture

This article examines the cultural impact of personal computers in Italian literature in the first decade of their mass diffusion (from the mid-1980s to the second half of the 1990s) through the analysis of four texts written by some of the most respected writers of the time: Primo Levi’s article “Personal Golem” (1985), Umberto Eco’s novel Il pendolo di Foucault (1988), Francesco Leonetti’s novel Piedi in cerca di cibo (1995), and Daniele Del Giudice’s story “Evil Live” (1997). More than simply addressing the advent of personal computers, what these texts have in common is the use of religious images and metaphors in order to make sense of the new technology. This study aims at showing how this frame of reference served the four writers in expressing the contradictions inherent to the machine. Bulky and tangible because of its hardware, but animated by an elusive and mysterious software, the personal computer was perceived at the same time as a dull office appliance and a threatening virtual entity. Finally, by showing how timely and well-informed these literary works on the impact of PCs are, this article wants to make the case for considering the role of literature in shaping computer culture.

scholarly journals Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 1011-1022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jet M. J. Vonk ◽  
Roel Jonkers ◽  
H. Isabel Hubbard ◽  
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini ◽  
Adam M. Brickman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Primary Progressive ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables

AbstractObjective:To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables—lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND)—on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method:We administered a lexical decision task—with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects—to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results:Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions:The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

scholarly journals SpaVerb-WN—A megastudy of naming times for 4562 Spanish verbs: Effects of psycholinguistic and motor content variables

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romina San Miguel-Abella ◽  
Miguel Ángel Pérez-Sánchez ◽  
Fernando Cuetos ◽  
Javier Marín ◽  
María González-Nosti
Keyword(s):  
Word Length ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Word Naming ◽  
Negative Slope ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Syllable Frequency ◽  
Adult Participants ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables

AbstractSeveral studies have been carried out in various languages to explore the role of the main psycholinguistic variables in word naming, mainly in nouns. However, reading of verbs has not been explored to the same extent, despite the differences that have been found between the processing of nouns and verbs. To reduce this research gap, we present here SpaVerb-WN, a megastudy of word naming in Spanish, with response times (RT) for 4562 verbs. RT were obtained from at least 20 healthy adult participants in a reading-aloud task. Several research questions on the role of syllable frequency, word length, neighbourhood, frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and the novel variable ‘motor content’ in verb naming were also examined. Linear mixed-effects model analyses indicated that (1) RT increase in with increasing word length and with decreasing neighbourhood size, (2) syllable frequency does not show a significant effect on RT, (3) AoA mediates the effect of motor content, with a positive slope of motor content at low AoA scores and a negative slope at high AoA scores, and (4) there is an interaction between word frequency and AoA, in which the AoA effect for low-frequency verbs gradually decreases as frequency increases. The results are discussed in relation to existing evidence and in the context of the consistency of the spelling–sound mappings in Spanish.

Poetry in Dialogue in the Duecento and Dante

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bowe
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Guittone D'arezzo ◽  
The Rich ◽  
New Perspective

Poetry in Dialogue in the Duecento and Dante provides a new perspective on the highly networked literary landscape of thirteenth and fourteenth-century Italy. It demonstrates the fundamental role of dialogue between and within texts in the works of four poets who represent some of the major developments in early Italian literature: Guittone d’Arezzo, Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante. Rather than reading the cultural landscape through the lens of Dante’s works, significant though they may be, the first part of this study reconstructs the rich network of literary, especially poetic dialogue that was at the heart of medieval writing in Italy before and contemporary with Dante. The second part of the book uses this reconstruction to demonstrated Dante’s engagement with and indebtedness to the dynamics of exchange that characterized the practice of medieval Italian poets. The overall argument of the book, for the centrality of dialogic processes to the emerging Italian literary tradition, is underpinned by a conceptualization of dialogue in relation to medieval and modern literary theory and philosophy of language. By triangulating between Brunetto Latini’s Rettorica, Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘dialogism’, and as sense of ‘performative’ speech adapted from J. L. Austin, Poetry in Dialogue shows the openness of its corpus to new dialogues and interpretations, highlighting the instabilities of even the most apparently fixed, monumental texts (such as Dante’s Commedia).

From Constitutional Transitions to the Great National Transition: A Constant and Obstinate Italian Narrative

Pólemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-280
Author(s):  
Fulvio Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Economic Factors

Abstract The essay aims to illustrate the ways in which Italian literature deals with transitions (constitutional or political). After having clarified the methodological approach, the author identifies and describes in the national literature some historical phases, analysing the trends emerging from the reading of famous novels. In conclusion, some observations are drawn, in which it is highlighted that in the national literature there is a profound awareness of the importance of informal institutional transformations and of the central role of social, moral and economic factors.

Defining Italianness: Poetry, Music and the Construction of National Identity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Accounts of the Medieval Italian Lyric Tradition

2017 ◽  
Vol 142 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-276
Author(s):  
Lauren Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Literary Identity ◽  
Medieval Italian Literature ◽  
Lyric Tradition ◽  
Giosuè Carducci

ABSTRACTThis article explores the role of music in nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts of medieval Italian literature and its relation to the construction of Italian national identity both during and long after the Risorgimento. Tracing music's role in the writings of Giosuè Carducci, Vincenzo De Bartholomaeis and Aurelio Roncaglia, it argues that music somewhat paradoxically became entangled with Italy's literary identity even as scholars worked to extricate the peninsula's most renowned poetry from its grasp. In the realm of ‘popular’ poetry, Italianness depends on the presence of music, which serves as a marker of that poetry's popular origins. In contrast, music's absence from the realm of ‘high-art’ poetry was essential to the construction of an Italian tradition independent of and superior to its French and Provençal predecessors.

scholarly journals Jam recenzent, nie policjant. Z perspektywy recenzenta przekładów współczesnej włoskiej literatury w Polsce po 2000 roku

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-223
Author(s):  
Hanna Serkowska
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Domestic Market ◽  
Literary Critic

The article is an overview of Polish translations of Italian literature published between 2000 and 2020. The presentation aims to capture the characteristic phenomena of the domestic market of translations from Italian to Polish in times dominated by capitalism and the new media. The author contemplates the role of the reviewer/literary critic in these new conditions, and asks whether reviewers/literary critics can still drive the readers’ choices and receptions, and shape their knowledge and awareness.

scholarly journals Innovazione e brokeraggio tecnologico

2010 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Italian Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Normal Flow ◽  
Future Technology ◽  
Traditional Markets ◽  
Interdisciplinary Knowledge ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Frequent Presence

This book is designed to furnish Italian literature with an insight into the significance and the role of knowledge transfer, and in particular of technological brokerage. The idea is that, in the present-day world, dominated by a technology and knowledge available to an increasingly large number of people, enterprises are called upon to reconfigure the concept of innovation, expanding in even geographical terms the quest for solutions that aim at creating an exchange of interdisciplinary knowledge. To respond to the need for the dissemination of knowledge, collaboration between enterprises and the use of brokers appears to be the easiest solution. This can contribute to reducing the inefficacy of the markets and hence to facilitating the technological transactions. In this context the role of the brokers is fundamental in the knowledge markets in general, and in particular in that of technology, spawned by the need for an increasingly complex brokerage of knowledge, between applicant and user. In traditional markets, in effect, transactions can be conducted directly by the enterprises and may deal with current or future technology, but there is also the possibility of indirect transactions, involving the intermediation of specialised brokers. The emergence of these brokers is due to the frequent presence of structural gaps in the real markets which do not permit the normal flow of information: in practice, it is rare for every agent in a market to be connected with all the other agents that may important for him.

scholarly journals Between Dante and Caesar. The Vernacular Policy of Filippo Maria Visconti

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
Paolo Ponzù Donato
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Cultural Project ◽  
New Perspective

This paper offers a new perspective on vernacular literature in Milan in the 1430s, when Duke Filippo Maria Visconti commissioned from the humanists of his court vernacular translations of ancient histories and commentaries on Dante’s Comedy and Petrarch’s Canzoniere. These works, often dismissed as courtly products, were part of an ambitious cultural project that was carried out by humanists like Filippo Maria’s secretary Pier Candido Decembrio and Guini-forte Barzizza, but their attitude toward the duke’s commissions betrays their uneasiness with vernacular literature. It was the duke of Milan who, having sensed the political impact of promoting vernacular literature in Milan, intended to take over from Florence the role of driving force of Italian literature. Had not the Visconti army been defeated at Anghiari in 1440, Filippo Maria would have further pursued his ambition to politically and linguistically unify Italy under Milan’s rule.

scholarly journals La post-fantasy: il ciclo letterario Inquisitore Eymerich di Valerio Evangelisti come una realizzazione dell’elemento fantastico tramite la narrazione postmoderna

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Patrycja Przełucka
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Human History ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Genre Fiction ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
New Type

This article examines the literary series of Inquisitore Eymerich by Valerio Evangelisti, a variegated macronarrative, which, resisting generic classification, introduces innovation to the panorama of contemporary Italian fantasy. Departing from the analysis of the salient features of the series such as intertextuality, hybridization, storiographic metafiction, and transfictionality, the article examines closely the areas of postmodern narration and inquires into the role of the fantastic element in Italian literature. Evangelisti makes the most of postmodern narrative strategies and of fantasy’s ability to penetrate various media in order to provide a tool of critical reflection on human history with an emphasis on the phenomenology of power. By interweaving different literary genres and inviting readers to produce their own interpretations in form of fan fiction, Evangelisti creates a new type of committed narrative, post-fantasy, which presents a new conception of postmodern narrative, one that overcomes the barrier between the literary fiction and the genre fiction.

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