scholarly journals Issues on topics

2000 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Kerstin Schwabe ◽  
André Meinunger ◽  
Dieter Gasde
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
Syntactic Behavior ◽  
Discourse Topic

The present volume contains papers that bear mainly on issues concerning the topic concept. This concept is of course very broad and diverse. Also, different views are expressed in this volume. Some authors concentrate on the status of topics and non-topics in so-called topic prominent languages (i.e. Chinese), others focus on the syntactic behavior of topical constituents in specific European languages (German, Greek, Romance languages). The last contribution tries to bring together the concept of discourse topic (a non-syntactic notion) and the concept of sentence topic, i.e. that type of topic that all the preceding papers are concerned with.  

Comparatives and Superlatives in the Romance Languages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen Van Peteghem
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Equal Degree ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
Comparative Constructions ◽  
Standard Of Comparison ◽  
Traditional Grammar ◽  
Standard Marker

Comparison expresses a relation involving two or more entities which are ordered on a scale with respect to a gradable property, called the parameter of comparison. In European languages, it is typically expressed through two constructions, comparatives and superlatives. Comparative constructions generally involve two entities, and indicate whether the compared entity shows a higher, lesser, or equal degree of the parameter with respect to the other entity, which is the standard of comparison. Superlatives set out one entity against a class of entities and indicate that the compared entity shows the highest or lowest degree of the parameter. Hence, comparatives may express either inequality (superiority or inferiority) or equality, whereas superlatives necessarily express superiority or inferiority. In traditional grammar, the terms comparative and superlative are primarily used to refer to the morphology of adjectives and adverbs in languages with synthetic marking (cf. Eng. slow, slower, slowest). However, while Latin has such synthetic marking, modern Romance languages no longer possess productive comparative or superlative suffixes. All Romance languages use analytic markers consisting of dedicated adverbs (e.g., Fr. plus ‘more’, moins ‘less’, aussi ‘as, also’) and determiners (e.g., Sp./It. tanto, Ro. atât ‘so much’). Superlatives are marked with the same markers and are mainly distinguished from comparatives by their association with definiteness. Another difference between comparatives and superlatives lies in the complements they license. Comparatives license a comparative complement, which may be clausal or phrasal, and which identifies the standard of comparison. As for superlatives, they license partitive PPs denoting the comparison set, which may be further specified by other PPs, a relative clause, or an infinitive clause. The Romance languages show many similarities with respect to the morphosyntactic encoding of comparatives and superlatives, but they also display important cross-linguistic differences. These differences may be related to the status of the comparative marker, the encoding of the standard marker, ellipsis phenomena in the comparative clause, and the dependence of the superlative on the definite article.

scholarly journals On the origins of French and Occitan

2020 ◽  
pp. 307-325
Author(s):  
Clive R. Sneddon
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Church

The status of the language found in the Clermont-Ferrand manuscript of the Passion and St Leger is unclear. Should it be regarded as French, or French with an admixture of Occitanisms, or something else? A concordance of the early mostly short texts shows that they share a range of common forms, across all three Gallo-Romance languages. A study of the books and manuscripts which have preserved these texts show that they are part of the learned culture of their day. Reading and writing are done in Latin, and the early texts are both innovatory in writing literary vernacular and conservative in keeping as close to Latin conventions as possible, as expected by the church institutions in which these materials were used and preserved.

scholarly journals Evidentiality In Romance Languages. Explanatory Potential of a Concept and Its Applications In Pragmatics

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. e337
Author(s):  
Gerda Hassler
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Epistemic Modality ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Superordinate Category ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Factual Claim ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Linguistic Means

Defined narrowly, evidentiality pertains to the sources of knowledge or evidence whereby the speaker feels entitled to make a factual claim. But evidentiality may also be conceived more broadly as both providing epistemic justification and reflecting speaker’s attitude towards the validity of the communicated information, and hearer’s potential acceptability of the information, derived from the degree of reliability of the source and mode of access to the information. Evidentiality and epistemic modality are subcategories of the same superordinate category, namely a category of epistemicity. Since the first seminal works on evidentiality (Chafe and Nichols 1986), studies have for the most part centred on languages where the grammatical marking of the information source is obligatory (for example Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004). Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of the domain of evidentiality in European languages, which rely on strategies along the lexico‐grammatical continuum. Assuming a broad conception of evidentiality and defining it as a functional category, we study linguistic means that fulfil the function of indicating the source of information for the transmitted content of a certain proposition in Romance languages.

Adjectival Suffixes: From Latin to Romance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Rainer
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
European Languages

All languages seem to have nouns and verbs, while the dimension of the class of adjectives varies considerably cross-linguistically. In some languages, verbs or, to a lesser extent, nouns take over the functions that adjectives fulfill in Indo-European languages. Like other such languages, Latin and the Romance languages have a rich category of adjectives, with a well-developed inventory of patterns of word formation that can be used to enrich it. There are about 100 patterns in Romance standard languages. The semantic categories expressed by adjectival derivation in Latin have remained remarkably stable in Romance, despite important changes at the level of single patterns. To some extent, this stability is certainly due to the profound process of relatinization that especially the Romance standard languages have undergone over the last 1,000 years; however, we may assume that it also reflects the cognitive importance of the semantic categories involved. Losses were mainly due to phonological attrition (Latin unstressed suffixes were generally doomed) and to the fact that many derived adjectives became nouns via ellipsis, thereby often reducing the stock of adjectives. At the same time, new adjectival patterns arose as a consequence of language contact and through semantic change, processes of noun–adjective conversion, and the transformation of evaluative suffixes into ethnic suffixes. Overall, the inventory of adjectival patterns of word formation is richer in present-day Romance languages than it was in Latin.

scholarly journals The Spanish and Portuguese Keyboards, the Best Options to Type in all Romance Languages for US-QWERTY Users

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique Miguel Tébar Martínez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Manual Dexterity ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Western European ◽  
Keyboard Layout

While adequate for English-speaking users in the United States, as well as many Commonwealth countries and other English-speaking jurisdictions (e.g., Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa among others), typing in Romance Languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian) by using a standard US-QWERTY Keyboard is not easy since it is not adapted to special characters such as accented vowels, tildes and cedillas or ligatures, used in Romance Languages. With regard to the International Layout, intended to enable access to the most common diacritics used in Western European Languages, the problem comes from the fact that accented vowels are spread throughout the Keyboard layout, and their uppercase versions need chord combinations which can require good manual dexterity. This paper will analyze how the Spanish or Portuguese Keyboards are the best options for these users since they are QWERTY-based and the most compatible ones for the different character sets in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian Languages.

Popular lexicon of Greek origin in Italian varieties

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-120
Author(s):  
Francesco Crifò
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

AbstractGreek-speaking people have been sailing the Mediterranean for millennia. At various stages of their development from Latin, the Romance languages have been influenced by their idiom. In Italy and in its islands, this role has been particularly evident due to the many rich and culturally active colonies in Southern Italy before and during the Roman period on the one hand, and through the later Byzantine occupation, which lasted several centuries in some areas, on the other. In this article, after a brief summary of the historical background (2.), the characteristics of the lexical borrowings from Greek in the local idioms of Southern (3.) as well as of Central and Northern Italy (4.) will be sketched. Here and there, and in the conclusions (5.), the status quaestionis and the latest orientations of the research will also be broadly outlined.

scholarly journals Non-Verbal Clauses with Demonstrative Identifiers in the History of Croatian

Fluminensia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Ana Šimić
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Universe Of Discourse ◽  
Main Change

The paper presents a corpus-based typological and diachronic study of nonverbal clauses with demonstrative identifiers in Croatian. As one of the four types of demonstratives proposed by H. Diessel, demonstrative identifiers occur in copular and non-verbal clauses. They are used to focus the hearer’s attention on entities in the surrounding situation or in the universe of discourse. The paper reviews the typologies of demonstratives discussed in recent literature with respect to the status of demonstrative identifiers. Furthermore, it investigates the history of non-verbal clauses with demonstrative identifiers in Croatian: 1. se človêkь 2. evo čovjeka DEM man-NOM.SG DEM man-GEN.SG ‘Here is the man!’ ‘Here is the man!’ The main change occurred in the case marking on the argument. In the first Croatian literary language, Croatian Church Slavonic (1), the argument appears in the nominative case. In contemporary Croatian (2), the demonstrative identifier is predominantly followed by a genitive argument. Apart from shedding some light on the diachronic development of non-verbal clauses with demonstrative identifiers and their constituents in Croatian, the paper shows how they differ from similar constructions in other Slavic languages, as well as in some major European languages. In addition, they are compared to other non-verbal constructions with genitive and nominative arguments in Croatian.

scholarly journals The Dichotomy Free and Literal Translation

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Barbe
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Study ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Literal Translation ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Cross Cultural Study ◽  
Independent Field ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
The Status

Abstract Historically, the status of translation and translators has changed with the ascendance of monolingualism. Even today, translation is not fully recognized as an independent field of study, and translators as well as translation theorists are not without blame for this. The requirements for a good translation vary with each text. The concepts of free and literal translation are questionable and need to be rexamined. A cross-cultural study of translation including non-Indo-European languages may help us to break out of this dichotomy, as may the study of oral cultures.

The rise of it-clefting in English: areal-typological and contact-linguistic considerations

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARKKU FILPPULA
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Celtic Languages

Recent areal and typological research has brought to light several syntactic features which English shares with the Celtic languages as well as some of its neighbouring western European languages, but not with (all of) its Germanic sister languages, especially German. This study focuses on one of them, viz. the so-called it-cleft construction. What makes the it-cleft construction particularly interesting from an areal and typological point of view is the fact that, although it does not belong to the defining features of so-called Standard Average European (SAE), it has a strong presence in French, which is in the ‘nucleus’ of languages forming SAE alongside Dutch, German, and (northern dialects of) Italian. In German, however, clefting has remained a marginal option, not to mention most of the eastern European languages which hardly make use of clefting at all. This division in itself prompts the question of some kind of a historical-linguistic connection between the Celtic languages (both Insular and Continental), English, and French (or, more widely, Romance languages). Before tackling that question, one has to establish whether it-clefting is part of Old (and Middle) English grammar, and if so, to what extent it is used in these periods. In the first part of this article (sections 2 and 3), I trace the emergence of it-clefts on the basis of data from The York–Toronto–Helsinki Corpus of Old English Prose and The Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. Having established the gradually increasing use of it-clefts from OE to ME, I move on to discuss the areal distribution of clefting among European languages and its typological implications (section 4). This paves the way for a discussion of the possible role played by language contacts, and especially those with the Celtic languages, in the emergence of it-clefting in English (section 5). It is argued that contacts with the Celtic languages provide the most plausible explanation for the development of this feature of English. This conclusion is supported by the chronological precedence of the cleft construction in the Celtic languages, its prominence in modern-period ‘Celtic Englishes’, and close parallels between English and the Celtic languages with respect to several other syntactic features.

scholarly journals Langues et littératures de la « vieille Europe » dans les universités américaines : un état des lieux

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 39-52
Author(s):  
Frédéric Canovas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
University Policy ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Private And Public

Having completed his literature studies in France, the author of this essay started teaching in the United States in 1988 in both private and public universities. This essay is the result of his observations made as a teacher, a scholar and an administrator on the evolution and the shifts occurred in departments of romance languages these past thirty years. Since the 1980s, neoliberal politics and repetitive economic crisis encouraged states to drastically reduce their financial support to public universities forcing them to turn to other forms of financing including juicy contracts with Asian and the Middle Eastern countries where economic development generates surplus. This essay studies the consequences on departments of Romance languages of a university policy conducted in favor of the development of Chinese and Arabic languages, as well as sciences instead of European languages and the humanities in general, and shows how the preference given to those newly developing languages has weaken departments of European studies as a result.

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