scholarly journals Leibniz’s Last Letter on Linguistic Matters

Author(s):  
Stefano Gensini

We reproduce in what follows the last writing published in life by G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) on linguistic topics. Together with other works by scholars of the time, Leibniz’s essay served as an introduction to an important collection of versions of the Pater noster in many different languages (Chamberlayne ed. 1715). In his critical remarks, the philosopher not only summarises his main ideas about the importance and method of linguistic comparison, but also integrates them with interpretative insights from neighbouring fields, such as numismatics, archaeology, and the history of writing systems. The editor’s commentary gives information on the historical and theoretical context in which Leibniz writes and on the numerous authors and works mentioned in the text.

Author(s):  
Andrij Rovenchak ◽  
Solomija Buk

The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the history of writing in Africa. It goes on to describe the indigenous African scripts: the Tifinagh family of scripts; West African syllabaries, which include Vai, Mende, Kpelle, Loma, and Bambara scripts; West African alphabets, which include Bassa, Nko, Wolof, and some Hausa scripts; Bamum and Bagam scripts; East African scripts, including Somali alphabets (Osmanya, Gadabuursi, and Kaddariya), Oromo script, Beria alphabet, and some Nubian scripts. A separate section is devoted to the invention of writing within religious communities (Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ, Yoruba “holy” script, and Mandombe). Then, several recent attempts at orthography development from the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century are analyzed: Fula alphabets, Bété syllabary, Nwagu Aneke Igbo syllabary, Aka Umuagbara script, Mwangwego script, and some others. A description of writing systems among African diasporas conclude the chapter.


Author(s):  
Ivars Orehovs

On May 4, 2020, the 30th anniversary of the restoration of Latvia’s national independence was celebrated, and the 160th anniversary since the birth of the first President of Latvia, Jānis Čakste (1859–1927), was remembered on September 14, 2019. In 1917, even before the establishment of the Latvian state, Čakste published a longer essay in German, entitled „The Latvians and Their Latvia” (Die Letten und ihre Latwija), in which both the ethnic and geopolitical history of the Baltics was presented to communicate the public opinion and strivings of that time internationally. The essay also reflected economic relations in the predominantly Latvian-inhabited territory, demonstrating the political convictions and the culture-historical background of the era. The article aims to characterise the history of writing and publishing the essay in German, and its translation into Latvian (1989/90), and the translation’s editions (1999, 2009, 2014, 2019). Part of the article is devoted to analysing the culture-historical aspects, which in the authorial narrative have been expressed in the interethnic environment of the territory and the era.


Itinerario ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronit Ricci

Scripts are sites of religious, cultural and political power. Although scripts are often viewed solely as technical devices in the service of meaning, the particular histories of scripts’ coming into being, their uses and sometimes disappearance can tell us much about shifting religious agendas, memory, and attachments to community, place, and particular literary cultures. In my essay I explore the history of writing in Java, including the story of the letters’ creation, to think about cultural and religious transformations, the relationship of foreign to local, and the powerful hold certain texts have on the imagination.


2018 ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Leonid Kondratyk

Kondratyk L. "Ideas of Civil Religion in the Creative Work of Cyril Methodians". The author is based on the fact that the civil religion is such a sociocultural phenomenon in which, through the prism of a peculiar religious language and specific practices, the necessity of acquiring and establishing a national state is substantiated, which originates in the need of the community to find the sacral in the activity that is inherent in the transcendent, eternally -linear character and which is rooted in the history of the territory. It is proved that the soil on which the ideas of the Cyril and Methodius civil religion originated is Western European romanticism, religiosity, the starting point of which was the idea of religion as the focus of the spiritual world of the individual and community, the idea of the Higher Reason that sets the directions for historical development, Christianity a decisive role in the spiritual and moral and social renewal of mankind, the view of Ukraine as an independent cultural and historical and social force, the influence of creativity T. Shevche gt; The main ideas of the civil religion of the Cyril Methodians are as follows: the messianism of the Ukrainian spirit manifests itself in the ability to unite the Slavs in the best way, because Ukraine is inspired by self-sacrifice with the Christian spirit and has apostolic intercession; Kiev - the capital of the resurrected from the oppression of the Slavs, the city - in which the courts prevail, truth, equality; concepts "temple", "truth", "righteous judgment", "freedom", "brotherhood", "equality", "love", "Kiev", "Kiev mountains" - the basic concepts-symbols of the Ukrainian civil religion; in the Ukrainian community with the need to coincide Christian values and moral standards, which dominate it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Michał Wendland

The article concerns some of the most important elements of I. Kant’s epistemology and its connections with earlier epistemological ideas, namely rationalism and empiricism. The history of dispute between rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) and empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) is hereby shortly presented while Kant’s own philosophical achievements are suggested to be both alternative and synthesis of these. The main core of this paper is summary of basis of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; some most important categories are described: apriorism, synthetic and analytical judgements, knowledge a priori and a posteriori, main ideas of transcendental esthetics (two forms of pure intuition: time and space), main ideas of transcendental logic (forms of judgement and twelve categories). Also the meaning of Kant’s „copernican revolution” is presented as a turning point for classical German philosophy as well as for whole modern epistemology.


At least four writing systems—in addition to the Phoenician, Greek, and Latin ones—were used between the fifth century BCE and the first century CE to write the indigenous languages of the Iberian peninsula (the so-called Palaeohispanic languages): Tartessian, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian. In total over three thousand inscriptions are preserved in what is certainly the largest corpus of epigraphic expression in the western Mediterranean world with the exception of the Italian peninsula. The aim of this book is to present a state of the question that includes the latest cutting-edge scholarship on these epigraphies and the languages that they transmit. To do so, the editors have put together a volume that from a multidisciplinary perspective brings together linguistic, philological, epigraphic, numismatic, historical, and archaeological aspects of the surviving inscriptions. The study of these languages is essential to achieve a better understanding of the social, economic, and cultural history of Hispania and the ancient western Mediterranean. They are also the key to our understanding of colonial Phoenician and Greek literacy, which lies at the root of the spread of these languages and also of the diffusion of Roman literacy, which played an important role in the final expansion of the so-called Palaeohispanic languages.


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