Retro-Digitization of Croatian Pre-Standard Grammars

In this article, we will present the rich linguistic heritage of the Croatian language and our attempts to ensure its preservation and presentation to the general public by means of the "Retro-digitization and Interpretation of Croatian Grammar Books before Illyrism ‒ RETROGRAM" project. There is a long tradition of grammatical description in the history of the Croatian language. The first grammar book of the Croatian language was written at the beginning of the 17th century and the first grammar book written in Croatian was compiled in the middle of the 17th century. In later years, when literary and linguistic activity were transferred from the Dalmatian area to the northern and eastern part of Croatia, the Latin model for the description of the Croatian language was still present, even though German was also used. There were a large number of grammars written up to the second half of the 19th century, which are considered pre-standard Croatian grammars. They are the subject of research within the project "Pre-standard Croatian Grammars" at the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics. This research proposal "Retro-digitization and Interpretation of Croatian Grammar Books before Illyrism" aims to create a model for the retro-digitization of the chosen eight Pre-standard Croatian Grammars (written from the 17th until the 19th century). The retro-digitization of Croatian grammar books implies the transfer of printed media to computer-readable and searchable text. It also includes a multilevel mark-up of transcribed or translated grammar text. The next step of the project is the creation of a Web Portal of Pre-standard Croatian Grammars, on which both the facsimiles and the digitized text of the grammars will be presented. Our aim is to present to the wider and international public the attainments of the Croatian language and linguistics as an important part of Croatian culture in general. Keywords: pre-standard Croatian grammars, history of the Croatian language, retro-digitization, Extensible mark-up language, Text encoding initiative, web portal of pre-standard Croatian grammars

Hawthorne’s True Artist in The Marble Faun: The Jewish Miriam?

The Marble Faun (MF), besides being a travelogue account of Rome, is a story about sin, guilt, suffering and abuse; it is also a tale about love and friendship. It is a story about the relationships between four different individuals united by their mutual love of art. The more interesting and convincing woman of the two female characters in the novel is unquestionably Miriam. Miriam is a rebel, an artist, and a compassionate and redemptive figure. Nevertheless, her art has been almost totally neglected, probably because most critics maintained that Miriam is an allegorical character lacking moral development or growth, whose function in the romance is limited to bringing about the Model’s murder and enacting the romance’s moral drama. The aim of this paper is to rectify a long and undeserved history of neglect and award Miriam her due status of Hawthorne's sole genuine artist. Keywords: art, Hawthorne’s female artists, The Marble Faun

Multilingual Content in Teaching the Kazakh Language Courses

According to the second state program on the development and functioning of languages until 2020, Kazakhstan concentrates on consolidating the Kazakh language as the state language, where Russian, English or others are foreign languages. New educational programs of the country assume a step-by-step implementation of communicative language skills. Students receive a possibility of relaying certain knowledge in the field of natural, human and technical sciences. The mission of Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University as the educational center of transforming the results of advanced research in the field of pedagogy, teaching methods are implemented to prepare teachers in order to support multilingual content approaches in education. It is expected that in high schools four natural subjects like chemistry, biology, computer science, and physics will be taught in English, Kazakh, and Russian, while history, language, literature and other art sciences will be the subjects of the Kazakh or Russian languages. The school programs with general educational standards are aimed at creating a base of modernly demanded and replenished knowledge. It explains the creation of the International Nazarbayev University which is unique in Kazakhstan. High admission requirements characterize selection quality, and targets in mastering foreign languages. Keywords: multi-academic content, multilingualism, cross-cultural expertises, educational methods and strategies, educational approaches

Chinese and Japanese Characters from the Perspective of Multimodal Studies

This article aims to demonstrate that a character can generate at least three different modalities simultaneously – visual, audial and vestibular — and influence a recipient in a deeper and more powerful way (than a sign from a phonetic alphabet). To show this, we chose modern Chinese and Japanese characters as live signs, and analyzed them functioning in texts with obvious utilitarian purposes – in advertisements. The main problem we were interested in during conducting this research was the “information capacity” of a character. We find out that any character exists in three dimensions simultaneously and generates three modalities at the same time. Its correspondence with morphemes opens two channels for encoding information – first of all, it brings a space for audial modality through the acoustic form of a syllable, and then it opens a space for visual modality through the graphical form of a character. The latter form implies a space for vestibular modality, because as a “figure,” any character occupies its “ground” (a particular square area), which becomes a source of a sense of stability and symmetry, enriching linguistic messages with non-verbal information. Keywords: advertisement, character, information, mode, multimodality

Tamil, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit: Sandalwood ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬(Σανταλόξυλο) and its Semantics in Classical Literatures

The Greek and Tamil people did sea trade from the pre-historic times. Sandalwood is seen only in Tamil land and surrounding places. It is also one of the items included in the trade. The Greek word ‘σανταλίνων’ is first mentioned in the ancient Greek works around the middle of the first century CE. The fact that the word is related to Tamil, but the etymologist did not acknowledge the same, rather they relate it to other languages. As far as its uses are concerned, it is not found in the ancient Greek literatures. One another type of wood ‘κέδρου’ cedar is also mentioned in the ancient Greek literature with the medicinal properties similar to ‘σανταλίνων’. In the same way the use of the Hebrew Biblical word ‘Almuggim -אַלְמֻגִּ֛ים’ which is the word used for sandalwood, also denotes teak wood. This shows that in these words, there are possibilities of some semantic changes such as semantic shift or broadening. Keywords: biblical word, Greek, Hebrew, Sandalwood, Tamil

Organic Archetypal Patterns in Literature: Origin, Meanings, Interpretations

The article studies the role and functions of organic archetypal patterns based on the concept of the Tree in literary texts, to which it brings a rich variety of emotive and cultural associations. Being ontologically and epistemologically grounded in the surrounding ecosystems, organic archetypal patterns as a mode of figural modeling run through genres of different epochs and inform their content with a naturalized view of themes, motifs, and situations, which make up the fabric of a work of fiction. Literary figures of this type have their roots in mythological consciousness that at a certain level of human development was instrumental in the categorization of the world and construction of cultural codes as objectivized forms of sensory perception, as pre-discursive human cognitive activity; they have retained till today the symbolic potency of those mythic structures and religious conceptions, often hidden from an uneducated mind. We hypothesize that archetypal patterns forming meaningful connections of language with myth, religion, and art, are used by authors to ensure an integrated understanding of a particular literary piece or its part. Keywords: archetypal pattern, mythological consciousness, ecosystem, cultural code

Compositional and Verbal Aspect in Greek: The Aorist Imperfect Distinction and the Article-Aspect Interplay

According to an aspectological model proposed by Kabakčiev in 1984, later developed and sophisticated, languages differ according to whether they mark aspect (perfectivity and imperfectivity) on verbs, as in the Slavic languages – among others, or through nouns/NPs featuring (non-)boundedness which is transferred onto verbs, as in the Germanic languages – among others. In this model of compositional aspect (CA), Bulgarian is a borderline case with a perfective-imperfective and an aorist-imperfect distinction and a definite article only (no indefinite), and the model is used to analyze Greek, a language exhibiting identical features. NP referents play a major role for the compositional explication of aspect. The study finds that Greek is of the same borderline/hybrid type of language as Bulgarian, featuring verbal aspect (VA) predominantly, but also peripherally CA. The aorist/imperfect distinction exists both in Greek and Bulgarian to offset the structural impact of the definite article. Analyzed are some conditions for the explication of CA in Greek and they are found similar to those in Bulgarian. However, there are specificites and differences between the two languages that must be further studied and identified. Keywords: verbal aspect, compositional aspect, definite article, article-aspect interplay, aorist-imperfect contrast

Greek, Tamil and Sanskrit: Comparison between the Myths of Prometheus, Sembian and Sibi

The Prometheus myth in Greek literature deals primarily with the theft of fire. The mythological story unwinds such events as the sacrificial thigh bone, God’s corporal punishment, and the eating of flesh by an eagle. A link with the Oceanus race and with the continent of Asia is also seen. Interestingly resemblances with this myth can be seen in some ancient literary sources from Tamil and Sanskrit languages. The Tamil myth of ‘Sembian’ and the Sanskrit myth of ‘Sibi’ also have resemblances with the Greek myth of Prometheus. The parallels seen between these myths are examined here. Keywords: comparative study, Indian, myth, Prometheus, Sanskrit, Sembian, Sibi, Tamil

Greek, Tamil and Sanskrit: Comparison between the Myths of Herakles (related with Iole and Deianira) and Rama in Hinduism

The Greek Historian Arrian has said that the Indians worshipped Greek Herakles. So the myths related with Greek Herakles need to be compared with the myths of the Indian Gods. There are many myths related with Herakles. The myth related with Iole and Deianira has resemblance with the myth of Rama in Hinduism and Buddhism. The word Rama which is connected with sea is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. This word came into existence in the ancient Tamil literature called Sanga Ilakkiam through the trade that happened among the people of Greek, Hebrew and Tamil. The myths of Rama that occurred in the Tamil Sangam literature later developed as epics in Sanskrit, Tamil and other languages. Further the myths of Rama also found place in religions such as the Hinduism and the Buddhism. The resemblance between Herakles, in connection with Iole and Deianira, and Rama are synonymous. Hence the Greek Herakles is portrayed as Rama in Hinduism and Buddhism. Keywords: Arrian, Buddhism, Herakles, Rama, Tamil Sangam

Spanish and Italian Diminutives Compared: Two Alternatives of a Single Diasystem

The relexification of diminutives has been one of the most productive ways to create new words in the Romance languages. The phenomenon is defined as the historical reanalysis of a lexical item composed of root plus diminutive suffix, whereby the original semantic value of the suffix is bleached over time and its combined form is subsequently reanalyzed as part of a new single morphological root carrying new meaning. This study provides a quantitative lexicographic analysis of the entirety of diminutives that have relexified in the history of Italian. When compared to results for Spanish by Ryan and Parra-Guinaldo (2016), data of this study suggest that Italian followed a very different trajectory of diminutive relexification from Latin than that for Spanish. Specifically, Italian appears to have developed a preference for the alternate ad hoc diminutive suffixes -ino/a and -etto/a (based on non-diminutive Latin forms) at a much earlier period than did Spanish, allowing for greater absorption and the time necessary for relexification. Contrastively, lexicographic data for Spanish suggest that Spanish instead continued to favor reflexes of the original Latin diminutive suffixes. The reasons proposed for this divergence is the relatively early colonization of the Iberian Peninsula and continued preference for traditional Latin diminutive endings over innovative endings that were being adopted Empire-wide, beyond Castile, including other regions of Hispania Keywords: morphology, lexicon, diminutives, Italian, Spanish