Volume 22, Issue 1

This paper deals with a morphological issue, the inflection in Luxemburgish family names. While in colloquial High German only the one inflective form -s is attested in the plural forms of family names, for instance Schmit-s, we discover in colloquial Luxemburgish, besides the different plural forms, the composition ‘family name + first name’, for instance Schmit’s Paul instead of Paul Schmit. First, we give precise details about the morphological complexity of this construction. Next, its numerous connotations are emphasized. Finally, we put the question, if the new attitude of the young generation towards the inflected composite form generates a linguistic development in this local specified field.

For describing a particular area from a geolinguistic perspective, the basic procedure is to create a two-dimensional table with an axis showing forms or phenomena and another axis showing localities. In this table, observing the specific reaction in every cell will allow us to develop both co-occurrence and coefficient matrixes, as well as clustering and multivariate interpretation graphs. In this table, which is the starting point for multivariate analyses of geolinguistic data, certain convergences and divergences of the reaction points are revealed. Our interest is in a quantitative evaluation of the degree of convergence and divergence that takes the form of a rectangular linkage of the reacted points; that is to say, an analysis of the state of their continuity set out in rectangular plots. In order to evaluate properly the absolute values in numbers of unions (U) it is necessary to develop a mathematical function that will return the maximum number of unions (Umax) in a parameter with the number of reactions (n): Umax (n). Once the Umax function has been established, the desirable “Degree of Binding” will be formulated through the division of U by Umax(n). The aim of this paper is to put into practice this method with the data from La flexió verbal en els dialectes catalans (‘Verbal Flexion’) (1929-1932), by Antoni M. Alcover, previously analysed in Perea & Ueda (2010). The calculation of the Degree of Binding is applied to the data in both its forms: the original data and the patternized distribution of data (see Perea & Ueda 2010: 103-111). The result of our calculations gives rise to a new multivariate perspective of “isoglosses” for overcoming the problems of mismatched lines on the linguistic maps.

The words denoting the most ancient European grain legumes, such as ‘pea’, ‘lentil’ or ‘faba bean’, in both extinct and living Baltic languages confirm that these crops were cultivated among the ancestors of the modern Lithuanians and Latvians. The words denoting ‘pea’, such as Lithuanian žirnis and Latvian zirņi, are derived from the Proto-Baltic *žir̂n-ia- and the Proto-Indo-European *g'er[a]n-, denoting grain. The Proto-Indo-European root denoting ‘lentil’, *lent-, gave the Proto-Baltic *leñšia- and the modern Lithuanian lęšis and the Latvian lēca. The linguistic evidence confirms that the Old Balts transferred both grain legume crops and their names to their Finno-Ugric neighbours.

How do speakers of current Turkish and Moroccan ethnolects of Dutch deal with phonemes that do not exist in their heritage languages and that are at the same time subject to pronounced regional and social variation in the Dutch speech community at large, such as the Dutch diphthong /εi/? This diphthong does not occur in Turkish and Berber and it occurs only as a dialectal allophone in certain dialects of Moroccan Arabic. Data from speakers from the Amsterdam and Nijmegen urban areas are studied. In the Amsterdam dialect, the diphthong is traditionally subject to monophthongization and lowering, yielding realizations as [a:] or [a:], while in Nijmegen the diphthong is only subject to monophthongization, resulting in the variant [ε:]. Recently, a new lowered, diphthongal variant [ai] entered colloquial spoken standard Dutch. Therefore, ethnolect speakers have a wide range of variants to ‘choose’ from: the traditional standard Dutch variant [εi], the new variant [ai], which is expanding areally and socially, and the monophthongal variants of the surrounding urban dialects. Two variable properties of /εi/ are examined: (1) height of the prominent first element, and (2) the degree of monophthongization. The urban dialect features which had developed into sociolect features over the past generations appear to be undergoing social redistribution to become ethnolect markers.

The three series of national linguistic atlases (WLAD, ALR and NALR) proof that the Romanian linguistic cartography has one of the richest and most important traditions in Europe, fact acknowledged by the linguistic community starting from the first half of the last century. This tradition continues nowadays with the digitization of the linguistic atlases. The first achievement in this direction is the release in 2007 of the third volume from series NALR. Moldavia and Bukovina with the help of bespoke software built in collaboration by linguists and computer scientists from Iasi Branch of the Romanian Academy. Another project in the same field, done by a Romanian-Canadian team, is the Online Romanian Dialect Atlas which plans to build an interactive database for dialects using a multidimensional scaling statistical technique. The Bukovina Audiovisual Linguistic Atlas (ALAB) is the most recent project for a digital atlas of the Romanian academic community and it is based in the research centre from Iasi. The ALAB project, started in 2010, plans to build, for the first time in Romania, an audio-video atlas centred on sociolinguistic features. This atlas will present, with the help of online support in one interface, diatopic, diastratic (diasexual and diagenerational), and possible diaphasic variations on dialect level.

This study attempts a close investigation of areal variation in the major phonological features of the Egyptian Arabic spoken in the agrarian northern region of Kafrelsheikh (KEA): their contexts and patterns. Targeting old, rural speech, a survey of all the localities is conducted through recordings of natural speech and a questionnaire. The instrumentally investigated phonological variables in KEA include major allophonic variants, and some typical instances of assimilation, dissimilation, metathesis, sound addition and sound deletion. Most instances of variation in the present data prove to be linguistically conditioned. Analysis shows that the differences between the dialect areas do not involve all the previous variants. KEA roughly seems to have five speech areas, with each enjoying intra-variation and comprising many relic features. Finally, the findings are interpreted with reference to the phonological system of (Egyptian) Arabic as a whole and various models of language variation patterning.

The Celts are commonly regarded as one of the Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups, speaking Celtic languages derived from Proto-Celtic. Numerous archaeobotanical, palaeogenetic and historical linguistic analyses demonstrate that the most ancient European pulse crops, such as chickpea (Cicer arietinum), grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), lentil (Lens culinaris), lupins (Lupinus spp.), pea (Pisum sativum), vetches (Vicia spp.) and faba bean (Vicia faba), were widely used in everyday life as early as sixth millennium BC. The Latin word denoting ‘pea’, pisum, was borrowed by both Brythonic and Goidelic languages, spoken during the first centuries AD in Britain and Ireland, and produced the words denoting ‘pea’ in their modern members. The ultimate origin of the words denoting ‘faba bean’ in all living and attested Celtic languages is the Proto-Indo-European root *bhabh-, denoting the same crop, literally meaning something swollen and imported from both the Latin faba and the Old Norse baun. The majority of the words denoting ‘grain’ in the Celtic languages are descendants of the Proto-Celtic root *grāno, denoting ‘grain’ and originating from the Proto-Indo-European *g'er[a]n-, *grān-, denoting ‘grain’ and ‘corn’.