Volume 133, Issue 1

When in 1974 René Étiemble raised accusation against Walther von Wartburg to have fostered Nazi-activities during his visiting professorship in Chicago in 1935 and the following years, Kurt Baldinger asked his Heidelberg colleague Johannes Hubschmid, son of Wartburg’s old friend Johann Ulrich Hubschmied, to clear Wartburg of all blame. But Hubschmid, who was in possession of a rich correspondence between Wartburg and his father, came to a different result, and his documentation remained unpublished. The following article reproduces not only Hubschmid’s text, but gives at the same time an evaluation of Hubschmid’s assertions in the light of other archival material.

The paper is concerned with the semantics of the French particle bien in spoken interaction. It argues that linguistic structures are shaped by their use in interaction and thus have to be described in relation to their interactional context. Bien is commonly described as a modal adverb (e.g. Il est bien habillé . ‘He is well dressed’) or as an adverb of degree (e.g. Il est bien grand pour son âge . ‘He is rather tall for his age’). In certain contexts, however, it appears to be used as a modal particle, as argued in this paper (e.g. C’est bien la première fois que ça m’arrive . ‘It’s [MP] the first time that happens to me’). The study shows that this use can be related not only to a number of syntactic and structural restrictions but also to specific sequential patterns, to a particular stance of the speaker toward the proposition expressed and to a specific discourse function. The latter consists in referring to contextual elements that are in contrast to the proposition of the current utterance. Bien thus functions as a kind of contextualization cue and as an instruction to the hearer to take the proposition into account.

Based on a corpus comprising 109 French job advertisements of leadership positions, the article focusses on the questions of whether and to what extent the gender sensitive language has been implemented. The findings that have emerged from this corpus-based investigation can be summarised as follows: Regarding the mere job title, women are co-addressed more or less explicitly in 98,2 % of cases. Frequently, however, women are solely addressed by the marker H / F . In addition, in the textual parts of the job advertisements, concord rules are often violated and the text components are often not feminised consistently or not at all. Out of the entirety of the corpus, the number of unobjectionably formulated ads does not exceed 14 %, which has strong societal and linguistic implications.

The deletion of syllable-final consonants in Eastern Andalusian Spanish has been extensively documented; however, there is no consensus about its effect on neighbouring vowels. Researchers have focused on the effects of /s/ deletion on vowels to analyse how its semantic value is conveyed, while other consonants which are also deleted have been ignored. This paper examines the effects of word-final /s/, /r/, and /θ/ deletion on preceding /o/ from the point of view of production and perception. Regarding production, acoustic analyses of data from El Ejido (Eastern Andalusia), show specific changes to the F1 and F2 of /o/ depending on the underlying consonant it precedes (/s/, /r/, or /θ/). Likewise, a perception test demonstrates that Eastern Andalusian speakers can distinguish between more types of mid back vowels than previously thought.

This article examines the historical evolution of certain collocations with venir that feature a dative experiencer in Modern Spanish (e.g. venirle vergüenza ), but which in earlier periods also allowed a subject experiencer ( venir en / a vergüenza ) or a locative experiencer ( venir vergüenza en alguien ). The corpus study shows that dative experiencers predominate since the 1200 s; locatives and subjects, which were preferred only by some nouns, gradually disappeared starting in the 1600 s. These changes are attributed to the lexical properties of venir and the generalized triumph of dative experiencers in Spanish Constructions designating involuntary physical or mental processes.

This article investigates the internal canon built by grammarians themselves explicitly shown in its treaties. For this project, a plural corpus has been analysed. This corpus consists of thirty four grammars, prepared for different audiences, written by different senders and presented with different theoretical or didactic discourses. We study occurrences in the corpus, frequencies of each unit, the relationship between canon and senders, canon and receivers and canon and type of grammar as well as the relationship between canon and the parts of grammar where it appears. We also analyse traditions and main sources which are the foundations of Spanish grammar from 1492 ( Grammar of Nebrija) to 1798 ( Art Torío de la Riva).

In the Galician-Portuguese Cantigas de Santa Maria , written at the court of Alfonso X in the second half of the XIIIth century, the Devil has an important role. In one cantiga , where a case of possession is narrated, the Devil gives a talkative possessed girl the power of revealing the unconfessed sins of the people who stand in front of her. We do not know of a direct source for this particular narrative in the field of Marian miracles. However, the theme of the diabolical revelation of sins is shared by some exempla , such as some stories in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum or Etienne de Bourbon’s Tractatus de diversiis materiis predicabilibus . Through a contextualized reading of cantiga 343 and a comparison with these other narratives showing the working of the talkative possessed, this paper aims to show the strict relations between the cantiga and the beliefs of the time, as well as Alfonso’s shrewdness in incorporating topical themes into the cantigas , as part of his overall aim of conveying a doctrinal message while contributing to the entertainment of his Court.

The Raccolta di voci affatto sconosciute o mal note ai lessicografi ed ai filologi of Enrico Zaccaria, published in 1919, is an early example of the innovative potential of historical lexicography. The author compiles about 10.000 mostly unusual and peripheral words taken from up to then little known sources. Zaccaria was not an expert in historical linguistics, but earned his life as a school teacher. As a consequence, the systematic arrangement of the Raccolta and the historical and etymological comments present relevant drawbacks. The lexical documentation itself, however, is highly innovative and reliable. It is astonishing that this rich resource has not yet been completely exploited by modern lexicographers.

The aim of this paper is to present two new tools for research into Dolomites Ladin: the Corpus dl ladin leterar (CLL, «Corpus of literary Ladin») and the Vocabolar dl ladin leterar (VLL, «Dictionary of literary Ladin»). The term Ladin is used to define the varieties of the «Ladinia brissino-tirolese», namely the Ladin varieties spoken in the Dolomites valleys, which belonged to the Austrian Empire before 1918. Two standard varieties are included: the Ladin Dolomitan (contemporary written koine proposed by Heinrich Schmid in 1994) and – for the first time in a lexicographic work – the Ladin de Micurá de Rü (historical written koine proposed by Micurá de Rü/Nikolaus Bacher in 1833). The adjective «literary» is used in a comprehensive way, and includes all texts written with a recognisable aesthetic endeavour. The CLL is a fully internet-accessible tool (<vll.ladintal.it>). It is presented with its diatopic and diachronic structure, and with its different search options. The most notable characteristic of the CLL is that every text is included in its original form and in a modernised one. The aim of these double encoded versions is to be useful for linguists as well as for the language community. The VLL is accessible online as well (<vll.smallcodes.com>). It is the first Ladin dictionary that is completely text-based. Each entry contains a metalinguistic description, and includes dialectal forms, the etymology, the first attestation, a definition (in Italian) of the different meanings, and a translation into Italian and German. Every meaning is documented by a large set of examples taken from Ladin literature.

After briefly presenting the two paradigms of etymology – « étymologie-origine » vs. « étymologie-histoire » –, the article sets forth the main directions of Romanian etymological research throughout the 20th century and the evolution of the relation between the etymological researches at the (micro)-monographic level and their counterpart at the lexicographical stage. The author states his opinions on the fundamental requirements of modern etymological science. The main aim of the article is to precisely evaluate the concept of « multiple etymology » and its influence on present-day Romanian lexicography.