Volume 134, Issue 2

This paper discusses the major linguistic theories concerned with the distinction between proper and common names. At the same time, it aims to show that a border line between both categories cannot be drawn without answering the question about the capacity of proper names to express denotative meaning. There seems to be little agreement in this respect since the classical points of view linked to Mill and Jespersen, which is why linguists and philosophers still lack a common understanding on this point. In order to clarify the origin of this debate, it will be approached from different perspectives and fields of linguistics, including an analysis of Eugenio Coseriu’s position revealed in a manuscript on this topic made available by the Eugenio-Coseriu-Foundation (www.coseriu.org) and which has remained unpublished until nowadays.

This paper deals with folk etymology from the vantage point of sociolinguistics. After a critical overview of the concepts of « parole -Volksetymologie» and «langue-Volksetymologie» (Heike Olschansky), a new dichotomy based on the Coserian couple of habla (‘speech’; It. discorso ) and norma (‘norm’) is proposed, with the aim of depicting the social diffusion of folk etymology. The categories of «paretimologia di discorso» (‘speech folk etymology’) and «paretimologia di norma» (‘norm folk etymology’) are thus coined and discussed, the examples being taken mainly from Italian and the Italoromance dialects.

Editorial practice in literary traditions still dominated by neo-Lachmannian philology remains focussed on the establishment of the text as the medieval author knew it himself. For adherents of this method, the influence of “foreign” languages is labelled as a contamination that should, if possible, be removed as unauthentic. This article proposes a less doctrinaire practice and demonstrates its fruits when brought to bear at the interstices of literary history and Romance philology, as represented by poems by Guillem de Berguedà, Giacomo da Lentini, and Bonifacio Calvo. Approaching both medieval poets and their modern editors in the light of Derrida’s Le monolinguisme de l’autre , the present contribution counters the tendency to impose linguistic and cultural identities on medieval authors, instead allowing their manuscripts to speak for themselves. It further considers the thinking of medieval poets and their transmitters on the nature of language and lyric poetry, and how these systems could and should be used and developed.

The Latin sequences ‑ ngul ‑ in words such as cingulum , ungulam or singulos have evolved into two possible outcomes in Spanish: a palatal sonorant ([ɲ] or [ʎ]), or [nd]. The purpose of this paper is to provide a phonetically-based explanation to account for the sound changes that led to these outcomes in Old Spanish, as well as in other Ibero-Romance languages. In this regard, it will be shown that palatalization and nasalization were competing processes in the development of the sequences ‑ ngul ‑, as well as in the other structurally comparable sequences ‑ ndul ‑ and ‑ mbul ‑.

This paper presents the results of the study of the use of first names in the oldest parish register of the Cathedral of Seville (Iglesia del Sagrario). The baptismal certificates —of newborns and also non-Christian slaves— contained in the Libro de los baptizados en esta Santa Iglesia de Sevilla are dated between January 1, 1515 and the March 3, 1524. The study focuses on the relative frequency of the names of newborns and slaves, but is also trying to find out the reasons for the choice of the names (geographical origin, social status).

This article offers an approach to the De medicina equorum (post 1250–ante 1256) with the aim of analyzing some of the divergences between the manuscript that contains the Galician translation (Biblioteca Nacional de España, ms. 23076) and the Latin text, mainly known through Girolamo Molin’s edition (based on ms. Lat. Cl. VII 24 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana de Venezia). The analysis of the Latin and Romance tradition of Ruffo’s work as well as of other treatises written under its influence show that these divergences do not result from mistakes in the copy of the Galician translation but are rather related to the variations issuing from the process of transmission of this work. Thus, the essay contributes to the establishment of certain textual features of the source text of the Galician version, most likely a Latin manuscript similar to but different from the codex reproduced by Molin.

In this paper we analyze the contemporary uses of three equivalent adverbs in French and Spanish ( sérieusement , seriamente and en serio ) in order to characterize them by some salient linguistic properties. We will also establish the emergence of these uses in the history of the French and Spanish languages and try to determine the historical links between them. To achieve these goals we have created a personal corpus with more than 200 occurrences of each adverb from very diverse types of texts (novels, journals, Internet, oral, data bases such as Frantext , Corpus Le Monde Diplomatique , Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual and Corpus Diacrónico del Español , etc.). Our main hypothesis is that those three adverbs are the result of a similar complex process of grammaticalization.

The chartulary of the Monastery of Santa Maria de Fiães consists of documentation dating mostly back to the 12th century which concerns the process of constitution of the land patrimony of the Benedictine abbey located on the Galician-Portuguese border. This documentary source offers several interesting aspects for linguistic research. In particular, it is worth highlighting the fact that this source contains some of the earliest records (or even, in some cases, the only ones) available for the analysis of a significant number of place-names in the extensive geographic area (the Portuguese Minho land as well as the southern and southwestern regions of Galicia) in which the monastery had a greater number of properties. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore this line of research, by collecting the records in the chartulary for a micro-corpus of four place-names (one being Portuguese and three Galician) and by using them to identify both their etymon and their formal and semantic evolution. Moreover, we will establish, when necessary, their possible relations with other toponymic items, finally analyzing certain dynamics and phenomena (essentially phonetic ones). Their research interest stems from their relatively rare nature in the context of Galician-Portuguese toponymy.

In Modern Italian the syntagm «noun + da + infinitive» displays different syntactic features compared to Old Italian. After the subject has been introduced (§1), we first take into account some grammatical issues related to « da + inf.», namely: i ) syntactic category; ii ) verbal aspect; iii ) voice (§2). After that, we focus on the description and explanation of the diachronic development concerning phrases like acqua da innaffiare gli orti , macchina da scrivere and so forth (§3).

In this article the Romagnolo locution fe(r) e’ curdo(n) ‘to purr’ is considered in regard to its etymology. It is argued that the word curdo(n) ‘string’ is a paretymological reinterpretation of burdon ‘burden, drone’, a technical music term designating the lowest course of a lute and, more generally, a uniform bass accompaniment. Hence the locution would have been playfully applied to the purr of cats, whose noise resembles a bass accompaniment because of its low pitch and assiduity.

Genoa was involved since the 13th century in the commercial activities in the region around the Black Sea (Caffa, Pera, Kiliya, etc.). Numerous texts of that time written in Latin (especially old notarial records) have survived to our days. As the region was a melting pot of traders and travelers from East and West, the sources also contain some interesting lexical borrowings from Arabic. The present article illustrates this phenomenon on the basis of selected examples from the edition of Gheorghe Ioan Brătianu ( Actes des notaires Génois de Péra et de Caffa de la fin du treizième siècle , Bucarest, Cultura naţională, 1927) which so far has not yet been taken into account in linguistic research.

In Italian language there are two words, alitta and alipta , derived from the same latin etymon alipta , shaped on gr. ἀλείπτης ‘who anoint’; however, the two terms have different categories and meanings: alitta (f.) ‘mixture of aromatic substances’ and alipta (m.) ‘who anoint’. The story of ‘alipta’ is traced from ancient Greece until contemporary age – through the middle ages – to clarify the passages that have determined the independent origin of the two terms in the Italian language.

The Italian verb ammazzare ‘to kill (someone), usually in a violent way’ is explained by Italian historical and etymological lexicography as a verb originally indicating a homicide committed with a club (Italian mazza ). On the basis of historical linguistic examples it is instead here ascribed to the act of striking animals with a club during slaughter, where the verb would then assume (for the immediate correspondence between the action and its purpose) the general meaning of ‘killing (an animal)’ (subsequently being referred to people). The article then briefly discusses the etymology of the Italian verb stramazzare ‘to strike down to the ground violently’, which may also be ascribed to animal slaughter, and finally the origin of the ancient Italian verbs mattare and mazzare ‘to kill’, as well as their possible Latin bases * mattare/ * mattiare .

The present article focuses on English-Italian language contact. In detail, we will show that supposedly recent borrowings such as leggings (GRADIT: 2004) or steward (1928) can already be observed in 19th-century Italian translations of English travel literature.