Volume 134, Issue 3

The objective of this paper is to analyze a particular part of French and German language planning discourse in a comparative perspective. In this context, the purpose of the article is to reveal the metalinguistic use and function of the common and frequently used national identity motive. Considering discourse linguistics as an appropriate applied linguistics approach, a case study rather focuses on the topical structure and on specific argument layouts as they play a vital part in language-related discourse and metalinguistic interaction as a major domain of national identity construction.

This paper casts light on the onomastic landscape of the Eastern Pyrenees. Against the background of toponymic evidence we get insights into its prehistoric ethnicity and in particular into its celticity. The etymology of artigue / Artigue both as a common and as a proper noun remains a controversial issue of linguistic research on the Pyrenees. Linguists still tend to adhere to the traditional assessment of an Iberian origin. However – as will be argued here – it can be brought into a more effectual relationship with a Celtic etymology. Evidence is given for a prehistoric language island being situated on the upper reaches of the river Tech and surrounded by speakers of the Iberian language. Special attention is drawn to the etymology of the name of the river Tech . The hydronym is considered to be of Celtic origin. May it be that it derives from the name of the Gaulish tribe of the Tectosages ?

This study documents the definitive consolidation of the Object + Verb (OV) > Verb + Object (VO) change in the passage from Latin to Hispano-Romance. The change can be situated around the very point at which the first cases of clitic duplication of preverbal, nominal direct objects (i.e., direct objects whose nucleus is a noun) surface in the written records. A scrutiny of central-northern Iberian texts, whose composition ranges from the eighth to the twelfth century, allows me to claim that clitic duplication of the most prominent kind of nominal and preverbal direct objects, i.e., humans —as opposed to inanimates —, can be found in the eleventh century. But given that linguistic changes normally occur in speech, rather than in writing, first, our study shows that the categorical consolidation of the change in question happened even before clitic co-referentiality of direct objects emerged in the extant texts. Therefore, clitic duplication of nominal, preverbal animate accusatives points to OV having established itself in Hispano-Romance, by the eleventh century, not only as an emphatic order, but also as a derived pattern from non-emphatic VO.

This paper deals with the complex sentences in Spanish formed by the correlation tanto(s)~tanta(s)... que (i.e. Comí tanto que me sentó mal ‘I ate so much that I felt bad’). In opposition to the majority of the previous analyses, which treat que as an adjacent of the quantified phrase with tanto , we will argue that tanto... que is not a functional group nor a maximal projection lexically generated, but a long-distance correlation that is semantically and pragmatically conditioned. In particular, we will defend that tanto is an evaluative scalar quantifier that behaves like correlatives do: it maximizes the meaning of its clause and is pragmatically significant (it marks contrastive focus by means of intensive accent and intonation and may give rise to an informative structure of topic-comment). In addition, the clause with que behaves like the typical correlates: it is always postposed to the correlative and it rejects recursive operations (like coordination). As occurs in the comparative correlatives from some Germanic languages and the relative correlatives in languages like Hindi, the clause with que is an adjunct of the first clause. Lastly, and following Dayal’s work on relative correlatives in Hindi (1995), we will suggest that tanto is a two-place quantifier linking a propositional variable, instantiated by the clause with que .

Clipping and linguistic variation are inexorably interconnected. Shortened or elliptical words reflect a great deal of variability of the language, especially in the morphological and phonological levels. The object of this study is precisely to explore the phono-graphemic and grammatical variations occurred in the visible changes undergone by clipped words in Spanish and English. A contrastive analysis of this type reveals both expectedly different correspondences in terms of gender and number, and surprisingly parallel lexico-syntactic features. This suggests that clipped or elliptical units are not only necessarily dependent on intrinsic morpho-grammatical and phonological traits, but they are also characterized by regularities and universal patterns that might show disruptive or “corrupted” constructs. This analysis confirms the peculiarities of clipping and linguistic variations in both languages, in an attempt to comprehend the interconnection between functional motivations, and morphological and phonological changes.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Spanish language underwent, from the point of view of the written standard, a series of changes that resolved the prevailing graphic chaos of the preceding centuries. This had been caused by continuous phonological adjustments. The creation of the Spanish Royal Academy (1713), as well as subsequent lexicographical and grammatical works, gradually standardised the orthography of those who used writing as a means to express thought. The objective of this article is to gather together a set of opinions of ordinary people present in the most important spaces of public opinion during the two centuries in question, in order to be able to determine in this way what influence was exerted by the academic body on this process of graphic normalisation and what impact their rules may have had on the different means of written dissemination: publishers, press and handwritten writing. From the methodological point of view, different discursive traditions are identified in order to observe the limits and scope in the acceptance or rejection of these new norms, and therefore to reach conclusions concerning different linguistic attitudes to the graphic system. The diverse opinions of grammarians, writers and non-specialists examined in this study may help to guide different approaches to possible linguistic change in graphic expression.

The anonymous Padovano, author of the Entrée d’Espagne , writes to admonish and educate the knights and the rulers of his time: his explicit aim is to «castoier li coarz et li van». Therefore, it is not surprising that the story of the chanson is provided with a moral intent. The knights of the Entrée often disobey Charlemagne’s orders because of their pride and wrath. Also Roland, the best Christian knight, is affected by these vices, as the episode of the conquest of Nobles shows. His adventure in the Orient can be read as a penitential route, at the end of which he learns the high value of humility. Given the moral goal of the text, the author proposes to date the Entrée in the early decades of the fourteenth century (between 1312 and 1328), when the Paduan commune and the Trevisan March were upset by civil wars, determined by the violence and the vicious ambitions of the local nobility.

Foucon de Candie is an epic poem dating to the last two decades of the twelfth century. In the first part, it tells the story of Foucon, one of Charlemagne’s nephews, acquiring the Saracen city of Candie. The still unpublished Franco-Italian version of this chanson de geste contains some laisses that are not in the rest of the French tradition. In this article I publish and comment on two of them which describe the galley of Foucon ( La nef Folcho mult est bien atorné e Per gran maistrixie hont afermé un doion ).

Most of 17th century Romanian lexicography is represented by adaptations of the Slavonic-Ukrainian Lexicon published by Pamvo Berynda (Kiev, 1627). There are six known Slavonic-Romanian lexicons dating from this time plus a fragmented one, all in manuscript. Out of these, only two have been studied in their entirety : Mardarie’s Lexicon from Cozia Monastery (1649) and the so-called « Cipariu Lexicon ». The others are only partially known as they have not yet been transcripted from Cyrillic into Latin script. This article discusses the connections between these lexicons and their relationship to their shared source, as well as the purpose of their compilation. It also gives a critical analysis of the established hypotheses in the literature and suggests new ones.

No conclusive etymological explanation is to be found in the main historical dictionaries for the Middle and Modern French interjection Saint-Gris , first attested in Renaissance Comedy. Several hints point to a minced oath created in order to avoid swearing on the name of Christ.

This paper aims to present the so-called «Italy Project» of the Regesta Imperii , a new basic research project in Medieval Studies that is offering some overlap with Romanistic research. Since 1829 the Regesta Imperii records all documents and narrative sources, which gives evidence to the activities of the Roman-German kings and emperors between ca. 751 and 1519. The RI are therefore an important research-tool concerning the European Middle Ages. Since 2016 the «Italy Project» coordinates the research about the later medieval emperors Henry VII (1308–1313), Louis IV (1314–1347), Charles IV (1346–1378) and Frederick III (1440–1493) in archives and libraries of Italy. As some of the collected documents are written in Italian Volgare or other Romance languages, there are links to Romance language history as will be shown by some letters of the merchant family Frescobaldi written in the period of Henry VII.

This study focuses on a problem which has been widely debated among specialists in epic literature, Hispanists and Romance Philologists, that is the supposed existence of a Chanson de Geste written in Castilian («Cantar de Rodlane») around 1060–1070. According to Ramón Menéndez Pidal, this text could be the direct source for the famous and anonymous Nota Emilianense . Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of the arguments proposed by Menéndez Pidal leads to the conclusion that the Cantar de Rodlane probably never existed and, on the other hand, that some of the principles of Pidal’s neotraditionalist theory should be critically revisited.

In the tradition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca , It. ambracane ‘ambergris’ is commonly derived from Sp. ámbar cano (lit. ‘white ambar’). The alleged etymon, however, does not exist in Spanish. In reality, the term is composed of Ar. ‘anbar and the adjective ḫām ‘raw, unworked, unprocessed’.