Volume 141, Issue 1

The term “false etymology” refers to the imaginative reconstruction of the origin and history of a word, widely circulating among laymen despite its lack of any scientific foundation. Based on a corpus of false etymologies of Italian, French and Spanish words (and occasionally of other Romance languages and dialects), the article attempts a definition and classification of the phenomenon, according to the classes of words affected and the techniques by which words are analyzed, as far as both their forms and meanings are concerned. A reflection on the social function of false etymologies is also provided, as well as considerations on how false etymologies originate and spread in contemporary societies.

This article studies the evolution of the Latin and Romance [mn] sequences (i.e. primary and secondary [mn] sequences). Among the wide range of outcomes these sequences developed into in the Romance languages, particular consideration is given to the rise of [mb(r)] and [nd(r)]. Through the examination of philological, dialectal and experimental data, three fundamental questions are discussed: 1) how much more frequent regressive assimilation as opposed to progressive assimilation in intervocalic [mn] sequences is in reality and why; 2) whether [mb(r)] and [nd(r)] come only from [mː]/[nː] or if they can also come from [m]/[n]; and 3) whether the epenthesis of [r] is triggered by phonetics or by analogy. The evidence presented in this article points to articulatory and perceptual bases for the much higher rates of regressive versus progressive assimilation in these sequences in intervocalic position, the viability of [mb(r)] and [nd(r)] resulting from both [mː]/[nː] and [m]/[n] depending on the language, and phonetic grounds, rather than analogical, for the [r]-epenthesis in most instances of [mbr] and [ndr].

The few studies that dealt with the Roman de Reinbert , transmitted only by ff. 350ra-357vb of the ms. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 3516, mostly observed it from the point of view of textual criticism, arriving at the hypothesis that the romance was conceived simultaneously with the preparation of the rest of the codex and that ff. 350ra-357vb testify the original text of the Reinbert . The purpose of this essay is to verify these hypotheses and to determine more precisely the nature of the witness folios.

Climate change and its effects on the environment are among the most pressing problems of our time and are of concern to researchers and politicians as well as a large number of citizens; they are among the most frequently covered topics in the media. As a result, we are constantly confronted with new words – neologisms – that refer to this topic. Neologisms can be terms that are transferred from specialized language into our everyday language, but they can also be new words created by politicians, media professionals and other people in public life who use them to describe new phenomena, actions, or behaviors. This article compares the lexical processes used in French and German to create climate change-specific neologisms and outlines which procedures are similar in both languages and how the respective neologisms differ. The focus is on the creative potential of certain topic-specific word components, their function, and the range of content their use can cover.

The purpose of this paper is to study the failed grammaticalization of the noun phrase nul homme (Eng. «no man/nobody») in Medieval French. Having a considerable frequency in Old French (12 th –13 th century) which declined by the end of the Medieval period, nul homme showed a tendency for grammaticalization towards a negative indefinite pronoun. Nevertheless, in later stages of the French language evolution, the grammaticalized use did not prevail. The paper represents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of nul homme occurrences in the BFM19 corpus (9 th –15 th century) that takes in account the text-type distribution and the verse/prose opposition. Based on the model by Giacalone-Ramat/Sansò, it follows different stages of grammaticalization of nul homme in Medieval French before suggesting a multifactorial explanation of its later failure such as nul homme ’s preference for versified texts and its competition with nul -pronoun.

The inconveniences posed by the definition of the subject as a conceptual universal in the field of theoretical linguistics —discussed in the first part of this study— are, in our opinion, due to the lack of a rigorous characterization of this constituent in different languages. In order to address this issue, we propose, in a second part, a description of this linguistic element in the realm of descriptive grammar of Spanish. In our view, the noun phrase —or its equivalent— acts as a null or overt subject in this language if it agrees with the verb and designates a specific or unspecified entity. However, we consider that the existence of a subject is not always guaranteed. To verify the validity of our proposal, we analyze certain structures that reflect the controversy stemming from such characterization and, as a result, confirm the need to establish specific criteria for the behavior of the subject in Spanish. This is essential not only to achieve a valid definition across all languages but also to ensure a coherent and systematic reflection in the classroom for Spanish as both a native and foreign language.

The primary objective of this study is to conduct an analysis of the restricted-to-phraseology term “barrisco” and its associated idioms, specifically “a barrisco” and “llevar a barrisco”, as found in lexicographical works predating the Diccionario de autoridades (1726–1739). This analysis aims to shed light on the process by which this idiomatic term was documented, while also intending to exam some key aspects such as etymological considerations, the delineation of semantic specialisation, and the treatment of phraseological usage. Hence, exploring the historical progression from the 16th to the 18th century -as evidenced in successive editions of dictionaries- assumes critical importance in elucidating the mechanisms underlying the formation and interpretation of phraseological units.

This study focuses on the reconstructed phonetic manifestation of direct objects with nouns as nuclei in the historical development of Latin, early Medieval Latin, and Ibero-Romance. Based on their written manifestation, as well as on their morphemic patterning, the apparent phonetic reality of nouns, which was continuing to merge due to an increasing erosion of the case system in Vulgar Latin, must have contributed, to some degree, to the eventual establishment of verb-direct object ( v-do ) as the unmarked order in the various Iberian domains. When v-do established itself as the unmarked order, direct object-verb ( do-v ) was reassigned as the marked counterpart, paving the way for the duplicative direct object pronoun to surface. These claims are supported by the incidence of do-v and v-do as attested to by the extant early Medieval Latin documents from Portugal and northern Iberia, namely, Asturias and embryonic Castile (La Rioja), whose composition is attributed to the eighth century.

This paper analyses the temporal interpretation of the negative adverb nunca (‘never’), with a particular focus on the implicative combinations nunca antes (‘never before’), which is retrospective, and nunca mais (‘never again’), which is either prospective, or retrospective-prospective. A brief discussion of emphatic negative temporal constructions is also included. A first section deals with the definition of the location time in sentences with nunca , an interval which is often restricted, in particular by the action of tense, and of other temporal adjuncts within the same proposition (e.g., nunca nessa década ‘never in that decade’, nunca desde então ‘never since then’). A second section deals with the implicative combinations nunca antes and nunca mais , focusing on their semantic and pragmatic interpretation; this includes a discussion of the implicit information they normally convey, and an analysis of the intricate correspondence between tenses and semantic values involved. A final third section briefly scrutinizes emphatic or redundant constructions containing nunca , both with nunca followed by other negative adjuncts (e.g., nunca jamais ‘never ever’, literally ‘never never’, nunca em momento algum ‘never at any time’), and with nunca followed by the weak negative polarity item alguma vez ‘ever’, literally ‘some time’ ( nunca alguma vez ‘never ever’).

This article examines several cases of problematic documents, arising from their improper, singular or anomalous placement, which have surfaced during the recent activities related to the reorganization and the study of the archives of Adolfo Mussafia and Ernesto Giacomo Parodi at the Biblioteca Umanistica of the University of Florence. Firstly, it clarifies why three letters from Gustav Gröber and one from Emil Levy in the Parodi Archive should instead be attributed to the Mussafia Fonds. The article then discusses the current extent of Gröber’s correspondence with Mussafia and suggests a date for the only letter lacking one, providing a full transcription of it. Subsequently, attention turns to the postcards sent by Kristoffer Nyrop to Ernesto Giacomo Parodi, with corrections made to their order, and to the inappropriate placement of a letter from Joseph Bédier found in his correspondence with Parodi. This letter, originally sent to someone else (presumably Francesco Novati), to serve as a mediator following an alleged discourtesy from the French philologist towards Parodi, was subsequently forwarded to Parodi.

The paper presents a codicological description and the edition of a new fragmentary witness (called ASDCr) of Aldobrandino da Siena’s Régime du corps . This parchment fragment, a bifolio found in the Diocesan Historical Archive of Cremona, is the seventy-eighth known Régime ’s witness. In the paper a hypothesis is made about the manuscript to which the fragment belonged: it is likely that it came from the book production and circulation environment gravitating around the Visconti-Sforza library in Pavia. Finally, some reflections are developed on the Régime du corps manuscript tradition.

In her 1955 study on Italian loanwords in German, Marjatta Wis considered the German words stramatzen , stromatzen , stromaczen and stromatzo as borrowings from It. stramazzo ‘straw-filled mattressʼ. In actual fact, however, the forms go back to two different etyma. While It. stramazzo , which is derived from strame ‘strawʼ, can be unambiguously identified only in Sebald Rieter's pilgrim travelogue, the other cases mentioned by Wis are based on the synonymous and phono-morphologically very similar Upper German stromatze , from stro(h) ‘strawʼ + mazze ‘matʼ.