1,354,999 research outputs found
Letter from Mary G. Bartolotta, December 4, 1967
No full textLetter from Mary G. Bartolotta to Fayez Sayegh, December 4, 1967, regarding his appearance on the David Susskind show and the Arab-Israeli conflict
Searching for syntax in the history of medieval linguistic thought
No full textThe present volume contains selected papers from the international
conference on “The submerged syntax between Late Antiquity and the
Modern Age. Sources, models, and interpretative strategies”, that took place
in Palermo, 28-29 November 2019, hosted by the Department of
Humanities at the University of Palermo. The conference was organized
under the umbrella of a project of national relevance funded by the Italian
Ministry of Education, University and Research, named “Parts of speech
meet rhetorics: searching for syntax in the continuity between the Middle
Ages and the Modern Age” (PRIN 20172F2FEZ, funded from January
2020). The approach that unifies this volume is mostly related to the reconstruction
of the medieval syntactic thought, which was developed on the
basis of ancient grammarians descriptions. Indeed, as has been recently
remarked, the ancient Apollonius Dyscolus’ grammatical theory of syntax,
which was received in the Middle Ages through the Latin Grammar of
Priscian, «established itself as the foundation of the Western theory of syntax
» (Luthala 2020: 23). However, although in particular Priscian’s
Institutiones Grammaticae contained many syntactic insights, they offer
neither a coherent syntactic theory nor a specific metalanguage for syntax
(Kneepkens 1990: 140; Vineis & Maierù 1990: 114). Also, following the
classical grammarian’s approach, Priscian’s model of syntax was wordbased,
thus ultimately relying on dependency-oriented rather than constituency-
oriented approaches (Law 2003: 91). For this reason, the papers
presented here aim at tracing back to emergent syntactic notions in the history
of Western thought, through the analysis of specific key terms used in
the medieval tradition. In fact, the hypothesis according to which the syntactic
concept of subordination and the opposition between main and
dependent clause were introduced for the first time by the foundational contribution
of Port-Royal Grammar (1660), thus starting from the modern age
(Graffi 2019: 87-88; 2021: 35), seems no longer tenable (cf. Cotticelli
Kurras 2004: 135; 2021: 69ff.; see also Bartolotta 2022)
Spatial Cognition and Frames of Reference in Indo-European
No full textThe development of Frames of Reference (FoRs) as coordinate systems in space language has
gained increasing attention in current linguistic, neurolinguistic, and psycholinguistic research
(Diessel 2013: 687; Kemmerer 2010). Previous studies on typology of spatial expressions have
traditionally been based on the universal status of the egocentric or relative FoR found in the Indo-
European languages, in which the relation between Figure and Ground is specified by the deictic
observer’s viewpoint (Mühlhäusler 2001). However, there is growing crosslinguistic evidence that
many non-Indo-European languages do not make use of such deictic or ternary FoR, but interpret
spatial relations by referring to binary non-egocentric absolute (geocentric) and intrinsic (objectcentered)
FoRs (Levinson 2003; O’Meara & Pérez Báez 2011). Contrary to the hypothesis
according to which children’s spatial representations are primarily egocentric, the most recent
results on spatial language acquisition similarly suggest that children initially exhibit a strong bias
toward absolute rather than relative FoRs (Shusterman & Li 2016). If one takes a historical
perspective, it can be found that spatial cognition in the Indo-European language is different from
that found in modern European languages. After investigating the contexts of use of spatial terms of
FRONT, BEHIND, LEFT, RIGHT in Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek in a comparative perspective, this
paper aims at reconstructing the proto-language spatial FoRs. Specifically, data from the Rigveda
and the Homeric poems prove that the egocentric relative FoR could not have existed yet in Indo-
European, which indeed reveals traces of an absolute language. The close association between those
spatial terms and east and west cardinal directions shows a projection of the front-back axis to
spatial relations according to the positions of the sun within a geocentric FoR. These findings are
also in line with recent studies on the existence of deictically-neutral temporal sequences in Indo-
European space-time metaphors (Bartolotta 2018).
References
Bartolotta, A. 2018. Spatio-temporal deixis and cognitive models in early Indo-European.
«Cognitive Linguistics» 29 (1), 1-44.
Kemmerer, D. 2010. A neuroscientific perspective on the linguistic encoding of categorical spatial
relations, in Evans, V. & P. Chilton (Eds), Language, cognition and space. Equinox, pp. 139-170.
Levinson, S. C. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition. Cambridge University Press.
Mühlhäusler, P. 2001. Universals and typology of space, in Haspelmath M. (Ed.), Language
typology and language universals: An international handbook. Vol. 20. Walter de Gruyter.
O’Meara, C. & Pérez Báez, G. 2011. Spatial frames of reference in Mesoamerican languages.
«Language Sciences» 33, 837-852.
Shusterman, A. & Li, P. 2016. Frames of reference in spatial language acquisition. «Cognitive
Psychology» 88, 115-161
Bartolotta Antonino
No full textSi indaga la produzione artistica di Bartolotta Antonino attestato come argentiere nel XVIII secolo a PalermoWe investigate the artistic production of Bartolotta Antonino attested as a silversmith in the eighteenth century in Palerm
From comitative to clausal conjunction in a typological perspective: Evidence from simul in early Latin
No full textThis analysis investigates the role of comitative constructions as a coordination strategy in
early Latin. From a typological perspective, it is well-known that a comitative marker can be
used to express a conjunctive relationship (Mithun 1988: 338; Haspelmath 2004: 15). The
Latin comitative construction with simul ‘together; simultaneously’ (de Vaan 2008: 564; cf.
Corder 1905: 5) shows a gradual grammaticalization process toward a ‘coordination-like’
construction. It gives rise to new conjunctive functions that involve not only the phrasal level
but also extend to the broader sentence level (cf. Gast & Diessel 2012, Haspelmath 2004).
The syntactic and semantic analysis of the occurrences of simul/semul in Latin literary texts
from the late 3rd to early 1st century BC allows us to identify at least four main functions of
this term, which proves to be multifunctional at a synchronic level (cf. Haumann 1997: 47;
Kortmann 1998: 58). Depending on the different contexts of use, it indeed behaves as i) a
spatial or temporal adverb, ii) a preposition, iii) a noun or adjective phrase conjunction, and
iv) a sentence conjunction. From a diachronic perspective, the distribution of those
occurrences suggests that starting as an adverb, simul develops a coordinating function,
initially at the NP level and later extending to the independent sentence level. This
development conforms to the general grammaticalization path COMITATIVE > NP-AND >
SENTENCE-AND (Heine & Kuteva 2004: 83). From a typological perspective, although modern
Indo-European languages have been undoubtedly classified as AND-languages, these data
would support the existence of previous WITH-coordination strategies in Latin, as has been
also assumed for other ancient Indo-European languages (Stassen 2000: 37; Bartolotta 2025).
Moreover, given that pairing of the comitative function with temporal functions of
simultaneity or concomitance is common cross-linguistically, it is not surprising that simul,
while still retaining its function as a lexical adverb (cf. Hopper 1991), tends to further evolve
from a comitative marker added to NP arguments into a temporal clause marker used to
introduce subordinate clauses. This development conforms to the grammaticalization path
COMITATIVE > TEMPORAL (cf. Heine & Kuteva 2004: 89-90).
References
Bartolotta, A. (2025), From WITH-languages to AND-languages: Insights from Ancient Greek,
in Verano, R. et al. (Eds.), Papers in Greek Linguistics, Sevilla: Editorial de la
Universidad de Sevilla (forthcoming).
Corder, L. F. (1905). The use of simul, simulac (atque) and synonyms, cum primum ut primum
and ubi primum from the earliest literature down to the Augustan age. PhD thesis,
University of Missouri, Columbia.
Gast, V. and Diessel, H. (2012), The typology of clause linkage: status quo, challenges,
prospects. In (Eds.), Clause Linkage in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin/Boston:
Walter de Gruyter, pp. 1-36.
Haspelmath, M. (2004): Coordinating constructions: An overview. In M. Haspelmath (Ed.),
Coordinating Constructions. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 3-39.
Haumann, D. (1997), The Syntax of Subordination. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Heine, B. and Kuteva, T. (2004): World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, P. J. (1991), On some principles of grammaticization. In E. Traugott and B. Heine
(Eds.) Approaches to Grammaticalization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp.
17–35.
Kortmann, B. (1998), Adverbial subordinators in the languages of Europe. In J. van der
Auwera (Ed.), Eurotyp. 3. Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe.
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 457-561.
Mithun, M. (1988), The grammaticization of coordination. In J. Haiman and S. Thompson
(Eds.), Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins, pp. 331-359.
De Vaan, M. (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages.
Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Stassen, L. (2000): «AND-languages and WITH-languages», Linguistic Typology 4 (1), 1-54
Evoluzione, applicazioni e nuove linee di sviluppo dei sistemi di simulazione a eventi discreti
No full textSpatial Frames of Reference in Old Latin
No full textThis paper investigates the spatial Frames of Reference (FoRs) in Old Latin within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (cf. Talmy 1983; Levinson 2003; Levinson & Wilkins 2006). Differently from modern Indo-European languages, which are heavily based on the so-called relative or egocentric FoR, ancient Indo-European languages such as Vedic and Homeric Greek did not make use of such an egocentric orientation system at their earliest stage, since the relation between FIGURE and GROUND was not specified by imposing an external deictic observer’s viewpoint (cf. Bartolotta 2018; 2021). The historical-comparative analysis of the most ancient literary texts in the Indo-European tradition gives us the opportunity to investigate early spatial orientation systems that might have been inherited from the proto-language. Strikingly, data from the Rigveda and the Homeric poems show that those languages made use of the same two orientation systems, i.e. the intrinsic and the absolute. Thus, the fact that both languages appear to lack the relative or egocentric FoR challenges the reconstruction of a deictic orientation system also for Indo-European. More specifically, the use of spatial terms FRONT, BEHIND, LEFT, RIGHT shows no evidence for a spatial perspective projected by bodily coordinates (on front-back and/or right-left axes) either in Vedic or in Greek. The aim of this study is to add the perspective of Old Latin, by focusing on the meaning and the contexts of use of these spatial terms in the comedies of Plautus. The results of this analysis are consistent with the hypothesis according to which the ternary relative FoR was not the primary orientation system in Proto-Indo-European. In fact, the data show that Plautus made primarily use of the binary intrinsic FoR (both object-centered and direct), as the GROUNDs taken as reference points of the spatial scene were always entities endowed with unambiguous intrinsic front-back sides (e.g. the house, the doors, the army, the human body and its parts). Furthermore, although more rarely, the spatial scene could also be described by referring to fixed constant bearings abstracted from the environment (e.g. prevailing wind directions), according to the absolute or field-based FoR. In both intrinsic and absolute FoRs, the spatial description does not change by changing perspective. Consequently, it is not strictly necessary to involve an extra-entity, i.e. a deictic observer imposing her/his own viewpoint to the scene, as is crucial in case of GROUNDs that are intrinsically ‘unfeatured’. It is plausibly for this reason that no trace has been found of the more complex relative FoR in Plautus’ comedies. These results are consistent with both typological and historical-comparative studies. In a typological perspective,
the universal status of the egocentric or relative FoR proper to modern Indo-European languages (Mühlhäusler 2001) has indeed been challenged by recent evidence on many non-Indo-European languages (see, among others, Levinson 2003; O’Meara & Pérez Báez 2011). In addition, it has been shown that there is a constraint toward the absolute-intrinsic FoR combination in the world’s languages (cf. Kataoka 2002). In a historical-comparative perspective, these preliminary data might allow us to list Old Latin among those ancient Indo-European languages, like Vedic and Greek, which originally did not make use of a deictic orientation system.
References
Bartolotta, Annamaria. 2018. Spatio-temporal deixis and cognitive models in early Indo-European. «Cognitive Linguistics» 29 (1): 1–44.
Bartolotta, Annamaria. 2021 (forthcoming). Spatial Cognition and Frames of Reference in Indo-European, in D. Romagno, F. Rovai, (Eds.), Contact, Variation, and Reconstruction in the Ancient Indo-European Languages: between Linguistics and Philology. Leiden, Brill. Kataoka, Kuniyoshi. 2002. Linguistic anthropological research on spatial cognition in European and non-European settings. «Language and Culture» 6: 121–150.
Levinson, Stephen C. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, Stephen C. and Wilkins, David P. 2006. Grammars of Space. Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2001. Universals and typology of space, in M. Haspelmath et al. (Eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook. Vol. 20. Berlin & New York, Walter de Gruyter.
O’Meara, Caroline and Pérez Báez, Gabriela. 2011. Spatial frames of reference in Mesoamerican languages. «Language Sciences» 33: 837–852.
Talmy, Leonard. 1983. How language structures space, in H. L Pick., L. P. Acredolo (Eds.), Spatial orientation: Theory, research and application. New York, Plenum Press, pp. 225–282
On the typology of motion events in Aymara
No full textThis paper investigates the lexicalization pattern of motion events in Aymara, an Andean language spoken in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile. After providing a description of the morphosyntax of translational motion events, this study aims at a preliminary typological classification of Aymara within the framework of Talmy’s typology (Talmy 2000). With this purpose, three diagnostic tests have been used to determine the basic framing-typology of motion events. These tests consider i) the size of manner-of-motion lexicon and, more broadly, the degree of manner salience, ii) the Complex Path constructions and the use of ‘plus-ground’ clauses, iii) the expression of boundary crossing. The results of this analysis are in line with predictions of expected values according to Talmian typology, and suggest that Aymara is a predominantly Satellite-framed language
Generazione automatica di codice di simulazione a partire dalla descrizione schematica del sistema produttivo
No full textLa straordinaria normalità di Felicia
No full textIl saggio ripercorre la storia di Felicia Bartolotta Impastato, madre di Giuseppe Impastato, assassinato dalla mafia il 9 maggio del 1978
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