Search results for "Indo-European"
showing 10 items of 41 documents
Measures of native and non-native rhythm in a quantity language.
2005
The traditional phonetic classification of language rhythm as stress-timed or syllable-timed is attributed to Pike. Recently, two different proposals have been offered for describing the rhythmic structure of languages from acoustic-phonetic measurements. Ramus has suggested a metric based on the proportion of vocalic intervals and the variability ( SD) of consonantal intervals. Grabe has proposed Pairwise Variability Indices (nPVI, rPVI) calculated from the differences in vocalic and consonantal durations between successive syllables. We have calculated both the Ramus and Grabe metrics for Latvian, traditionally considered a syllable rhythm language, and for Latvian as spoken by Russian l…
Linguistic Analysis and Ancient Indo-European Languages
2015
Using modern linguistic theory to describe ‘dead’ languages is one of the theoretical and methodological challenges in contemporary linguistic research. In fact, theories of the twentieth century mostly aimed to account for speakers’ linguistic competence, thus basing their analysis on live speakers and their intuitions. However, drawing on evidence from languages such as Vedic, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Gothic, Celtic and Proto-Indo-European itself, the relevance of the ancient Indo-European languages to contemporary linguistic theory has been constantly shown, since the rise of the linguistic sciences in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the observation of ancient Indo-European language…
The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations
2021
Summary The Cycladic, the Minoan, and the Helladic (Mycenaean) cultures define the Bronze Age (BA) of Greece. Urbanism, complex social structures, craft and agricultural specialization, and the earliest forms of writing characterize this iconic period. We sequenced six Early to Middle BA whole genomes, along with 11 mitochondrial genomes, sampled from the three BA cultures of the Aegean Sea. The Early BA (EBA) genomes are homogeneous and derive most of their ancestry from Neolithic Aegeans, contrary to earlier hypotheses that the Neolithic-EBA cultural transition was due to massive population turnover. EBA Aegeans were shaped by relatively small-scale migration from East of the Aegean, as e…
Reading and Spelling Development Across Languages Varying in Orthographic Consistency: Do Their Paths Cross?
2020
We examined the cross‐lagged relations between reading and spelling in five alphabetic orthographies varying in consistency (English, French, Dutch, German, and Greek). Nine hundred and forty‐one children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and were tested on word and pseudoword reading fluency and on spelling to dictation. Results indicated that the relations across languages were unidirectional: Earlier reading predicted subsequent spelling. However, we also found significant differences between languages in the strength of the effects of earlier reading on subsequent spelling. These findings suggest that, once children master decoding, the observed differences between languages are not…
Introduction
2014
Studying Ancient Greek offers new insights for linguistic theory. Thanks to the amount of available written data of a large corpus at our disposal, it is possible for a linguist to test hypotheses from modern theories in order to explain language phenomena, without disregarding a description according to methodologies adopted in traditional analyses of ancient languages. In particular, the morphological complexity of the Greek verb with its highly intricate inflectional system provide a valuable basis for an in-depth-analysis of the mechanisms which regulate the functioning of a language in the mind of the speaker. Crucially, in recent times also deductive methodologies adopted in the gener…
Sulla corporeità del processo cognitivo nei poemi omerici: il caso di μαίνομαι
2019
The aim of this paper is to shed light on the striking connection between, on the one hand, the cognitive process in Homer and, on the other, the verb μαίνομαι (and the forms from the perfect stem μεμον-/μεμα-), which represents the ultimate example of Ancient Greek verb conveying the idea of “raging, being furious/mad/insane”. Besides those common meanings, the analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey shows that the semantic complexity of μαίνομαι actually includes the idea of “thinking”, due to the inner polysemy of the IE root *men-, to which the verb at issue traces back, as well as the Homeric lack of distinction between body and mind. More specifically, the verb also refers to a range of…
Towards a Reconstruction of Indo-European Culture: Semantic Functions of IE *men-
2003
The aim of this paper is to recover the semantic values involved in IE *men- in order to reconstruct some cognitive process modalities in regard to "Indo-European ideology" (Campanile 1992). After focusing on the apparent semantic split noticeable between Homeric Greek and Vedic in the uses derived from *men-, I argue for the presence of striking parallel paths using the methods of textual comparison. Then, the role of lexical nucleus' polysemy in originating the linguistic change is highlighted, without disregarding an Indo-European typological perspective within the realm of the so-called "basic lexicon" to which the root at issue belongs.
Some Reflections on the Gothic Optative
2015
The verbal systems of the earliest Indo-European languages are not so congruous with one another as the nominal paradigms. The reconstruction of IE is conformably fraught with far greater difficulty, and there is plenty of room for doubt. In this paper a particular morph will be dealt with, which does not go back as such to Indo-European. The proto-language must have possessed the linguistic unit employed in Gothic to form the verbal endings that are discussed here. Traces of this unit are found in other IE languages, as a matter of fact, and Gothic has utilized it in its own way. The issue will be discussed inside what is called the Greco-Aryan model. Indeed, based chiefly on Greek and San…
From Thinking to Raging: Reflexes of Indo-European *men- Polysemy in Homer
2020
This paper aims at investigating the semantic value of the verb μαίνομαι “to rage, to be furious” in Homeric Greek, in order to clarify the striking semantic relationship between the common ‘irrational’ meaning of the verb and the original ‘rational’ meaning of the Indo-European root *men- “to think”, to which the verb traces back. The corresponding words for μαίνομαι in other Indo-European languages (e.g. OInd. mányatē; Av. mainyeite; OIr. (do)moiniur; OCS mъnjo; Lit. miniu) can be translated as “to think”, thus showing an opposite meaning. From a textual analysis of all the occurrences of μαίνομαι in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the study aims at finding semantic traces of the original mean…
Homeric k-aorists and/or k-perfects?
2013
In classical Greek the aorist indicatives of dído:mi, je:mi, and títhe:mi end in -ka, -kas, -ke following a long vowel in the singular. Homeric Greek utilizes k-forms, both augmented and non-augmented, of these three verbs, and attests to third person plural forms ending in -kan and even to a first person plural form such as êne:kamen. There is a broad consensus regarding these forms as typical of Greek, while their relation to the k-perfect is still discussed. The paper considers the -k- to have a phonetic origin deriving from a laryngeal root,viz from *h1 or *h3, when they come into contact with *h2,the laryngeal of *-h2e, the ancient first person singular ending of the original perfect. …