docoflove1974

Nope, you're not missing it...case fell out of the other Romance languages very early; the only ones with vestiges were Old French (nominative/oblique) and Old Proven

PSB version is very good...'The Joshua Tree' I count as more modern U2...they're not so political, and more 'pop' in their lyrics. From that era: "One", "Beautiful Day" and "Mysterious Ways" are the top 3, although there's room for many more to sneak in.

It truly is. I worked on it and other poetry of that geographic area and time frame for my MA thesis, and this by far is my favorite. And, yeah, it's technically XIII...these are the volumes I used in the thesis: Monaci, E. 1954. Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli con prospetto grammaticale e glossario. Castello: Casa Editrice S. Lapi. Ugolini, F.A. 1959. Testi volgari abruzzesi. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier. von Wartburg, W. 1946. Raccolta di testi antichi italiani. Berne, Switzerland: Casa Editrice A Francke S.A.

Told ya This and Pride (In The Name Of Love) are the best of the old school U2...and 2 of my all-time favorite tracks.

Sorry, hun, but it's originally a Nine Inch Nails song, one of Trent Reznor's best IMO...Johnny heard it, and wanted to redo it. But both are indeed classics.

I take this back...mostly because I can't find my notes...they're buried in boxes of books under the house, and I don't really have the time to sift through it. So, ignore said comment. Sorry about that.

One more reason why I want to be cremated

Yes, I know of the phrase...and actually Graham Mallinson's Rumanian (1984) delves into the language most thoroughly...I use it often in my research.

Eh, it's all good...I have one of Minerva that I want up, but the *(&(!@#$$ site won't let me upload it, for whatever reason, I don't know. It's the right size! And I'd go in the running for Mrs. UNRV, but I'm still working on my bikini shape :giggle: Sorry, didn't mean to derail the thread...

Ah, only Bulgarian in Slavic? Interesting...I will be honest in that I'm not good with my Slavic morphology...but do the other Slavic languages use articles? Either way, the Balkan linguistic elements fool Romance linguists all the time, and I'm sure it's true for Slavicists. So much that we don't know about that area...and such a history!

I gotta get a different av...one that shows that I'm a chick

Quite true about Christians being lower class...I admit my knowledge of the history of the Germanic languages is lacking, but it makes some sense about the Bible affecting the language. I'd love to read more about this area, since the introduction of the article in the Romance world is quite a change in the lexico-syntax of the language family. The fact that it's postposed in Rumanian but not in the rest of Romance is also intriguing, although I believe I've read that this is due to the linguistic influences (mostly Slavic) around Dacia. Oh what I would give to see some 6th-10th century Rumanian documents!!

Age: 31 Sex: F Occupation: Professor of Spanish; Doctoral Candidate I don't know if the media has led to an increase of violence in society. Humans are violent by nature; we're emotional, protective and territorial, as well as selfish...this is done so that we ensure the propogation of the species in general and our personal genes specifically. It seems there's something innate about us, that pushed to whatever limit we react viciously. In every society there are groups of people who seem to have a 'shorter fuse' than others, and it is those who society deems 'violent' in their behavior. I don't think the reporting of such deeds leads to more violence in society, nor causes people to become more violent. If anything, it shows people what is wrong about their community--be it local or global--and makes them think about their lives and how to change things for the better. It forces parents to talk to kids about the things going on in the world, perhaps getting them to avoid such behavior. However, there are plenty of parents who would rather be friends with their kids than be parents, and allow them to watch whatever they feel like, play whatever video game they choose, and listen to whatever music they happen to come across. There must be restrictions placed on kids, so that they do not become exposed to situations that they can't emotionally or mentally comprehend.

Italian wasn't late in developing...just late in being recorded. There's no reason to think that the entire peninsula kept with Latin in their day-to-day speaking while everyone else had moved on to local Romance. Also: I believe that the Oaths of Strasburg have now been seen as 'questionable', in the sense that it seems that they are fakes...10th or 11th century fakes, if I recall correctly, but not of 9th century. Let me look through my files and notes, just to make sure.

I don't recall fully--and perhaps the program didn't go into it much--but they seemed like clean cuts to remove the body parts (as opposed to, say, hacking off parts with an axe). There were some seemingly knife cuts, like a 'torture'-style incision, to the arms of one. But I can't recall much more than that. This is the link for the show; it focused mostly on Oldcroghan Man and I can't remember the other, but it's linked to an area near Old Croghan and also outside of Dublin. Like I said, it was interesting to learn more about them, since I knew nothing, but it doesn't convince me about cultural practices outlined in the show. Germanicus, your option sounds more, well, normal about what we know about several cultures. The Aztecs did much the same thing with the warriors of their conquered enemies, and it makes more sense to sacrifice outsiders vs. your own, except for very desperate times. The bog couple sounds interesting, though, and it makes one wonder what sort of crime could have been committed to warrant such punishment, if that indeed is what it is.

Your post is scattered and doesn't make much sense. But the bog bodies of this particular TV show dated to 200-300 BCE, well before any Roman presence. Also, there are different bog bodies; some which are 'whole', others which are mutilated. My question was geared specifically to the mutilated ones, as the narrator and the experts lined up on the show weighed heavily towards the 'Celtic human sacrifice' side of the argument, and I did not find it so compelling based on the information presented.

Yeah, and that guarantees nothing. I like the Churchill answer better Seriously, though...I have friends in the military serving (as I'm sure many of you do, too), and I have suddenly got very very very very VERY nervous about their safety. This is up from the very very very nervous state that I was in even 2-3 weeks ago. I don't know if this is the doing of terrorists who want to stir up the manure pile, or the Sunnis who feel like they want to start a fight...either way, this *bleep* has to stop.

Well, I think that an important note is that not all bog bodies were considered to be 'criminals'. Certainly those who were hung (the rope still around their necks) or mutillated could possibly be considered to be criminals--although that is just one possibility. But others that they briefly showed on this program where whole bodies (mostly women) who had nary a mark on them, or perhaps just a broken limb. This is true, according to the program, of bog bodies regardless of where they were found. It was the mutilation of these two in particular, and the seemingly constant insistence, that these were 'victims' of human sacrifice, that got to me. In particular, the implication that they were killing one of their own in order to apease the gods. EDIT TO ADD: Incidently, these two bodies were dated to ~300BCE, so early Iron Age. No trinkets or artifacts were found with either, save that one had an arm band (and I don't remember the materials used, sorry), and the other had resin and other additions to his hair and hairstyle to suggest that he was a member of the upper/ruling class.

I realize this isn't the Celtic board, but I'm gonna try for this anyway. Last night I was watching a NOVA special on PBS on the recent discovery of 2 more 'bog bodies' found in central Ireland. Because both bodies were horrifically mutated--one with just the torso and arms, the other with the head and torso and arms down to the elbow--and they were found at the edge of clan territories, there was a suggestion by a couple of the experts, as well as serious overtones by the narrator, that this could have been the result of human sacrifice. Now, I know that several Roman authors wrote about the Celts performing human sacrifice on their own people (as opposed to the Aztec ritual of sacrificing the warriors of the tribes they just conquered), but that it was largely fabricated...or was it? The little I've read about the Celts, it doesn't seem to me that they would have practiced such a ritual, at least not on themselves. And it was reckoned that both of these bog bodies in the show were Celts, higher-classed ones no less. Any thoughts on this?

Hmmmmmmmmm...I hadn't heard that argument...to be honest, I've yet to come across a (solid) argument for the development of the definite article in Romance, rather just some 'educated guesses' that Greek influence had something to do with it (I just looked, and Penny 2000 and Menendez Pidal 1968 both just say that late VLat speakers 'wanted to be like Greek'--I can't find half of my Rohlfs 1968 copies, which is one more reason why I hate moving hehe). I would love to get a more 'sound' argument, however. The thing that troubles me with the Bible-translation argument is that would be done at a 'higher level' of language speakers--by clerics and the like--and the lower-class speakers would not have much control over that change. This 'tends' to contradict what has been shown about language change, that it tends to be a 'bottom-up' phenomena. BUT...this would not be the first time that a higher-class, more educated group had a permanent influence on the language; lexical items immediately come to mind, and I'm sure with a bit more digging and pondering I could come up with another. (I do apologize...my brain is quite mushy, as I'm editing another chapter, and taking a break to come here.) EDIT TO ADD: I do believe my mentor, Brigitte Bauer, would absolutely hang me for the above answer. I'm pretty sure she's discussed this in her 1995 work The emergence and developing of SVO patterning in Latin and French : diachronic and psycholinguistic perspectives, and in lecture she was a firm believer in grammaticalization in this area. Anyway, I did a very quick check on LLBA for material on this subject matter, and didn't find anything that struck me as "ooooh read me!" But if I come up with something else, I'll post it here.

Grow up...eh...spent a lot of time there, between family connections to establishments and such. Since I moved back, I'm in North Beach at least once a month, for dinner if nothing else!

You're right, AD, I do agree with what you say. **But**...how does one prove it? Yes, I suspect that, despite what the books tell us, school enrollment, let alone success, was not near the 'utopia' that seems to be projected...but baring a time machine, how does one prove it? And the language changes tend to come from the lower classes...indubitably, this is as true today as in antiquity. The closest I can come is to look at the borrowed terminology that came into Latin, and when it is 'documented' (knowing full well that the term was probably well-entrenched in the language even before it was first documented). Off the top of my head--so there's plenty of room for error--I recall early borrowings from Greek, with Celtic and Germanic words coming in the early Empire years. But those are only lexical items...and those tend to get borrowed easily from one language to another; the mophology, syntax and phonology come much much later.

Well, yes, when second language learners use this acquired language, they are consciously choosing their language--be it lexicon, morpho-syntax, even phonology--depending on their level of fluency. Functionalists, as I have understood their readings (and this is principally Keller 1994 and Aitchison 2001, but others as well), are not as concerned with language acquisition issues. It is their contention that native speakers consciously change those aspects of their language which impede communication. For example: 'Flavius' and 'Octavius' are native Latin speakers. Because of word-final consonant erosion, 'Flavius' notices that case distinctions between the nominative and accusative are blurred, as well as the difference between II masculine and II neuter nouns. So, 'Flavius' decides to rely more on word order and to not worry about a masculine/neuter distinction in gender. There are two gross problems with this line of thinking: 1) This theory of language change holds as a central position that language change is individual...that the choices of one individual speaker will diffuse into the entire speech community. But who is to say that 'Flavius' has the right answer and not 'Octavius'? or that 'Octavius' will even accept 'Flavius' ' alternative, let alone continue to use it? Of course language change has to start somewhere--'someone has to think of it first' mentality--but it must be accepted by the speech community, and this theory does not truly take that into consideration. There is no way to prove that this individual decision really and truly takes hold...perhaps 4 people came up with the 'correct alternative' independently? Who knows. 2) While it can be shown that people consciously think about lexical items when communication becomes difficult--I use word X, but you don't know that word, so I think of word Y or I define word X--it has not been shown that people think about morpho-syntactic structures or phonological elements consciously in order to ease communication. Quite the opposite, in fact: people ennunciate when phonological elements are not communicated clearly, and other morpho-syntactic instruments are employed if such aspects are not communicated--including an entire re-wording of the utterance. When thinking of the rebuttals, I'm primarily relying on Lass (1980), even with his scathing view of functionalism...but much of this is also 'internal belief' which has been followed up with Lass and others. As for second language learners...meh...I don't know. If the history books are accurate (and books never lie! hehe), these children of the second-language-learners were usually taught Latin in school, so that they would have a pure bilingual situation at home--'native' language at home, probably, or code-switching, but Latin in school and elsewhere. And there hasn't been any evidence that I've read that children of bilingual families learn the 'social language' (in this case, Latin) incorrectly because of the parents and their level of acquisition; it depends on the reinforcement of this 'other' language (Latin), particularly in education and other social contexts (religion, business, etc.). If you need to learn language X in order to get a job and function in society, then by God/Jove/etc. you're gonna learn it. You need to in order to survive.

Heheh I'm a chick It's an interesting question, Andrew. I'm not fully familiar with the history of the Greek empire(s), in regard to 'Hellenization' policies, so I can't really compare them to the Roman empire. What I do believe is that there are internal and external forces which can 'guide' how a language changes. Internal forces are those which are intrinsic to the language family--for Romance palatalization is a huge force in phonology, along with gender/number preservation over case preservation. External factors, I believe, start with the education and trade/infrastructure systems the Romans placed in the colonies--which forced the conquered cultures to use Latin more and more in their everyday lives. But...that doesn't explain why Romance languages stuck in some places but not in others (N. Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, Pannonia). In those areas of the Empire, my history and ethono-cultural knowledge are shaky, so perhaps you (or someone else on here) can point me in the right direction. I see what you mean about forwards- vs. backwards-looking in developing these theories of language change. It's a tricky line that we teeter along, because no theory is worth its salt if it's ad hoc. In fact, it's what I'm struggling with in my dissertation...in some ways I'm an evolutionist...BUT...much of the theory seems empty. "Language changes, or evolves, but cause its in its nature"...meh...that doesn't say much. But, personally, I do believe that as humans evolve and change, so do the aspects of their lives--and this definitely includes language. Language must evolve...but unlike Functionalists, I can't get myself to say that speakers actively change their language, or aspects of their language, in order to facillitate communication. Language acquisition specialists have shown that speakers don't 'consciously' change the language they're speaking. So many questions!

Heh true enough about linguists. Greenberg makes me queasy, only in the sense that he is all about 'coincidences'...now, it so happens that many of his 'coincidences' and 'correlations' line up well, and have been proven with more 'legitimate' studies, methods, and theories. But it is still dangerous to only work with correlations and coincidences without more scientific methods being employed. No doubt that you need someone to identify a possible match in order to get the research going, though. It's generally accepted by my colleagues that you can start with Greenberg, but you'd better have something else to back it up. I will say this: the Greenbergian correlations having to do with word order and morpho-syntactic constructions, Key-rist, they are damn-near unshakable. Scary.