The Concept of Taboo in Raga,Vanuatu: Semantic Mapping and Etymology

This article discusses the two terms that convey the concept of taboo in Raga, the language of north‐central Vanuatu originally spoken in north Pentecost, and provides linguistic evidence expanding on the information published previously by the anthropologists Masanori Yoshioka and John Patrick Taylor. Based on the corpus collected in north Pentecost in the period 2015–2017, and on older ethnographic and religious written material, a semantic map is proposed for the two taboo‐related Raga terms: sabuga and gogona. Reviewing the terms that designate the concept of ‘taboo’ in the neighbouring languages, the study also explores the possibility of borrowing and semantic interference from other languages, and proposes that sabuga is a reflex of Proto Oceanic *tabu, albeit an irregular reflex, and gogona a reflex of Proto North and Central Vanuatu*kona ‘sacred, taboo’.     

Neurognostics Question: An American Neurophysiologist,Pioneer of Electromyography,A President of Universities and Scientific Advisor to United States Presidents

The semantics of pain are an important and interesting aspect of any language. Ancient Greek and Latin had multiple words for pain, which makes scrutinizing different meanings problematic. The ancient physician Galen approached this issue through the use of adjectives to describe the qualities for pain, instead of the words for pain themselves. The medical texts of Celsus and Caelius Aurelianus reveal that Latin also vested particular significance in qualifiers to distinguish between different types of pain. This article looks at the qualifying terms used for pain in the ancient Greek and Latin languages to reveal a sophisticated Greco-Roman vocabulary for pain.     

Anthropomorphic Wooden Figures from the Trans-urals

Anthropomorphic wooden figures found in peat-bogs east of the Urals are described. Their archaeological context, chronology, and stylistics are analyzed. The Uralian specimens are compared with those from Western and Eastern Europe. The possible meaning of these representations is reconstructed on the basis of Ob Ugrian rituals and mythology.     

Difficulties of the Re-Emergent Science — the Case of Astrobiology

Abstract

Science dealing with the emergence and evolution of life in the Universe — on Earth and beyond appears under different names in subject literature, these names are usually either a portmanteau of biology and astronomy, or involve particular branches of natural sciences. Scientific and linguistic methodology reveals the danger of gross oversimplification when using names such as: exobiology, cosmobiology, biocosmology, bioastronomy, as- trobiology, etc. The main purpose of this article is to present and analyse the relationships of such notations and synonyms, which are often used interchangeably, and to criticize the attempts of unifying these terms, and to characterize them in a linguistic context. On such basis, it shall be argued that the origin of the existing confusion and misunderstandings might have been either scientific or non-scientific imprecision which may be eliminated for the purpose of a better scientific communication and clarification of terminology as shown in this paper.     

语言相对论与语义研究视角摭议

19世纪以来西方语言学关于语言与思维的关系有普遍主义和相对主义两种解释。本文评述洪堡特的观点、萨丕尔——沃尔夫假说、列文森的综合观,探讨语义研究的视角问题,提出研究视角取决于研究目的的观点。不同研究视角之间是互补关系;语义普遍性和民族性是语义性质的两个方面;旨在为语言教学、翻译、词典编撰等提供可资借鉴的成果则自然会选择民族性为语义研究的对象,从种族视角研究语义会选择对比或比较的研究范式。     

Lebensaltertheorien in der Anthropologie der Romantik

Theories of stages of life within the anthropology of romanticism. – The essay discusses the importance and prominence of theories about different stages of life in the anthropological and medical discourse of romanticism. This discourse has clearly a stabilising and restaurative function, favouring the age of moderate manhood. The political and social regulative implications of these theories demand a restaurative roll‐back. The essay is based on a concept of sociology of knowledge formation.     

HISTORY'S DEMARCATION PROBLEM

In his 1998 book Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Lubomír Dole?el put forth a theory of narrative fiction based on the interdisciplinary framework of possible worlds. In Possible Worlds of Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage, Dole?el takes his earlier theory further and applies it to historiography as well, with the specific aim of showing how the study of history might be defended against the postmodern challenge via the use of possible worlds (PW) semantics. Dole?el's book is essentially an argument against the postmodern views expressed by Roland Barthes and Hayden White, who have claimed that fundamentally, there is no difference between fictional and historical narratives. According to Dole?el, this difference can be saved if the focus of attention is shifted from the textual features of these narratives to the fictional or historical worlds that the narratives project. Dole?el's comparison of fictional and historical worlds to each other is quite illuminating and thorough. However, the question remains whether the application of PW semantics does anything besides offering a detailed analysis of the structure of the different types of narrative worlds. After all, one should not overlook the perhaps more practical way of differentiating between historical and fictional narratives through their institutional status. Furthermore, we argue that by focusing on the properties of the end products, that is, the resulting narratives, Dole?el concedes too much to postmodernists. A stronger way to give postmodernists a taste of their own medicine would be to argue that the rules that historians follow in the process of generating, constructing, and evaluating weighed causal explanations (or historical models of the past) are fundamentally different from whatever rules govern the generation and construction of fiction.     

Literature,crisis, and Spanish rural space in the context of the 2008 financial recession

ABSTRACT

The novelistic production related to the 2008 financial crisis has been partially studied from the lens of the label of “literatura de la crisis.” In this article, I analyze the complex and essential transformations suffered by literary writing practices in contemporary Spain where ill attention has been devoted to the social, political, and aesthetic implications of neoliberal globalization in rural areas. Departing from a thorough conceptualization of the notion of “literatura de la crisis” and its paradoxical impact over the most recent literary production, I study the rural discourse and the emerging academic challenges for the assessment of the rural experience in literary works. In conclusion, I set the main principles for the development of a transposable model of textual analysis that will shed new light on the cultural representation of the rural sphere in the aftermath of the 2008 financial recession.     

European solidarity: a semantic history

Abstract

‘European solidarity’ is one of the most frequently used words in contemporary public discourse, but what does it mean? This article investigates the historical and semantic background of the term in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish since the French Revolution, when ‘solidarity’ became a political keyword for the first time in European history. With the founding of the Holy Alliance in 1815 the idea of ‘European solidarity’ as an instrument for achieving political order on the continent emerged. A historical longitudinal analysis via the Ngram Viewer reveals that the frequency of ‘solidarity’ follows or depends on certain crisis moments in history, such as revolutions, wars or economic troubles. ‘Solidarity’ belongs to the history of emotions and propaganda but is not a stable value system that consolidates political culture. It also seems to play a greater role in the national rather than in the European context. As a European political expression, ‘solidarity’ is not genuinely European but borrowed from the national political vocabulary. Moreover, the article outlines the semantic field of ‘European solidarity’ by showing linkages between ‘solidarity’ and other words.     

Design als ‘mediating interface’ Zur Zeugen‐ und Zeichenhaftigkeit des Radioapparates

Design as Mediating Interface: Historical Evidence and Symbolic Enunciation of the Radio Set. – Based on a case study on the invention of the radio station scale in the late 1920's and early 1930's, this article pleads for an interdisciplinary look at the importance of design as a mediating interface in the production‐consumption junction. In this cultural history perspective on technology, the material artifact matters both as a witness of and a sign for the symbolic meaning and appropriation of the technical object, which transgresses the functional logic of instrumental rationality. In presenting five different perspectives on design offering some alternative looks for a cultural history of technology, this theoretically inspired essay wants to sound the critical potential of a multilayered semantic approach to the radio apparatus as a prominent representation of a radical innovation in media technology.