This study demonstrates, through the detailed examination of a specific example of written Old English, that a very large proportion of the general vocabulary of Old English survives in some form in Late Modern English. The "Finnsburg Fragment" is parsed and translated and its lexicon glossed. After a brief discussion of several special semantic categories and the traditional categories of semantic change, the study enlarges upon the historical setting which influenced the loss, retention, shift, or stability of these two hundred Old English words. Appendices group the lexicon by parts of speech as well as by semantic history.

This dissertation brings the Ancient Near Eastern practice of the wheel, hanging, impaling, placarding, and crucifixion (WHIPC) into the scholarship of crucifixion, which has been too dominated by the Greek and Roman practice. WHIPC can be defined as the exposure of a body via affixing, by any means, to a structure, wooden or otherwise, for public display (Chapter 2). Linguistic analysis of relevant sources in several languages (including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian, Hebrew, Hittite, Old Persian, all phases of ancient Greek, and Latin) shows that because of imprecise terminology, any realistic definition of WHIPC must be broad (Chapter 3). Using methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches drawn from art history, archaeology, linguistic analysis, and digital humanities, this work analyzes scattered but abundant evidence to piece together theories about who was crucified, when, how, where, and why. The dissertation proves that WHIPC records, written and visual, were kept for three primary functions: to advertise power, to punish and deter, and to perform magical rituals or fulfill religious obligations. Manifestations of these three functions come through WHIPC in mythology (see especially Chapter 4), trophies (Chapter 5), spectacles, propaganda, political commentary, executions, corrective torture, behavior modification or prevention, donative sacrifices, scapegoat offerings, curses, and healing rituals. WHIPC also served as a mode of human and animal sacrifice (Chapter 6). Regarding the treatment of the body, several examples reveal cultural contexts for nudity and bone-breaking, which often accompanied WHIPC (Chapter 7). In the frequent instances where burial was forbidden a second penalty, played out in the afterlife, was intended. Contrary to some modern assertions, implementation of crucifixion was not limited by gender or status (Chapter 8). WHIPC often occurred along roads or on hills and mountains, or in in liminal spaces such as doorways, cliffs, city gates, and city walls (Chapter 9). From the Sumerians to the Romans, exposing and displaying the bodies consistently functioned as a display of power, punishment and prevention of undesirable behavior, and held religious and magical significance. Exposure punishments have been pervasive and global since the beginning of recorded time, and indeed, this treatment of the body is still practiced today. It seems no culture has escaped this form of physical abuse.

This study analyses the different social variables that conditioned the naming of schools during the colonial period in Zimbabwe (1890-1979). The study collects and analyses the names given to schools in Salisbury (including Chitungwiza), Umtali and Fort Victoria the colonial period in Zimbabwe. The study adopts Geosemiotics, a theory propounded by Scollon and Scollon (2003), together with insights from Semantics, Semiotics and Pragmatics in the analysis of school names. Critical Discourse Analysis is used a method of data analysis. One of the main findings of the study is that place names are discourses of power which are used to express and legitimise power because they are part of the symbolic emblems of power. It was possible to ‘read’ the politics during the colonial period in Zimbabwe through the place names used in the colonial society. Both Europeans and Africans made conscious efforts to imbue public places with meanings. Overally, people who have access to power have ultimate control over place naming in any society. In this case, they manipulate place naming system in order to inscribe their own meanings and versions of history in the toponomastic landscape. The second finding is that place names are critical place-making devices that can be used to create imagined boundaries between people living in the same environment. Place names are useful discourses that index sameness and differences of people in a nation-state. Place names exist in interaction and kinship with other discourses in making places and imposing an identity on the landscape. Semiotics, Semantics and Pragmatics are instrumental in the appreciation of the meaning conveyed by school names. This study makes an important contribution to onomastic research in the sense that its findings can be generalised to other place naming categories during the colonial period in Zimbabwe. This study provides background information on how place naming was done during thecolonial period in Zimbabwe. This makes it significant because it provides insights on place naming in other states that went through the colonial experience, in Africa or elsewhere in the world. / African Languages / D. Lit. et Phil. (African Languages)

<p>I denna uppsats undersöks ett flertal ortnamnsformer som förekommer i olika tyska, slaviska och skandinaviska källor och betecknar ett och samma ställe, nämligen staden Wolin belägen på sydspetsen av ön Wolin i polska Pommern. Syftet med arbetet är dels att fastställa etymologin av två av Wolin-namnen, <em>at Jómi </em>och <em>Jómsborg</em>, dels att förklara hur alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin hänger ihop och bestämma vilka faktorer som orsakade en sådan namnmångfald. Undersökningens material utgörs framför allt av de Wolin-namnformer som förekommer i de skandinaviska och de med dessa relaterade tyska källorna. Materialet analyseras i stort sett enligt den traditionella namntolkningsmetoden. Det visar sig att formen <em>at Jómi</em> sannolikt härstammar från det pommerska naturnamnet <em>*Jǫma</em> (˂ <em>jǫma</em> f. ’grop; dike’) som betecknade Stora bukten, en del av Szczecinbukten. Sammansättningen <em>Jómsborg</em> är en sekundär form som bildats från <em>at Jómi</em> enligt standardmodellen: dat. (<em>at</em>)<em> Jómi</em> > gen. <em>Jóms</em> + efterleden <em>-borg</em>. Alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin i primära källor är relaterade till varandra: vissa av dem är etymologiskt besläktade, vissa endast ”referentiellt”, dvs. de betecknar ett och samma ställe. Uppkomsten av ett så stort antal Wolin-ortnamnsformer kan i första hand förklaras genom att formerna i fråga har olika ursprung, att det fanns olika namnbrukarkretsar som använde olika former för att hänvisa till samma stad och att det uppstod olika stavningsvarianter och sammansatta namn under de primära formernas senare utveckling.</p>

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Chinese

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Chinese

This dissertation is a historical analysis of Varro’s De Lingua Latina, a linguistic treatise composed in the 40s BCE during Rome’s transition from oligarchic Republican government to the monarchic settlement of the Augustan Principate. I advance a reading which restores contemporary political and intellectual context to the treatise, complementing and revising previous scholarship which has traditionally focused on the Greek philosophical pedigree of Varro’s work. As such, I explore Varro’s thematic emphasis on natura (‘Nature’) in his linguistic programme, which, as a term with wide-ranging intertextual functions, embodies its complex philosophical, political, and literary character. This five-chapter dissertation is subdivided between the surviving books on etymology (Chapters 1-3) and inflection (Chapters 4-5). In Chapter 1 (“Organisation and Meaning in Varro’s Etymologies”), I explore Varro’s etymologies in De Lingua Latina, Books 5-7, and explain how his programmatic emphasis on natural philosophy conveys his unique etymological authority. In Chapter 2 (“Grammatical Discourse in De Lingua Latina”), I consider Varro’s reception of grammatical techniques of etymological exegesis, elucidating his preference for philosophical readings of poetry and the social value of literary sophistication in the late Republic. Chapter 3 (“Ethnography and Identity in Varro’s Etymologies”) develops Varro’s etymological project as a kind of ethnography of the Roman people, which contextualises Varro’s philosophical intervention in the changing circumstances of his era. Chapters 4-5 are devoted to an analysis of Books 8-10, in which Varro describes his theory of morphological inflection (declinatio naturalis) as a platform for Latin linguistic standardisation. In Chapter 4 (“Declinatio and Linguistic Standardisation in the late Republic”), I survey the politics of linguistic standardisation in the late Republic. Mediating in a debate between Cicero and Caesar, I describe Varro’s nuanced revision of existing models of analogical inflection, and characterise his use of natura to explain linguistic standards. In Chapter 5 (“Linguistic Analogy and Natural Ratio in De Lingua Latina, Books 8-10”), I relate Varro’s linguistic innovations to contemporary shifts in cultural authority, and demonstrate how his transference of linguistic standardisation to philosophy entails a radical reorganisation of the existing political status quo. / text

The primary role of this report is to provide an in-depth analysis of all the instances of the word vidua, its meanings and uses in Latin literature from the last two centuries B.C. This close examination of the word vidua in the literary sources of this period has resulted in a number of important modifications to its definition. The word vidua, which is commonly translated by ancient scholars as widow, is not sustained by the contextual evidence of the majority of the passages that do no state explicitly the reason for the women's deprived status. Instead the word is most commonly used to mean a much broader social group of Roman women, all no longer married women, a category which includes various groups of women such as widows, divorcees, abandoned women and women whose husbands have been away for long periods of time. Furthermore the English word unmarried should not be used to translate the Latin word vidua since, as I demonstrate throughout my paper, there is a clear distinction in the Roman minds between women who are no longer married, vidua, and women who are not yet married, virgines an important distinction that gets lost with the more inclusive and broader social category meant by the word unmarried. / text

Die Arbeit prüft, inwieweit die Übersetzungstheorien von Otto Kade et al., Werner Koller und die Skopostheorie das Problem der kulturgebundenen Farbwortvielfalt bei der Übersetzung zu lösen versuchen. Im ersten Teil wird hierfür der Grundstein gelegt, indem interdisziplinäres Wissen auf die Bildung von Farbbezeichnungen, ihrer Herkunft und ihrer biologischen und physikalischen Grundsätze angewendet wird. In diesem Zusammenhang wird auch die Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese diskutiert. Die Etymologie bestehender Farbbezeichnungen verschiedenster Sprachen bildet dabei das Zentrum, sowohl für die Erklärung der Farbwahrnehmung und die Kulturgebundenheit ihrer Bezeichnungen als auch der Neuschöpfung von Farbbezeichnungen in den Übersetzungssituationen. Anhand fiktiver Übersetzungssituationen aus dem Alltag wird der Übersetzungsprozess für jede Übersetzungstheorie simuliert und aus ihrer Sicht verfolgt. Im Abschluss werden die Ergebnisse gegenübergestellt und diskutiert.

I denna uppsats undersöks ett flertal ortnamnsformer som förekommer i olika tyska, slaviska och skandinaviska källor och betecknar ett och samma ställe, nämligen staden Wolin belägen på sydspetsen av ön Wolin i polska Pommern. Syftet med arbetet är dels att fastställa etymologin av två av Wolin-namnen, at Jómi och Jómsborg, dels att förklara hur alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin hänger ihop och bestämma vilka faktorer som orsakade en sådan namnmångfald. Undersökningens material utgörs framför allt av de Wolin-namnformer som förekommer i de skandinaviska och de med dessa relaterade tyska källorna. Materialet analyseras i stort sett enligt den traditionella namntolkningsmetoden. Det visar sig att formen at Jómi sannolikt härstammar från det pommerska naturnamnet *Jǫma (˂ jǫma f. ’grop; dike’) som betecknade Stora bukten, en del av Szczecinbukten. Sammansättningen Jómsborg är en sekundär form som bildats från at Jómi enligt standardmodellen: dat. (at) Jómi &gt; gen. Jóms + efterleden -borg. Alla ortnamnsformer som betecknar staden Wolin i primära källor är relaterade till varandra: vissa av dem är etymologiskt besläktade, vissa endast ”referentiellt”, dvs. de betecknar ett och samma ställe. Uppkomsten av ett så stort antal Wolin-ortnamnsformer kan i första hand förklaras genom att formerna i fråga har olika ursprung, att det fanns olika namnbrukarkretsar som använde olika former för att hänvisa till samma stad och att det uppstod olika stavningsvarianter och sammansatta namn under de primära formernas senare utveckling.