Foreign Language Study

From the 17^th century onwards, in a context of increasingly intense trade and diplomatic contacts, the exchange of scientific ideas became a key element in the encounters between the European world and the cultures of the Far East.

This volume investigates the ways in which scientific knowledge was transferred and disseminated to new audiences, whose cultural background was very different from that in which such knowledge had originally developed. A vital role in this process was played by the Jesuit mission in China, whose members included intellectuals with a keen interest in cross-cultural comparison. The study of the local languages enabled the transfer of knowledge in both directions, through translations of existing texts and the production of new ones for both Chinese and European audiences. The papers in the volume, authored by specialists in various fields of cultural studies, highlight the intellectual effort and strategies by which scientific works were made available and understandable beyond cultural differences.

The volume will be welcome to those interested not only in cultural interactions between Europe and the Far East, but also in translation studies, particularly in the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Ce volume est consacré à l’étude des noms de lieux et de personnes d’origine arabe dans la Péninsule Ibérique. Leur existence est la preuve évidente que l’arabe andalou y a été parlé pendant des siècles. Cet ouvrage fournit deux inventaires distincts (de toponymes et d’anthroponymes), mais il faut reconnaître que la constitution de catalogues exhaustifs est impossible aujourd’hui. Le but est donc d’améliorer nos connaissances dans ce domaine de la linguistique hispanique. Ce cinquième volume de l’Encyclopédie Linguistique d’al-Andalus peut également alimenter les recherches en linguistique historique romane et servir de source pour trouver de nouvelles isoglosses dialectales, ainsi que des caractéristiques grammaticales, phonétiques et morphologiques du faisceau arabe andalou.

Aucune étude actualisée concernant les influences substratiques et adstratiques sur la formation du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou n’avait été réalisée jusqu’à présent.

Ce volume met à jour l’information disponible sur ce sujet, bien qu’il convienne de considérer que le petit nombre de données berbères présentes dans les ouvrages relatifs à l’Al-Andalus ne permet pas une attribution dialectale précise, et que la description linguistique du roman andalou demeure difficile en raison de l’état des sources, maigres et difficilement interprétables.

Ce quatrième volume de l’Encyclopédie Linguistique d’Al-Andalus est dédié à la description de ces influences sur la genèse du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou à tous les niveaux de la langue : phonologique, morphologique, syntaxique et, surtout, lexical. Étant donné que les langues sont un moyen de communication sociale, il a fallu considérer d’autres facteurs (démographiques et sociolinguistiques) pour expliquer que ces interactions linguistiques dans la Péninsule Ibérique au Moyen Âge aient eu comme résultat une influence plus faible du berbère que du roman dans la genèse de l’arabe andalou.

This volume assembles scholars working on cuneiform texts from different periods, genres, and areas to examine the range of social, cultural, and historical contexts in which specific types of texts circulated. Using different methodologies and sources of evidence, these articles reconstruct the contexts in which various cuneiform texts circulated, providing a critical framework to determine how they functioned.

The Global Latin II Conference has highlighted the role of the Latin language as cultural medium between West and East. Adopting a diachronic perspective which spans from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, the conference and its proceedings have paid special attention to texts related to Africa and Asia. The richness of literary genres as well as the dialogue between the Humanities and hard sciences characterize this volume.

Students of Classics will find reflections on the role of Latin in the humanistic and missionary traditions, whereas historians of ideas and historians of religions will be able to pinpoint key moments in the use of Latin language and culture in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Ethiopian contexts. This volume can also be of interest to people working on Digital Humanities and computational linguistics in Latin language, and it represents a novelty on the world scene, along the lines of the previous Global Latin I Conference, which was yet again held in Siena in 2019.