Baṅgāṇī, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the so-called Baṅgāṇ area, a land enclosed by the Pabar and the Tons rivers (Uttarkāśī district, Uttarākhaṇḍ state), shows in its grammar and lexicon some peculiar features still rather controversial. The debate is still in course, due to the lack of enough documentation available, as the majority of scholars complains about. Moreover Baṅgāṇī, among the Western Pahāṛī languages of New Indo-Ayan, is now esteemed as a critically endangered language by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. The paper presents the preliminary results of a fieldwork research with Baṅgāṇī mother-tongue speakers and the unique elicited text available. In particular a description of Baṅgāṇī pronominal and nominal declension, focusing on the case marking and agreement system of the Subject-like and Object-like arguments of intransitive and transitive clauses (in perfective and non-perfective tenses), is offered. The comparison between the data that I collected enabled me to offer a good amount of Baṅgāṇī sentences exemplifying the function of the different forms, and thus to understand their use in depth, that is to shed light on the peculiarities of Baṅgāṇī case marking system.

Anthimus De observatione ciborum, a letter on dietetics written during the 6 th century AD and addressed to Theuderic king of the Franks, has been debated for many years because of its particular language. Anthimus was a Byzantine physician who wrote his letter in Vulgar Latin, but he also used and adopted many foreign loanwords in his treatise. In particular, words which may be considered of Germanic origin (brado, bridum, fartalia, fenea, gavata, medus, melca, sodinga) have caused translators and commentators many difficulties, because of their nonunivocal interpretation. The aim of this article is to offer a short contribution to the explanation of two of these Germanic loanwords (bridum and sodinga) by means of a comparison made between the Latin text by Anthimus and its translation in Early New High German, which, of course, can not be considered as the definite solution to their problematical interpretation, but nevertheless can show how these words were understood during the 15 th century in German area.

Among the different uses shared by articles in other languages which have already grammaticalized this part of speech, one in particular should be emphasized. It is the indefinite use, where the colloquial definite article can be preceded by an indefinite modifier such as an indefinite article. Languages that have been influencing the Slovene language do not share this particular use, therefore this leads us to the conclusion that the Slovenian article has chosen an independent course and its development has not been influenced by other languages.

Over the last decade, an increasing number of academic discourse studies have placed great emphasis on the concept of identity and the way(s) it is manifested in academic writing. Research on the field has suggested that academic writing is not completely impersonal, but that writers gain credibility by projecting an identity invested with individual authority (Ivanic 1998; Hyland 2001, 2002; Flottum 2005; Bondi 2007). As a further contribution to our understanding of the issue, the present paper explores some linguistic and discursive features that the interacting voices characterising the dialogic and argumentative practice in the genre of the academic book review article use to project their personal identities. Our own interest in this study is to investigate the construction of identity in different academic disciplinary discourses, in the area of the humanities and the social sciences: linguistics, history and economics have been chosen as case studies. Using corpus-based methods, the study tries to establish whether cross-disciplinary variation can be observed in the way the various voices involved in the evaluation of academic research manifest themselves (i.e. the authorial voice of the reviewer and other textual voices like the reviewed author’s voice). Particular attention will be paid to the lexico-grammatical categories of person pronouns, proper names, and verbs lexicalising certain cognitive and verbal processes signalling the argumentative dialogue between the writer-as-reviewer and the reviewed author or the other experts, members of the scientific community. A quantitative analysis of the corpus data reveals significant distributional trends across disciplines, and a qualitative analysis of concordance lines confirms that these trends are motivated by discipline-specific practices.

One noteworthy aspect is that the more famous the authors are, the less they tend to conform to generic norms and standard scientific reporting style. The present paper will show, with qualitative data from the Introductions of influential volumes by Christie (1970), Critchley (1970), Dalgleish & Power (1999), Kolb & Wishshaw (2003) Gazzaniga (2004), Goldstein & McNeil (2004), how authors feel free to use a more personal language, constructing a delicate balance between consideration for the canons of scientific reporting and the need for more authentic, holistic interaction with the audience. Far from disguising their personal involvement, they highlight how their research fits into a larger picture, engaging the readers as participants in a disciplinary discourse that functions as situated social interaction. Evidence will be given of the discoursal features these famous authors use to ‘trade’ knowledge from their personal perspectives – explicitly appraising both individual and collective work – in a complex interplay of ‘delayed’ adherence to generic norms and assertion of individual identity.

article analyzes the text of a passage taken from Beowulf commonly known as The episode of Finn putting forward an interpretation of the narrated facts that is detached from those generally adopted. On the basis of some linguistic studies about the poetical syntax of Old English, some crucial points in the narration are analyzed in order to evaluate under a new light the behaviour of one of the main characters, Hengest. More precisely, the aim is to demonstrate how his conduct does not imply the breach of the deal made with Finn, but, on the contrary, that he adopts a more subtle strategy in order to get the same result yet within the juridically established terms.

Starting from letter writing as a part of rhetoric, this article seeks to trace the development of model letter-writers in England from their origins in Latin and French formularies to the present day. The first letter-writers in England appeared in the thirteenth century but it was not until the sixteenth that they were written in English. Gradually, they became directed more towards the requirements of ordinary working people rather than towards scholars. There are two main types of model letter-writer: those intended for serious use and, a later development, those aimed at entertainment. The formulas for opening and closing letters, as well as some others are examined. Dating from the fourteenth century and earlier, these survived into the twentieth century among less educated writers. In conclusion there is a brief look at the continuing publication of model letter-writers today.

Beowulf, sia come poema sia come personaggio, sta vivendo un periodo di grande fortuna. Due film e un?opera teatrale sono gi� usciti o stanno per uscire tra quest?anno e il prossimo. La ricezione del Beowulf nel XX secolo non � certo ricca come quella, ad esempio, di Ulisse, ma sicuramente ci sono diverse pregevoli opere che riscrivono la storia antico-inglese. Due di queste sono prese in esame in questo articolo: il fumetto italiano Beowulf. Leggenda cristiana dell?antica Danimarca (1940/1941) di Enrico Basari e il romanzo americano Grendel (1971) di John Gardner. Due opere piuttosto differenti: da un lato un graphic novel creato entro una dominante ideologia cattolica durante il Fascismo (e la Seconda guerra mondiale), dall?altro un romanzo ascrivibile alla cosiddetta area Postmoderna che mostra una radicale decostruzione delle ideologie interne e delle narrazioni identitarie. Comunque le due opere si possono accostare in uno sguardo comparatistico, perch� entrambe hanno evidenti legami con i tempi in cui sono state scritte, entrambe sono profondamente radicate nell?ambiente culturale che le ha prodotte. Dallo studio delle riscritture contemporanee � possibile capire se l?antica storia e i suoi personaggi sono ancora vivi e produttivi oggi ed � possibile conoscere qualcosa in pi� del poema medievale.

In this paper, we approach the punctuation system of a medieval manuscript. This has been a matter, especially in the case of Old English, hardly studied by scholars. Thus, our knowledge about punctuation marks is somewhat restricted to just a few contributions (Harlow 1959; Mitchell 1980; Calle / Miranda Forth). However, in the last decade a number of studies dealing with medieval punctuation has come out shedding light on the use of scribal practices at the time. In this same line, we deal with the punctuation system found in the West-Saxon version of the Gospel according to Saint John to offer a detailed description of the use and function of the scribal marks of punctuation, and to find the correspondence with their modern counterparts. A corpus-based study of the text helps to classify the different examples and to reach grounded conclusions about the coherence of the punctuation symbols used.