Browse results
Abstract
The usual meaning of folcscare in Beowulf l. 73 is “nation”, while feorum gumena refers to human lives. It seems impermissible for Hrothgar to either give away or divide his nation or to sacrifice a human life as a reward for his retinues. In the story of Herod and John the Baptist in the Gospel, the “bad” king Herod seems to promise or give what should be taboo for the “good” king Hrothgar. This story possibly resounds in l. 73.
Abstract
The Legendary ‘The Lives of the Saints’ became a medieval bestseller soon after it was composed in the early 15th century. This success was due to its simple, standardised language and its theological programme aimed at promoting a collectively lived spiritality. However, different concepts of holiness or narrative elements such as exorbitantly cruel martyrdoms, the ascetic isolations or mystical excess challenged this homogeneity. The article shows that the redactor was very conscious of these elements and made an effort to even them out. In this way, the Legendary partially counteracts its sources by narrating against a self-sanctification of the human being. Thus, it corresponds to the ideas of the Dominican Observance by developing a kind of literary asceticism.
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to examine how Chinese learners of EFL frame their complaints on English language learning (ELL) to understand their sense of entitlement to complain. Two basic complaint-frames are identified—complaint proper (Cp), which communicates entitlement in blaming and asking for correction of what is intrinsically correctable, and lament (Lt), which conveys the lack thereof by simply ‘lamenting’ something that cannot be solved. Though Cp and Lt appear, therefore, tied to specific concern-kinds, the inherently addressable and unaddressable, respectively, their actual use depends on the perception of the complaint-concern and the relative power of the complainant. When Cp is selected, subordinate status may require diminished expression of entitlement. This is not achieved by mitigating face-threat. Rather, it is necessary to modify the complaint-framing by selecting more, rather than less, Lt-defining features. Applied to complaints on ELL, in the Chinese context, it is found that this inherently Cp-appropriate, patently addressable problem is only, and always, used with mitigation and/or ‘Lt-ization’ to convey deference and/or disentitlement. In the vast majority, students address limitations in program implementation—in authentic language use, and the opportunity for individual thought, creativity and self-determination—in complaints that suggest disaffection and disenfranchisement.
Abstract
The Linköping Legendary contains amongst other texts an Old Swedish translation of the well-known medieval German legend of Gregory on the Stone. This text was translated into Swedish around 1525 in the monastery of Vadstena. In this article the Swedish translation is compared with the Middle High and Middle Low German originals. This comparison makes it highly probable that the translation was based on the 1478 Low German edition of the ‘Der Heiligen Leben’, also known as the ‘Passional’, by Lucas Brandis. Some differences between the Swedish translation and its exemplar can be explained as mistakes in understanding the Low German original.
Abstract
In Modern Icelandic the form veri of the verb vera ‘to be’ is seen as a subjunctive expressing a wish. Treating Old Norse veri, earlier vesi, as an imperative of the third person simplifies the vera paradigm. A survey of the oldest attestations shows that veri not only fits qua form in the imperative paradigm, but also behaves like an imperative and expresses a command. The hypothesis that veri is an imperative can be extended to: Old Norse had an imperative of the 3rd person consisting of stem+i. What usually is called the use of the 3rd person subjunctive to fill in for the missing 3rd person imperative, would then be nothing else than a real imperative, which, however, in all verbs except vera coincides in form with the subjunctive. The form verir looks like a counter example to the hypothesis, but it is only found twice in poetry, never in prose, and can be explained as a common copying error. We cannot ask the native speakers of Old Norse, so the description of Old Norse veri as a subjunctive is a hypothesis as well. It is argued that seeing veri as an imperative is the more elegant solution.
Abstract
This article examines current practices of normalization of names in Norse philology and computational linguistics that to a large extent build on deductive reasoning and external authoritative sources such as grammars, dictionaries and gazetteers. Instead, a survey of manuscript evidence and quantification of name forms at several levels of abstraction is proposed as an alternative inductive principle of normalization. A case study of name-form distributions in a dataset of 6,633 spatial attestations in East Norse literature from the Norse World resource serves as a point of departure for a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the approach. The comparison between attestations linked to the five most frequent place-names in Old Swedish and Old Danish shows the existence of typical spellings. However, there are still examples of norm negotiations and competitive distributions. Thus, the first inductive step of normalization can be complemented by further processing based on correspondences between phonology and spelling. Finally, stratified normalization of place-names pioneered by Norse World is seen as more versatile compared to traditional methods; the approach has a potential to facilitate both more nuanced philological and linguistic research as well as the further development of named-entity recognition tools.
Abstract
As a continuation of earlier articles on the morphology of Old Dutch (2019) the weak declensions of substantives and personal names that appear in place names from the 8th to the 10th century are discussed. This also offers the opportunity for a critical view on some of the place names that are attested in this period.
Abstract
This research studies a group of Chinese university students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to analyse the macro- and microstructure of their emails and their pragmatic competence. In order to study the features and context adequacy of their email communication, a corpus of 200 emails written by 100 second-year students (sophomores) and 100 fourth-year students (seniors) was analysed to identify the uses and preferences concerning subject lines and opening and closing moves and to investigate the uses and functions of strategies related to disagreement in their communication to a faculty member. Findings show that both Chinese groups lacked standardisation in relation to the use of subject line and opening and closing moves. Data also proved that Chinese EFL emails were inappropriate due to insufficient mitigation, lack of acknowledgment of the imposition involved and lack of status-congruent language.
Abstract
Die sozialen Medien stellen das Verhältnis von Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit auf den Kopf. Die Grenze zwischen beiden Sphären war immer schon prekär und ihre Funktion sowie ihre Beschaffenheit Gegenstand vieler interdisziplinärer Debatten. Autor:innen, die ihre literarischen Texte in den sozialen Medien veröffentlichen, finden sich sowohl als private als auch als öffentliche Person dort adressiert, wo eigentlich ihre literarischen Figuren zu verorten sind. Anders gesagt: Die durchlässig werdende Membran zwischen öffentlichem und privatem Raum verändert die Funktion der Autor:innenschaft. Literarische Texte wie die von Sarah Berger verhandeln dieses Phänomen, indem sie die Funktion des Schreibens und der Schrift im Kontext neuer Technologien in den sozialen Medien und jenseits davon diskutieren.