Electronic Library of Scientific Literature
Electronic Library of Scientific Literature
Volume 7 / No. 1 / 1998
Viktor Krupa
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia
In several recent papers I tried to highlight the importance of the
human (and to some extent also the animal) body as an auxiliary cognitive
model (e.g. Krupa 1993 and 1995) in the vocabulary of widely divergent
languages. The body (especially its outer and visible parts) incessantly
enters into interaction with its surroundings, and is a major source of
our elementary and fundamental knowledge. It is therefore not surprising
that the body, with its complex internal design, often serves as a hypothetical
blueprint or model for the interpretation and structuration of other conceptual
domains, especially in those instances where functionally different and
yet complementary (more important versus less important, central versus
peripheral, superordinate versus subordinate) components ought to be distinguished
and labelled.
pp. 3-9
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Emanuel M. Fuchs
Seilerstätte 17/6, Vienna, Austria
English-Tuvaluan Interference and Language Policy in Tuvalu
In this paper evidence of English influence on Tuvaluan (Part 1) as well
as some aspects of language policy in the Pacific atoll nation of Tuvalu
(Part 2) will be examined.
Section 1.1. treats the historical impact of English as the language of
traders and colonialists in the former Ellice-Islands, including borrowing,
the phonological adaptation of English borrowings, the creation of literary
Tuvaluan and Tuvaluan orthography; section 1.2. deals with the present
status of English as an official and international language in modern Tuvalu;
section 1.3. looks into the phenomenon of Tuvaluan-English bilingualism
and 1.4. summarizes the first part of the paper.
Part 2 contains section 2.1. on government sponsoring - 2.1.1. of the Southern
Tuvaluan dialects and 2.1.2. of English, section 2.2. on the standardization
of Tuvaluan and 2.3. summarizing the second part of the paper.
pp. 10-22
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Ladislav Drozdík
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia
The linguistic category of gender has been extensively studied from
both the synchronic and diachronic points of view. The present article
can only touch on some of the most provocative issues of these studies.
Its proper aim is to propose a short synchronic survey of the most outstanding
functional variations of the suffix -a /-at in a number of
linguistic systems of Modern Written Arabic and some of its colloquial
varieties.
pp. 23-44
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Jinyang Zhu, Universität Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg
Karl-Heinz Best, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen,
Germany
Frequency of Word Lengths in Chinese Short Stories
Chinese short stories are used in this paper with the aim of testing once
again the theory of word length distribution in texts as proposed by Wimmer
et al. (1994) and Wimmer/Altmann (1996). The theory assumes that the word
lengths in texts are not distributed randomly but have to correspond to
quite specific, theoretically justifiable distributions. The paper is another
step in the investigation of Chinese as well as another 36 languages covered
by the quantitative linguistic project carried out in Göttingen and introduced
to the readers of this journal in Best/Song (1996).
pp. 45-51
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Dagmar Marková
Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,
Pod vodárenskou vìží 4, 182 00 Prague 8, Czech Republic
All that is stated here is based on reading and on confrontation of
the reading (1) with the results of sociological research and (2) with
the empirical knowledge of Indian reality. No statistical methods were
used. In Hindi short stories, we find a number of recurrent family motifs
through the whole 20th century, modified according to the time and view-point
of the respective writer. Hindi short story is reflective of social realities
but it can be regarded as a document of its time only up to some extent.
The natural fascination of the writers by the novelty of certain problems
is rather misleading.
pp. 52-68
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Helga Rittersberger-Tiliç & Sibel Kalaycioglu
Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, 06531 Ankara,
Turkey
The Turkish nation state project introduced itself with drastic reforms
which had without doubt great influence on the institutional levels of
society as well as on the private life of the people. However, a Western
type of state-subject relationship did not develop. The nation state model
and the introduction of a Western type modernity was introduced "from
above" and remained to a large part at the legislative and administrative
level alien to the individuals' experiences. Thus, in Turkey we can witness
an articulation of a relatively modernized institutional body together
with strong traditional family/kin networks which act as alternative means
of social control and organization. These alternatives are perceived by
the members of society as more efficient mechanisms to gain access to their
goals. How do the individuals or better family/kin networks develop strategies
to overcome the inefficiencies regarding the state institutions in responding
to the needs of the individuals? It was seen that mainly through such individual
strategies access was gained to resources concerning for example housing,
employment, social security, education and health. We argue that these
individual strategies constitute an alternative social organization "from
below" which does not necessarily contradict the state's modernization
goals, and in effect it completes the inefficiencies of the state institutions.
pp. 69-79
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Xénia Celnarová
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia
Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) is presented in dictionaries and encyclopedias
as a neoclassicist, but also as the last representative of classical Ottoman
poetry (Divan ºiiri).The poet did not give up the traditional metre
(aruz) and rhyme even in the period when the syllabic metre and
free verse completely dominated Turkish poetry. However, Yahya Kemal did
not use the classical metre and rhyme, or the traditional forms of Arabic
and Persian poetry (gazel, kaside, rubaî and others) as ends in
themselves. He subordinated them to his own conception of poetry, which
was connected with the cultural and aesthetic trends of Western Europe
and especially France in the second half of the nineteenth century and
the beginning of the twen-tieth century.
pp. 80-86
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Getnet Tamene
Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has significantly declined since the disruption
of her ally the so-called "Solomonic Line" in 1974, when the
last monarch was overthrown; nevertheless, she still exerts strong influence
on the lives of millions even without the support of her ally, the State.
Neither the divorce of Church-State relations, which culminated with the
end of the monarchy and introduction of Communist ideology in the 1970s,
nor the trends of pluralistic democracy-based currently flourishing Independent
Churches, could remove away her influence in the country. In fact, these
events have threatened the position of this archaic Church and made questionable
the possiblity of her perpetuation, as can be well observed at the turn
of the century.
pp. 87-104
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pp. 105-112
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