I, Claudian: the syntactical and metrical alignment of ego in Claudian and his epic predecessors

This article provides an analysis of the syntactical and metrical alignment of the subject pronoun of the first person singular in Latin epic. Based on the observation that, due to its prosody, ego may only feature in a certain number of sedes within the dactylic hexameter line, a quantitative and qualitative argument is made for a careful distinction between emphatic and unstressed uses in relation to consistent patterns of metrical and syntactical collocation

The Vulgate text of the Catholic Epistles: its language, origin and relationship with the Vetus Latina

The Latin Vulgate represents the final stage of the process of the translation of the Bible which began in the late second century with the texts known as the Vetus Latina. This study examines the language of the Latin versions of the Catholic Epistles from the lexical, morphological and syntactical points of view and through a qualitative and quantitative analysis. It investigates their relationship with the Greek text and the presence of non-standard and late Latin features. The comparative examination of Greek and Latin texts casts light on the techniques employed by the Vulgate and the Vetus Latina translators. Diachronic and synchronic descriptions of the language highlight the linguistic peculiarities of these texts and their relationship with contemporary and earlier writings. The statistical examination of the lexicon, participial renderings and word order presents an overview of the variation in each epistle between the Vulgate and the Vetus Latina. The Vulgate, which has traditionally been considered a more refined text than the Vetus Latina is shown here to be equally, and often more, influenced by the Greek language and ‘vulgar’ usages. The differing linguistic character of the individual Epistles and the varying degrees of agreement between the Vulgate and the Vetus Latina reveal that the Vulgate Catholic Epistles do not form a unitary corpus: 1 Peter, 1 John, 2 John and Jude appear to be more conservative and accomplished than James, 2 Peter and 3 John. This variation may be due to their gradual inclusion in the western canon, which could explain their separate origins and different processes of revision. On the other hand, the close relationship between the Vulgate and the Vetus Latina in all the letters demonstrates that the Latin versions known today derive from a common archetype. Accompanying Data for the thesis can be found at https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.0000060

Noun phrases in early Germanic languages

Synopsis: On the premise that syntactic variation is constrained by factors that may not always be immediately obvious, this volume explores various perspectives on the nominal syntax in the early Germanic languages and the syntactic diversity they display. The fact that these languages are relatively well attested and documented allows for individual cases studies as well as comparative studies. Due to their well-observable common ancestry at the time of their earliest attestations, they moreover permit close-up comparative investigations into closely related languages. Besides the purely empirical aspects, the volume also explores the methodological side of diagnosing, classifying and documenting the details of syntactic diversity. The volume starts with a description by Alexander Pfaff and Gerlof Bouma of the principles underlying the Noun Phrases in Early Germanic Languages (NPEGL) database, before Alexander Pfaff presents the Patternization method for measuring syntactic diversity. Kristin Bech, Hannah Booth, Kersti Börjars, Tine Breban, Svetlana Petrova, and George Walkden carry out a pilot study of noun phrase variation in Old English, Old High German, Old Icelandic, and Old Saxon. Kristin Bech then considers the development of Old English noun phrases with quantifiers meaning ‘many’. Alexandra Rehn’s study is concerned with the inflection of stacked adjectives in Old High German and Alemannic. Old High German is also the topic of Svetlana Petrova’s study, which looks at inflectional patterns of attributive adjectives. With Hannah Booth’s contribution we move to Old Icelandic and the use of the proprial article as a topic management device. Juliane Tiemann investigates adjective position in Old Norwegian. Alexander Pfaff and George Walkden then take a broader view of adjectival articles in early Germanic, before Alexander Pfaff rounds off the volume with a study of a peculiar class of adjectives, the so-called positiona

Attestation in Trusted Computing: Challenges and Potential Solutions

This report examines the state of play in TCG attestation. It asks the question: how practical is the attestation specification and does it meet the needs of designs that propose to take advantage of trusted computing functionality? It is shown that, broadly speaking, both specification and implementation falls short of its stated goals. Application designs expect different semantics. Straightforward application of attestation to a running system does not provide adequate assurance nor does it scale. It is argued that extending the TCG architecture and reworking application designs are the most viable routes to making attestation a practical proposition

Purpose and Justification for New Design Standards Regarding the Use of Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Composites in Civil Engineering

The scope of this document concerns the purpose and justification for a new Eurocode for fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials, outlining the specific aims and reasons for standardization in this area, and the main interested parties (industry, consumers, trade, standardisation authorities and distributors) who will benefit from it.JRC.G.5-European laboratory for structural assessmen

A policy-based security framework for ad-hoc networks

Imperial Users onl

The Subjunctive in Celtic: Studies in Historical Phonology and Morphology

This thesis attempts to address a number of problems related to the phonological and morphological development of the subjunctive mood in the Celtic languages, and to come to a reconstruction of the category based on all of the data attested in the documented languages. The origin of the various subjunctive morphemes attested in the Celtic languages has long been a contested matter in comparative Celtic and Indo-European linguistics, particularly regarding the question of whether the ā-subjunctive of Old Irish constitutes a shared innovation with the Italic branch of the language family. In this thesis, the data is comprehensively reassessed, attempting to reconstruct the Proto-Celtic subjunctive from the ground up. After a brief survey of the subjunctive in Indo-European more generally, the material from the relatively well-understood Insular Celtic languages is examined. Significant progress has been made in the treatment of the subjunctive in Irish and Brittonic, particularly by McCone (1991), and, more recently, Zair (2012b). Some debate still remains, however, particularly in relation to a set of irregular forms in the Brittonic languages (MW el, O/MBr. -el), which are taken by Jasanoff (1994; 2009) as conclusive proof of an Italo-Celtic ā-subjunctive. This work shows that these forms can be explained without recourse to an ā-subjunctive category otherwise unattested in Brittonic Celtic. The distinguishing characteristics of the subjunctive categories attested in Insular Celtic are then used to come to a provisional reconstruction of the category. The second half of the thesis assesses the Continental Celtic evidence for the subjunctive. As this material is more fragmentary, and there is greater controversy as to its interpretation, first the historical phonology of Gaulish and Celtiberian is examined, in order to set criteria by which subjunctive forms may be identified. The possible evidence for the subjunctive in these languages is then analysed on a case-by-case basis, in order to establish whether it is truly admissible as evidence of the category. It is found that many of the forms previously identified in the scholarship as subjunctive are likely to have been misinterpreted. Nonetheless, there is a small but significant body of evidence for the category in Continental Celtic. This is finally brought together with the Insular Celtic material to establish a reconstruction of the Proto-Celtic subjunctive. The possible consequences of this reconstruction to that of the Indo-European subjunctive are then briefly assessed

'Les cent nouvelles nouvelles': A linguistic study of MS Glasgow Hunter 252

MS Glasgow Hunter 252 is the sole surviving manuscript copy of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'. The present PhD thesis, funded by a Glasgow University Scholarship and supervised by James Simpson and Peter Davies, explores the language of this collection of bawdy tales, attributed to the court of Philippe III de Bourgogne (1396-1467). Most existing studies on the language of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles' have offered a literary (e.g. stylistic, narratological) perspective, and very few have considered the document within the wider context of French historical linguistics. The present thesis aims to fill this gap by: •Presenting elements of linguistic interest within the document (dialectalisms, archaisms, rare features, cultural references, etc.), through a comprehensive survey of phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. •Expanding and reassessing existing theories on orthographic standardisation and dialectal input in written and, more speculatively, spoken Middle French. •Providing scriptological evidence towards the localisation of other textual resources within the online 'Dictionnaire du moyen français (1330-1500)'. •Investigating the authenticity of the mise-en-scène of the 'Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'; reflecting on linguistic practices and note-taking at the Court of Burgundy. •Exploring spoken language as rendered by direct speech passages, with special consideration of linguistic variation and stereotyping. •Publishing textual databases for future analysis (tables of main spelling variants, alphabetical list of words, etc.)