Pushing back the origin of Bantu lexicography: the vocabularium congense of 1652, 1928, 2012

In this article, the oldest Bantu dictionary hitherto known is explored, that is the Vocabularium Latinum, Hispanicum, e Congense, handed down to us through a manuscript from 1652 by the Flemish Capuchin Joris van Gheel, missionary in the Kongo (present-day north-western Angola and the southern part of the Lower Congo Province of the DRC). The manuscript was heavily reworked by the Belgian Jesuits Joseph van Wing and Constant Penders, and published in 1928. Both works are currently being digitized, linked and added to an interlingual and multimedia database that revolves around Kikongo and the early history of the Kongo kingdom. In Sections 1 and 2 the origins of Bantu lexicography in general and of Kikongo metalexicography in particular are revisited. Sections 3 and 4 are devoted to a study of Van Cheers manuscript and an analysis of Van Wing and Fenders rework. In Sections 5 and 6 translation equivalence and lexicographical structure in both dictionaries are scrutinized and compared. In Section 7, finally, all the material is brought together

Was Proto-Kikongo a 5 or 7-vowel language? Bantu spirantization and vowel merger in the Kikongo language cluster

This article addresses whether Proto-Kikongo (PK), the most recent common ancestor of the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC), should be reconstructed with an inventory of 5 or 7 vowel phonemes. Based on the synchronic vowel systems of its descendants, the most economic reconstruction would be 5 vowels, as all present-day varieties within the KLC have 5 vowels or once went through a 5-vowel (5V) stage. If such were the case, the reduction of the inherited Proto-Bantu (PB) 7-vowel (7V) system to a 5V system in PK would count as a genealogically significant shared innovation setting apart the KLC as a discrete sub-group within the “West-Coastal” or “West-Western” branch of the Bantu family. Most other West-Coastal Bantu (WCB) languages have either retained the PB 7V system or extended it. However, based on Bantu spirantization (BS) patterns within the KLC, it cannot be excluded that PK actually was a 7V language. Within Bantu, BS and 7>5V reduction are known to be closely interconnected sound changes in that the vowel merger generally takes place after BS. The irregular application of BS at the stem level in several KLC varieties as well as the near-total absence of BS across morpheme boundaries suggest that PK was a 7V language. Different stems manifest irregular patterns of BS in different varieties across the KLC. These irregularities can only be accounted for if we assume that the merger of PB close (/*i/, /*u/) and near-close vowels (/*ɪ/, /*ʊ/) recurrently occurred within the KLC as an independent innovation after BS had started but before it had affected all possible targets within the language.de ce dernier ont soit conservé le système à 7V, soit développé des systèmes comptant plus de 7 phonèmes vocaliques. Cependant, la façon dont s’est déroulée la spirantisation au sein du KLC suggère qu’il se pourrait bien que le PK ait été une langue à 7V. De fait, au sein de l’ensemble bantou, il est bien connu que la spirantisation et le passage de 7 à 5 unités vocaliques constituent des évolutions phonologiques étroitement liées, la réduction du nombre de voyelles survenant généralement après le phénomène de spirantisation. Le fait que la spirantisation ne se soit produite que de façon irrégulière à l’intérieur des racines et restée exceptionnelle au niveau des frontières entre morphèmes laisse penser que le PK était une langue à 7V. En effet, ce ne sont pas les mêmes radicaux qui manifestent une spirantisation dans les diverses variétés du KLC. Ces irrégularités ne peuvent s’expliquer que si l’on admet que la neutralisation du timbre entre voyelles fermées (/*i/, /*u/) et mi-fermées (/*ɪ/, /*ʊ/) s’est produite à plusieurs reprises dans le KLC, et que ce processus de neutralisation constitue donc une innovation indépendante dans les variétés où il est attesté. On est aussi conduit à supposer que ces neutralisations se sont produites après le début du phénomène de spirantisation, mais avant que ledit phénomène n’ait affecté toutes les cibles possibles dans les langues concernées

The emergence of French statistics. How mathematics entered the world of statistics in France during the 1920s

This paper concerns the emergence of modern mathematical statistics in France after the First World War. Emile Borel's achievements are presented, and especially his creation of two institutions where mathematical statistics was developed: the {\it Statistical Institute of Paris University}, (ISUP) in 1922 and above all the {\it Henri Poincar\'e Institute} (IHP) in 1928. At the IHP, a new journal {\it Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincar\'e} was created in 1931. We discuss the first papers in that journal dealing with mathematical statistics

Progressive vowel height harmony in Proto-Kikongo and Proto-Bantu

The systematic comparison of the different types of progressive Vowel Height Harmony (pVHH) attested within the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC) leads to the conclusion that this common Bantu process of long-distance assimilation cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Kikongo. The ‘(a)symmetric-pVHH’ and ‘back-pVHH’ patterns, the two main and structurally different kinds of pVHH within the KLC, emerged independently and relatively late within two distinct subgroups, viz. South Kikongo and North Kikongo respectively. Moreover, the ‘(a)symmetric-pVHH’ pattern further spread from a South Kikongo focal area coinciding with the heartland of the Kongo kingdom to other parts of the KLC through contact-induced dialectal diffusion. Furthermore, the historical-comparative evidence from the KLC suggests that neither symmetric nor asymmetric pVHH should be reconstructed to Proto-Bantu, the most recent common ancestor of all Bantu languages

The New Generation And The New Russia: Modern Childhood As Collective Fantasy

American Studie

"Audacity or Precision": The Paradoxes of Henri Villat's Fluid Mechanics in Interwar France

In Interwar France, Henri Villat became the true leader of theoretical researches on fluid mechanics. Most of his original work was done before the First World War; it was highly theoretical and its applicability was questioned. After having organized the first post-WWI International Congress of Mathematicians in 1920, Villat became the editor of the famous Journal de math\'ematiques pure et appliqu\'es and the director of the influential book series "M\'emorial des sciences math\'ematiques." From 1929 on, he held the fluid mechanics chair established by the Air Ministry at the Sorbonne in Paris and was heading the government's critical effort invested in fluid mechanics. However, while both his wake theory and his turbulence theory seemingly had little success outside France or in the aeronautical industry (except in the eyes of his students), applied mathematics was despised by the loud generation of Bourbaki mathematicians coming of age in the mid 1930s. How are we to understand the contrasted assessments one can make of Villat's place in the history of fluid mechanics

Movement of piers during the construction of multiple-span reinforced concrete arch bridges

Cover title.Prepared as part of an investigation conducted by the Engineering Experiment Station, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In Pursuit of the Functional Definition of a Mind: The Inevitability of the Language Ontology

In this article, the results of conceptualization of the definition of mind as an object of interdisciplinary applied research are described. The purpose of the theoretical analysis is to generate a methodological discourse suitable for a functional understanding of the mind in the context of the problem of natural language processing as one of the components of developments in the field of artificial intelligence. The conceptual discourse was realized with the help of the author's method of structural-ontological analysis, and developed in the mainstream of the system-methodological tradition of the school of G.P. Shchedrovitsky and intended for descriptive research of subject areas of interdisciplinary objects of scientific study. As a result of the structural and ontological analysis of the super-system, the relevant place and role of the directly studied system (mind) are determined, and its primary process and material are localized and structural and functional connections are described. At the basic level, the mind is conceptualized as an energy process unfolding in a spatio-temporal environment and accompanied by archetypal structuring of neural impulses into images. The genesis of the system is separately analyzed by constructing a structural-ontological matrix that reflects the initial stage of the development of the mind. The primary process is concretized with the help of hetero- and homeostatic dichotomy, and also the most significant features of the consistent transformation of the material of the system and its ascent to verbal morphology are described. The structural-ontological comparison of the functioning of the verbal intelligence with the preverbal level has been carried out. The transformation of neural impulses of needs into words, as verbal units fixing semiotic values is analyzed. Structural-ontological connections that determine the reactive and prospective characteristics of the functioning of the system are disclosed. The position of the chronological primacy of "semiotic readiness" for language with respect to the debut of the latter as an information-sign model of the environment is argued. The hypothesis of domination at the initial stage of the development of the mind of exopsychic functions over endopsychic ones is formulated. The theoretical substantiation of the hypothesis of the inevitability of the ontology of language in the functional understanding of the mind is given, corresponding structural and ontological arguments are given, including those based on the ideas about the information relationship between affects and needs, according to the views of P.V. Simonov. The arguments are presented in favor of the non-alternative methodology of A. Turing in studies of artificial intelligence