Methods and masters: multilingual teaching in 16th-century Louvain

En el siglo XVI se hablaban y se practicaban varias lenguas en Flandes, especialmente en la ciudad universitaria de Lovaina y en Amberes, centro económico de los Países Bajos españoles. El multilingüismo que se practicaba era por un lado un multilingüismo ‘vertical’, implicando el estudio de las tres lenguas ‘sagradas’ (hebreo, griego, latín); este tipo de estudio se concretizó con la fundación del Collegium Trilingue de Lovaina (1517). Por otro lado, estaba muy difundido un multilingüismo ‘horizontal’, que implicaba las lenguas vernáculas, como el español, el francés y el italiano; este tipo de multilingüismo se explica por el ascenso de la clase comerciante. La presente contribución analiza la documentación disponible (sobre los maestros de lengua y los instrumentos didácticos) y rastrea los factores contextuales que influían en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en Flandes, con particular atención a Lovaina.In 16th-century Flanders, various languages were spoken and practiced, especially in the university town of Louvain and the city of Antwerp, the economic heart of the Southern Low Countries. On the one hand, the multilingualism to be observed there was a ‘vertical’ one: it concerned the study of the three ‘sacred’ languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), and is typically exemplified by the creation of the Collegium Trilingue in Louvain (1517). On the other hand, there was a widespread ‘horizontal’ multilingualism, involving the vernaculars (e.g., French, Italian, Spanish) and serving the needs of the ascending merchant class. The present paper surveys the extant documentation (language masters, didactic tools), and investigates the contextual factors underlying the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Flanders, with a focus on Louvain

Protes dalam masyarakat di Alam Melayu sebelum Merdeka: analisis terhadap beberapa novel terpilih

Makalah ini menganalisis pemikiran protes di kalangan masyarakat watan di Malaysia, Indonesia dan Brunei pada zaman sebelum merdeka berasaskan beberapa buah novel-novel terpilih pada era berkenaan. Rujukan diasaskan kepada beberapa buah novel yang mendapat tempat di kalangan masyarakat di negara-negara berkenaan pada era tersebut. Penulisan ini menggunakan pendekatan struktural atau formalistik. Didapati secara amnya para pengarang pada zaman tersebut mempunyai kecenderungan untuk mengenengahkan pemikiran protes melalui tema-tema percintaan, kahwin paksa, emansipasi wanita, pertembungan budaya dan nasionalisme

The grammar of traditional Malay long-roof type houses

In this paper, the grammar of the traditional Malay houses (TMH) built in the past century is presented. The basic unit structures that form the shape of the TMH are first derived. Evidences of the basic unit structures or their combinations were documented by previous researchers and are used as a way of explaining the physical, spatial and functional relationships of the built forms of the TMH. The scope of the study is currently limited to the original TMH of the bumbung panjang (long roof) type in which the key features of the houses were easily discernible from the side view. The shape addition rules for generating these structures are used to characterize the compositional aspects of TMH style

Providence, Temporal Authority, and the Illustrious Vernacular in Dante's Political Philosophy

Drawing primarily upon Dante’s three major philosophical treatises (De vulgari eloquentia, Convivio, and Monarchia), this essay explores how Dante’s ethico-political philosophy operates within the crucial tension between the phenomenology of time as the condition for the possibility of human moral development and yet also as, metaphysically speaking, the privation and imitation of eternity. I begin by showing that, in the De vulgari eloquentia, Dante’s understanding of the poetic and rhetorical function of the illustrious vernacular is tied to his political philosophy in a way that depends upon a rich but ultimately unresolved tension between (a) the demand that only an atemporal, unchanging vernacular would be suitable for the tasks of universal monarchy and (b) the recognition that only a temporal, localized, and changing illustrious vernacular could possibly bring about the existence of the universal monarchy. In the second half of the essay, I will turn to Dante’s treatment of the providential grounding for the independence of spiritual and temporal authority in Convivio and Monarchia. I will argue that Dante’s understanding of divine providence provides common justification for the temporal and spiritual authorities whose independence he otherwise insists upon. Finally, drawing on the letter to Cangrande della Scala (the authorship of which is disputed), I will discuss how, for Dante, the providential ground for the legitimacy of temporal authority can only be discerned through the allegorical interpretation of history itself. In light of my discussion of these themes in Dante’s political philosophy and its dependence on his understanding of divine providence, I will conclude with a brief reflection on how Dante’s understanding of divine providence might help us better appreciate important aspects of the neglected legacy of Renaissance humanism in the history of early modern philosophy

Natural Language Processing at the School of Information Studies for Africa

The lack of persons trained in computational linguistic methods is a severe obstacle to making the Internet and computers accessible to people all over the world in their own languages. The paper discusses the experiences of designing and teaching an introductory course in Natural Language Processing to graduate computer science students at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, in order to initiate the education of computational linguists in the Horn of Africa region

Syntactic variation and diglossia in French

The present article addresses syntactic variation within French, and is an example of a relatively recent shift in attitude towards variation in this language. It considers the status of the variation with respect to the mental grammars of speakers, in particular in the light of Massot’s work suggesting that contemporary metropolitan France is characterised by diglossia, that is, a community of speakers with two (in this case massively overlapping but not entirely identical) ‘French’ grammars which co-exist in their minds, one stylistically marked High, the other Low. The article reviews one particular instance of variation and argues that Massot’s model needs to be revised in order to account for the particular phenomenon of surface forms which can be generated by both putative grammars but which have a different linguistic status in each

Women as linguistic codifiers in modern Europe. A comparative socio-historical British and Spanish framework

Considering the role of grammars as cultural products, influential on the education of women and children of the past, this contribution aims at assessing the extent to which nineteenth-century Spanish women were allowed to enter a community of discourse constituted by grammarians and linguistic codifiers of the vernacular. Following socio-historical lines of study, this new path of exploration intends to give visibility to women as authors and receivers of grammatical discourse and to provide comparative material to previous research in the field, particularly that on eighteenth-century British women grammarians. First, school grammars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are reanalysed from the point of view of ideological discourse. British female grammarians and their audiences are then taken into consideration in order to establish a social and historical framework which may serve as a basis for comparison. The Spanish setting is described and conjectured profiles of women as authors and receivers of grammar-books are given. Finally, a preliminary list of names and works is provided, laying the base for future research