Haplotype Affinities Resolve a Major Component of Goat (Capra hircus) MtDNA D-Loop Diversity and Reveal Specific Features of the Sardinian Stock

Goat mtDNA haplogroup A is a poorly resolved lineage absorbing most of the overall diversity and is found in locations as distant as Eastern Asia and Southern Africa. Its phylogenetic dissection would cast light on an important portion of the spread of goat breeding. The aims of this work were 1) to provide an operational definition of meaningful mtDNA units within haplogroup A, 2) to investigate the mechanisms underlying the maintenance of diversity by considering the modes of selection operated by breeders and 3) to identify the peculiarities of Sardinian mtDNA types. We sequenced the mtDNA D-loop in a large sample of animals (1,591) which represents a non-trivial quota of the entire goat population of Sardinia. We found that Sardinia mirrors a large quota of mtDNA diversity of Western Eurasia in the number of variable sites, their mutational pattern and allele frequency. By using Bayesian analysis, a distance-based tree and a network analysis, we recognized demographically coherent groups of sequences identified by particular subsets of the variable positions. The results showed that this assignment system could be reproduced in other studies, capturing the greatest part of haplotype diversity

FARMACI A PICCOLE DOSI: LA SCIENZA MEDICA NEI PRIMI DIZIONARI INGLESI

This essay examines the role of lexicography in the popularisation of medical terminology in seventeenth-century England. As a matter of fact, the compilation of the earliest monolingual English dictionaries proceeded side by side with the birth and early development of modern science. After sketching the lexicographical tradition of the so-called hard-word dictionaries and commenting on how these works were involved in the popularisation of science, and especially scientific terminology, in the seventeenth century, this essay focuses on all the medical entries in the very first monolingual English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's A table alphabeticall of 1604

Lexicography, or the Gentle Art of Making Mistakes

The man in the street’s attitude of mind towards dictionaries is that they are the true repositories of all the words in a language, and that they are both authoritative and objective – in short, dictionaries are perfect. By mainly referring to the early history of English mono- and bilingual lexicography, this essay explodes the myth of the perfect dictionary and shows that mistakes in dictionaries may profitably be discussed under two headings: lexicographical mistakes, i.e. vague or circular definitions and the so-called ghost words in monolingual dictionaries, and non-insertable equivalents in bilingual dictionaries; and socio-cultural mistakes, which are related to the often elusive impact of ideology on dictionary-making

Icone del potere: simbolo e realt\ue0 nei ritratti di Elisabetta I Tudor

Il saggio analizza alcuni ritratti ufficiali di Elisabetta I Tudor come strumenti che la sovrana utilizza per veicolare il proprio potere: in quanto donna le convenzioni sociali del tempo la relegano in una posizione subordinata, come regina \ue8 al vertice della gerarchia del potere. I ritratti presentano la regina come rappresentazione astratta e disincarnata del body politic

L'innovazione lessicale nei testi letterari e nelle loro traduzioni: puntualizzazioni concettuali e indicazioni metodologiche

Viene trattata l’innovazione lessicale, usata e concepita da molti scrittori come strumento espressivo con l’intento di suscitare nel referente extralinguistico una reazione emotiva. Si effettua una riflessione sull’attività neologistica e sulla creatività lessicale presente nella lingua d’uso e nei testi letterari, attraverso un approfondimento sulla differenza del valore del prodotto di innovazione lessicale in ambito letterario e non letterario, ponendo l’attenzione nel primo caso sul concetto di valenza espressiva e nel secondo caso su quello di valenza cognitiva. Si afferma che la creazione lessicale in letteratura va analizzata in rapporto al testo in cui compare, affrontando e risolvendo così il problema della modalità di traduzione del neologismo presente nei testi letterari

"A hundred visions and revisions": Malone's annotations to Johnson's Dictionary

Researchers on Samuel Johnson's Dictionary have carefully analysed the lexicographer's methodology and expanded on the technicalities of his compilation, with regard to both the first edition of 1755 and the fourth, revised edition of 1773. The early reception and criticism of the Dictionary have also been studied, especially as far as the awkwardness and idiosyncrasy of some of Johnson's definitions are concerned.Annotated copies of the Dictionary, instead, represent a still neglected, undervalued research area in Johnsonian studies, and undeservedly so, since they may both furnish detailed lexicographical critcism and represent privileged dictionary users' viewpoint, and can therefore offer us reliable and interesting data on the way Johnson's lexicographical achievement was received by the cultural élite of this times.Following my previous research on Samuel Dyer's annotated copy of the Dictionary (which, when the scholar died in 1772, passed to Edmund Burke, who added his own notes), it is the purpose of my paper to present the work of another annotator of the Dictionary, i.e., Edmond Malone, the renowned Shakespearian scholar and member of Johnson's circle; beginning in November 1808, Malone added some 3000 notes in his copy of the Dictionary, and made lists of 'Modern Quoted' and 'English Idioms'.I will carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Malone's notes, and will outline a taxonomy of his addenda and corrigenda to the Dictionary. My paper is therefore meant to contribute to a deeper knowledge of the Dictionary itself and, on a methodological level, to the research into the interplay between language data, lexicographic technique and cultural tenets in an epoch-making dictionary.</p

Past and present in translation collaborative practices and cooperation.

In recent years, the landscape of translation studies has undergone a transformation as scholars increasingly recognise and emphasise collaboration as an integral aspect of the translation process. While historical translation studies have traditionally focused on the solitary translator, contemporary research challenges this singular perspective and highlights the collaborative nature of translation (Cordingley and Frigau Manning 2017; Folaron 2010; Malmkjaer 2013; O’Hagan 2013). This changing understanding recognises that the notion of the solitary translator is culturally determined and that translation processes inherently involve multiple agents (Bistué 2016). Despite this shift in perception, there remains a significant gap in research: a comprehensive history that explicitly focuses on the cooperative strategies and collaborative efforts of translators and language mediators. This gap prompts a critical examination of collaborative practices throughout history, shedding light on the dynamic and evolving nature of cooperation – or the absence of it – in the fields of translation and intercultural communication