docoflove1974

Heh shoulda looked at the obvious site...silly me.

Exactly. ae and oe fell out as diphthongs relatively early in the various Romance languages...as I recall (and I don't have Rohlfs' (1968) Grammatica storica in front of me, so please forgive any errors), ae and oe became [e] and [o], respectively, and from there normal phonological rules would apply ('ce' requiring the 'ch' sound, 'co' requiring a [k]).

No, I don't. Amazon (bot the US and UK sites) don't have it on here. I tried to access the publisher's site, but it's not very easy. I'd love to know, too!

For those who are interested, there is a (relatively) new linguistic grammar of Ancient Greek. The review on LinguistList was pretty good...hence I decided to post the reference here, and link to the review Bibliographic information: AUTHOR: Luraghi, Silvia TITLE: Ancient Greek SERIES: Languages of the World/Materials 213 PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH YEAR: 2005

I think it was a combination of things: --Arab/Moorish and Irish monastic 'reintroduction' and 'preservation' of ancient texts: I don't think you can discount the contribution of either groups. Both were instrumental in continual copying and maintaining of ancient texts, which facilitated learning in the rest of Europe. --Renaissance: I know that the timing varies, but this period of time (in my mind: 1350ish-1550ish) was so amazing in far of (Western) European culture. And in every aspect, too: arts, philosophy, literature, science, education, et cetera. In fact, one could say that, along with the 'classical' period of the Greeks, it was one of the most creative and important ages of Europe. I know that the root of all events (and evils?) is money...in this case, the Medici family setting up a 'banking' system which helped to finance the Papacy, Florence, and so much of central Italy...and that from here, you have the explosion that we know as the Renaissance. One book, which I do recommend reading, which gives a bit of insight to the later Renaissance is Ross King's Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling . It does focus mostly on il gran Buonarroti and his tempestuous relationship with Il Papa...but it's also a good view of how this period was financed, run, and developed in other areas. It was a good read (and with good sized print!).

Perhaps this is a basic question...but is Alavanna in any way connected to Arthurian Avalon? I know there's a metathesis (switiching) of consonants...but it still rang a bell.

From what little I know... I think two of the key components of the Roman society was education and trade. Most all Romans had access to education (someone fill in the gaps here, please), and with the fall of the empire, only those in monasteries (or who could afford to send their son off to the monastery to learn) had 'easy' access to books and education, and even that was limited to a select few. With the fall of the empire also came a broken-down infrastructure, and people not having as much opportunity to do long-distance trade. Less trade, in my opinion, lead to a more closed society (or societies), and combined with a lack of education, more people became xenophobic, in a way, and helped to exacerbate the situation. Like I said, this is my gut feeling, based on the little I've read.

Well, now, that's certainly a reason to conquer the Dacians! Ok, my hypothesis failed...next!

Excuse my ignorance...but perhaps the question should be viewed as: what good did the land/territory/people do for the Roman Empire? Perhaps it was 'let go' because there were no resources of interest?

I know it's not exactly what you're looking for...but the Asterix comic book series is a lot of fun. It follows Asterix the Gaul, and a lot of his romps against the Romans, in particular, and other peoples of the time. Lots of hijinx, but gets kids to look up the historical accuracies of the comics. Added bonus: they're printed in multiple languages.

Help me, Obi Wan...you're my only hope . What about Tim Roth? and Ben Kingsley? The dudes have an amazing ability to mould themselves into any character they wish to be.

Um...femina sum And I'm just looking at it from a literary standpoint. Those literary types get picky with movements, and since many of those types have been my professors, I just followed their line of thinking. No question that 'The Big Three' influenced writers for hundreds of years to come...and continue to do so today.

"If it's not Scottish, it's crrrrrap!!!" *ahem* sorry I go with Locutus of Borg , Hugh Laurie, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Hopkins (even if he is Welsh), Lawrence Olivier, Christopher Plumber, and many others that aren't coming to mind.

But doesn't the Renaissance 'officially' start more in the 1400s? I would place Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarca just before it...leading up to the period, yes, but not in the same period.

Here's a thought: the Italian royal family might have a bloodline/geneology recorded long enough, as would, perhaps, the noble families of Italy *might* have a similar geneology available.

Couple of knee-jerk thoughts: 1) I wonder if the Roman name for the tribe relates to the grape varietal 'barbera'? 2) I wonder how much the French are going to tout their Celtic blood now? hehe

And traditor being 'a traitor'...interesting how the two are linked!

My mother's family is Northern Italian, so while I say that I'm Italian-American, in reality who knows how much of that bloodline is Roman, Celtic, Germanic, etc. My father's family is typical American mutt, too, heavy on the German and British Isles.

This is what keeps me going in finishing the blasted dissertation...the fact that one day I will, indeed, no longer be at the poverty line. heh

Yes, it's always academic year, which goes July 1-June 30 here. And as far as I know, the summer is part of the salary...well, for professors...those are 12 month salaries. Lecturers, I would imagine, are 9-month salaries, and tend to be on a year-by-year contract.

'Supposedly' (note the quotes), on Good Morning America tomorrow there's gonna be some brief story on the KT and it's taking place in London. No clue as to what time in the program (it goes from 7-9am on your local ABC station), but it'll be a story. For those interested.

Just to add to this discussion more...I looked at The Chronicle for Higher Education and their reports on salaries for academians. They have a database which is easily accessible for the US salaries, divided by states. Some highlights: --In California (where I'm at), $40-50 is what a Lecturer is paid at a 4-year university (regardless of the Research Level)...this is someone who teaches in a non-tenured capacity, and who often only holds a Masters' degree. Assistant Professors (PhD holders who are at the start of their careers) were high $40k-mid $50k. Associate Professors (next level up) mid $50k-$90k. Full Professors (highest level) averaged mid $80-$110k. Per year. --In Texas (where I used to teach), Lecturers were mid $30k-high $40k; Assistant Professors were low $40k-high $60k; Associate Professors were high $40k-$70k; and Full Professors were $60k-high $100k. --In the US, much depends on where you are teaching. Major research universities (ranked as Research I) are going to pay much more, plus have more opportunities for research grants, which add to the salaries. 'Teaching' universities or 'baccalaureate' schools (usually IIB or III), where the focus is solely on teaching and research is secondary or even terciary, tend to pay less, and also tend to be very small, private, 'liberal arts' schools where the student body does not exceed 2,000. Community/Junior Colleges (III or IV), where no research is required for tenure, are about the same as the 'teaching' universities. --Professors tend to have much in the way of student loans to repay (Lord knows I do...&**&^&$%), so the salaries are high, but on par with other professions where post-graduate work is required (doctors, lawyers, etc.) So, in sum, in the US an archeologist making $40-50k/year is earning that money on the side, most likely, and is associated with a university.

I'm guessing that this is supplemental to their university salary...and that's why it seems 'low' to me. Trust me when I say that $42k does not cut it in any major metropolitan area in the US.

Sorry I'm coming late to this party...but I can add to this greatly, at least from the Romance Linguistics point of view. Graham Mallinson and Maria Manea Manoliu (or often Manoliu Manea) are the two foremost authors on Rumanian and its role in Romance Linguistics. Maria was a professor of mine at the University of California at Davis, and was one of the first to use Chomskian ideals (particularly UG) to describe the Romance morpho-syntax...a huge name, and I learned from her greatly (as well as an academic adversary of Robert Hall Jr!). Anyway, she has several works on various topics on Rumanian linguistics. But as for general overviews, which are both basic and chock full of information, Graham Mallinson is the grand master. He wrote the chapter on Rumanian in the Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent's standard The Romance Languages (1988, Oxford University Press), but wrote the actual thome (sp?) on the language: Rumanian 1986. Dover, NH: Croom Helm. So, let's take up some topics--again, I know Rumanian as a Romance linguist and through these works, but do not speak it, so bear with me. Also take note of the quotation marks--the terms in them are meant to be taken with a grain of salt, as there is still much debate on Rumanian: 1) Syntactically, Rumanian is 'archaic' in that it retains case distinction (albeit in reduced form from Latin) as well as pseudo-three-way gender distinction (the 'third gender' is often termed ambigeneric since the singular forms are that of the masc.sing, but the plural forms are that of the fem.sing.; this third 'gender' does not have distinct inflection of its own, even on modifiers, and so there is great debate as to whether it is a gender or not...I can get into this discussion at a later point in time). 2) There are substantial 'Balkan' traits to the language--the use of postposed articles (so it looks like 'noun-article' all in one word) being one of many areas. Due to the substantial Slavic influence, it is often thought that aspects of them influenced Rumanian--it should be noted that Mallinson is opposed to this explanation (and I would tend to agree), as it is not normal to borrow aspects of morpho-syntax without substantial borrowings in other areas, which is not shown in great numbers outside of lexical items. Again, another topic for another time. 5) As for external influences, certainly the other Balkan languages (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Greek, Albanian, et. al.) were an influence, as is Hungarian...and do not underestimate the French and Italian influence which came in the 17th and 18th century. All added greatly to the lexicon, and perhaps in other areas...but as noted above, this is under debate. 3) Phonologically and phonetically, Rumanian is quite 'Romance', with particular reference to palatalized consonants in certain situations and weakened vowels in word-final position (Mallinson 1986: 395-8). (I don't know squat about Slavic phonology, by and large, but I know that the consonant clusters which are typical in Slavic languages are not present for the most part in Rumanian.) 4) Lexically, yes there are 'archaic' words, but no more so than in Spanish/Portuguese and Sardinian...basically, 'more archaic' words tend to be used in the periphery of a language community. Perhaps the saddest part of the language of Rumanian is that there does not exist any document older than the 16th century...so we have a very large gap (~1000 years) with zero documentation of the language, and therefore we don't know exactly how Rumanian was formed. We can surmise, but we don't have nearly the same documentation that we do with all of the other Romance languages. As for Sardinian and Sicilian...Sardinian is a totally and completely different Romance language from 'Italian', and Sicilian/Southern Italian is often thought of as a different, although highly related, linguistic area than Northern/Gallo-Italian and Central Italian--this is constantly debated, too. Iberia: Gallician-Portuguese and Portuguese are the same thing...albeit different dialects. El gallego, as it is called in Spanish, is the more modern dialect which is a mesh of Gallician-Portuguese (which died out a couple of centuries ago) and Spanish (more Leonese than Castilian). European Portugese is pretty much defined in the country of Portugal, and Catalan is spoken on the other side of the peninsula, in the provinces of Catalunya and, in a modified form, Valencia, as well as a small portion of SW France. Oh, one more thing...as to which (modern) Romance language is 'closest' to Latin...the question must be reformed. In what way?...no one language is 'closest' to Latin in all areas (phonology/phonetics, morphology, syntax). Also...which Latin?: Classical, Vulgar, Late, etc. In my personal opinion--having to work on this constantly--I would put it as follows: Phonolgy/Phonetics: the closest is probably Sardinian and South-Central Italian, since the vowels are pretty much the same (albeit in Sardinian in reduced form) as well as the syllable structure...standard (Florentine) Italian can be thrown in here, too. Morphology: no one, really. If you want to say that Rumanian is, since it still have a case distinction, ok, fine. In reality, it's highly pared down...no where near the level that Classical Latin, and even Vulgar Latin, had. Syntax: again, no one really here, either. Classical Latin was a Subject-Object-Verb order, when there was word order in a sentence, with high reliance on case inflection instead of word order and prepositions. Every one of the Romance languages, including Rumanian and the Rhaeto-Romance languages, has high reliance on prepositions and medium-to-high reliance on word order (it's still much more flexible than, say, English). Verbal aspect (perfective/progressive/imperfective) has been greatly reduce in the modern languages, as well. Overall...I really would doubt that any of the Classical writers would be able to read much of any of the modern Romance languages. Even as early as the 10th and 11th century--so ~600-700 years after the fall of the Empire--the morphology and syntax of the Romance languages were vastly different from Classical and Vulgar Latin(s).