Events

Abstract

“Continuum con addensamenti”, ‘continuum with agglomerations’: this is how Berruto once described the Italian linguistic repertoire. Much has been discussed about the extremes of this continuum; however, little do we know about those intermediate “agglomerations”. How many are there? How are they organized? Do they share features? To address these questions, we adopt a phonetic perspective and borrow a technique typically used in commercial profiling. Examining established Neapolitan phonetic features alongside new prosodic parameters, we identify possible speaker profiles and features agglomerations, shedding a new light on the intermediate varieties of the Italian standard-dialect continuum. In this talk, I will discuss preliminary studies and findings, applying this innovative methodology to offer new insights into the nature of the concept of variety.

In my talk I will discuss some minor deities (demons) of the Indo-Iranian pantheon such as Gandharva(s) and their possible Indo-European parallels outside Indo-Iranian. In particular, I will focus on some features of Njörðr and other Nordic Vanir gods in order to show their structural similarities with the Gandharva(s), foremost, their importance for such issues as sexuality and fertility. Special attention will be paid to the etymology of the names of these gods. I will further demonstrate that this comparison may shed some light on the anthropogonic views of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and to figure out how they envisaged the origin of humankind and the role of (minor) gods in this emergence of humans.