Human Remains and Funerary Rites in the Phoenician Necropolis of Motya (Sicily)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the fresh evidence retrieved in the early cemetery or 'archaic necropolis' (8^th-6^th century BC) on the island of Motya, one of the main Phoenician colonies in the Mediterranean. Because of its integrity and the large number of finds, the cemetery has been considered one of the most relevant sites for the study of early burial customs in the West.

The absence of anthropological data, completely neglected in the past, was a major shortcoming of previous research. This failing is now being rectified by a new project of fieldwork and excavation undertaken on the island by a team from Palermo University.

This report provides a close examination of the human remains from a group of 32 graves discovered during three seasons (2013-2015) in a combined archaeological and taphonomic perspective, and contributes to shed light on the funerary practices of the Phoenicians in Sicily.

http://ift.tt/2uJuJFP

Xerostomia Pilot Fudan: Acupuncture for Prevention of Radiation-Induced Xerostomia

Conditions:   Head and Neck Cancer;   Xerostomia
Intervention:   Other: Acupuncture
Sponsor:   M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Recruiting - verified August 2017

http://ift.tt/2uWWlX7

A matched-guise study on L2, heritage, and native Spanish speakers’ attitudes to Spanish in the State of Washington

By means of a matched-guise study, this paper examines the attitudes of L2, heritage, and native Spanish speakers in the state of Washington toward Mexican-accented and English-accented Spanish. We interpret our findings in the wake of previous research on language attitudes and ideologies related to Spanish in the United States which shows that Spanish and those who speak it as a first or heritage language are thought to have a lower socioeconomic status than English and Anglophones. 97 Spanish-speaking participants residing in Washington (N=95) and the Pacific Northwest (N=2) rated 4 voices along six-point semantic differential scales falling into the dimensions of superiority, solidarity, language competence, and physical characteristics. We submitted mean scores to a linear mixed-effects model. Contrary to our expectations, all groups rated the Mexican-accented guises higher than the English-accented guises in the dimension of superiority. Also unforeseen, the L2 speakers rated the Mexican-accented voices higher in the dimension of solidarity. We consider the high level of education of the respondents and, for the L2 subjects, their experience as advanced Spanish language speakers, as likely explanations for the observed attenuation of well-documented prevailing stereotypes directed at Latinos from the monolingual community at large.

http://ift.tt/2i19Tjk

Welsh English intonation and social identity

This paper is a sociophonetic study concerned with state-of-the-art description of Welsh English (WE) pitch patterns which may serve as WE regional and social markers. WE pitch patterns in authentic spontaneous conversations are correlated with social factors of regional and cultural background (North Wales, South Wales, Cardiff), generation of speakers (young, middle-aged, old), gender (men, women) and social class (middle, working). The data are compared to Received Pronunciation (RP) tone nomenclature (Crystal, 1969) in search of systemic (i.e. concerned with the total repertoire of tones in each variety), distributional and realisational differences. Within the identical tone systems a considerable difference in the distribution of certain WE pitch configurations is interpreted as the impact of the Welsh language. The data are further specified to the dominant pattern frequency in each region, age, gender and social class. Special reference is made to the acoustic structure of rise-falls in North Wales, which is a new subject of research.

http://ift.tt/2fGazcU

Langues de France et Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires: inventaire critique des arguments anti-ratification (2014-2015) [Languages of France and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages]

The deliberations in France surrounding the potential ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (from January 2014 to October 2015) resulted in a national debate unheard of since 1999, providing new insight into resistance towards promoting these languages in the public space. Despite a recent survey claiming that 'the ideological barriers on this issue have now almost disappeared', the virulent arguments opposing ratification eventually triumphed in the Senate. Basing ourselves on comments published in the media by a range of opponents to ratification of the Charter, we review here the various ideological strategies used to preserve the linguistic status quo in France and to maintain the supremacy of French.

http://ift.tt/2i1AzR2

Ideology and language choice: Catalan-speaking university students

The article analyses the relationship between the ideological factors of university students from the cities of Barcelona, Valencia and Palma de Mallorca, and their language behavior. Apart from the traditional right-left scale, the self-defining ideology focuses on the national-regional identity, which resulted as the main ideological variable in the last studies on language choice in the Catalan language area. The data were gathered through a sociolinguistic questionnaire to approximately 600 respondents. The results highlight the importance of identity in the three different regions but also the impact it has on the use of Catalan. The comparative analysis from the main Catalan-speaking cities and society in general is crucial to show the interaction between different perceptions of ideological factors and language choice, being Valencia the only city where the use of Catalan correlates with an ideological position: the left.

http://ift.tt/2fHoaRg

Enoncés de type OV et positionnements sociaux dans l’espagnol parlé par les Quichuas équatoriens à Cali (Colombie) [OV constructions and stance in the Spanish spoken by Ecuadorian Quichuas in Cali (Columbia)]

Members of the indigenous Quichuan minority population living in Cali within an asymmetrical contact setting usually make use of linguistic marked elements from two varieties of Spanish which they speak: Andean Spanish and Spanish from Cali. One of these marked linguistic elements is OV syntactic constructions, highly frequent in Andean Spanish. A sequential conversation analysis shows that when Quichuas in Cali interact with someone outside the group, they may express differentiation through the use of OV constructions. Construed as a social positioning, this differentiation takes place in an act of stance (Du Bois 2002, 2007; Jaffe 2009; Johnstone 2009; Kiesling 2011) which arises with an evaluation of a referent in the discourse situation by a speaker, then triggers a social positioning that finally leads to a disalignment vis-à-vis another speaker. This article discusses the social effects of linguistic marked forms such as OV constructions in an understudied area (Cali, Colombia) within a field of research (Spanish-Quichua contact) that usually focuses on contact issues from a typological perspective.

http://ift.tt/2i08M3l