Ricerc@Sapienza

The Orthographia Bernensis I, so called form the ms. Bern 522 used by Hagen for its edition, is a short collection of orthograpical prescription, sorted according to the first letter, given the absence of any other element that could provide a greater consistency.; however, this text is transmitted almost unaltered in three other mss., and a fuller version is preserved in six other mss.

The work presented is the analysis, study, translation into and from Chinese of a late Qing China lexicographical previously unpublished work, a catechism published in Latin with the transcription of Chinese pronunciation. Starting from the transcription, the author provided the whole text in Chinese, annotated the text, translated the preface and pointed out its sources.
The text represents a unique instrument for all scholars interested in the topic of Nanjing guanhua, the history of foreign missions in China, linguistic missionary and the cultural interactions in the late Qing.

La seguente nota esplora brevemente alcune questioni concernenti l’intenso dibattito italiano sull’utilità delle lingue antiche (e, più in generale, delle cosiddette Humanities) sulla base di diverse argute riflessioni di Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) su questo tema.

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Palmira Cipriano, Professor of Linguistics in Rome University 'La Sapienza'; it is a brief sketch of her scientific profile and her investigations concerning philological and linguistic issues in Iranian, Classical and Romance studies.

L'articolo, che rientra nella specifica Tavola Rotonda su "Roma nella storia, nella linguistica e nella letteratura", esamina la categoria storiografica della continuità e della "longue durée" applicata alla storia linguistica dell'Vrbs, una storia per molti versi eccezionale per quantità e qualità documentaria.

Il lavoro, adottando il concetto operativo di "regola d'uso" codificato a suo tempo da Aldo L. Prosdocimi, esamina la scrizione ricorrente in diverse classi di testi e a diverse quote cronologiche nell'epigrafia latina. Ne esamina lo status distribuzionale, le funzioni socio-grafiche e le motivazioni di tipo prosodico che ne hanno favorito la diffusione nell'ortografia latina, in congiunto con la creazione della geminatio consonantium a partire dal III sec. a.C.

This paper is an essay in micro-historical semantics and concerns the Late Latin verb charaxāre, a loanword from Gr. χαράξαι, χαράσσω. The scientific literature uses to separate two different semantic values of this Latin verb: ‘to carve; to cut’ and ‘to write’. In Herren’s opinion, starting from Virgilius Maro Grammaticus’ writings, charaxāre ‘to write’ was unique to Hisperic usage and derived from the knowledge of Greek glosses circulating among Irish monks from the VI-VII century AD onwards.

This paper deals with the much disputed etymology of Lat. paricīdas, a technical term occurring in a legal fragment transmitted by Paulus Diaconus’ De significatione verborum (247, 19-24 Lindsay). The ancient word is attributed toNuma Pompilius’ legal code dating back to the 8th-7th century B.C. Relying on a vast scientific literature that includes hundreds of titles, firstly the philological data are thoroughly discussed, and three phonologically different variants of the word are reconstructed: the archaic /pārĭkīdas/ in Paulus Diaconus, the classical

Marsilio Ficino’s Latin translation of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum was carried out in 1463 at Cosimo de’ Medici’s request and first printed in Treviso in 1471 without Ficino’s consent. This translation, together with Ficino’s preface running through Trismegistus’s life and writings, was the starting point of modern Hermetism. The striking success of the Pimander–by far the most widespread of Ficino's works–is demonstrated by more than 40 extant manuscripts, 24 printed editions up to the end of the sixteenth century, and renaissance translations in many vernacular languages.

The contribution discusses a seal matrix, said to have been found ‘near Norfolk’ in the early 1980s, set with an inscribed Arabic cornelian intaglio. The matrix is of bronze and its Latin inscription is not unusual and reads: Ie Sv Sel Bon E Lel (I am a seal good and loyal). Seal matrices of this type employing re-used gems are not rare and similar objects have been found in Norfolk. What renders this example special is its gem which contributes to the archaeology of Islamic contacts in Britain.