Böcker utgivna av De Gruyter

This monograph studies ancient tefillin (also known as phylacteries) and mezuzot found in the Caves of Qumran. Most of these miniature texts were published by the end of 1970s and thus have long been available to scholars. And yet in several respects, these tiny fragments remain an unfinished business. A close scrutiny of their editions reveals a presence of texts that have not been fully accounted for. These fall into three categories. First, there are multiple tefillin and mezuzot that contain legible fragments which their editors were unable to identify. Second, several tefillin and mezuzot feature imprints of letters that have not been deciphered. Third, there are texts which were provisionally classified as tefillin and mezuzot yet left unread. This monograph offers a detailed study of these unidentified and undeciphered texts. It thus sheds new light on the contents of ancient tefillin and mezuzot and on the scribal practices involved in their preparation.

Taking its cue from Jacques Derrida's concept of le mal d'archive, this study explores the interrelations between the experience of loss, melancholia, archives and their (self-)destructive tendencies, surfacing in different forms of spectrality, in selected poetry of British Romanticism. It argues that the British Romantics were highly influenced by the period's archival fever - manifesting itself in various historical, material, technological and cultural aspects - and (implicitly) reflected and engaged with these discourses and materialities/medialities in their works. This is scrutinized by focusing on two basal, closely related facets: the subject's feverish desire to archive and the archive's (self-)destructive tendencies, which may also surface in an ambivalent, melancholic relishing in the archived object's presence within its absence. Through this new theoretical perspective, details and coherence previously gone unnoticed shall be laid bare, ultimately contributing to a new and more profound understanding of British Romanticism(s). It will be shown that the various discursive and material manifestations of archives and archival practices not only echo the period's technological-cultural and historical developments along with its incisive experiencing of loss, but also fundamentally determine Romantic subjectivity and aesthetics.

Guglielmo Sirleto has generally been acknowledged as a crucial contributor to defending the papacy's claims over St Peter's primacy, including the apostle's legendary arrival to Rome before his martyrdom. Sirleto established himself as a pivotal prelate, who assisted Pope Paul IV in rearranging the ceremonial apparatus for the solemn celebrations of the Cathedra Petri (St Peter's Throne). Scholars, however, were unable to properly examine his De praestantia basilicae Vaticanae, because the manuscripts of this discourse were never completely identified. The edition of this treatise will therefore primarily provide a reconstruction of Sirleto's working methods in readjusting the ceremonial solemnities prescribed for the feast day of the Cathedra Petri according to Curial Ceremony. The second discourse concerns, on the other hand, a description of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline Hill, which Sirleto composed for the Cardinal Bishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo. In contrast to the edition of the first discourse in this volume, the Trattato sopra la chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore is presented according to the correspondence between Borromeo and Sirleto.

Intertextuality is a well-known tool in literary criticism and has been widely applied to ancient literature, with, perhaps surprisingly, classical scholarship being at the frontline in developing new theoretical approaches. By contrast, the seemingly parallel notion of intervisuality has only recently begun to appear in classical studies. In fact, intervisuality still lacks a clear definition and scope. Unlike intertextuality, which is consistently used with reference to the interrelationship between texts, the term 'intervisuality' is used not only to trace the interrelationship between images in the visual domain, but also to explore the complex interplay between the visual and the verbal. It is precisely this hybridity that interests us. Intervisuality has proved extremely productive in fields such as art history and visual culture studies. By bringing together a diverse team of scholars, this project aims to bring intervisuality into sharper focus and turn it into a powerful tool to explore the research field traditionally referred to as 'Greek literature'.

Ce volume IV.1 du DHAR traite des étymons correspondant aux très importants adjectifs de couleur (*blank, canus/canutus, blund, niger/nigellus, *brun, rubeus, russus, etc.), à des dates et fêtes (aprilis, sabbatum, quadragesima, carnavale), ainsi qu'à des aliments et vêtements (panis, farina, caro, piper, cepa/cepulla, cappellus, calcea, etc.).

This volume is the first to attempt a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary analysis of the manuscript cultures implementing the pothi manuscript form (a loosely bound stack of oblong folios). It is the indigenous form by which manuscripts have been crafted in South Asia and the cultural areas most influenced by it, that is to say Central and South East Asia. The volume focuses particularly on the colophons featured in such manuscripts presenting a series of essays enabling the reader to engage in a historical and comparative investigation of the links connecting the several manuscript cultures examined here. Colophons as paratexts are situated at the intersection between texts and the artefacts that contain them and offer a unique vantage point to attain global appreciation of their manuscript cultures and literary traditions. Colophons are also the product of scribal activities that have moved across regions and epochs alongside the pothi form, providing a common thread binding together the many millions of pothis still today found in libraries in Asia and the world over. These contributions provide a systematic approach to the internal structure of colophons, i.e. their 'syntax', and facilitate a vital, comparative approach.

Textile Chemistry gives a detailed and explanatory overview on mainly chemical but also physical aspects of fabrics. It contains definitions, basic components and their properties, physicochemical processes, as well as chemical modification of textiles, highlighting the application of smart materials. The book also provides exercises and sample calculations, which makes it ideal for students and scientists in industry.

This ambitious study of all proper names in the Chanson de Roland is based for the first time on a systematic survey of the whole geographical and historical literature from antiquity to after 1100 for the Geographica, and on working through (almost) the entire documentary tradition of France and its neighbouring regions from 778 to the early 12th century for the personal names. The overall result is clear: the surviving song is more tightly and profoundly structured, even in smaller scenes, than generally assumed, it is also richer in depicting reality, and it has a very long prehistory, which can be traced in outline, albeit with decreasing certainty, (almost) back to the Frankish defeat of 778. Here are some individual results: for the first time, a detailed (and ultimately simple!) explanation not only of the 'pagan' catalogue of peoples, but also of the overarching structure of Baligant's empire, the organisation of North Africa, the corpus of the Twelve Anti-Pairs as well as the 'pagan' gods are given, and individual names such as Bramimunde and Jurfaret, toponyms such as Marbrise and Marbrose are explained. From Roland's Spanish conquests (v. 196-200), the course of the elapsed set anz toz pleins is reconstructed. Even the names of the weapons prove to be a small structured group, in that they are very discreetly adapted to their respective 'pagan' or Christian owner. On the Christian side, the small list of relics in Roland's sword is also carefully devised, not least in what is left out: a relic of the Lord; this is reserved for Charlemagne's Joiuse. The author explains for example, why from the archangel triad only Michael and Gabriel descend to the dying Roland, whereas 'the' angel Cherubin descends in Rafael's place. Munjoie requires extensive discussion, because here a (hitherto insufficiently recorded) toponym has been secondarily charged by the poet with traditional theological associations. The term Ter(e) major is attested for the first time in reality, namely in the late 11th century in Norman usage. For the core of France, the fourth cornerstone - along with Besançon, Wissant and Mont-Saint-Michel - is Xanten, and its centre is Aachen. The poet's artful equilibration of Charles's ten eschieles and their leaders is traced. The "Capetian barrier" emerges as a basic fact of epic geography. Approximatively, the last quarter of the study is devoted to the prehistory of the song, going backwards in time: still quite clearly visible is an Angevin Song of Roland from around 1050, in which Marsilĭe, Olivier, Roland, Ganelon, Turpin and Naimes already have roles similar to those in the preserved Song. Behind it, between about 970 and shortly after 1000, is the Girart de Vienne from the Middle Rhône, already recognised by Aebischer, with the newly invented Olivier contra Roland. Finally, in faint outlines, an oldest attainable, also Middle Rhône adaptation of the Roland material from shortly after 870 emerges. For the Chanson de Roland, Gaston Paris and Joseph Bédier were thus each right on the main point that was close to their hearts: the surviving song has both the thoroughly sophisticated structure of great art that Bédier recognised in it, and the imposingly long prehistory that Paris conjectured.

Is theology a dead corpse or living organism? For Uruguayan Jesuit Juan Luis Segundo (1925-1996), theology is dynamic. Freedom and existence for central themes. Segundo believed that theology should be transformative in human lives. For a theology to be transformative, there must be a connection to existence. That is,　it must be existential. Yet most scholars have overlooked this assumption in critical analyses of liberation theology. This prima facie connection to existence is distinguishable　from existentialism as a school of philosophy. By showing the significant existential dimension to Segundo's theology, assessing his work and contribution to twentieth-century theology relates to freedom, ecumenism, the role of faith in society, and the relationship between faith and ideologies.

The volume aims at complementing the international literature on the interaction between Cicero and Greece. It offers new and unpublished material on Cicero's presence in Greece literally, deriving from his epistles, speeches and philosophical treatises, but also on his interaction with the Greek philosophical schools, the Greek language and politics, etc. Besides, it offers new knowledge on the appreciation and reception of Cicero and his texts by the Greek world from Late Antiquity to Byzantium and Modern Greece, based on material deriving from a variety of sources (papyri, manuscripts, compendia or encyclopaedias, imitations, translations, early editions, etc.), an aspect of the relationships between Cicero and Greece still understudied. Thus, the volume offers an image as illustrative as possible of various aspects of the presence of the Greek world in Cicero's works and of Cicero's presence in Greece from his own times to the present day.

Il trevigiano è una delle varietà venete medievali meno conosciute in quanto i testi a oggi noti si sono dimostrati per varie ragioni insufficienti ai fini di una descrizione linguistica. Nella prima parte del libro si dà edizione di un quaderno di conti relativo all'attività di un mastro pellicciaio attivo tra il 1348 e il 1350: questo testo permette di illustrare i tratti di una varietà fortemente caratterizzata in senso contrastivo rispetto al vicino veneziano, che pure a partire dalla metà del secolo era stato assunto come codice privilegiato specie nei canali di comunicazione ufficiali. Segue l'edizione di un breve manipolo di testi d'estrazione notarile compilati entro il 1350, che consente di anticipare la penetrazione di questo modello di koinè all'inizio del secolo, a dimostrazione della coesistenza, nella Treviso del sec. XIV, di due varietà distinte in base all'àmbito d'uso.

This book examines the Romanian mihi est construction (Mi-e foame/frică, me.dat = is hunger/fear 'I am hungry/ afraid'). While it disappeared from all other Romance languages to be replaced with a habeo structure, the mihi est pattern is in Romanian the most common way of expressing psychological or physiological states. By means of synchronic and diachronic corpus studies, the book investigates the status of the core arguments of the mihi est structure, i.e. the dative experiencer and the nominative state noun, as well as its evolution throughout the centuries. The data analysis reveals that the dative experiencer syntactically behaves like nominative subjects, whereas the state noun shows predicate behavior. As for the evolution of the mihi est structure, the analysis shows a certain tendency toward innovation, since in present-day Romanian it can coerce nouns coming from other semantic fields into the construction's psychological or physiological interpretation. Could this be another unique trait of Romanian, which causes it to seemingly go against the tendency of most Romance languages toward canonical marking of core arguments?

A fresh new treatment written by industry insiders, this work gives readers a remarkably clear view into the world of chemical separation. The authors review distillation, extraction, adsorption, crystallization, and the use of membranes - providing historical perspective, explaining key features, and offering insights from personal experience. The book is for engineers and chemists with current or future responsibility for chemical separation on a commercial scale - in its design, operation, or improvement - or for anyone wanting to learn more about chemical separation from an industrial point of view. The result is a compelling survey of popular technologies and the profession, one that brings the art and craft of chemical separation to life. Ever wonder how popular separation technologies came about, how a particular process functions, or how mass transfer units differ from theoretical stages? Or perhaps you want some pointers on how to begin solving a separation problem.　 You will find clear explanations and valuable insights into these and other aspects of industrial practice in this refreshing new survey.

The mythical narratives of Stesichorus provide the earliest surviving examples of poetic production in the Greek West. This book illustrates how Stesichorus reshaped Greek epic to create a remarkably innovative type of lyric poetry - a literature that was particularly expressive in its handling of motifs associated with travel, such as the voyages of heroes, their returns home, and their escapes. This comprehensive survey of Stesichorus' treatment of myth discusses his engagement with Homer and Hesiod, his powerful and often moving means of characterisation, his subtle treatment of narrative, and his elaboration of emotional episodes unprecedented in archaic Greek lyric poetry.All Greek is translated, making the book accessible to anyone with an interest in one of the great poets of archaic Greece, whose work had such an impact on the later genre of tragedy.

The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics offers a comprehensive overview of Latin American aesthetic and conceptual production addressing the more-than-human environment at the intersection between art, activism, and critique. Fields include literature, performance, film, and other audiovisual media as well as their interactions with community activisms. Scholars who have helped establish environmental approaches in the field as well as emergent critical voices revisit key concepts such as ecocriticism, (post-)extractivism, and multinaturalism, while opening new avenues of dialogue with areas including critical race theory and ethnicity, energy humanities, queer-*trans studies, and infrastructure studies, among others. This volume both traces these genealogies and maps out key positions in this increasingly central field of Latin Americanism, at the same time as they relate it to the environmental humanities at large. By showing how artistic and literary productions illuminate critical zones of environmental thought, articulating urgent social and material issues with cultural archives, historical approaches and conceptual interventions, this volume offers cutting-edge critical tools for approaching literature and the arts from new angles that call into question the nature/culture boundary.

This authoritative new edition of the ancient scholia to Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is the first to rely on a complete scrutiny of the sources of the text and the conjectural activity of scholars, but is also characterised by a fresh methodological approach: the transmission of scholia is prone to creating different versions of basically the same material, and to conflating originally distinct entities; these peculiarities are fully taken into consideration in analysing the manuscript tradition and composing the critical text. The scholia are thus restored in a textual state that is arguably the earliest we can recover, and is free of contradictions, unacceptable repetitions, and hybridisation or blending of elements from different versions. The critical text is accompanied by a detailed apparatus criticus, and is placed in the context of ancient scholarship by means of a rich collection of parallel passages. Extensive indices are provided at the end of the book. The edition will be an invaluable resource for those engaged in the interpretation and reception of Sophocles' tragedies and, in particular, of the Oedipus Tyrannus, and will be of interest to classicists working on ancient literary criticism and ancient scholarship.

Considering the ubiquity of rhetorical training in antiquity, the volume starts from the premise that every first-person statement in ancient literature is in some way rhetorically modelled and aesthetically shaped. Focusing on different types of Greek and Latin literature, poetry and prose, from the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity, the contributions analyse the use and modelling of gender-specific elements in different types of first-person speech, be it that the speaker is (represented as) the author of a work, be it that they feature as characters in the work, narrating their own story or that of others. In doing so, they do not only offer new insights into the rhetorical strategies and literary techniques used to construct a gendered 'I' in ancient literature. They also address the form and function of first-person discourse in classical literature in general, touching on fields of research that have increasingly come into focus in recent years, such as authorship studies, studies concerning the ancient notion(s) of the literary persona, as well as a historical narratology that discusses concepts such as the narrator or the literary character in ancient literary theory and practice.

Die im Jahre 1905 von Gustav Gröber ins Leben gerufene Reihe der Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie zählt zu den renommiertesten Fachpublikationen der Romanistik. Die Beihefte pflegen ein gesamtromanisches Profil, das neben den Nationalsprachen auch die weniger im Fokus stehenden romanischen Sprachen mit einschließt. Zur Begutachtung können eingereicht werden: Monographien und Sammelbände zur Sprachwissenschaft in ihrer ganzen Breite, zur mediävistischen Literaturwissenschaft und zur Editionsphilologie. Mögliche Publikationssprachen sind Französisch, Spanisch, Portugiesisch, Italienisch und Rumänisch sowie Deutsch und Englisch. Sammelbände sollten thematisch und sprachlich in sich möglichst einheitlich gehalten sein.

Special Focus: "Omission", edited by Patrick Gill Throughout literary history and in many cultures, we encounter an astute use of conspicuous absences to conjure an imagined reality into a recipient's mind. The term 'omission' as used in the present study, then, demarcates a common artistic phenomenon: a silence, blank, or absence, introduced against the recipient's generic or experiential expectations, but which nonetheless frequently encapsulates the tenor of the work as a whole. Such omissions can be employed for their affective potential, when emotions represented or evoked by the text are deemed to be beyond words. They can be employed to raise epistemological questions, as when an omission marks the limits of what can be known. Ethical questions can also be approached by means of omissions, as when a character's voice is omitted, for instance. Finally, omission always carries within it the potential to reflect on the media and genres on which it is brought to bear: as its efficacy depends on the recipient's generic expectations, omission is frequently characterized by a high degree of meta-discursiveness. This volume investigates the various strategies with which the phenomenon of omission is employed across a range of textual forms and in different cultures to conclusively argue for its status as a highly effective and near-universal form of artistic signification.

This set of varied and stimulating papers, by an international group of younger as well as senior scholars, examines the manner in which peoplehood was understood by the Jewish communities of the Second Temple period and by the religious traditions that emerged from those communities and later flourished in Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. The Hebrew and Greek terms for "people" and "nation" and the name "Israel" are closely analyzed, especially in forays into wisdom literature, Jewish apologetic and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and their uses are related to geographical, political and theological developments, as well as statehood, authority and rulership in the Persian world, Hasmonean times and Ptolemaic Egypt. Especially interesting are the carefully argued and documented suggestions about how Jewish peoplehood expressed itself with regard to charitable behavior, pagan deities, and marital regulations. Those interested in the history of cultural and theological tensions will be intrigued by the studies centered on how the opponents of Jews behaved towards "the people of God", how Hellenistic Jewish culture located the Jews on the Roman rather than on the Greek side, and how early Christian discourse saw the mission among the peoples and interpreted earlier sources accordingly. The idea of the Jewish "way of life" is seen to have influenced the writer of the longer Greek version of Esther and works of fiction are shown to have had important historical data within them. Modern social theory also has its say here in a careful consideration of Cognitive theory of ethnicity and the dynamic of ethnic boundary-making.

Proclus, successor of the School of Athens in the fifth century AD, is one of the last great voices of a pagan polytheistic world in crisis in the face of the gradual rise of Christianity.His writing bears witness not only to one of the most influential metaphysical representations for the constitution of the idea of a philosophical "system" based on a complex "language game" based on the conceptual sphere of "order" and "unity", but also of an attempt to reconcile rhetorics with philosophy. In the three chapters in which the book is structured (style, system, unity), then, a conscious intention is evident in Proclus, to adapt the content of his systematic metaphysics to literary form. Hence there is a consistency traced in Proclus' stylistic choices, with the aesthetic norms of a rhetorical canon, probably established in the cycle of readings of the Neoplatonic school.The way in which expressive "art" is subordinated in Proclus to philosophy is one of the most emblematic examples of a development in late antiquity, that of the enkuklios paideia - the union of all the arts necessary for the formation of man - that would later constitute in the Latin world the cycle of liberal arts.

This book brings together Old Norse-Icelandic literature and critical strategies of memory, and argues that some of the particularities of this vernacular textual tradition are explained by the fact that this literature derives from, represents, and incorporates into its designs mnemonic devices of different kinds. Even if Old Norse-Icelandic manuscript culture is relatively silent about the mnemonic context of the literature, the texts themselves exhibit multiple reminiscences of memory. By showing that this literature reveals glimpses of mnemonic technologies at the same time as it testifies to a cultural memory, this study demonstrates how 'the past', and narrative traditions about the past, were constructed in a dynamic relationship with ideas that existed at the time the texts were written. Moreover, the book deals with the function of memory in early book-culture, with metaphors of memory, and with mnemonic cues such as spatiality and visuality. With its new readings of canonical texts like the Íslendingasǫgur, the Prose Edda and selected eddic poems, as well as of less widely studied branches of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, such as the sagas of bishops and religious texts, this book will be of interest to Old Norse scholars and to scholars interested in medieval Scandinavia and memory studies.

This book covers the emerging applications of different computational and optimization techniques in order to achieve a sustainable agriculture. A sustainable agricultural management requires tools in providing integrated, area-specifi c, and interpreted prediction or forecasting and guidance in every aspect in agriculture.

This book presents an edition of Greek metrical inscriptions from eastern Phrygia (modern Turkey), accompanied by a translation and commentary. It is a corpus of ca. 100 funerary, honorary and votive epigrams from the 2nd- 5th c. CE. The commentary is centered on their linguistic, philological and literary features. It analyses several phenomena related to the late stage of Greek language development and to the spoken language. As regards the literary tradition, even though the Homeric poems are the primary models for most epigrams, the commentary highlights the occurrence of several terms and expressions found in later (epic and non-epic) works, often reflecting a Christian background. The book shows the relevance of the study of metrical inscriptions from Asia Minor as a means to enhance our knowledge of the spread of education and literary culture in the area even in the late Roman Empire. The inscriptions analyzed are not only invaluable linguistic documents, but also play an important role both as pioneering texts reflecting the emergence of a new literary style and as reliable and enduring testimonies to the cultural influence of the Greek literary tradition in places and periods very remote from its original context.

This work aims to distill the findings of a wide variety of scholarly disciplines into a coherent narrative of the Qur'ān's history, from the first oral recitation to the four published Variants in active circulation today. In the process of unraveling the complicated relationships between the oral Qur'ān and the written Qur'ān, it becomes clear that there are, in fact, two histories of the Qur'ān and that the overall history of the Qur'ān cannot be appreciated without understanding the interactions between these two occasionally intertwined but often independent component histories. Discrepancies between the four qur'ānic Variants that are in active use today are indexed and analyzed. While most scholarship views the Qur'ān either in relation to its past and its possible origins, or in relation to its contemporary status as a static, fixed text, this work adopts an organic, developmental approach recognizing that the Qur'ān is a living text that continues to evolve.

Die interdisziplinäre Studie untersucht Lyrik, die in städtischen Räumen zu sehen oder zu hören ist. Aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive interessieren vor allem die Ästhetik, Sprachgestaltung und Ortsbezüglichkeit der präsentierten Lyrik, aus stadtsoziologischer Sicht die Einbindung der Projekte in stadtpolitische Konstellationen, Debatten über öffentliche Räume und ihr Beitrag zur Produktion des jeweiligen Raums. Das Spektrum der analysierten Lyrikprojekte ist vielfältig. Es reicht von Wandgedichten an Hausfassaden und Audiowalks in Stadtvierteln über Gedichte auf Lesezeichen, die vom Hubschrauber auf öffentliche Plätze abgeworfen werden, oder großformatige Projektionen an repräsentative Gebäude einer Stadt bis zu informellen, durch Dichter: innen oder Anwohner: innen initiierte Formen, etwa Gedichte auf kopierten Zetteln, die in Parks oder U-Bahnen aufgehängt werden und derart ihr "Recht auf Stadt" (Henri Lefebvre) beanspruchen. Lyrikprojekte in urbanen Räumen wurden bisher nicht untersucht. Die Studie schließt nicht nur dieses Desiderat der Lyrikforschung, sondern bietet durch den interdisziplinären Ansatz kreative Interpretationen von Gedichten in städtischen Kontexten, die für ein breites Lesepublikum interessant sind.

This book introduces the properties of conservative extensions of First Order Logic (FOL) to new Intensional First Order Logic (IFOL). This extension allows for intensional semantics to be used for concepts, thus affording new and more intelligent IT systems. Insofar as it is conservative, it preserves software applications and constitutes a fundamental advance relative to the current RDB databases, Big Data with NewSQL, Constraint databases, P2P systems, and Semantic Web applications. Moreover, the many-valued version of IFOL can support the AI applications based on many-valued logics.

Analytical Chemistry is important and applied, experimental field of science that employs different instruments, and methods for the collection, separation, identification, and quantification of various organic, inorganic, and biological molecules. This interdisciplinary branch is based not only on chemistry but also on other disciplines such as biology, physics, pharmaceutical, and many areas of technology. The book is organized into six sections and provides information pertinent to the important techniques, and methods employed in analytical chemistry. It covers the basic concepts of qualitative and quantitative analysis, spectrochemical methods of analysis, along with thermal- and electroanalytical methods. Qualitative analysis identifies analytes, while quantitative analysis determines the concentration or numerical amount of the molecules under study. This book also exposes students to the different laws of spectroscopy, and various electronic transitions that occur in the different regions of the electromagnetic spectra. The main objective of this work is to develop an understanding and make learners familiar with the basic analytical methods employed in the chemical analysis of various compounds.

While previous research on collective nouns in Romance languages mostly adopts a semasiological and theoretical perspective focusing mainly on one single language, the present study takes an onomasiological and comparative approach which is strongly based on empirical evidence. Against this background and in analogy to the verbal domain, the work elaborates further the functional category of nominal aspectuality which describes the construal of extra-linguistic entities as well as the linguistic means reflecting it. In this sense, collective nouns are systematically compared with other (nominal) means of expression of collectivity in French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, focusing especially on object mass nouns, which have hardly been studied so far for Romance languages. On the basis of corpus analyses and acceptability judgement studies, a holistic picture is thus drawn of the semantic-syntactic and derivational properties of various noun types in the synchrony of present-day language as well as of the diachronic lexicalisation paths of these very nouns. The work thus contributes to the understanding of the verbalisation of pluralities by linking and complementing previous monodimensional approaches and, above all, by placing them on a broad empirical basis.

This volume presents key results of the Estudo comparativo de variedades africanas, brasileiras e europeias do Português (ALFAL Project 21): (i) an overview of the results and new perspectives of analysis; (ii) the description of morphosyntactic phenomena in Portuguese varieties; and (iii) a discussion about methodological aspects fundamental to the development of comparative linguistic studies.