Latin Sentence Research Articles

How do students translate? A study of the translation process from student perspectives at Key Stage 3

Abstract Achieving proficiency in reading Latin is the stated aim of nearly every Latin course the world over. However, very little research has been devoted to how beginner students attempt to process Latin when it is placed in front of them for the first time. This paper aims to fill this gap, based on a study of students still relatively close to the start of their Latin journeys. I found that they tend to read Latin sentences in their original order, breaking them down into individual lexical items, and trying to discern their meaning by looking for similarities with words they already know. They will usually skip over words they do not recognise, returning to them later. This suggests that, as they become more familiar with Latin vocabulary and grammar, and so long as they are not taught to read in a different order, they will continue to read Latin in the order it is written. There is, however, a perception among many of the students that grammar is difficult, and so they tend to overly rely on context and common sense instead. Going forward, I would try to ensure my students become more confident with their grammar, as context can sometimes lead them astray. However, it is clear that, rather than just giving them tables and lists to learn, they need as much exposure to the grammatical forms ‘in the wild’ as possible, to promote ease of recognition.

How do L2 learners deal with a “dead” language? A psycholinguistic study on sentence processing in Latin

Many decades of research have shown that sentence processing works in an highly incremental and predictive fashion (Marslen-Wilson, 1975) – in the L1 but also (maybe to a lower extent) in the L2. But whereas almost all studies on L2 sentence processing focus on modern languages, it is fully unclear how a language like Latin that fundamentally differs in the way it is taught and used is processed. Thus, the current study focuses on the question if proficient L2 learners of Latin show any evidence for incremental and predictive processing when reading Latin sentences. In a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task 25 advanced learners of Latin read 384 easy three-word Latin sentences that were manipulated among the factors animacy, argument order and verb position. The results indicate that the participants used the word order and animacy information to incorporate the arguments into the sentence structure on-line and to predict upcoming arguments on the basis of verb information. These findings are interpreted as the first evidence for incremental and predictive processing when reading Latin sentences.

The Melancholy Mapmaker

Abstract The article discusses some Latin sentences written on the back of a nautical chart made by Dionysus Paulusz. van Husum, a little-know Dutch cartographer, in about 1660–1671. The sentences, which resemble entries in a commonplace book, offer a grim view of the state of Christianity in the world, and also of the cartographer’s own life. A study of the sources of these sentences reveals that some of them were taken from works about death. Death was a common theme of seventeenth-century piety, but content of the phrases, their sources, and contextual details suggest that Van Husum was melancholic at the time. The sentences offer a rare insight into the outlook on life of an early modern cartographer.

Recenzja książki: "Errando discimus?" – O pewnej gramatyce języka łacińskiego

The article concerns the Latin Grammar by Emilia Kubicka, published in 2019. The book presents the rules of the Latin pronunciation, conjugation, declension of the nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, and the indeclinable parts of speech such as adverbs and prepositions. However, the grammar does not present all the principles that govern the structure of Latin sentences, and the book has numerous errors.

Bilingualism in Medieval Italian Preaching: The Case of Angelo da Porta Sole (d. 1334)

This article examines the language of an important collection of sermons by Angelo da Porta Sole, predicator generalis of the Dominican Order and Bishop of Grosseto, who preached in Tuscany in the early fourteenth century. It is a very early case of the macaronic sermon, in the wider sense of the term (not to be confused with a very particular kind of late fifteenth-century Italian preaching). Adopting the scheme proposed by Siegfried Wenzel for English macaronic sermons, this article examines three ways in which Latin and the Umbrian vernacular are combined in Angelo da Porta Sole’s sermons, namely: the insertion of a vernacular word in a Latin sentence; the presence of vernacular glosses of Latin words and etymological doublets; extended and frequent switching from Latin to the vernacular and vice versa. The last typology, which constitutes the fully macaronic mode, is frequently employed in dramatic or narrative contexts, particularly in sermons on Good Friday and at Easter.

La herencia de las Sententiae de Publilio Siro en las paremias españolas en torno a la avaricia

The aim of this paper is to present the Spanish proverbs related to the topic of greed that can be understood as a continuation of Publilius Syrus’ sentences. For the analysis are taken into account the contributions of two Hellenistic philosophical schools (Stoicism and Epicureanism), which illuminate the scope of the criticism of greed that occurs in these proverbs, both from a psychological as a social point of view. Latin sentences and Spanish proverbs are compared according to their formal or semantic continuity, as well as depending on other aspects (such as the tone or prosodic issues).

Communication of Linguistic Idioms in Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini’s Letters

<?page nr="213"?>Abstract Eneas Silvius Piccolomini was a prolific writer in all phases of his life. His writing, influenced by the devotion to classical style of Renaissance humanism, has nevertheless been described as “falling below the highest humanistic standards” and even as “frequently incorrect.” Piccolomini’s style, moreover, includes lexical and syntactical practices of the medieval scholastics that have at times been thought to be the collective object of banishment by the humanists. Those negative assessments acquire more validity when Piccolomini’s style is judged strictly by the exaggerated standards of classical purity which many humanists claimed. Piccolomini’s hybrid style, however, was effective and at times even necessary; and nowhere better can the effectiveness of his merging of Latin idioms be seen than in the letters he wrote between his early secular career and brief reign as Pope Pius II. This essay examines the Latinity of Piccolomini’s detailed epistolary reports on the Council of Basel composed in 1450, and on his mission to Bohemia in 1451. Just as his actual mission that year blended secular and religious agendas, the style of his letters that reflect on the Council and its aftermath skillfully achieves not only a combination but a communication between classical and ecclesiastical Latin vocabulary, sentence structures, and concepts.

Deciphering Latin sentences using traditional linguistic resources

Abstract This article describes methods that can be used to construct a Latin morphological and syntactic parser, including resources that enable reordering the sentence according to the SVO (subject + verb + object) standard order, aiming to facilitate the translation of Latin phrases by users. The article also addresses the solutions that can be implemented to overcome some of the problems found in this context, namely, the difficulties in accessing different forms of dictionarization, the lack of lexicographic resources, and a methodology for processing the ‘special constructions’ required by adverbs and adjectives.

Reading Latin and the need for empirical research: A psycholinguistic approach to reading comprehension in Latin

AbstractThe idea of reading Latin has been addressed by different teaching methods and theoretical approaches, but it has not been until recently that the reading process in Latin has become an object of empirical investigation. While qualitative research methods can examine the strategies consciously used by learners, experimental studies provide insight into the mental processes during reading. In psycholinguistics, the study of sentence processing forms an important strand of research which is also concerned with non-native processing. The present article discusses how psycholinguistic methodology can be used to investigate how Latin sentences are processed by learners.

Cicero’s Pro Roscio Amerino volgens de positionele lectuurmethode

Summary This article provides an example of how to read Cicero’s early speech in defence of Sextus Roscius junior according to the positional reading method. This reading method is based on a colometric reading of Latin texts and emphasizes the tension between the neutral word order and the word order that was chosen by the author. This tension is made visible for students and their teachers by a scheme that shows the fixed order of content positions in Latin sentences and offers a new perspective on the content of Latin texts.

Read Like a Roman: Teaching Students to Read in Latin Word Order

For countless students of Latin (myself included), prevailing memories of Latin instruction involve being taught to unpick Latin sentences by racing towards the verb and securing the meaning of the main clause before piecing together the rest. However, this ‘hunt the verb’ approach, where one's eyes are jumping back and forth in search of the resolution of ambiguity, is not necessarily conducive to fluent reading of Latin (Hoyos, 1993). If, as so many textbooks and teachers vouch, we are aiming to unlock Roman authors for all students to read, then we need to furnish them with the skills to be able to read Latin fluently, automatically and with enjoyment, not engender in them a process more akin to puzzle-breaking. I chose to experiment with teaching students to read Latin in order, firstly because, as Markus and Ross (2004) point out, the Romans themselves must necessarily have been able to understand Latin in the order in which it was composed as so much of their sharing of literature happened orally. Indeed, as Kuhner (2016) and others who promote the continuation of spoken Latin have argued, this is still a very real possibility today. And secondly, because it is a skill which I, and others, believe to be teachable (Hansen, 1999; Markus & Ross, 2004; Hoyos, 2006; McCaffrey, 2009). Not only that, but whatever our starting point, Wegenhart (2015) believes that by encouraging these reading skills early, we can encourage our students to be ‘expert’ readers who will be able to enjoy reading Latin long after they have been through their exams.

Study of Text Segmentation and Recognition Using Leap Motion Sensor

Recognition of 3-D texts drawn by fingers using Leap motion sensor can be challenging for existing text recognition frameworks. The texts sensed by Leap motion device are different from traditional offline and on-line writing systems. This is because of frequent jitters and non-uniform character sizes while writing using Leap motion interface. Moreover, because of air writing, characters, words, and lines are usually connected by continuous stroke that makes it difficult to recognize. In this paper, we present a study of segmentation and recognition of text recorded using Leap motion sensor. The segmentation task of continuous text into words is performed using a heuristic analysis of stroke length between two successive words. Next, the recognition of each segmented word is performed using sequential classifiers. In this paper, we have performed 3-D text recognition using hidden Markov model (HMM) and bidirectional long short-term memory neural networks (BLSTM-NNs). We have created a data set consisting of 560 Latin sentences drawn by ten participants using Leap motion sensor for experiments. An accuracy of 78.2% has been obtained in word segmentation, whereas 86.88% and 81.25% accuracies have been recorded in word recognition using BLSTM-NN and HMM classifiers, respectively.

Poverty at Court: The Death of Álvaro de Luna and the Coplas del menesprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo by Pedro, Constable of Portugal

Poverty at Court:The Death of Álvaro de Luna and the Coplas del menesprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo by Pedro, Constable of Portugal Ana M. Montero On June 2, 1453, Álvaro de Luna, constable of Castile, King Juan II's chief minister and closest friend for more than thirty years, was executed by the king's command. Álvaro de Luna—the most powerful and rich noble at the time, "the greatest man uncrowned to be found in the kingdom"1—was ordered to be beheaded, and his head was displayed on a spike for nine days. Not surprisingly, this gruesome, unusual execution of a powerful figure shocked witnesses at the time and left an enduring mark on the consciousness of fellow countrymen.2 It did send the message of what would happen to others who might aspire to amass the same amount of political and economic power. It also triggered a series of political and moral reflections, of which the best known is arguably Doctrinal de privados [Doctrine for king's advisors] by Marqués de Santillana, who also dealt with the death of his acknowledged adversary Luna in a more emotional composition known as Coplas contra don Álvaro de Luna [Verses against don Álvaro de Luna].3 As it has been noticed, the Doctrinal de Privados amounts to a "literary revenge" against Álvaro de Luna, who is made to confess having violated all the ten commandments and the seven deadly sins, and who begs for mercy from God. Luna's avarice is highlighted from the very first line of the poem: "I saw treasures gathered / for the harm of his owner."4 And Luna is heard to regret "his furious hunger for gold" (IV, 25) and having accumulated "silver, jewels, gold, and silk" (V, 36) which remained useless as he stood to be beheaded. After acknowledging his greed, Luna demonstrates remorse for his lack of gratefulness to God for all his remarkable success (VI), and acknowledges his immoderate ambition for "power and absolute control" (XI, 85–87).5 A number of writers—such as: Diego de Valera, Juan Agraz, Juan de Padilla, Juan de Valladolid, Fernando de la Torre, Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, or Berenguer Masdovelles—also reflected on the lessons derived from Luna's dramatic rise and fall.6 One of the most intriguing reactions—hardly analyzed by scholars—is [End Page 11] that of Pedro, Constable of Portugal and one of the members of Santillana's literary circle. Pedro seized this literary occasion and penned Coplas del menesprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo [Stanzas in contempt and scorn for the beautiful things in the world; hereafter Coplas], a poem including 125 coplas or eight-line stanzas and a striking pedagogic structure with glosses and the occasional Latin sentence.7 For Pedro of Portugal, Luna's tragic end deserved "perpetua recordación"—that is, it should be preserved as "an eternal memory, most especially by those who abide by the great and extraordinary judgments of the divine."8 Without doubt, Pedro also made patent his disapproval of Luna's conduct throughout his poem. In the section dedicated to the evils of worldly riches ("De la mundana riquesa" 194ff), he deems Luna's "unbearable crimes to be appropriately punished not by judgment of an earthly king, but by the King of Kings who never fails to punish evil and reward good."9 Luna is mentioned a second time in order to give evidence of the instability of the state of privados or royal favorites; the author mentions that Luna received an income of one hundred and fifty thousand doblas, and his gruesome death is described once more.10 A third potential allusion appears in the section on continence, when the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, sodomy, is said to be practiced so unabashedly and in such new ways that the third destruction and fall of Spain is to be expected soon.11 Furthermore, the inference that Pedro had been on familiar terms with Luna cannot be missed from the fact that he had overheard Luna stating more than once that he lived in fear of his death.12 However, unlike...

3D text segmentation and recognition using leap motion

In this paper, we present a method of Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) through 3D air-writing. Our proposed method includes a natural way of interaction without pen and paper. The online texts are drawn on air by 3D gestures using fingertip within the field of view of a Leap motion sensor. The texts consist of single stroke only. Hence gaps between adjacent words are usually absent. This makes the system different as compared to the conventional 2D writing using pen and paper. We have collected a dataset that comprises with 320 Latin sentences. We have used a heuristic to segment 3D words from sentences. Subsequently, we present a methodology to segment continuous 3D strokes into lines of texts by finding large gaps between the end and start of the lines. This is followed by segmentation of the text lines into words. In the next phase, a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based classifier is used to recognize 3D sequences of segmented words. We have used dynamic as well as simple features for classification. We have recorded an overall accuracy of 80.3 % in word segmentation. Recognition accuracies of 92.73 % and 90.24 % have been recorded when tested with dynamic and simple features, respectively. The results show that the Leap motion device can be a low-cost but useful solution for inputting text naturally as compared to conventional systems. In future, this may be extended such that the system can successfully work on cluttered gestures.

Roots of political corruption in ancient history

Corruption has always been regarded as a special form of enrichment, based on prohibited and unethical grounds. Hence 'political corruption' could be defined as the immorality of the powerful; as the use of political power for the purpose of getting rich without any legal basis. Immorality of the powerful is the root of all the abuses that occur in the society. Those who are at the top of the pyramid of power have been particularly prominent in acquiring as large a fortune as possible. The phenomenon of 'political corruption' has been known in all societies, from the oldest to modern ones. In the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, there was an established custom of reciprocity between deliberate gifts and requested services. This phenomenon could be observed with Pericles, who is, among other things, attributed the idea of compensation for participation in state affairs. The phenomenon of 'political corruption' is referred to in Cicero's Rome, where bribery as a form of wealth acquisition without legal basis was formally condemned, but also widespread. Even today we can see that there are powerful persons who persist in the violation or circumvention of rules which guide any structured society: their wealth originates from the enormous acquisition of material things, but also the acquisition of various privileges which they are not entitled to, such as titles, promotions, etc. They are the ones who have brought about the demise of the Latin sentence that the basis of any developed society is: 'To live an honest life, hurt no one, and grant everyone their due.'.

Michel de Montaigne and the Power of Language

This essay argues that the main instrument Montaigne, 16th-century French thinker and writer, used for creating a “new ontology,” as Nicola Panichi calls it (2004, 278), was language and a special style of writing. He, first of all, created – or revived from the Antiquity – a new genre most suitable for a new discourse, and christened it essai. Then he applied a method known in humanist schools of the Renaissance as ultraquem partem to relativise all previous thought. Finally, he employed a thorough, frank examination of his own behaviour, habits and preferences, adorned with Latin sentences, to promote self-analysis as a path to personal contentment. This article applies the theory of Bakhtin, a 20th-century Russian philosopher and sociolinguist, especially his essay “Discourse in the Novel” (“Слово в романе”), in the analysis of the peculiarity of Montaigne’s composition and its purposefulness in expressing at that time dangerous, but already prevalent worldview. Since battling medieval Christian thought was the paramount assignment of his endeavour, the quotes are mostly taken from Montaigne’s only essay – and by far the longest in the three-volume collection – entirely dedicated to religion, “Apologie de Raimond Sebond.”

The impact of usingMemriseon student perceptions of learning Latin vocabulary and on long-term memory of words

During my PGCE I had a class of eight students in Year 11 studying for the OCR GCSE in Latin who had to master knowledge of 475 words for their exams. Their recent unseen translations demonstrated weak performances due to poor vocabulary knowledge. On interviewing the students, most lacked a systematic approach to learning vocabulary. Since the end-goal of studying Latin today is more often the reading of ancient texts, the requirements for vocabulary learning differs from that of other languages. Composing sentences in Latin is an increasingly rare skill too. Thus by rarely needing to produce Latin, students have no means of actively practising the language. Whilst students often find learning vocabulary arduous, I found that with Latin students find it particularly difficult to retain knowledge. In the school the GCSE Latin lessons are teacher-led and mostly involve the dissemination of information for the students to record and process. The pressure of covering the exam syllabus and difficulty of integrating vocabulary activities into this class led me to the possible solution presented byMemrise.

Remarks on the methodology of private law studies: The use of Latin maxims as exemplified by nemo plus iuris

Lawyers use words with great care and, particularly in public discourse, often like to use Latin dicta. They do so not only to make their arguments sound more sophisticated, but also to support their theses not merely with elegantly worded, classical maxims, but also with well tested, established concepts based on the experience of people who lived in ancient Rome, a consummately practical society, very well versed in the practice of law. A legal dictum formulated in Latin is referred to as a rule, maxim, definition, precept, or principle. It is impossible to differentiate these terms clearly, although this has been done for instance in the terminology used in contracts in continental private law. How can contemporary lawyers best use Latin maxims and sentences? This is explored by using the example of nemo plus iuris ad alium transferre potest, quam ipse haberet. The six steps are as follows: use maxims competently; be aware of the context of your quotation; do not allow yourself to be taken by surprise; make sure the maxim is well established in the law; do not neglect related and supporting maxims; and take the local context into account.

“Agreement Supersedes Law, and Love Judgment:” Legal Flexibility and Amicable Settlement in Anglo-Norman England

The anonymous author of theLaws of Henry I (Leges Henrici Primi)seems to undercut the value of the laws and courts of early-twelfth-century England by making a number of pessimistic comments about the capacity of formal legal proceedings to render justice. At a few points in this treatise, probably completed shortly after 1108, he also voices a preference for friendly agreement. Noting that similar predilections were widespread in medieval Europe, many recent scholars have seized on one of the author's remarks that explicitly compares these two approaches to conflict resolution by proclaiming:Pactum enim legem uincit et amor iudicium, which is translated by L. J. Downer, the work's most recent editor, as, “For an agreement supersedes law and amicable settlement a court judgment.” Ever since Stephen White and Michael Clanchy used this Latin sentence as, respectively, a title and an opening epigram in influential essays written over 25 years ago, it has become a scholarly commonplace, epitomizing what is now often seen as a deep-seated medieval preference for settling disputes through informal compromise. Most scholars that refer to this aphorism, however, use it merely as an illustrative device, without exploring this provocative assertion's meaning in its original textual setting. When considered in light of theLeges Henrici Primi(henceforth:LHP) as a whole and this work's wider context, this statement proves more revealing of complex contemporary attitudes about agreements, conflict resolution, and law than the frequent reference to what is taken to be a categorical declaration of the superiority of friendly concord might suggest.

Reading sentences in Serbian: Effects of alphabet and reading mode in self-paced reading task

The study examined the influence of alphabet (Cyrillic vs. Latin) and reading mode (silent reading vs. reading aloud) on sentence reading speed in Serbian. Entire-sentence and single-word reading times were obtained from the moving window paradigm in the self-paced sentence reading task. Sentences printed in Latin took less time for reading than sentences printed in Cyrillic and silent reading was more rapid than reading aloud. Single-word processing results followed the pattern observed in entire-sentence analysis. Faster reading of Latin sentences and words is likely a consequence of subjects? predominant exposure to this alphabet. Reading aloud was slower than silent reading due to the articulation process, which is present in the former but not in the latter. The effect of the alphabet did not depend on reading mode, suggesting that the two modes of reading involve essentially same cognitive processes. Aloud reading procedures do not seem inappropriate for the research of bialphabetism.