This study is devoted to a corpus of Old Russian letters, written on pieces of birchbark. These unique texts from Novgorod and surroundings give us an exceptional impression of everyday life in... Show moreThis study is devoted to a corpus of Old Russian letters, written on pieces of birchbark. These unique texts from Novgorod and surroundings give us an exceptional impression of everyday life in medieval Russian society. The organic material has been preserved in the soil, and every year new birchbark letters tend to be unearthed during excavations in Novgorod. In this study, the birchbark letters are addressed from a pragmatic angle. A number of linguistic parameters are identified that shed light on the degree to which literacy had gained ground in the communicative processes of the time. It is demonstrated that the birchbark letters occupy an intermediate position between orality and literacy. On the one hand, old oral habits of communication persisted, and are reflected in the way in which the birchbark letters are phrased; they are characterized by a large degree of context-dependence. On the other hand, new literate modes of expression emerged, which can be seen in the development of normative conventions and fixed formulae. The subject will be of interest not only to scholars of Russian, but also to a broader circle of linguists who work in the fields of corpus linguistics and historical pragmatics. Show less
Kurdish dengbêjs are singer-poets who are trained in singing and telling stories. For a long time, the dengbêjs and their art were suppressed and forgotten, and only recently did they return into... Show moreKurdish dengbêjs are singer-poets who are trained in singing and telling stories. For a long time, the dengbêjs and their art were suppressed and forgotten, and only recently did they return into public life. Today the dengbêjs are seen as guardians of Kurdish history and culture. This vision tells much about recent socio-political developments and should be understood in the context of the evolving story of Kurdish nationalism. The dengbêjs and their songs create a Kurdish home set within the landscape of Turkey and the surrounding (nation-)states. Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, the political landscape of the Kurdistan region was marked by conflict and turmoil that greatly affected the lives of millions of people. The art the dengbêjs, and the negotiation about what it means to be a dengbêj today, reflect this difficult history. From a theoretical perspective the dissertation gives an ethnographic account of narrative. The variety of narratives circulating in a society at a particular time and place are presented and analyzed. The narratives do not only tell us a story about Kurdish society in Turkey, but also about the larger global stories of modernity, nationalism, and Orientalism. This gives the study a wider relevance. Show less
The study attempts to reconstruct aspects of the culture and knowledge transfer as involved in the import of cuneiform writing from Mesopotamia to Anatolia and Syria in the Late Bronze Age. It... Show moreThe study attempts to reconstruct aspects of the culture and knowledge transfer as involved in the import of cuneiform writing from Mesopotamia to Anatolia and Syria in the Late Bronze Age. It therefore analyzes the manuscripts called 'lexical lists' that were excavated at the Anatolian and Syrian sites of Hattusha, Ugarit, and Emar. Lexical lists are structured, often bilingual or multilingual lists of words and cuneiform signs; they were the essential tools of scribal education in that period. The analysis follows three main research foci, i.e., (1) the geographical transmission of the lists from Mesopotamia to Anatolia and Syria ('long-distance transmissional context'), (2) their local reproduction at the mentioned sites ('short-distance transmissional context'), as well as (3) their role within the actual education procedures ('functional context'). Thereby, the analysis particularly takes into consideration t he specific role that oral vs. writing-based techniques of transmission played within those processes. Show less
