Roslyn Frank

The Neolithic has traditionally been characterized by the arrival of Near Eastern farmers to Europe, replacing the indigenous foragers. This view postulates a cultural, genetic and linguistic discontinuity that allows the Neolithic archaeological record to be analyzed and interpreted outside of its diachronic context. However, there is now a wealth of information supporting continuity since the preceding Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, revealing a slow and gradual adoption of Neolithic elements by local indigenous populations. This is especially true for Atlantic Europe, the very same area that becomes populated with megaliths during the subsequent Neolithic and Early Bronze ages. The totality of this evidence forms a new interpretative paradigm, the 'Continuity Paradigm', which doesn't allow for loose interpretations or the 'blank slate approach'. Instead it calls for an evaluation of the local Mesolithic as a preliminary to understanding the Neolithic: to see the world through Mesolithic eyes in order to understand the transformations that took place during the Neolithic. The importance of cosmology and ideology is thus brought to the forefront of archaeological interpretation. This paper showcases the evidence for continuity in Atlantic Europe, reviews its implications for the interpretation of Neolithic archaeological remains and highlights certain readings and approaches that impact the study of the archaeoastronomies of the period.

Entre las ficciones de Borges, La muerte y la brújula es señalada más que ningún otro escrito del autor como un típico cuento policial a la Chesterton, un puro juego matemáticos y geométrico con ciertos alardes de metafísica. La narración revela una cuidadosa elaboración de detalles, a través de los cuales el lector se siente atraído por la misma fuerza de atracción a lo desconocido que influye en el proceso de raciocinio de Lönnrot. El ilusorio detective no se contenta con la teoría de la muerte gratuita de los hombres. Descarta las ideas del mundano comisario Tre-vir-anus, creador de una descripción exotérica, literal, impía y simplista. Según éste, la realidad no tiene la menor obligación de ser interesante, mientras que para Lönnrot, ‘la realidad puede prescindir de esa obligación, pero no de las hipótesis’. En la que el comisario ha improvisado interviene copiosamente el azar. Lönnrot preferiría una interpretación rabínica, es decir, una interpretación esotérica, alegórica, de los hechos del texto, casi se podría decir, una interpretación talmúdica.

It was in 2013 that I first heard about the existence of this unpublished lecture by Irving Hallowell. In 2015, I was finally able to obtain a photocopy of it. The document consists of a typed manuscript called “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere: Re-examined”. It forms part of the Hallowell collection of papers housed at Bryn Mawr College and has following introduction penned by Frederica de Laguna:

The accompanying paper, “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere: Re-examined”, was written by Dr. A. Irving Hallowell in the spring of 1968. It represents the polished draft of a lecture which he gave at Bryn Mawr College in a graduate seminar on Circumpolar Peoples, conducted by Frederica de Laguna. It aroused so much interest among the students that for a time we hoped that it might be possible to publish a little book of readings on Bear Ceremonialism, printing this and reprinting not only Hallowell’s original paper of 1926, but papers by others, if we could secure permission and find a publisher. To this end, one of the students prepared a bibliography on the subject. Since our project never materialized, it seems particularly appropriate that this paper should be included in the present collection of Dr. Hallowell’s writings.
Frederica de Laguna
William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Anthropology Bryn Mawr College
November 4, 1974

This chapter examines the skylore of the indigenous peoples of northern Eurasia, paying particular attention to the commonalities found among them as well as the differences. Special attention is placed on the motif of the Cosmic Hunt and its diverse manifestations across the study area as well as on the oral nature of the celestial beliefs of these groups. The stars of a variety of "Western" constellation figures are implicated in the narratives and in some cases are clearly utilized in social practice for celestial navigation. The role played by the underlying hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence in shaping their cultural conceptualizations, their skyscapes and the overarching cosmology of these peoples is also addressed.

Hasta la fecha las indagaciones encaminadas a documentar los orígenes del término facería han partido del supuesto de que su procedencia se explica apelando a una palabra en lengua romance o hasta en latín. Este ensayo parte de otro acercamiento al problema, fundamentado en la posibilidad de que la voz con que se denomina la institución en cuestión tenga una procedencia netamente indígena, o sea, que sus raíces semánticas y conceptuales se encuentren en euskara. La exposición se ocupa principalmente de los orígenes del término facería. Consta de tres apartados, una introducción, repaso de las etimologías previamente aducidas y una propuesta nueva con un argumento sustentada en una etimología indígena.

Until now attempts aimed at documenting the origin of the term facería have been based on the assumption that its origins are explained by appealing to a word in a Romance language or even in Latin. this paper puts forward another approach to the problem, based on the possibility that the term used for the institution in question has a distinctly indigenous origin, that is, that the semantic and conceptual roots of the term are found in Basque. the discussion deals primarily with the origins of the term facería. It consists of three sections, an introduction, a review of the etymologies previously put forward and a new proposal with an argument based on an indigenous etymology.

Over the past 20 years, the field of Cultural Astronomy has become increasingly less compartmentalised in terms of its disciplinary grounding and much more multidisciplinary, even transdisciplinary, in its methodology and approaches. At the same time, the period in question has seen the rise of two other areas of academic concern and a proliferation of publications, journals, and books elucidating them which, at first glance, might not appear to have much to do with cultural astronomy. The first area is that of human–animal studies, which has seen tremendous growth in recent years as the human-animal divide, along with the culture–nature dualism, of Western thought has come under increased scrutiny, driven in part by an increased awareness of the environmental crisis facing the planet. Central to these human–animal studies is the conflicted relationship between humans and other-than-human animals and hence, our relationship with what we call “nature” itself. One must recognise that the concept associated with the word “nature”, along with its many connotations, is not universal, but rather a social construct particularly prevalent in Western thought, in the same way that separating human animals from nonhuman animals is far from a universal cognitive category.
The second area that I have in mind is called “memory studies” which, along with work taking place in cultural linguistics examines the way that cultural conceptualisations are affected by the acts of individuals at the micro-level and of social collectives at the macro-level. These forms of distributed cognition, taken collectively, play a role in the way that communities of practice view their world and memorialise it. While studies concerning the role played by memory in laying down cultural conceptualisations that persist across time is still very much in the exploratory phase, the skyscape projected by different cultures might be viewed as one way of storing the memory of a community. In this sense, the narratives attached to sky resources can be understood to function as “collective memory banks”.
Keeping in mind that the skyscape projected by a given culture or group of cultures is an example of how acts of collective memory operate over extended periods of time, the skyscape can be conceptualised as a memory bank in which certain patterns of understanding become fixed elements even though the precise nature of the individual socioculturally instantiated acts that led to these cultural conceptualisations and not others to be established and transmitted across time are no longer directly accessible. In this sense, the resulting skyscape reflects back past acts of meaning-giving as well as understandings of cultural identity and values. In short, just as language itself can be conceptualised as a “memory bank”, so, too, can the skylore of different peoples. Moreover, given that the skyscape is produced by multiple past acts of cognition and, therefore, multiple attempts to project skyward the norms and values of the group, the result is an exteriorisation of a worldview shared by the community in question. And concomitantly, this opens up vistas on past acts of meaning making.

The main thesis of this article is that the Basque linguacultural complex provides a window onto conceptual frames reflecting a much earlier animistic worldview, reminiscent of the type of relational cosmologies characterizing ethnographically documented hunter-gatherers. In this respect, even though the Basque language is classed as pre-Indo-European, what that classification might mean from the point of view of the cosmological frames of thought entrenched in the Basque language is taken into consideration, especially the fact that, until the late 20th century, the orally transmitted belief that humans descended from bears was still circulating among Basque speakers. Ethnographic and linguistic evidence points to the possibility that a similar animistic linguacultural substrate was operating across much of Europe during the period in which Indo-European languages and their associated conceptual frames were gaining a foothold. Drawing on the methodological and theoretical tools of cultural linguistics and Habermas' concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt), defined as a culturally transmitted and linguistically organized stock of interpretative patterns, a set of asymmetric polarities are analyzed. These are deeply engrained in the linguaculture of Western thought, namely, man/woman, human/animal and culture/nature. Moreover, all of them rest, ultimately, on the notion of human exceptionalism. When viewed from the indigenous frames of the Basque language, these oppositions disappear or are represented in ways more in accordance with the underlying animistic ontology and associated conceptualizations of relational personal identity. In short, the conceptual frames discussed in this study, understandings that are projected through the linguacultural nexus of the Basque language, often align with the ways that animism has been interpreted as expressing a form of relational ontology in which notions of kinship, mutual aid and reciprocity are emphasized and hence closely intertwined. Consequently, the resulting worldview provides a different vantage point for looking back at Western thought and what might have been going on in Europe in times past.

An idea that I have had for many years has been that of writing a series of short articles for the general public, each of which would focus on one of the 'endangered’ words and expressions in Euskara. For example, I often come across Basque speakers using Spanish loan words when there are perfectly good words available in Basque that are being ignored or have been forgotten. Other words which are viewed as indigenous, like 'labroka', the topic of this essay, are known by specific groups of speakers only in their phonologically reduced form, while the original etymology of the term is no longer available to them: it has been lost or misplaced.

All along the Atlantic façade there is evidence that distinctive septarian units of measurement were employed, suggesting a continuity of metrological practice and more particularly the association of the Septarian Package with agropastoral practices. The goal of this paper is to show how this metrological Sprachbund with its geographical diffusion and memory traces can be brought into play to examine cultural conceptualisations and practices that might have been associated with megalithic structures found along the Atlantic façade.

For the past five years I’ve been doing research on the cognitive abilities of African Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus), attempting to document not only their remark-able linguistic abilities but also examining the way that they interact with their human caretakers, specifically Greys who have been home-raised and hence exposed to a language-rich environment. Given that literally no work has been done on the linguistic abilities of Greys raised in home environments, the research I’ve carried out to date and which will be discussed in this chapter must be viewed as preliminary, although not necessarily ground-breaking for that term needs to be applied to the outstanding research that Dr. Irene Pepperberg has carried out in her laboratory where she demonstrated the remarkable cognitive abilities of her Greys, Alex, Griffin and Arthur.
Pepperberg’s conclusion—which is accepted by animal behaviourists—is that the cognitive abilities of Greys allow them to be ranked as having reasoning skills equivalent to those of a 2- to 3-year-old human child and in some specific areas the tests showed that a Grey is capable of performing at the level of a 5-year old. Quite surprisingly, leaving aside the outstanding work of Pepperberg and her highly insightful commentaries on the speech production and verbal interactions that her Greys had with her and members of her laboratory staff (Pepperberg 2009), to my knowledge, there still has been no inquiry into how the proven cognitive abilities of these laboratory-trained birds relate to the way that home-raised Greys communicate verbally with humans. While there is a plethora of studies and speculations about how songbirds acquire their songs, no such similar work has been done on Greys in home settings. In any case, Pepperberg’s remarkable research results provide support for the following proposition: that there would be nothing inherently wrong with suggesting complex cognitive interpretations of the verbal performance of home-raised Greys given that the species in question has already been proven to have high intelligence (Waal 2016:41–42).

This presentation focuses on an aspect of old pan-European belief that reaches back, ultimately, to a hunter-gather mentality, namely, the belief that humans descended from bears. It is a belief that the Basque people kept alive into the 1980s, but which has deep roots in other parts of Europe, including Slavic-speaking areas. As is well-recognized, the image of the bear is very prominent in Slavic mythology, folk belief and fairy-tale discourse where mystical even supernatural powers have been regularly attributed to this animal.

The belief in ursine ancestors shows up in many forms and disguises, one of which is a set of folktales known in English as the "Bear's Son Tale." After spending several decades comparing the various European versions of these tales, I was able to extract the “master narrative”, given that some versions were much more archaic in terms of their plot than others. In short, it's been an exercise in "diachronic cultural linguistics" in which translation, understood broadly, played a major role.

Acting as sites of collective memory, a vast amount of information that can be gleaned from the study of these tales and related European performance art. The cosmovision in question has left a deep imprint in many of the languages of Europe, culturally entrenched in places one might not suspect. It is quite remarkable how such a belief system has been passed down orally from one generation to the next for so many thousands of years, keeping in mind the belief along with the ursine cosmovision itself has its ultimate origins in a hunter-gatherer mentality.

The intriguing part is how these stories ended up spread across Europe, a transmission process that took place took place primarily in orality and in which translation played a key role, for as each generation of story-tellers transmitted the tale, the teller of the tale (often grandmothers and grandfathers) would keep many of the old elements, respecting in that sense their knowledge of the version they themselves had learned. But at the same time elements were modified to suit the changing norms of the time and an evolving worldview, changes responding in part to the fact that as time passed these ursine ancestors faded from view and ceased being part of the worldview of the tellers of the tale. As a result, viewed diachronically, some parts of the plot ended up suppressed or mixed up while other elements remained remarkably stable. In other words, translation, understood as a means of knowledge transfer between generations, has insured the status of the tales as important sites of collective memory.

The talk examines specific elements that were retained as well as those that were lost, offering the possible explanations for certain losses and retentions. For example, in the case of Slavic versions of the tale, it is quite remarkable that the "immortal' nature of the protagonist's opponent has survived whereas in versions found in other languages the “immortality” of the character is often absent. In this sense, the Basque and Slavic versions are similar: both sets of tales emphasize that the hero's opponent is immortal. 

In reconstructing the “master narrative” the Slavic versions have been particularly helpful, alongside even more archaic Basque versions as well as Spanish and French versions often collected in zones where Basque was spoken earlier. At noted, in these more archaic versions, the true identity of the 'immortal enemy' (known in the Russian tales as the Коще́й Бессме́ртный) who engages in ritual battles with the hero is brought into view.

Another cause for the changes that can be detected in the tales seems to be the fact that, viewed in the longue durée, language change—replacement—was also taking place so that a bilingual generation of story-tellers would develop who would keep a few elements in the original language which the speaker and bilingual audience still understood but the meaning of which the next generation of monolingual speakers would no longer comprehend. In short, this process of cross-generational transmission often required the teller to translate the tale from one language into another which also often involved (incomplete) knowledge transfer between generations.

This presentation provides an overview of the research that has been carried out on the constellation of Ursa Major in Europe, Eurasia and North America and attempts to explain some of the reasons behind the widespread association of the figure of a bear, a bear hunt or a hunter in the form of a bear-human with these stars and ones nearby. In doing so it takes into consideration a set of beliefs associated with “bear ceremonialism” found among circumboreal hunter-gatherer peoples as well as among Europeans and the narrativization of these beliefs. Beginning with the assertion made by Gingerich that “In the widespread mythological connections of the dipper stars with a Great Bear (Ursa Major) we have a hint that a few constellations may date back as far as the Ice Ages”, special attention is given to the motif of the Cosmic Hunt and its diverse manifestations across the study area as well as the archaic cosmology that supports these celestial narratives and related motifs, most particularly the belief that humans descended from bears. In addition, the role played by the underlying hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence in shaping these cultural conceptualization and enculturating the skyscape is addressed.

This chapter examines research carried out to date on the Sky Bear and seeks to demonstrate the implications of this line of research for ―cultural astronomy‖. It begins by reviewing research that has been done cross-culturally on bear ceremonialism, focusing on the role of circumpolar stars, Dipper stars and stars adjacent to them, and how they came to be integrated, cognitively, into an over-arching cosmology shared by different hunter-gatherer populations across the N. Hemisphere. Next, using three mutually reinforcing ethnographic datasets, the manner in which, specifically in Europe, this archaic worldview, characterized by embodied reciprocity, allowed humans, animals and nature to be bound together. The cosmology, grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears, integrated skyscape and landscape into a single interlocking reality. Furthermore, the worldview can be understood as embodying a ―relational epistemology‖ or ―relational ecology‖. This more culturally-informed approach coincides with the goals of ―cultural astronomy‖ as well as the methodology and goals of the emerging field of archaeological ethnography. The reasons that these particular sky resources were chosen to project this set of spirtual beliefs skyward are also addressed. In the final section I suggest that the skyscape acts a kind of mnemonic device. As such, it is a cognitive resource, readily available to the social collective in question, which can act as a repository for past beliefs. Anchoring key components of a cosmology in the stars above allows the resulting skyscape to act as an enduring ―memory bank‖. In short, the datasets analyzed facilitate the reconstruction of a European-wide ethno-cultural substrate that points to an archaic relational cosmovision and the belief that humans descended from bears as well as providing evidence for the way that skyscape and landscape were integrated into this cosmology.

Recent interest in how anthropology and linguistics relates to mathematics has led to recognition that mathematical thinking is a function of language in ways not previously recognised. Ethnomathematics, cognitive linguistics, and anthropology are all pointing to a way of understanding mathematical ideas based on human experience and cultural activities. Formal mathematics can be seen to have developed from metaphors deeply embedded in our languages. This raises the question of relativity in mathematics. Do different languages embody different types of mathematics? This chapter examines some emerging evidence in the grammar and syntax of indigenous languages, i.e. languages structurally very different from the Indo-European linguistic tradition. The educational consequences of the possibility of different mathematical thinking is briefly discussed.

The chapter opens with a series of theoretical considerations that will be employed in the analysis of a single polysemous lexeme in Basque, namely, hatz. The section begins with an introduction to one of the principal instruments of analysis, an approach that allows language to be viewed a complex adaptive system (CAS). Next the scope of the CAS approach is enlarged so that it incorporates the notion of cultural schemas and their heterogeneously distributed nature. Then, the role of serial metonymy in semantic innovation and change is examined. These conceptual tools are applied to the analysis of the Basque data and to the exploration of the factors that contributed to the development and structuring of the resulting semantic network, particularly, to new senses such as ‘fingers’ and ‘claws’. Finally, it is argued that this approach to modeling language and semantic change represents a powerful conceptual tool for researchers working in usage-based frameworks, and more specifically, for those investigating topics in the field of cognitive diachronic lexical semantics.

During the past hundred years large numbers of Basque speakers have ceased being monolingual and become bilingual speakers in Spanish or French and the resulting contacts between two cognitive frames of reference have resulted in mixed usages, speakers who alternate between the indigenous model and the contact model. This alternation is especially prevalent in terms of the way that physical sensations are perceived and portrayed: the way that the relation· ship between body and mind is represented linguistically. The indigenous frames are congruent with a conceptualization of self and selfhood defined as ‘dialogic subjectivity’ whereas the contact frames are represented by a kind of ‘monologic subjectivity.’ These contrasting frames are discussed and analyzed using concrete linguistic examples drawn from contemporary usage as well as historically attested sources.

The development of the 48 Greek constellations is analyzed as a complex mixture of cognitive layers deriving from different cultural traditions and dating back to different epochs. The analysis begins with a discussion of the zodiacal constellations, goes on to discuss the stellar lore in Homer and Hesiod, and then examines several theories concerning the origins of the southern non-zodiacal constellations. It concludes with a commentary concerning the age and possible cultural significance of stars of the Great Bear constellation in light of ethnohistorical documentation, folklore, and beliefs related to European bear ceremonialism.

Theme session “Cognitive Linguistics and the Evolution of Language: Converging Perspectives” organized by Stefan Hartmann, Michael Pleyer & James Winters.

The relevance of a ‘Complex Adaptive Systems’ approach to ‘language’: A bridge for increased dialogue between the disciplines of cognitive and evolutionary linguistics. 

Keywords: evolutionary linguistics, enactive cognitivism, complex adaptive systems, usage-based models, distributed and situated cognition

This paper examines how historical cognitive linguistics and those working on topics broadly related to language evolution can benefit methodologically by viewing ‘language’ as a ‘complex adaptive system’. That languages are best understood as complex adaptive systems (CAS) was introduced initially in computational evolutionary linguistics, a discipline that was and remains inspired primarily by analogies to biological, systems theoretical approaches to the evolution of language. How the CAS approach serves to replace older historical linguistic notions of languages as ‘organisms’ and as ‘species’ is explained as well as how the CAS approach can be generalized to encompass linguistic domains and then utilized profitably to study language evolution and change across time. The talk begins with  a  brief review of several of the dominant conceptual definitions that have been used to define ‘language’ in the past, e.g., 19th century analogues that conceptualized languages as the counterpart of ‘species’ as well as later 20th century attempts to reconceptualize ‘language’ by building on the notion of population genetics. An overview of the CAS approach and its implementation in linguistics is provided with an emphasis on stigmergic, embodied, usage-based and socio-culturally situated language studies. The paper concludes by arguing that cognitive linguistics can benefit from an understanding of the CAS approach to language. Recognizing that research both in the field of cognitive linguistics and language evolution is by necessity a highly interdisciplinary undertaking, a CAS approach to language can contribute to the dialogue that is already underway across these disciplines. In conclusion, acquiring a greater familiarity with CAS terminology will allow cognitive linguists working on topics in diachronic linguistics to converse more readily with those who are focused on distributed cognition, emergence, the ‘extended mind’ and computational approaches to modeling language and language evolution. This, in turn, will facilitate the kind of cross-disciplinary dialogue that is needed to move away from the tenets of ‘classic cognitivism’ and toward those that characterize ‘enactive cognitivism’ and a dynamic systems approach to language and language evolution.

References
Beckner, C. et al. (2009) Language is a complex adaptive system. In N. C. Ellis and D. Larsen-Freeman (eds.), “Language as a Complex Adaptive System.” Language Learning 59. Special Issue. Supplement 1: 1–26.
Croft, W. (2006) The relevance of an evolutionary model to historical linguistics. In O. Nedergård Thomsen (ed.), Competing Models of Linguistic Change: Evolution and Beyond, pp. 91–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Frank, R. M. (2008) The language-organism-species analogy: A complex adaptive systems approach to shifting perspectives on 'language'. In R. M. Frank et al. (eds.), Body, Language and Mind. Vol. 2. Sociocultural Situatedness, pp. 215–262. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Frank, R. M. & Gontier, N. (2010) On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics (HCL): Some theoretical considerations. In M. E. Winters, H. Tissari & K. Allan (eds.), Historical Cognitive Linguistics, pp. 31–69. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Kemmer, S., & Barlow, M. (2000) Introduction: Usage-based conception of language. In M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (eds.), Usage-based Models of Language, pp. vii–xxviii. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications.
Steels, L. (2002) Language as a complex adaptive system. In F. Brisard and T. Mortelmans (eds.), Language and Evolution, pp. 79–87. Wilrijk: UIA.
Steels, L. (ed.). (2012) Experiments in Cultural Language Evolution. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & Di Paolo, E. A. (eds.) (2011) Enactivism: Towards a New Paradigm in Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Tallerman, M. & Gibson, K. R. (eds.) (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the future of Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, this volume) as a tool for exploring a variety of linguistic phenomena along with their intra-group and inter-group cultural instantiations. As a subfield of linguistics, Cultural Linguistics has the potential to bring forth a model that successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’. This will allow us to move away from essentialist models of the entity we call ‘language’ (Frank, 2008) and hence to adopt and build on theoretical approaches, e.g. ‘enactive cognitivism’, already being exploited by researchers working in related areas more characteristic of the cognitive sciences, that is, by those who no longer subscribe to the tenets of ‘classic cognitivism’. The paradigm emerging from research in Cultural Linguistics draws on a highly nuanced multi-disciplinarily informed approach that allows for a greater appreciation for individual choices and the motivations behind these choices as they coalesce into and around ‘cultural conceptualizations’ (Sharifian, 2003, 2009a, this volume).

Presentation at “The Way We Think: A Research Symposium on Conceptual Integration and the Nature and Origin of Cognitively Modern Humans.” University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Demark, August 19-23,  2002. Document includes Supplemental Materials: Resource Guide and Commentaries
In recent years the relationship between language change and biological evolution has captured the attention of investigators operating in different disciplines, particularly evolutionary biology, AI and A-Life (Zeimke 2001, Hull 2001), as well as linguistics (Croft 2000; Sinha 1999), with each group often bringing radically different conceptualizations of the object under study, namely, “language” itself, to the debate.  Over the centuries, meanings associated with the expression “language” have been influenced by mappings of conceptual frames and inputs from the biological sciences onto the entity referred to as “language”. At the same time the prestige of the “science of linguistics” created a feedback mechanism by which the referentiality of “language”, at each stage, was mapped back into the field of evolutionary biology along with the emergent structure(s) of the resulting “blend”. While significant energy has been spent on identifying ways in which biological evolution has been linked to concepts of language evolution (Dörries 2002), little attention has been directed to the nature of the conceptual integration networks that have been produced in the process. This paper examines the way conceptual integration theory can be brought to bear on the “blends” that have been created, focusing primarily on examples drawn from 19th century debates concerning the “language-species-organism analogy” in the emerging field of comparative-historical philology.

Preliiminary notes:

Reference: Lorente-Murphy, Silvia and Roslyn M. Frank (1982) “Roque Guinard y la justicia distributiva en ‘El Quijote.’" Anales cervantinos 20: 103-111.

What follows is a paper published over thirty years ago. It deals with the topic of “Distributive Justice” and a highly controversial fugitive from justice of the times, a kind of real life Robin-Hood operating in Catalunya, whose exploits caused him to be viewed by many as a hero but by others as nothing more than a bandit preying on the rich.

The decision on Cervantes’ part to include such a hotly debated public figure in his work is an interesting one. His choice to do so might be compared that of a contemporary American novelist who decides to include a comic vignette describing an encounter with Edward Snowden (‘hero’, ‘defector’, ‘patriot’, ‘traitor’) in what is otherwise a fictional work, but at the same time leaving a margin of ambiguity so that the author's real attitude toward this fictionalized character is ultimately left to the reader to figure out. 

Similarly, over the years attempts to determine the attitude held by Cervantes vis-à-vis his character, known as Perot Roque Guinard, Perot Roca-guinarda, Roca Guinarda as well as Roque Guinart, have been varied with the pendulum swinging back and forth from a “Romantic” to an “Ironic” reading of the text.

In this respect, two of the most cogent, although quite different, takes on this episode are:

Weber, Alison (1986) “Don Quijote with Roque Guinart: The Case for an Ironic Reading.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 6 (2): 123-140. Available online: http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante/csa/articf86/weber.htm

Montero Reguera, José (1997) El Quijote y la crítica contemporánea. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos. Cf. “Don Quijote ¿obra seria o cómica?” pp. 105-114. Available in Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9Cjo4QjnQcQC&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=Don+Quijote+with+Roque+Guinart:+The+Case+for+an+Ironic+Reading&source=bl&ots=oInEhU1qXM&sig=lKNinViF0dqpNQMVmMt3gl3nu4Q&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IM4DUsK4HIqqyAH25oGoDw&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Don%20Quijote%20with%20Roque%20Guinart%3A%20The%20Case%20for%20an%20Ironic%20Reading&f=false

Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

Another congress has been organized by Jauzarrea. This year’s event deals with “La huella humana en la Fachada Atlántica europea: de cazadores-recolectores a sociedades productoras.” The conference will focus on the European Atlantic Façade from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. It will bring together the following invited speakers:  Dr. Richard Peltier, Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, Dr. Mark Pagel, Dr. Lionel Sims, Dr. Kepa Paz-Alonso, Dr. José Antonio Mujika,  Dr. Xabier Peñalver, Dr. Peter Bakker, Dr. Stephen Augustine, Dr. Claude Dentaletxe,  and Dr. Stig Eliassan

"Abstract:

The following article explores the etymology of the Basque word zakur ‘dog’ and the palatalized form of the same txakur, often used today to refer to small dogs and dogs in a generic sense. Particular attention is paid to the question of the relationship between the latter term and Romance forms such as cacharro ‘puppy, young dog’. The study also examines the problems that arise from etymologies put forward in the past including the most recent one of the Basque philologist Joseba Lakarra, who derives the term zakur from a compound form that, according to him, originally meant ‘guardian agazapado’, i.e., ‘crouching guardian’.

Over the past decade Lakarra has published a series of articles in which he puts forward his reconstruction of an entity he calls Pre-Proto-Basque, whose exact referential time frame is still rather unclear. In these articles a large number of new etymologies are introduced, including the one he dedicates to zakur, along with a particular kind of methodology and theoretical basis for investigating them. While the material published by Lakarra is readily available on the web, there has been little critical discussion of its merits. The present study is an attempt to remedy this situation by examining in detail the etymology of the term zakur and by doing so, to bring into focus the value of applying a more principled approach to the Basque data, one that derives it methodological and theoretical orientation from the field of cognitive linguistics, and more concretely from the emerging subfield of cultural linguistics.

In a broad sense, the term cultural linguistics refers to linguistic research that explores the relationship between language and culture, bringing the sociocultural embedding and entrenchment of language into view and consequently charting the interactions of speakers of the language with their ever changing environment, the latter understood in the amplest sense of the term. Thus, cultural linguistics has a diachronic dimension as it attempts to understand language as a subsystem of culture and to examine how various language features reflect and embody culture over time. ‘Culture’ here is meant in the anthropological sense; that is, as a system of collective beliefs, worldviews, customs, traditions, social practices, as well as the values and norms shared by the members of the cultural group.

Until very recently, there has been a dearth of research on the Basque language and culture that embraces the methodological and theoretical premises of the field of cognitive linguistics and the related sub-discipline of cultural linguistics. Outstanding exceptions have been the investigations carried out by Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano (1). In short, very little research has been done on Euskera which takes into consideration the fact that the relationship between language and culture has significant implications for diachronic studies of the language: that language is a not only a system firmly grounded in culture, it is a macro-level system that through the individual choices of its agents at the micro-level, changes across time, dynamically. It functions therefore as a complex adaptive system (CAS) (2).
This article is the second (3) in a series in which the methodology and theoretical approaches utilized by Lakarra to develop his etymologies will be examined and contrasted with the more cognitively oriented approaches operating today to structure research in cultural linguistics. I argue that these approaches can bring new insights into the role of human cognition and individual speaker choices, most especially when applied to diachronic studies of the Basque language (4).

(1) Cf. http://unizar.academia.edu/IraideIbarretxeAntu%C3%B1ano.

(2) For further reading on the application of theoretical model of language as a complex adaptive system, cf. Roslyn M. Frank and Nathalie Gontier. 2010. On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics (HCL): Some theoretical considerations. In: Heli Tissari, Paivi Koivisto-Alanko, Kathyren I. Allan y Margaret Winter (eds.), Historical Cognitive Linguistics, 31-69. Berlin y New York: Mouton de Gruyter. http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/446528/On_constructing_a_research_model_for_historical_cognitive_linguistics_HCL_Some_theoretical_considerations.

(3) The first paper in the series, “Repasando a Joseba Lakarra: Observaciones sobre algunas etimologías en euskera a partir de un acercamiento más cognitivo”, is now available online: http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/1895187/Repasando_a_Joseba_Lakarra_Observaciones_sobre_algunas_etimologias_en_euskera_a_partir_de_un_acercamiento_mas_cognitivo.

(4) There are other papers available on Academia.edu which explore the application of this CAS approach to the Basque language as well as to other European languages. These papers, especially when read in the following order, also provide an overview of the possible significance of such studies for the recuperation of aspects of European cultural and linguistic (pre-)history and identity which have not been detected previously:

a) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/344519/The_language-organism-species_analogy_A_complex_adaptive_systems_approach_to_shifting_perspectives_on_language_;

b) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/355424/Shifting_Identities_Metaphors_of_discourse_evolution; 

c) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/471942/A_single_document_containing_three_published_articles_1_Recovering_European_ritual_bear_hunts_A_comparative_study_of_Basque_and_Sardinian_ursine_carnival_performances_2_Evidence_in_Favor_of_the_Palaeolithic_Continuity_Refugium_Theory_PCRT_Hamalau_and_its_linguistic_and_cultural_relatives_Part_1_3_Evidence_in_Favor_of_the_Palaeolithic_Continuity_Refugium_Theory_PCRT_Hamalau_and_its_linguistic_and_cultural_relatives_Part._2._;

d) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/471751/Shifting_identities_A_comparative_study_of_Basque_and_Western_cultural_conceptualizations;

e) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/1193145/Palaeolithic_Continuity_Refugium_Theory_A_New_Approach_to_the_Linguistic_Prehistory_of_Europe._Azken_Glaziazio_Handiko_Babeslekua_eta_Euskara._Bergara_2011-10-19;

f) And then most particularly the later sections of these papers where the etymologies of the terms beguine and charivari are subjected to a diachronic analysis with respect to their cultural and linguistic entrenchment: http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/462898/Euskal_Herriko_Eginkizun_Erligiosoaren_Inguruko_Azterketa_Diakronikoa_Serora_eta_bere_laguntzaileak. (English translation: A Diachronic Analysis of the Religious Role of the Woman in Basque Culture: The Serora and her Helpers: http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/462178/A_Diachronic_Analysis_of_the_Religious_Role_of_the_Woman_in_Basque_Culture_The_Serora_and_her_Helpers); and 2) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/451548/Singing_Duels_and_Social_Solidarity_The_Case_of_the_Basque_Charivari.
"

"Abstract:

Over the past decade the Basque philologist Joseba Lakarra has published a series of articles in which he puts forward his reconstruction of an entity he calls Pre-Proto-Basque, whose exact referential time frame is still quite unclear. In these articles a large number of new etymologies are introduced along with a particular kind of methodology and theoretical basis for investigating them. While the material published by Lakarra is readily available on the web, there has been little critical discussion of its merits. The present study is an attempt to remedy this situation and at the same time to bring into focus the value of applying a more principled approach to the Basque data, one that derives it methodological and theoretical orientation from the field of cognitive linguistics, and more concretely from the emerging subfield of cultural linguistics, also known as ethnolinguistics.

In a broad sense, the term cultural linguistics refers to linguistic research that explores the relationship between language and culture, bringing the sociocultural embedding and entrenchment of language into view and consequently charting the interactions of speakers of the language with their ever changing environment, the latter understood in the amplest sense of the term. Thus, cultural linguistics has a diachronic dimension as it attempts to understand language as a subsystem of culture and to examine how various language features reflect and embody culture over time. ‘Culture’ here is meant in the anthropological sense; that is, as a system of collective beliefs, worldviews, customs, traditions, social practices, as well as the values and norms shared by the members of the cultural group.

Until very recently, there has been a dearth of research on the Basque language and culture that embraces the methodological and theoretical premises of the field of cognitive linguistics and the related sub-discipline of cultural linguistics. Outstanding exceptions have been the investigations carried out by Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano (1). In short, very little research has been done on Euskera which takes into consideration the fact that the relationship between language and culture has significant implications for diachronic studies of the language: that language is a not only a system firmly grounded in culture, it is a macro-level system that through the individual choices of its agents at the micro-level, changes across time, dynamically. It functions therefore as a complex adaptive system (CAS) (2).
This article is the first in a series in which the methodology and theoretical approaches utilized by Lakarra to develop his etymologies are examined and contrasted with the more cognitively oriented approaches operating today to structure research in cultural linguistics. I argue that these approaches can bring new insights into the role of human cognition and individual speaker choices, most especially when applied to diachronic studies of the Basque language (3).

(1) Cf. http://unizar.academia.edu/IraideIbarretxeAntu%C3%B1ano.

(2) For further reading on the application of theoretical model of language as a complex adaptive system, cf. Roslyn M. Frank and Nathalie Gontier. 2010. On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics (HCL): Some theoretical considerations. In: Heli Tissari, Paivi Koivisto-Alanko, Kathyren I. Allan y Margaret Winter (eds.), Historical Cognitive Linguistics, 31-69. Berlin y New York: Mouton de Gruyter. http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/446528/On_constructing_a_research_model_for_historical_cognitive_linguistics_HCL_Some_theoretical_considerations.

(3) There are other papers available on Academia.edu which explore the application of this CAS approach to the Basque language as well as to other European languages. These papers, especially when read in the following order, also provide an overview of the possible significance of such studies for the recuperation of aspects of European cultural and linguistic (pre-)history and identity which have not been detected previously:

a) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/344519/The_language-organism-species_analogy_A_complex_adaptive_systems_approach_to_shifting_perspectives_on_language_ ;

b) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/355424/Shifting_Identities_Metaphors_of_discourse_evolution ;

c) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/471942/A_single_document_containing_three_published_articles_1_Recovering_European_ritual_bear_hunts_A_comparative_study_of_Basque_and_Sardinian_ursine_carnival_performances_2_Evidence_in_Favor_of_the_Palaeolithic_Continuity_Refugium_Theory_PCRT_Hamalau_and_its_linguistic_and_cultural_relatives_Part_1_3_Evidence_in_Favor_of_the_Palaeolithic_Continuity_Refugium_Theory_PCRT_Hamalau_and_its_linguistic_and_cultural_relatives_Part._2._ ;

d) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/471751/Shifting_identities_A_comparative_study_of_Basque_and_Western_cultural_conceptualizations ;
e) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/1193145/Palaeolithic_Continuity_Refugium_Theory_A_New_Approach_to_the_Linguistic_Prehistory_of_Europe._Azken_Glaziazio_Handiko_Babeslekua_eta_Euskara._Bergara_2011-10-19

f) And then most particularly the later sections of these papers where the etymologies of the terms beguine and charivari are subjected to a diachronic analysis with respect to their cultural and linguistic entrenchment: http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/462898/Euskal_Herriko_Eginkizun_Erligiosoaren_Inguruko_Azterketa_Diakronikoa_Serora_eta_bere_laguntzaileak. (English language translation: A Diachronic Analysis of the Religious Role of the Woman in Basque Culture: The Serora and her Helpers: http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/462178/A_Diachronic_Analysis_of_the_Religious_Role_of_the_Woman_in_Basque_Culture_The_Serora_and_her_Helpers); and 2) http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank/Papers/451548/Singing_Duels_and_Social_Solidarity_The_Case_of_the_Basque_Charivari"

In the .pdf you will find the announcement in English for an international conference to be held May 18, 2012, in Irun, Euskal Herria (Basque Country) sponsored by Jauzarrea (see below). The conference is entitled Atlantiar: Human Traces on the Atlantic Façade of Europe. The first conference in the series of four that are programmed examines territories around the Bay of Biscay with a focus on the Palaeolithic. The document contains a description of the conference and registration materials.

What follows is a description of Jauzarrea in Spanish outlinging the projects has supported in the past and the areas of research currently is promoting. The material below also includes an interview with the director of Jauzarrea, Xabi Otero, a well-known Basque historian, writer and photographer.


Un grupo de trabajo consolidado
La Editorial Txoria Errekan, con sede en Jauzarrea (Arraiotz), ha realizado desde 1984 más de 200 publicaciones en el ámbito del patrimonio cultural del País Vasco. Xabi Otero es su responsable y como consecuencia de esa tarea, ha concebido una doble idea: la creación de una institución estable, JAUZARREA –como fondo para el estudio y difusión de la Cultura Vasca– y el desarrollo del proyecto temporal, ATLANTIAR, como una herramienta para reunir el conocimiento más actualizado sobre la historia de los vascos.

Antecedentes.
Xabi explica la génesis del proyecto: “Desde 1972 he desarrollado mi labor en el ámbito profesional, estableciendo una sólida amistad con muchas de las personas con las que he trabajado. Gracias a la cantidad y diversidad de temas que he tenido que tratar, he atesorado un conocimiento sobre muchas materias que tiene dos vertientes realmente interesantes.

Por una parte, el proceso de aprendizaje me ha proporcionado una visión general muy completa para establecer conexiones e interacciones y plantear así un proyecto de divulgación de gran envergadura como es ATLANTIAR.

Por otra, el tejido de relaciones que he establecido, permite aglutinar a esas personas que constituyen, con su sabiduría, un aval científico para el proyecto –por el conocimiento que han acumulado sobre diversas facetas del ser humano, y porque la información que poseen es de primera mano, generada por sus propias investigaciones–, en torno a la editorial TXORIA ERREKAN.

Con esos elementos he implicado en el proyecto a un grupo cualificado de personas de mi entorno, artistas, investigadores, generadores de nuevas materias, gestores en diversos ámbitos, profesionales. Personas creativas que abarcamos el abanico de oficios que se da en nuestra sociedad; personas con ilusión y con una particular manera de encarar nuestro futuro juntos, desarrollando en la medida de lo posible la innovación cultural.

La calidad y el entusiasmo de este grupo humano lo convierten en el motor de una institución estable, JAUZARREA, constituida como fondo para el estudio y difusión de la cultura vasca desde Euskal Herria.

El conjunto de expertos que participan en el programa de congresos ATLANTIAR –integrado en su mayor parte por investigadores de otros países–, constituye un sólido núcleo científico de alto valor, con un bagaje profesional tras de sí rotundo”.

JAUZARREA desarrolla un modelo de gestión que permite:

• Difundir la cultura en la sociedad de manera dinámica y efectiva.

• Impulsar el conocimiento para mejorar la percepción de la cultura, especialmente cuestiones con implicación en las relaciones sociales.

•  Crear conexiones interculturales –la relación entre culturas, común a varias culturas– y multiculturales –convivencia de diversas culturas–.

•  Combinar actividades en los ámbitos del patrimonio material e inmaterial, potenciando estudio, investigación y difusión de la cultura de los vascos y su interrelación con la de otros pueblos indígenas.

•  Consolidar y ampliar la base social con personas que constituyen el soporte en red que impulsa el proyecto.

JAUZARREA gestiona difusión de nuestra cultura, con presencia en proyectos de instituciones colaboradoras, aunando disciplinas necesarias para regenerar la información, con una dinámica activa de investigación y una divulgación fluida en la sociedad.

Una herramienta: el programa de congresos ATLANTIAR.
ATLANTIAR es un programa con cuatro congresos sobre la historia de los vascos, que se desarrollarán en 2012 y 2013, abordando cada uno de ellos el análisis multidisciplinar de un período histórico:

•  PALEOLITÍCO, desde hace 45.000 años hasta el final del Magdaleniense.

•  SOCIEDADES PRODUCTORAS, desde el Neolítico hasta el final de la Edad del Hierro.

•  NUEVA ERA, desde los vascones prerromanos hasta la invasión del Reino de Navarra en 1512, por las tropas de las coronas de Castilla y Aragón.

• ERA MODERNA, desde 1512 hasta el presente.

Con este programa, los más de 100 expertos internacionales vinculados al proyecto, nos acercan a los resultados de sus investigaciones, con una línea de trabajo en la que confluyen todas aquellas evidencias de vanguardia, que tienen que ver con nuestra cultura y modos de vida. Se trabaja en una dirección compartida, liderada por JAUZARREA. Creando un corpus de conocimiento accesible, cuyo resultado será un proyecto editorial de amplio espectro, que reúna a estos autores de más de 40 instituciones científicas participantes. Desarrollando una campaña de marketing cultural en permanente evolución, dando a conocer nuestro bagaje creativo.

ATLANTIAR es un modelo integrador y riguroso de estudio que trabaja la clarificación de conceptos, renovando la información con nuevas lecturas, con la ayuda de los avances en ciencia y tecnología. Arma un corpus de conocimiento para ser canalizado e instalado a través de las instituciones participantes, para cohabitar –con sus señas de identidad, las de la cultura vasca–, con el resto de cátedras o grados que sean impartidos, dando a conocer nuestra historia y cómo ésta se articula y se entremezcla con la del resto del mundo. Creando y potenciando un modelo de referencia, del mismo modo que se utilizan conceptos específicos que definen e identifican a otras culturas.

Se desarrollan este y otros proyectos –estableciendo sinergias con grupos de trabajo–, que emitan una imagen de nuestra sociedad y cultura como referente de identidad y de prestigio. Creando una fuente para consulta de la cronología histórica sobre la civilización de los grupos de primeros pobladores europeos y su devenir hasta el día de hoy, como el conjunto de la población vasca.

Ejemplo práctico de un objetivo concreto: OREINA URKIAN KANATA.

A la par que cumplimos con el programa de congresos, se desarrolla en este caso un proyecto tan importante como el matriz, ATLANTIAR, ya que lo complementa, y constituye un adelanto de lo que será la puesta en práctica de JAUZARREA, como centro operativo de investigación y difusión.

En 2010, JAUZARREA presentó el proyecto OREINA URKIAN KANATA a la UPV/EHU, para efectuar una búsqueda de linajes genéticos vascos en los Pobladores de las Primeras Naciones. El Congreso Internacional Tras la estela de los balleneros vascos: Patrimonio Cultural y Genético de Vascos y Nativos Americanos del Atlántico Norte, celebrado el 21 y 22 de setiembre de 2011, en el Paraninfo de la UPV/EHU de Bilbao (BIZKAIA ARETOA), supuso el comienzo del proyecto, con objeto de poner al día la información existente sobre estas relaciones.

La búsqueda de los linajes de ADN –que la población vasca pudo haber aportado desde la baja edad media hasta el siglo XX–, se justifica por el intenso comercio establecido con los nativos desde el inicio de los viajes al litoral Atlántico Americano, llevado a cabo por nuestros pescadores de bacalao, cazadores de ballenas y tratantes de pieles. Destacando la buena relación de amistad existente; ya que los vascos – como pueblo– jamás arrebatamos territorio alguno, ni nos impusimos a ningún otro, produciéndose sin embargo una cooperación de manera ininterrumpida, con transferencia de conocimiento y tecnología entre ambas naciones. Continuando el contacto establecido desde hace años por JAUZARREA con las Primeras Naciones, retomamos el flujo de relaciones en más de treinta comunidades de Mi’kmaq, Malisset, Mohawk, Abenaki, Cree, Huron, Innu, Attikamekw, Algonkin y Ojibwa; con sus líderes y Consejos de Bandas. En un extenso territorio que abarca desde Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Québec, Ontario, New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentuky y región de los Grandes Lagos.

Realizando un estudio que comprende disciplinas como historia, folklore, arqueología, antropología, etnología, lingüística, biología o geología y la interpretación multidisciplinar de sus resultados; para determinar como ha tenido lugar esa relación y desde cuando se ha dado.

Conseguiremos un notable flujo de información, beneficioso, para poderlo aplicar con inmediatez en las comunidades objeto del estudio. De igual modo servirá para establecer una relación intercultural más sólida a ambas orillas del Atlántico.

The talk is an overview of the data, genetic, archaeological and linguistic, which support the Paleolithic Continuity Refuguim Theory (PCRT) of European prehistory. More specifically, based on the findings of genetics (studies of Y-chromosome and mtDNA), the following hypothesis has been brought forward for testing. It argues that during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the hunter-gatherers of Europe retreated to the south of Europe, settling into three refugia, one in the Balkans, one in the Ukraine and a third in the Franco-Cantabrian zone, a geographic location where the Basque people and their language have survived.

According to the results of various teams of geneticists, at the end of the LGM along with the warming of the climate that ensued, the hunter-gatherers inhabiting this refuge slowly moved north and westward to take advantage of the food resources in the newly opened territories. Studies of Basque DNA (paternally transmitted Y-chromosome and maternally transmitted mtDNA) have shown significant similarities between Basques and populations inhabiting present and former Celtic-speaking zones along the Atlantic Façade. Furthermore, various haplogroups found among the Basques show up in other populations of European descent, leading the geneticists to argue that this situation might best be explained by positing out-migration from this zone over a period of several thousands of years, starting at the end of the LGM.

Moreover, it follows that members of Basque-speaking population of this zone might well trace their descent from the same populations that began to move out of this geographical region as the ice sheets retreated.

In 2006, a multidisciplinary team of researchers –composed of geographers, archaeologists and geneticists, namely, Dr. William Davies, Dr. Paul Pettitt, Dr. Lee Hazelwood and Dr. Martin Richards coordinated by Dr. Clive Gamble– described the situation this way:

“A major population expansion occurred in Western Europe during the Late Glacial (15-11.5ka CAL PB) as the OIS2 ice sheets retreated and unglaciated areas in the north became available for re-settlement. Phlylogeographic analysis using molecular evidence assigns 60% of the European mitochondrial DNA lineages (Richards et al. 2000), and an even higher proportion of West European Y-chromosome lineages (Semino et al. 2000), to a population bottleneck prior to an expansion from southwest to northern Europe (Torroni et al. 1998; Torroni et al. 2001; Achilli et al. 2004; Rootsi et al. 2004; Pereira et al. 2005)” (Gamble et al. 2006: 1-2).

The key question posed by the research concerns the language that was being spoken by the hunter-gatherer populations when they moved out of this refuge. Gamble et al. was the first team of researchers to pose this question explicitly:

“The growing evidence that the major signal in European genetic lineages predates the Neolithic, however, creates serious problems for the agriculturalist perspective. If western Europe was, to a large extent, repopulated from northeast Iberia [Franco-Cantabrian zone] then, since place-name evidence suggests that people in this source region spoke languages related to Basque before the advent of Indo-European, the obvious corollary would seem to be that the expanding human groups should have been Basque speakers” (Gamble et al. 2005: 209).

The presentation lays out the methodology has been developed to test the validity of the corollary that Gamble et al. set forth in 2005. The latter section of the .pdf discusses the methodology and applies it to a concrete data set. The approach is a comparative one. It takes morpho-syntactic elements classified as Proto-Indo-European and compares them to what appear to be their counterparts in Euskara. Tests are then applied to determine the nature of the lineage of the two sets of morphemes in question. The PIE elements are ones recognized as common across IE languages and, therefore, as constituting the most archaic strata of these languages. However, until now IE research model has not sought to explain the origin of the elements themselves.

Keeping in mind the results of the genetic studies cited above, the Basque language becomes a possible candidate for additional comparative work. Moreover, by focusing on reconstructing morphemic lineages, not languages, the PCRT approach to the data allows for a more fine-grained analysis of the linguistic evidence.

Selected Referencias:
• Achilli, A. et al. 2004. The molecular dissection of mtDNA haplogroup H confirms that the Franco-Cantabrian glacial refuge was a major source for the European gene pool. American Journal of Human Genetics 75 (5): 910-918.
• Brugmann, K 1891. A Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages. Vol. II. Morphology (Stem-formation and inflexion). Part 1. New York: B. Westermann & Co. http://books.google.com/books?id=eWsKAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=brugmann+%22comparative+grammar+of+the+indo+germanic+languages%22#PPR2,M1
• Cardoso Martín, S. 2008. Diversidad del genoma mitocondrial en poblaciones autóctonas de la Cornisa Cantábrica: Huellas de la recolonización postglacial de Europa. Gasteiz: University of the Basque Country.
• Cardoso Martín, S. et al. 2011. The maternal legacy of Basques in Northern Navarre: New Insights into the Mitocondrial DNA diversity of the Franco-Cantabria Area. Journal of Physical Anthrpology 145 (3): 480-488.
• Dupanloup, I., et al. 2004. Estimating the impact of prehistoric admixture on the genome of Europeans. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21 (7): 1361-1372.
• Frank, R. M. 2008. Palaeolithic Continuity Refugium Theory (PCRT): Hamalau and its linguistic and cultural relatives. Part 1. Insula 4 (December): 61-131. Cagliari, Sardinia.
• Frank, R. M. in prep. Rethinking the Linguistic Landscape of Europe: The Indo-European "Homeland" in light of Palaeolithic Continuity Refugium Theory (PCRT).
• Gamble, C. et al. 2005. The archaeological and genetic foundations of the European population during the Late Glacial: Implications for 'agricultural thinking'. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15 (2): 193-223.
• Gamble, C. et al. 2006. The Late Glacial ancestry of Europeans: Combining genetic and archaeological evidence. Documenta Praehistorica 33: 1-10. http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf33/gamble33.pdf.
• Haspelmath, M. 2007. Pre-established categories don't exist: Consequences for language description and typology. Linguistic Typology 11 (1): 119-132.
• Haspelmath, M. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in cross-linguistic studies. Language 86 (3): 663-687.
• Oppenheimer, S. 2006. The Origins of the British - A Genetic Detective Story. Constable and Robinson.
• Tovar A. 1954. El sufijo -ko: Indoeuropeo y circumindoeuropeo. Archivo glottologico italiano 39: 56-64.
• Tovar A. 1970a. The Basque language and the Indo-European spread to the West. In: George Cardona (ed.), Papers Presented at the Third Indo-European Conference at the University of Pennsylvania: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans, 267-278. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Torroni, A., et al. 2001. A signal, from human mtDNA, of postglacial recolonization in Europe. American Journal of Human Genetics. 69:844-852.
• Wilson, J. et al. 2001. Genetic evidence of different male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98(9): 5078-5083.

The conference summary is as follows:

“The Basques established relations with Native Americans in the St. Lawrence River area over many centuries, and evidence of this appears in historical records. A wealth of historical, archaeological and even language records have been preserved as a result of these relations. One can therefore assume that the DNA lineages may also bear witness to these relations, owing to the contribution resulting from the constant trade established with the Native Americans by our whale hunters, cod fishermen and fur traders from the Lower Middle Ages and up until the 20th century.”

The list of participants includes: Dr. Marian M. de Pancorbo (UPV/EHU), Xabi Otero (JAUZARREA), Juan Antonio Urbeltz (IKERFOLK Institute), Dr. Stephen Augustine (Museum of Civilisation, Hull-Ottawa, Traditional Mi’kmaq Chief, Restigouche), Dr. Paul Charest (Laval University, Québec), Ghislain Picard (Head of the Assembly of the First Nations of Québec and Labrador), Dr. Charles A. Martin (University of Montreal), Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer (University of Oxford), Dr. Daniel G. Bradley (Trinity College, Dublin), Dr. Sergio Cardoso (UPV/EHU), Jon Maia and Amets Arzallus, Dr. Roldán Jimeno Aranguren (Public University of Navarre), Dr. Jacques Lacoursière (Laval University, Québec), Dr. Miren Egaña Goya (Aranzadi Scientific Society, Donostia), Dr. Brad Loewen (University of Montreal), Dr. Peter Bakker (University of Aarhus, Denmark), Dr. Robert Grenier (Parks Canada, UNESCO), Xabier Agote (ALBAOLA Association, Pasaia), Dr. Aurélie Arcocha-Scarcia (Université Michel de Montaigen-Bordeaux3, Centre de Recherche sur la Langue et les Textes).

As is well known, the Western worldview brings into play an extended colour-coded cultural model known as the Great Chain of Being, grounded in a mutually exclusive, asymmetric opposition between ‘black’ and ‘white’. In contrast, the Basque model introduces complementary colour-coded oppositions consisting of ‘black’ and ‘red’. The Basque dataset model should not be understood as merely some kind of inversion of the Western one, but rather as being composed of a radically different set of cognitive alignments. Nonetheless, there are junctures where the reader may be able to identify a certain overlap between the component parts of the two systems. Moreover, in the case of the Basque model it is clear that these alignments harken back to earlier indigenous pan-European beliefs in the efficacy of the colour black, its intrinsic epistemological grounding in notions of fecundity and wholeness as well as the positive role of black animals in general.

So far our provisional research results argue for the following scenario: that in the case of Europe the powerful life-giving and protecting characteristics associated previously with the colour black have been distorted, although not totally eradicated from the consciousness of Europeans, in part because of the influence of the Catholic Church and the Inquisitional authorities. The task of countering black’s positive polarity was central to the Church’s efforts to win converts. Given that the colour black was a key component in the competing eco-centric cosmology, attempts to assign a different value to it constituted an assault on one of the principle tenets of the indigenous interpretative grid. The fact that the colour black continues to have a highly charged aura about it – the sudden appearance of a black cat still generates a certain level of uneasiness in modern urban dwellers – testifies to the resilient nature of the older eco-centric cosmology: it has not been forgotten.

In contrast to the hierarchical anthropocentric cultural model encountered in and propagated by the ontological metaphors encountered in the Western dataset, we allege that those found in the Basque dataset derive their vitality from this earlier pan-European eco-centric cosmology, grounded in a different myth of origins, namely, in the belief that humans descend from bears. Reflexes of the belief in the sacredness of bears are still encountered in the rich folkloric traditions and practices of Euskal Herria.

The origins of the Germanic “Straw-bears” have been subject to speculation for years. In this study the Straw-bears will be contextualized along with their European relatives so that their meaning can be better appreciated within a larger framework of European ritual belief and social practice. The cosmogony in question is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears, a belief that continued into the 20th century among Basque-speakers. The transformative aspects of the Straw-bear performances will be examined in relation to “Good-Luck Visits”, a type of performance aimed at bringing good health and prosperity to the houses visited and in which Straw-bears and their relatives have played a major role.

Euskal Herriko elizek antzina-antzinatik datorren instituzio erlijioso bat gorde dute gaur egunera arte, euskal kulturak emakumezkoei tradizioz eman izan dien estatus handia argiro erakusten duena. Serorak, sorora, beata, freila, benoîte eta beata izenez ere ezagutzen direnak, eliza katolikoko erritu-jardueretan apaizen laguntzaile jarduten duten emakumeak dira. XX. mendean emakume hauek beren eginkizunetan jarraitzeak anakronismoa eta ezohiko gertakizuna dirudi, hierarkia katolikoak emakumeek elizan izan beharreko eginkizunaren inguruan behin eta berriro hartutako erabakiekin alderatuta behintzat.

Instituzio honen osaera bi ikuspegitik aztertuko dugu. Lehenik eta behin, sinkronikoki aztertuko dugu, seroren jarduera-eremua osatzen duten funtzio edo egiturak zeintzuk izan diren jakiteko. Ondoren, funtzio horiek gaur egunera arte iraun izanak duen esanahia ulertzeko, ikuspegi diakronikoa erabiliko dugu, instituzio horrek antzinako erlijio-egituretatik eta egitura horiei lotutako sinesmenetatik gure garaira iritsi arte izandako bilakaera irudikatzeko. Seroren instituzioak antzina zuen morfologia azaltzeko eredu hipotetiko bat finkatu dugu aurrena, eta ondoren, kristautasunaren eredu eta edukiekiko harremana handitu ahala antzinako egitura haiek nola aldatu ziren deskribatuko dugu.3 Denboraren poderioz, hasiera bateko azpigeruza osatzen zuten elementuak zokoratuz eta eraldatuz joan ziren kristautasunarekin fusionatu ahala. Hala eta guztiz ere, geroago frogatuko dugunez, garai hartan gauzatzen ari ziren prozesu sinkretikoei esker, hasiera bateko egitura haiek bizirik iraun zuten kristautzat jotzen ziren erritu eta sinboloen eitea hartuta. Honela, jatorrizko ereduek indarrean jarraitu zuten azpiegitura sortzaile gisa, baita eredu haien gaur egungo kideko egituretan ere.

During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the word beguine was used by women to identify themselves as members of a wide-spread and influential women's movement. The same term was used by their detractors and overt opponents, with the highly charged negative meaning of "heretic." The etymology of the term “beguine” and ultimate origins of the movement have never been satisfactorily explained.

In the churches of Euskal Herria there exists today a religious institution of great antiquity and one that clearly demonstrates the high status traditionally afforded to the female in Basque culture. The serora, also referred to as sorora, beata, freila, benoîte, benedicta and beata, is a woman who acts as an adjunct to the priest in the ritual activities of the Catholic Church. In the 20th century her continuing presence represents an anachronism and anomaly when viewed in light of repeated decisions by the Catholic hierarchy concerning the officially approved role of women in the Church.
The morphology of this institution will be viewed from two perspectives. First, it will be analyzed synchronically as a set of functions or structures constituting the field of activity of the serora. Then, in order to understand the significance of the survival of these functions, a diachronic approach will be utilized to trace their evolution back into the indigenous religious structures and associated patterns of belief. Having established a hypothetical model for the pre-existing morphology of the institution, it will be possible to describe the way in which the earlier set of structures was modified by increasing contact with the forms and contents of Christianity. With the passage of time the formative elements of the indigenous substratum become overlaid and modified by their fusion with Christianity. Nonetheless, as will be demonstrated, the syncretistic processes at work allowed the earlier structures to survive under the guise of what are understood to be Christian rituals and symbols. Thus the original indigenous patterns continued to function as generative infrastructures latent even in their modern counterparts. In the latter sections of the paper the duties and responsibilities of the serora are compared with those associated with the Beguines and a new etymology of the term “Beguine” is put forward.

Keywords: serora, herb-workers, Beguines, Benedicte, misogyny, early Christianity, witchcraft, Inquisition, De Lancre, etxekoandere, auzoa, pre-Christian women’s rituals, Catholic liturgy, ritual space, witch-hunters

Modern analysts argue that the Basque poetic duel, characteristic of bertsolaritza contests, is either a modern phenomenon or that it has mythic origins.  In contrast, the charivari performances have received little attention, being treated primarily as a quaint folkloric practice. An alternative interpretation is that the two social forms derive from archaic and highly dramatic mock trials that developed, in part, as a political response to the incorporation of previously autonomous communities into state systems and the consequent process of class formation. This interpretation of the Basque data unifies a group of otherwise disparate social-artistic phenomena and brings into focus the social and historic reasons that lead to the contemporary forms of performance art that characterize the charivari today.

The initial focus for this interpretation is an analysis of the disputing processes of the French Basque provinces of Lapurdi, Nafarroa Behera and Zuberoa, as they are manifested in the charivari, clearly a type of mock folk trial. In addition, the disputing processes found in several structural variants of the public charivari are analyzed. The specific examples cited cover a period from approximately 1815 to the 1930's, although references to earlier and later versions of these disputing processes will also be utilized. In recent years a substantial number of cross-cultural case studies have been published concerning disputing processes at the village level in Western and non-Western cultures. However, no such case studies have been undertaken of Basque ethnographic data from this perspective.  The theoretical model used here will be the analysis of disputing processes developed in the pioneering work of Nader (1969). The current study concludes with a discussion of the etymology of the expression charivari, a topic that has been hotly debated for decades.

Keywords: charivari, disputing processes, bertsolaritza, social protest, ritual castration, mock trials, singing duels, poetry improvisation, social solidarity, husband and wife beating, rape, Pierres Adame, legal anthropology

Full citation reference:

Frank, Roslyn M. and Joseph Szertics. "Doña Lambra y el conflicto familiar en la leyenda de los Siete Infantes de Lara." Confluencia 5, Núm. 2 (Spring 1990): 19-26.

Resumen: A diferencia de doña Jimena que, en el Cantar de Mío Cid, representa una especie de mujer ideal, prudente, sumisa y muy respetuosa de su marido, cuyas decisiones aprueba sin ser consultada, doña Lambra aparece como una mujer indiscreta, orgullosa, desvergonzada y vengativa en la leyenda de los Siete Infantes de Lara tanto en las crónicas como en los romances viejos. Por otra parte, mientras doña Jimena desempeña un papel complementario al de su marido, doña Lambra influye decisivamente en los sucesos en la primera parte de la leyenda. Y de tal manera que se ha afirmado que esta mujer constituye la principal fuerza propulsora en el relato. Tal afirmación resulta acertada sólo en parte, puesto que Gonzalo González, el menor de los Infantes, desempeña asimismo una función importante en la creación del conflicto entre las dos familias. No obstante, la confrontación entre ellos no se explica únicamente por razones de la honra y orgullo familiares, ya que elementos amoroso-sexuales entran también en él, conviniéndolo en uno de los conflictos más interesantes y pintorescos de las leyendas épicas españolas.

"This essay explores the relationship holding between language, cognition and space by examining the notion of “ontological commitments” and focusing on Basque as the exemplar. In recent years discussions of linguistic relativity have brought to the fore the question of language-specific ontology. This topic has been addressed by Lucy (1996; 2000), and Levinson (1996), and even earlier by Whorf in the 1940s (Whorf 1995) as well as more indirectly by language typologists such as Senft (2000) and other researchers (Barton and Frank 2001; Nisbett 2003; Nisbett et al. 2001; Watson 1990). The chapter begins by introducing the key role played by “ontological commitments” in language, using Basque as the data source and, more concretely, by means of a fine-grained analysis of two Basque morphemes -en and -ki along with the schemas associated with them. Once the morphological complexity of each of the Basque examples is established, I attempt to describe the conceptual structure inherent to each classifier, following the lead of Tuggy (2003), Inglis (2003) and Palmer (2003). Methodologically, I draw on Langacker’s (2004) remarks on type, instance and nominal grounding, as well as those of Hudson (2004) and Dryer (2004) in reference to the cross-linguistic applicability of the terms “nominal grounding” and “noun phrases”. Overall, I argue for the following position: there is an aspect of spatial representation that relates directly to the differences in these ontological commitments and is conditioned by them. Finally, I propose that cognitive linguistics can profit by broadening its focus and becoming more aware of the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research being conducted on the ontological commitments.

Key words: linguistic relativity, ontological commitments, Basque, pre-dative marker, monologic, dialogic, schemas, spatiotemporal particulars, type, instance, nominal grounding.
"

Evolutionary models of discourse history that follow a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) approach and emphasize socio-cultural situatedness of discourse metaphors aim to avoid some of the pitfalls of more genetically inspired linguistic models that include linguistic counterparts of DNA or even the genes/memes/lingueme analogical sequence, with the result that the heuristic of the biological source tends to excessively control the conceptual shape of the resulting analogically conceived linguistic target. In this chapter we explore epistemological and methodological aspects of these contrasting paradigms, concluding that more attention to context and agency is needed when appropriating these genetically inspired models, while the adoption of a CAS framework could produce a larger, more expansive conceptual platform for research into discourse metaphor networks.

Over the past two decades developments in the field of cognitive science have brought together pre-existing methodologies and theoretical approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and at the same time promoted cross-disciplinary dialogue relating to the development of new methodologies and theoretical frameworks (Bono, 1990; Maasen and Weingart, 1995, 2000). This cross-fertilization has been particularly rich in the case of researchers concerned with modelling ‘language‘ and ’language change‘ in a number of new settings, for example, those involved in working with artificial distributed agents associated with research projects in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (A-Life), as well as in the area of ecolinguistics, biosemiotics and theoretical biology. Whereas a great deal of attention and effort has been focused on developing these models in various subfields of cognitive science, to date less work has been carried out by Cognitive Linguists in terms of attempting to model the entity comprised by ‘language’ through cross-fertilization with the evolving methodological and theoretical models found in the ‘hard’ sciences, for example, Complex Adaptive Systems theory (CAS). Nonetheless, in recent years a number of important steps have been taken in this direction, e.g., Croft (2000), Steels (1999) and most recently, Sharifian (2003, 2008; Frank, 2008a).

These initiatives represent a conscious move away from the linear, Cartesian-Newtonian mode of thinking and the linear conceptualization of causality characteristic of earlier models of ‘language’ and ‘language change’ and, as such, these steps represent movement toward (re-)descriptions of the phenomenon of ‘language’ more in terms of a self-organizing, dynamic system. The notion of a self-organizing, dynamical system is central to Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory, also known as Dynamical Systems theory (see Clark 1997). Recently another avenue has opened up for applications of CAS thinking, namely, the potential that this theoretical framework has for the analysis of discourse metaphors. The latter are defined as ‘relatively stable metaphorical mappings that function as a key framing device within a particular discourse over a certain period of time’ (Zinken, et al., 2008).

The present chapter focuses first on the applications of CAS thinking to the notion of discourse metaphor networks. Then, an exemplary analogical sequence is explored: the evolution and discourse career of a biological concept, namely, that of the ‘gene’. Although this term first appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, only in the past decade has it started to penetrate the discourse of Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, revealing at the same time its ability to generate extended metaphor formations in the linguistic sciences. More concretely, I will discuss several analogical expansions of this base concept of a ‘gene’, showing how they currently function as a productive source for heuristic inferences in contemporary discussions of language and language change, particularly in the case of those attempting to incorporate an evolutionary or Neo-Darwinian perspective into their overall explanatory model for language evolution or language change, sometimes referred to as a ‘population approach’ where ‘language’ is treated, analogically, from the perspective of a ‘species’ or ‘population’.

The human mind is not only embodied, that is, individually situated in its own body, but it is also situated together with other embodied minds, that is, it is also socioculturally situated. This chapter addresses the interactive and dynamic role of sociocultural situatedness by examining the way that “language” itself has been “imagined” in its various metaphoric instantiations in discourse. The chapter brings forward a new conceptual frame of analysis that concentrates on the way metaphors, especially in scientific discourses, have come about, expanded, disappeared or been replaced by new ones. Divided into four parts the paper begins with an introductory section in which the concept discourse metaphor formation is introduced and discussed. It then moves on to a detailed examination of a discourse metaphor, namely, the “language-as organism-species” metaphor, which has dominated the metaphoric repertoire of linguistics for several centuries (cf. Zinken, Hellsten & Nerlich this volume). The analysis is further informed by thinking of language and metaphor formations as complex adaptive systems. The characteristics of the latter are taken up, explicitly, in the third section of the paper. The final section looks at the way the metaphor of “language-organism-species” is undergoing shifts in its meaning and application to language and language change, shifts that coincide in certain ways with those taking place in the discourse of the biological sciences in the post-genomic era.

Key words: complex adaptive systems, discourse metaphor formation, emergence, evolutionary linguistics, linguistic organicism, race, species.

The talk begins with a brief overview of the way that 'language' has come to be defined as a complex adaptive system and how concepts such as distributed cognition and cultural conceptualizations are being brought to bear in order to analyze the cognitive dimensions of language, in this instance the Basque language. The role played by the sociocultural situatedness of language agents as well as language itself in the production of macro-and micro-level structure of a linguistic system is highlighted. Next, factors contributing to the stability of a linguistically instantiated schema are summarized, e.g., the notion of networking, that is, the way that mutually supporting instantiations of a schema can contribute to its stability and continuity across time. Even when the cognitive schema entrenched in the language is not consciously perceived by its speakers, the participating linguistic subsystems still provide mutual structural support for each other. As will be demonstrated, from a cognitive perspective the three subsystems that will be examined in the talk act to support each other and have contributed to the stability of the schema of 'dialogic subjectivity' (elkarrekikotasuna) across time. As a bridging mechanism for the last section of the talk, the need to consider the 'dialogic dimension' of language is brought forward which as Stawarska (2009) has noted, involves moving beyond first-person transcendental subjectivity and the limited scope of first and third modes at the exclusion of the first-to-second person mode of interrelatedness. In the last part of the talk the way that the Basque language emphasizes the first-to-second person mode of interrelatedness and structurally incorporates the schema of 'dialogic subjectivity' will be addressed. To illustrate how this schema is instantiated, three examples of subsystems that feed into the schema of 'dialogic subjectivity' will be analyzed. All three of them are present in the Basque language today. Moreover, as will be demonstrated, this cognitive schema is deeply embedded in the Basque language and shows significant time-depth. Although no knowledge of Basque is required to follow the presentation, Basque speakers may discover that Euskera has some remarkable cognitive dimensions that until now have gone relatively unnoticed, not the least of which is the way that schema of 'dialogic subjectivity' contrasts with the schema of 'monologic subjectivity' found in languages like Spanish and English.

The following is a copy of an invited presentation given at the 25th Annual Meeting of the European Archaeological Association, Bern, Switzerland, September 4-6, 2019. The talk was part of the session on “Cultural Astronomy and Ontology” in conjunction with the European Society for Astronomy in Culture

A diferencia de los muchos y excelentes estudios dedicados al tema de los seles vascos (sarobeak/saroiak), trabajos que han logrado desvelar informaciones muy valiosas sobre su ubicación y desarrollo a través del tiempo, la presente investigación ha ido por otro rumbo. Es una perspectiva abocada en la investigación del diseño arquitectónico de estos recintos, las unidades de medida empleadas para trazarlos y la recuperación del sistema metrológico a que pertenecían estas unidades de medida. Por eso es un ensayo etnomatemático de arqueología etnográfica.
Hasta ahora la gran mayoría de los trabajos dedicados al tema de los saroiak se han centrado en localizarlos e investigar aspectos socioeconómicos relacionados a ellos, sus derechos de uso y explotación. Y por lo tanto los estudios han abarcado elementos claves vinculados al uso y transformación de estos recintos a partir de la Edad Media, avalándose de documentación de diversos tipos, archivos y otras fuentes. Pero no han explorado el sistema metrológico que pautaba su diseño arquitectónico, un sistema cuya composición y empleo nos revelan conocimientos y estrategias conceptuales no suficientemente apreciados hasta ahora.

In this presentation before the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, Roslyn M. Frank, professor emeritus of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, shares her experiences in the Basque Country (Euskal Herria) where for the past forty years she has carried out fieldwork and related investigations. The talk begins with a brief overview of how the Basque Country is seen from the outside, for example, by visitors as well as how she herself originally saw it when she first went there and before she learned Euskara, the Basque language. It is a perspective that often casts the Basque people, their language, culture and political beliefs—as if they represented the ultimate “outsiders” vis-à-vis the rest of Europe. From that starting point, her decades long journey, one that revealed a radically different perspective of the Basques and their relationship to Europe, will be discussed. Her investigations, facilitated by having learned Euskara, led to a truly remarkable discovery, namely, that the Basques used to believe they descended from bears, an indigenous belief system that appears to have been shared by other Europeans. In short, this revised perspective provides a lens through which an indigenous ecocentric worldview with significant time-depth starts to come into focus. The talk also provides an overview of the strategies that the Basque people have had to use to preserve their language and culture, both under the Franco regime and later. The current situation in Euskal Herria is also treated with special attention being paid to the trial of eight young Basques, the “Altsasu Eight”, which is currently taking place in Madrid court.