Multidisciplinary bibliography of the Portugal-Spain border

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

La toponimia constituye un instrumento muy útil para conocer mejor las características lingüísticas, pero también geográficas, socioculturales, políticas, etc., de un territorio tanto en el pasado como en el presente, ya que los nombres de lugar suelen reflejar rasgos fonéticos y léxicos, propios del habla o lengua que los propició y también de la vigente, así como distintos tipos de información a través de su motivación. Este hecho resulta especialmente interesante en zonas de frontera, donde los límites pueden haber cambiado en el tiempo y donde las influencias de las distintas lenguas en contacto pueden acabar plasmándose en los topónimos. Dentro de este amplio contexto analizaremos algunos de los topónimos de la frontera hispano-portuguesa a partir de las investigaciones que estamos realizando para el proyecto FRONTESPO.

ÍNDICE: A fala: situación sociolingüística || El proyecto y sus objetivos || Metodología | Ortografía | Grabaciones | Colección de textos | Colaboración con la comunidad | Procesamiento de los datos || Resultados | Base de datos | Diccionario || Conclusión || Bibliografía

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

Este trabajo aborda las experiencias de micro-cooperación transfronteriza entre Galicia y Portugal, centrándose en tres Eurociudades: Chaves-Verín, Tui-Valença y Salvaterra-Monçao. Palabras clave: Galicia, Portugal, Eurociudades, Eixo Atlántico, cooperación fronteriza.

This paper deals with the experiences of micro-border cooperation between Galicia and Portugal, focusing on three Eurocities: Chaves-Verin, Tui-Valença, and Salvaterra-Monçao. Keywords: Galicia, Portugal, Eurocities, Eixo Atlántico, border cooperation.

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

This dissertation investigates the status of expletive ele in non-standard European Portuguese (EP). More specifically, it is concerned with the syntax of constructions involving expletive ele, whose properties it attempts to explain, both at the syntactic and at the discourse levels. The aim of this investigation is twofold: (i) to provide a comprehensive account of overt expletive constructions in EP; (ii) to contribute to a better understanding of the status and function of expletives in natural languages in general. The research is developed within the Principles and Parameters framework of generative syntax (Chomsky 1981) under its minimalist version (Chomsky 1993, 1995 and subsequent work). The empirical support for this work has been drawn from the Syntactically Annotated Corpus of Portuguese Dialects (CORDIAL-SIN) developed at Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa.

Although it is usually assumed that Null Subject Languages (NSLs) like EP lack overt subject expletives, expletive ele has been traditionally analyzed as an expletive subject similar to those occurring in Non Null Subject Languages. This dissertation, however, explores and consolidates recent ideas relating certain expletives to positions other than the canonical subject position. More specifically, it is argued that expletive ele relates to the structure of the sentential left periphery (in line with Platzack 1998 and Holmberg 2000c for Icelandic expletive það; Holmberg and Nikanne 2002 for Finnish sitä; Uriagereka 1992-2004 and Silva-Villar 1996-2004 for Romance NSLs overt expletives).

The empirical survey carried out in this investigation provides evidence for distinguishing three distributional types of expletive ele: (i) impersonal ele; (ii) peripheral ele; (iii) postverbal ele. It is argued that all types display discourse-related effects connected to the illocutionary force assumed by a sentence. The proposal put forth in this investigation thus relates expletives (i) and (ii) – which can be shown to be in general non distinct – to a high [Spec, ForceP] peripheral position, relevant for the sentence type/illocutionary force mapping (adapting Rizzi 1997, Haegeman 2002), and expletive (iii) to a low peripheral [Eval0 ] position activated by evaluative sentences (adapting Ambar 1997, 1999).

KEYWORDS: expletive, left periphery, illocutionary force, Portuguese dialects, dialect syntax.

[Resumo proveniente da fonte]

Em 2010, no VI Simpósio Sobre a Mineração e Metalurgia Históricas no Sudoeste Europeu, realizado em Vila Velha de Ródão, foi apresentada uma comunicação com o título Mineração aurífera antiga, a céu aberto, no centro e sul do distrito de Castelo Branco, da responsabilidade de Francisco Henriques, Carlos Batata, Mário Chambino, João Carlos Caninas e Pedro Proença Cunha. Esta intervenção sumariou as várias áreas de extracção de ouro a céu aberto - vulgarmente e insuficientemente nomeadas como conheiras -, atribuíveis à romanização, existentes ao longo dos principais cursos de água que atravessam este território. Naquele trabalho, e ao contrário do panorama identificado noutros rios (Erges, Aravil, Ocreza e Tejo), o Ponsul apresentava uma única área, designada por Ponte do Ponsul. Para colmatar esta ausência executou-se, posteriormente, trabalho de prospecção ao longo das margens daquele rio. Foram percorridos mais de 19km de terraço fluvial, ao longo da margem direita, entre a ponte da Munheca e a barroca da Castanheira. Neste troço do rio podemos afirmar que a mancha de exploração mineira é praticamente ininterrupta variando a largura da faixa explorada entre 100m e 1500m. Em articulação com a actividade extractiva, identificou-se uma barragem de aterro e observaram-se níveis anormais de assoreamento do rio e de alguns dos seus afluentes. Admite-se, de igual modo, que os sítios arqueológicos, romanos, da Granja (Ladoeiro) e da Senhora de Mércoles (Castelo Branco) estejam associadas a esta área mineira, e um deles pode ter sido centro administrativo. Palavras-chave: Mineração aurífera; Época romana; Terraços fluviais; Rio Ponsul; Castelo Branco.

At the VI Simpósio Sobre a Mineração e Metalurgia Históricas no Sudoeste Europeu, held in Vila Velha de Ródão in 2010, an oral talk entitled Ancient gold, open cast mining at the center and southern regions of the District of Castelo Branco, was authored by Francisco Henriques, Carlos Batata, Mário Chambino, João Carlos Caninas and Pedro P. Cunha. This presentation made an overview on the latest knowledge about the open cast gold mines – usually and seldomly named as conheiras -, attributed to the Roman period, and located in genetic relation to the main rivers and tributaries that cross the territory. In that work, and somehow contradicting the examples of other rivers (Erges, Aravil, Ocreza and Tejo), for the Ponsul river was pointed out a single area called Ponte do Ponsul. Ulteriorly, to fulfil the lack of information was made specific fieldwork along its river margins. More than 19km of river terraces were mapped, along the right riverbank, between the Munheca bridge and Castanheira stream. In this sector of the river, the mining area is pratically continuous extending parallel to the bank by a zone between 100m and 1500m wide. In articulation with the mining operation, mining areas and fronts, tailing piles, an earth-fill dam, water channels and the abnormal aggradation of the Ponsul river and some tributaries were found. In the same way, it is considered that the Roman archaeological sites of Granja (Ladoeiro) and Senhora de Mércoles (Castelo Branco) are intrinsically related with this mining area, and one of them may have been the administrative centre. Keywords: Gold mining, Roman Period, River Terraces, Ponsul river, Castelo Branco.