This paper presents a new approach to study the palaeoecological and archaeological benefits of the previously investigated Szeged-Öthalom area. The aim was to combine the archaeological results with the palaeoecological ones by a new integral view. Age-depth models of 14C dated charcoal were calculated via Bayesian method to reconstruct the sediment accumulation rates in the investigated loess- palaeosol sequences. Moreover, the age of a Mammoth bone found in 1935 at the nearby Palaeolithic site was correlated with the calculated accumulation rates. Through our new results, the age of the Palaeolithic site could be correlated to the late LGM dust-accumulation-peak period. Even if this period is considered as cold and dry, the palaeoecological settings indicated dense forest cover and cool climate in the investigated area. This means that the palaeoenvironment may have encouraged the diffusion of Gravettian hunters in this area, founding campsites like Öthalom in the southern part of the Carpathian Basin.

This study presents the results of a comprehensive geoarchaeological study implemented at an archeological site covering ca. 5 ha near the city of Csorna on the NW part of the Danube Plain, NW Hungary. The site itself exposed a complex fluvial system of an ice age creek with near bank and overbank areas (levee, point bar, back swamp). Spatial distribution of archeological features allowed for the interpretation of differential use of the fluvial landscape by different cultures. According to our data, the referred fluvial system must have emerged during the Late Glacial. At this time, creeks originating from hills to the SE followed a uniform NW trajectory. From the Holocene, small creeks were beheaded turning into inactive flood channels. It was the time when the gradual infilling of the floodplain started. Alternating layers of floodwater coarses and floodplain fines mark recurring floods at our site. These could have been correlated with cooler, wetter climatic phases of the North Atlantic, Western Europe and high stands in Central European lakes. Highest floods are recorded during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages besides the Neolithic. Pollen data enabled us to make inferences on the vegetation as well.

The research was conducted at the Kwiatków site,1 in the Koło Basin (Central Poland). It included a fragment of a low terrace and the valley floor of the Warta river valley. The archaeological investigation documented over 100 wells that archaeological material indicates are associated with the Przeworsk culture. Geomorphological, lithological and geochemical studies were carried out at the archaeological sites and their surroundings. Selected for the presentation were two wells whose fillings were carefully tested and subjected to geochemical and lithological analyses. The wells showed a slightly different content of artifacts, as well as differences in their grain-size distributions, the structure of their filling deposits, and their geochemistry. This allows us to conclude that the two wells were used differently, but also probably about a different course for how each well was filled after the end of its operation.

Remains of a vast Roman pottery production complex were found on the shore of the Plemići Bay (Općina Ražanac, Zadar county) in 2012, and confirmed by geophysical survey. Ground-penetrating radar measurements revealed outline of a rectangular building that finds analogies with Roman storehouses (horreum). The area occupied by remains of the Roman pottery workshop was covered by immense soil-debris flows. Three geological exposures located to the north of the remains of the Roman building were documented using lithological and malacological analysis, and magnetic susceptibility measurements. The profiles revealed at least three generations of slope sediments, formed in result of intensive soil or debris flows in a dry climate, most probably in 5th c. AD. In the next, wet phase sediments were transported downslope and deposited on the Roman structures after 5th c. AD. Environmental conditions at Pelmići were supply with paleoclimate evidence from the Adriatic region. At ca. 1.5 cal. BP lake levels in the eastern Adriatic area were drastically reduced, probably because of strong decrease in humidity, correlated with the so-called North Atlantic Bond event 3. The drought was followed by a humid episode, also attested at the Plemići archaeological site.

Contemporary research on mobile robotics aims at designing robots that will be able to traverse an extremely varied environment. One of the most universal modes of locomotion is the serpentine movement. A majority of modern snake-like robots use electric drives. This study presents a snake-like robot made out of McKibben muscles. Using a pneumatic cable with muscles arranged in series, it is possible to create a robot of any length, limited only by the length of the muscle cables. Because the control system and the body of the robot are separate, the robot can be used for rescue missions involving high risk of explosion of flammable substances and for missions taking place on extremely difficult terrain.

Which lexical typology does the Italian language have? A comparative study with French – This paper sets out to show the lexical and typological differences between the French and Italian languages. French is the only Romance language without morphology in words. Italian continues to build words while including morphology. This phenomenon can be explained by the diacronic process of deflexivity, which is more advanced in French. The consequence is that French words are more compact and unanalyzable. French is becoming a “neoisolating” language.

Polite talk – The paper aims to analyze the role that books of manners from different historical times assign to language in defining politeness. It also tries to find differences and similarities among them and to explain principles that books of manners share with theoretical models on politeness, notwithstanding the descriptive perspective of the first and the normative point of view of the latter.

“How come you’re not shipping them??? They’re canon”: a look at the language of Italian fandom – The aim of this article is to examine a relatively recent phenomenon in the language of fandom, i.e. various communities of fans that form around a cultural event or artifact, such as a book, a TV show, a movie, etc. This research is located within fan studies, however, it mainly investigates the linguistic aspects of being a fan in Italian. The distinctive feature of the language of fandom as a specific variety, associated with a particular topic and activity and mediated by Internet communication tools, is a specialist lexicon, understandable only to community members. The article concentrates on loanwords from English which in the case of Italian primarily comprise the vocabulary of fandom.

A silent language: imagining the dialect in Ferrante’s novels – Elena Ferrante’s novels are not examples of plurilingual literature; in fact they do not mix diatopic varieties of Italian and dialect, even if, above all in the stories in My Brilliant Friend, Italian readers can perceive the sounds of the Neapolitan dialect. To achieve this effect, Elena Ferrante uses metalinguistic glosses, which alert the reader when the characters pass from one language to another. The essay examines the features of the glosses, which are cleverly inserted, do not hinder reading, and manage to transport the reader to among the houses and the sounds of Naples.

Post-truth and parody in old and new media – This paper presents a description of a few issues of the satirical magazine Il Male, published in Italy in the second half of the 1970s. These special issues – somewhat parodies – copied the typographic format of the main Italian newspapers of that period and were filled with odd and invented news. In some respects these publications anticipate parody and falsification in the digital era. In particular, some Internet sites that play on the slight distinction between false and true reports, and make us reflect upon the reliability of the information, can be considered as heirs to this experiment.

LABLITA-Suite. Resources for the acquisition of Italian as a second language – LABLITA-suite provides technology-enhanced learning resources for the acquisition of Italian L2. IMAGACT allows for mastering the semantic properties of action verbs in the early phases of language acquisition. The LABLITA corpus of Spoken Italian can be used for training learners for face to face conversations. RIDIRE and CORDIC provide corpus linguistic tools for accessing Italian phraseology, which is useful for enhancing writing capabilities in the various domains of language usage.

Successful slogans in Italian political discourse – This paper aims to describe the notion of ‘sloganisation’, with special regard to the fortune and circulation of certain slogans in Italian public discourse. An analysis of their forms, contexts of occurrence (political propaganda, advertising, football supporters) and means of diffusion (street talk, electoral manifestos, traditional and new media) shows an increasing desemantisation of this kind of message. Slogans are routinely used by political parties and are widely quoted, regardless of their ideological content, merely in order to create identification or to increase the polemical attitude of their leader.

Gender and representing the feminine in legal and administrative texts in Italy – The paper examines the linguistic treatment of the genre (delimiting the concept to ‘female’, ‘woman’) at various levels of legal communication, through the analysis of legal and administrative texts of different kinds produced in Italy in the 20th and 21st centuries (codes, sentences, regulations, etc). The survey focuses on lexical aspects and is supported by lexicographical research.

In search of the invariant semantics of the preposition “da”: a cognitive analysis of the predicative context – The purpose of this article is to verify whether the semantic invariant of the preposition da [starting point allowing physical or mental movement] in the nominal context remains valid in the context of the verb. The analysis of the content of predicates that link to the preposition da will help to answer the question of the extent to which the choice of a preposition is determined by the knowledge of the experienced activities and/or the predicate itself (its selective features) or if it is the result of convention.

Notes about a handbook of Italian grammar by a Croatian philologist Dragutin Antun Parčić – A handbook of Italian grammar, written in Croatian by Croatian philologist Parčić, confirms that in the past educated Croatian-speaking people were bilingual and at the same time it proves that lower classes aimed to study Italian as well. The paper analyses the functionality and appropriateness of topics presented in the Parčić manuscript because it is obvious that the author was keen to help his Croatian-speaking students in the acquisition of Italian.

Notes on Foscolo and the English language (1816–1827) – Foscolo never managed to master his host country’s language during his years of exile in London (1816–1827). The vast production of his English years consists almost entirely of works intended to be translated by other people and thus to be considered as provisional drafts. In this paper, the relationship between Foscolo and the English language is analysed and discussed, focusing in particular on his interactions with his translators and on his linguistic vision.

An unpublished Musical by Pirandello: a polysemic and multicultural kaleidoscope – The fact that Pirandello conceived the idea of writing a Musical was well know, but the recent discovery of the actual text and the musical score, in the archive of Guido Torre Gherson, agent of the writer while he lived in Paris, has shed some light on his final years and writings. The findings are discussed in the context of his late theatrical and fictional works, such as I giganti della montagna.

Mario Puccini between Italy and Argentina – The Italian writer Mario Puccini travelled to Argentina in 1936 to attend the Pen Club Congress. In the essay, the results of Puccini’s stay in Argentina are studied for the first time in Italy: books, stories, articles, translations, correspondences, unrealized projects. Puccini is confirmed as an important cultural mediator in relations between Italy and the Spanish-speaking nations.

The Ways of the Diaspora in the narrative of Claudio Magris – One of the themes in the works of Claudio Magris is that of the frontiers between nations which have been divided by arbitrary political decisions. This is the case with Central Europe, which forms a sort of transnational melting pot and which has hosted the Hebrew Diaspora. The theme of the Diaspora plays a key role in many of Magris books, in particular Lontano da dove. In his recent novel, Non luogo a procedere, one of the topics is the slave trade, a sort of African Diaspora.

The myth of Orpheus in the second postwar decade in Italy and Poland – The myth of Orpheus, in the second postwar decade, becomes a paradigmatic tale describing the horror of mourning and separation. Cesare Pavese and Anna Świrszczyńska, in their rewritings, elaborate that mith in a completely original way, tracing a new path of Orpheus’ journey to the underworld.

Narrative synergies – Christ stopped at Eboli: The writing of Carlo Levi in the view of Francesco Rosi – In Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi recounts his confinement in a recondite village of southern Italy, in an archaic world, by which he remains completely fascinated. In 1978, the director Francesco Rosi, adapting the documentary structure to the lyric moments of the literary text, offers us a wonderful film re-creation in which the intense autobiographical story of the anti-fascist writer intersects with geographical space at a historical moment crucial to Italy.

Bonaventura Tondi’s “La femina origine di ogni male”: a late XVII century misogynous treatise – This article analyses the treatise La femina origine di ogni male. Overo Frine rimproverata, written by Bonaventura Tondi in 1687. The first part of the article presents the architecture of the treatise and the author’s argumentation. The second part focuses on its distinctive features in the context of treatises about women in XVII-century Italy.