In the present article we explore the possibilities of reconstructing social behaviour through a detailed analysis of the so-called ‘ashmounds’ of the Late Bronze Age in Eastern Europe, starting from new research at a settlement of the Noua culture, Rotbav in south-eastern Transylvania. For the first time, the excavations comprised not only the ‘ashmound’ but also its vicinity, revealing the existence of structures like houses and pits. Furthermore, the analysis and comparison of the finds revealed significant differences between the ‘ashmound’ and the rest of the domestic spaces. This leads us to a new interpretation of the ‘ashmounds’ as special places, linked with feasting activities and collective leatherworking. This new interpretation is supported not only by the examination of the finds but also by new archaeozoological and chemical analyses, which are usually missing in Eastern Europe.

In this article, we discuss passive se constructions in Romanian and Spanish. We argue that there is a projected implicit external argument in passive se constructions in both languages based on an available inalienable possession interpretation of body parts. These constructions, however, differ from each other in one important way: Romanian passive se allows a ‘by’-phrase, while Spanish passive se shows severe restrictions. Moreover, we illustrate that in Old Spanish, passive se freely allowed ‘by’-phrases. Thus, Modern Romanian reflects an earlier stage of Spanish. We propose a linguistic cycle to explain these differences, where Spanish and Romanian are at different stages of that cycle. The approach offers an explanation for a general pattern within Romance, where ‘by’-phrases are initially grammatical with passive se, but then become ungrammatical over time, a pattern to date that has not yet been explained. It also offers a thereotical account for why some languages do not develop passive se constructions.

The attainment of justice through a private dispute-resolution process, such as the mediation process, is an elusive objective. With the prominent place mediation has been given in civil justice, debates about the ability of mediation to deliver substantive justice are relevant, particularly when proponents of the process argue that mediation offers some form of justice to its participants, while critics argue that it provides no justice. This paper explores the issue of justice in the private dispute-resolution process of mediation and its ability to deliver a substantive form of justice (rather than procedural or popular justice, which is often seen as the type of justice, if any, that is provided by mediation). It does so through an analysis of ethnographic data of the mediation process using Amartya Sen's justice framework set out in The Idea of Justice.

Originating as a presidential address during the seventieth birthday celebrations of the British Society for the History of Science, this essay reiterates the society's long-standing commitment to academic autonomy and international cooperation. Drawing examples from my own research into female scientists and doctors during the First World War, I explore how narratives written by historians are related to their own lives, both past and present. In particular, I consider the influences on me of my childhood reading, my experiences as a physics graduate who deliberately left the world of science, and my involvement in programmes to improve the position of women in science. In my opinion, being a historian implies being socially engaged: the BSHS and its members have a responsibility towards the future as well as the past.

The abandonment in the early nineteenth century of the Ottoman military bands (mehterhâne and tabl-khāne) that had provided ceremonial music for the Romanian princes, and the establishment of Western-style military bands in the newly formed army, brought about a radical shift in the cultural paradigm that was to have an effect upon the entire spectrum of musical life in the capitals of the Romanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. This change occurred at two levels: on the one hand, musicians and the repertory current in noble salons were imported from the West, and, on the other, a native ethnic element was activated in a series of works and orchestrations based on folk themes. The present study examines the emergence, development and organization of the modern military bands in the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the context of native musical practices and the transition of Romanian society from an oriental mentality to an outlook and behaviour specific to Western Europe, in the period from the nineteenth century to the War of Independence (1877).

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, two widely different attitudes regarding local music were evident in the Romanian musical press. One viewpoint had an obviously nationalist character, and was manifested in an apologetic idealization of Romanian music – especially folklore – but also in calls for the improvement of composition and performance in the local music scene. The other attitude revealed a pronounced inferiority complex connected to everything that contemporary Romanian music represented. This was manifested especially in the (sometimes harsh) criticism of Romanian musical life, and in a hostile position towards or ignorance of Romanian musicians, composers or interpreters, except when they attained success and recognition abroad – and sometimes not even then. The two extreme attitudes are not mutually exclusive, but complement each other; essentially, they can be seen to be in a cause–effect relationship.

These two faces of nationalist propaganda are reflected by publications such as Lyra română – foaie musicală şi literară, a weekly magazine published between 2 December 1879 and 31 October 1880, and România musicală, which appeared twice a month between 1 March 1890 and 28 December 1904.

Romanian composition in the nineteenth century went through rapid changes, moving from a Greek-oriental sound world to a Western European one. It is interesting to examine, in this context, the musicians’ quest for a ‘national’ sound and identity. Analysis of piano miniatures or vaudeville, the favourite genre of the Romanian audience in the first half of the century, shows eclectic combinations of urban folk music with sources of inspiration borrowed from popular foreign melodies. The second half of the century seems to be marked in modern scholarship by premieres: some composers are included in Romanian history just for the merit of writing the first Romanian symphony, the first string quartet, the first opera, and so forth. Their work led towards the constitution of a ‘national language’ adapted to genres borrowed from contemporary Western European music.

In addition to demonstrating these ideas in the work of a number of Romanian composers (Josef Herfner, Ioan Andrei Wachmann, Anton Pann, Alexandru Flechtenmacher, Ludwig Anton Wiest, Carol Miculi, George Stephănescu, Constantin Dimitrescu, Gavriil Musicescu, Eduard Caudella, George Dima, Ciprian Porumbescu, Iacob Mureşianu, Dumitru Georgescu Kiriac, Alfonso Castaldi, Eduard Wachmann), the present article also encompasses two case studies. The first is Franz Liszt’s tour through the Romanian Countries, which offers a clearer image of the popular ideas circulating within the musical scene of the time. Liszt’s initiative to emphasize the national spirit through folk quotations reworked in rhapsodies should have inspired Romanian musicians; we will see whether this actually happened. The second case study concerns the musical life of Bucharest around 1900, when the directions of Romanian modern music were being traced, and cautious and selective steps were made toward harmonizing with Europe began.

Hannah Flynn was sentenced to death on February 27, 1924. She had been convicted of the murder of Margaret O'Sullivan, her former employer. Hannah worked for Margaret and her husband Daniel as a domestic servant, an arrangement that ended with bad feeling on both sides when Hannah was dismissed. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923, while Daniel was at church, Hannah returned to her former place of work, and killed 50-year-old Margaret with a hatchet. At her trial, the jury strongly recommended her to mercy, and sentence of death was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life. Hannah spent almost two decades in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, from where she was conditionally released on October 23, 1942 to the Good Shepherd Magdalen Laundry in Limerick. Although there is no precise date available for Hannah's eventual release from there, it is known that “a considerable time later,” and at a very advanced age, she was released from the laundry to a hospital, where she died. The case of Hannah Flynn, and the use of the Good Shepherd Laundry, represents an explicitly gendered example of the death penalty regime in Ireland following Independence in 1922, particularly the double-edged sword of mercy as it was experienced by condemned women.

This article attempts to describe the shift in the Romanian public’s musical taste brought about by musical borrowings and imports from the West. It focuses on the period between the end of Phanariot rule (1821) and the establishment of Romania’s capital in Bucharest (1862). These decades of change yielded rich intercultural encounters and fusions, whereas the years that followed – from the 1870s to the outbreak of the First World War – show a more unified phase of assimilation of Western music.

After looking at the boyar class and the bourgeoisie of Bucharest (the social segment from which an opera- and concert-going public emerged in the last quarter of the century), I move on to the everyday musical practices of the population of Bucharest, using musical examples and travellers’ accounts as a descriptive means. Finally, I analyse the shifts in musical tastes that took place in the upper layers of society as a complicated process of exclusion, inclusion and assimilation of various musical influences; as we shall see, the mixing and hybridization of musical practices not only shaped the tastes of music lovers, but also influenced the creation of Romanian music, which entered a new phase.

The present study investigates the functions and forms of conversational self-reformulation in spoken French. (Self-)Reformulations in general are a typical feature of unplanned and spontaneous conceptional orality (as opposed to conceptional distance; Koch and Oesterreicher, 1985). They exhibit retrospective modification of a reference expression, which is semantically equivalent in paraphrases and semantically different in corrections. The latter are therefore communicatively more problematic with regard to discourse intervention and turn-taking. As for the linguistic marking of self-reformulation, paraphrases are preferably introduced by lexically polyfunctional markers and prosodic deaccentuation, while corrections are marked by lexically monofunctional and prosodically overaccented structures. Since the accessibility to context-dependent forms is specifically related to conceptional orality, a more important linguistic marking of self-reformulation is hypothesized to occur in conceptional orality when compared to conceptional distance. The results of an empirical study contrasting two conceptionally different corpora suggest a generalization of paraphrastic markers in conceptional orality. This tendency is attributed to speaker-strategic routinization in which corrections are re-marked as paraphrases in order to avoid conversational intervention and, as a consequence, turn-taking. When taken over by other speakers, this routine may cause variation and, eventually, linguistic change.

This article, based on a French oral corpus, discusses the standing and the interpretation of some vocalic false starts. It recaps the characteristics of false starts and presents the spoken data on which this study is grounded. It details the false starts in the corpus that begin with a vowel in order to draw some conclusions about their form, focusing on the differences between what would be expected and a few discrepancies. The analysis starts from the auditors' perception and proposes an interpretation of the effects of morphophonological constraints.

On parity views of mere addition if someone (or a group of people) is added to the world at a range of well-being levels – or ‘neutral range’ – leaving existing people unaffected, addition is on a par with the initial situation. Two distinct parity views – ‘rough equality’ and fitting-attitudes views – defend the ‘intuition of neutrality’. The first can be interpreted or adjusted so that it can rebut John Broome's objection that the neutral range is wide. The two views respond in distinct ways to two of Broome's other objections. Both views can, nonetheless, be plausibly defended against these objections.