Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences--and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences--from anatomy to crystallography--are those featured in (...) scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity--or truth-to-nature or trained judgment--is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity-- and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, and other books, and coeditor of The Architecture of Science. (shrink)

Anatomical exhibitions, online atlases and televised dissections have recently attracted much attention and raised questions concerning the status of and the authority over the human body, the purpose of anatomical education within and outside medical schools and the methods of teaching in the digital age. I propose that for understanding the current public views of anatomy, we need to gain insight into their historical development. This article focuses on anatomies accessible to non-medical audiences in the capital of the Habsburg Empire, (...) Vienna, at the time when the city was the seat of a world-leading medical school. Anatomy at the University of Vienna was famous for its research, instruction and the abundant provision with dissectible corpses. Public anatomies were equally rich and ranged from exhibitions at the Präuscher’s Panoptikon und Anatomisches Museum , established in 1871 in the Prater amusement park, lectures on human and comparative anatomy by the university professor Carl Bernhard Brühl (1863–1890), to displays of anatomical objects at the World Exhibition in 1873. I finish by discussing a collection of letters written by the prospective ‘cadaver donors’, offering an insight into the ways in which medical encounters and anatomical knowledge informed the working-class views of their bodies. By looking at the kinds of anatomy in circulation, as well as at the participants in these exchanges, I want to illuminate the relationship between academic and public anatomies, as well as to reveal the purposes to which public anatomy served. (shrink)

Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1925–1929) is a prescient work of mixed media assemblage, made up of hundreds of images culled from antiquity to the Renaissance and arranged into startling juxtapositions. Warburg’s allusive atlas sought to illuminate the pains of his final years, after he had suffered a breakdown and been institutionalized. It continues to influence contemporary artists today, including Gerhard Richter and Mark Dion. In this illustrated exploration of Warburg and his great work, Georges Didi-Huberman leaps from Mnemosyne Atlas into (...) a set of musings on the relation between suffering and knowledge in Western thought, and on the creative results of associative thinking. Deploying writing that delights in dramatic jump cuts reminiscent of Warburg’s idiosyncratic juxtapositions, and drawing on a set of sources that ranges from ancient Babylon to Walter Benjamin, Atlas, or the Anxious Gay Science is rich in Didi-Huberman’s trademark combination of elan and insight. (shrink)

In Objectivity, Daston and Galison argue that scientific objectivity has a history. Objectivity emerged as a distinct nineteenth-century “epistemic virtue,” flanked in time by other epistemic virtues. The authors trace the origins of scientific objectivity by identifying changes in images from scientific atlases from different periods, but they emphasize that the same history could be narrated using different sorts of scientific objects. One could, for example, focus on the changing uses of “type specimens” in biological taxonomy. Daston :153–182, 2004) indeed (...) provides a detailed account of the history of the type specimen which purports to show this. I argue that this attempt hinges on a conceptual confusion and therefore fails. I show that the actual history of the type specimen does not reinforce the account of epistemic virtues from Objectivity, but rather threatens to subvert it. (shrink)

This article analyzes how the medical gaze made possible by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. It argues that although computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI shift radiological analysis to the realm of cyborg visuality, radiological analysis continues to depend on visualization produced by other technologies and diagnostic inputs. In the radiological laboratory, MRI is used to produce diverse sets of images of the internal parts of the body to zero in and visually extract the pathology. Visual extraction of pathology (...) becomes possible, however, because of the visual training of the radiologists in understanding and interpreting anatomic details of the whole body. These two levels of viewing constitute the bifocal vision of the radiologists. To make these levels of viewing work complementarily, the body, as it is presented in the body atlases, is made notational. (shrink)

Brain in a vat scenarios in analytic philosophy feature both brains and technological apparatus. The relation between specimens and technology is an interesting aspect of these scenarios, and in order to explore this relation, I contrast here two kinds of scientific collecting practices: the collection of post-mortem brains versus the compilation of digital brain atlases. This contrast highlights a novel configuration of the relation between brains and new information technologies. This new configuration is traced back to the late 1980s, which (...) saw the rise of a new kind of collection of brains, with a markedly different scope and nature: the neuroscience database. Brains are now easily captured in vivo, so that while post-mortem brains were precious and few, scanners provide an embarrassment of riches in the form of terabytes of data. The rise of the virtual brain as a new digital object for research is reliant on the development of new imaging technologies, but also on the growth of computerised tools, informatics, and electronic networks in this field. These developments contribute to an informational turn in scientific research. This article considers what is involved in the shift in type of object, from the scarce, wet, biological brain to a plentiful, digital, virtual one. It discusses the significance of this new object in terms of collections, institutions, and research practices. (shrink)

Research from psychology, neurobiology and behavioral economics indicates that a binary view of motivation, based on approach and avoidance, may be too reductive. Instead, a literature review suggests that at least seven distinct motives are likely to affect human decisions: “consumption/resource seeking,” “care,” “affiliation,” “achievement,” “status-power,” “threat approach” (or anger), and “threat avoidance” (or fear). To explore the conceptual distinctness and relatedness of these motives, we conducted a semantic categorization task. Here, participants were to assign provided words to one of (...) the motives. By applying principal component analysis to the categorization assignments we represent the semantic inter-relations of these motives on a two-dimensional space, a “semantic atlas.” This atlas suggests that, while care and affiliation are conceptually close, affiliation is closer to threat avoidance (or fear); opposite to these motives we find achievement, consumption and power, with the latter lying closer to threat approach (or anger). In a second study, we asked participants to rate how well the motive-specific words obtained in the first study described their currently experienced feelings. We find that semantically close motives are also more likely to be experienced together, that is, we replicate most of the semantic relations in the “subjective atlas.” We discuss our findings in comparison to other multi-dimensional models of motivation, which show clear similarities. In addition to these motivational atlases, we provide a database of motive-specific words, together with the valence and arousal scores. These can be used for future research on the influence of motives on decision making. (shrink)

Hegel once said that philosophy is the "world stood on its head" and Karl Marx credited his own philosophic genius with setting the Hegel ian world right side up again. But both of these intellectual Atlases hid before our mind's eye a symbol of the philosophical sphere that bears further reflection. Philosophy down the ages has always involved at least two elements, first, the universe of being as its objective pole and second, man gazing into this crystallic sphere as the (...) subjective pole. The "world" of Hegel and Marx and of most philosophers can be interpreted to mean the world we know and live in and about which all philosophers wonder. Thus for the philosopher - whoever he be - the concern of his interest is not limited to any particular segment of reality and no thing is off-limits to the beams of his mental radar. Yet this scope seems to many too vast and proud an enterprise. The philosopher seems to leap upon his horse and ride off in all directions at once. He is the day dreamer who indulges in fantasy and escapes from the world of practical concern and anxiety. On the other hand the reflective person must concede that it is the ideas ofthe philosophers more than the strategems of the generals that have shaped history and destinies. (shrink)

In the early modern period costume books and albums participated in the shaping of a new visual culture that displayed the diversity of the people of the known world on a variety of media including maps, atlases, screens, and scrolls. At the crossroads of early anthropology, geography, and travel literature, this textual and visual production blurred the lines between art and science. Costume books and albums were not a unique European production: in the Ottoman Empire and the Far East artists (...) and geographers also pictured the dress of men and women of their own and faraway lands hybridizing the Renaissance western tradition. Acknowledging this circulation of knowledge and people through migration, travel, missionary and diplomatic encounters, this Element contributes to the expanding field of early modern cultural studies in a global perspective. (shrink)

Early observations of the southern celestial sky were reported in many sixteenth-century books and compilations of voyages of discovery. Here we analyse these accounts in order to find out what was really seen and reported by the first navigators. Our analysis had resulted in new interpretations of the phenomena reported by Amerigo Vespucci and Andreas Corsali. Thus, a reassessment of the discovery of the Coalsack Nebula, the Magellanic Clouds, and the Southern Cross can be made. From a comparative review of (...) the observations of the latter constellation as published between 1500 and 1600, we demonstrate that only questionable records found their way to contemporary compilations of voyages of discovery, and that as a result public knowledge about this constellation at the end of the sixteenth century was entirely unreliable. Another problem we discuss is that although the stars of the Southern Cross were the first to be discovered, and were observed again and again by many navigators, it was not until 1678 that their proper positions were found in stellar atlases and star catalogues accessible to astronomers. We explain how negligence of and subsequently confidence in Ptolemy's astronomy by, respectively, the early navigators and cartographers, were at the root of this amazingly long-lasting gap in the knowledge of the southern celestial sky. (shrink)

Biblical cartography has elaborated a master narrative of Paul’s missionary activity. This master narrative, which clearly distinguishes between three different journeys, is omnipresent and can easily be found in Bibles and atlases. Nevertheless, Paul’s letters and the book of Acts do not support such a clear distinction. The present study contends that the distinction between three missionary journeys is a modern construct and that this way of representing Paul’s missionary activity has a significant impact on how we understand it. By (...) representing Paul’s missionary activity as an orderly sequence of three travels, the maps not only minimise the novelty of his independent mission but also minimise Paul’s confrontation with the Jerusalem church. In this representation, he is no longer the marginal leader of a minority movement within the nascent church, but ‘the’ missionary. The portrayal of the missionary activity of Paul in biblical maps is an example of the uncritical transfer of exegetical traditions, and of the role of these traditions in the creation of a master narrative of Christian origins. (shrink)

This paper examines the predominant systems used for the classification of print-based cartographic materials (primarily atlases and sheet maps). We present the results of a brief, widely distributed survey on the topic, followed by discussions of the distinctive characteristics of the classification systems used by survey respondents. The Library of Congress Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification systems were found to be widely used, with several other schemes also in use.

This article is the result of collaboration between a linguist and an anthropologist. In La Troisième planète. Structures familiales et systèmes idéologiques (The Third Planet: Family Structures and Ideologies) (Todd, 1983), anthropologist Emmanuel Todd provided a world map of family types, which he used to explain the distribution of major political philosophies around the world. However, this did not explain the distribution of the family types themselves. Indeed, a concluding chapter entitled “Le Hazard” (The Effects of Chance) stated that the (...) distribution of family types did not seem to be the result of any particular economic or ecological factor and was therefore a prime example of the uncertainty principle at work. However, Laurent Sagart, a linguist specializing in Chinese dialects, noticed that this map of family types exhibited a structure well known to experts in historical linguistics and dialectology, contrasting a large, continuous zone in the center with a number of small, independent zones located around the periphery of the central zone or in isolated enclaves within it. When such maps appear in linguistic atlases, dialectologists usually conclude that the central zone was the innovative area while the peripheral and isolated zones conserved the original features. The same analysis, if applied to the map of family types, would lead to the conclusion that the communal family system in the center of the map represented a more recent innovation than the systems around the periphery. (shrink)

This book is a comparative study of the production and role of maps, charts, and atlases in early modern England and France with a particular focus on Paris and London.

People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple observation, renowned geographer Gunnar Olsson offers in Abysmal an astonishingly erudite critique of the way human thought and action have become deeply immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people’s lives. A spectacular reading of (...) Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases, Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein, Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh , and Marcel Duchamp, Abysmal is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. Olsson roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails. A work of ambition, scope, and sharp wit, Abysmal will appeal to an eclectic audience—to geographers and cartographers, but also to anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and art. (shrink)

The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) is a map of the human body. Like maps of other sorts – including the map-like representations we find in familiar anatomical atlases – it is a representation of a certain portion of spatial reality as it exists at a certain (idealized) instant of time. But unlike other maps, the FMA comes in the form of a sophisticated ontology of its objectdomain, comprising some 1.5 million statements of anatomical relations among some 70,000 anatomical kinds. (...) It is further distinguished from other maps in that it represents not some specific portion of spatial reality (say: Leeds in 1996), but rather the generalized or idealized spatial reality associated with a generalized or idealized human being at some generalized or idealized instant of time. It will be our concern in what follows to outline the approach to ontology that is represented by the FMA and to argue that it can serve as the basis for a new type of anatomical information science. We also draw some implications for our understanding of spatial reasoning and spatial ontologies in general. (shrink)

We first show that the projection image of a discrete definable set is again discrete for an arbitrary definably complete locally o‐minimal structure. This fact together with the results in a previous paper implies a tame dimension theory and a decomposition theorem into good‐shaped definable subsets called quasi‐special submanifolds. Using this fact, we investigate definably complete locally o‐minimal expansions of ordered groups when the restriction of multiplication to an arbitrary bounded open box is definable. Similarly to o‐minimal expansions of ordered (...) fields, Łojasiewicz's inequality, Tietze's extension theorem and affiness of pseudo‐definable spaces hold true for such structures under the extra assumption that the domains of definition and the pseudo‐definable spaces are definably compact. Here, a pseudo‐definable space is a topological space having finite definable atlases. We also demonstrate Michael's selection theorem for definable set‐valued functions with definably compact domains of definition. (shrink)

Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation is an established therapy for Parkinson’s disease motor symptoms. The ideal site for implantation within STN, however, remains controversial. While many argue that placement of a DBS lead within the sensorimotor territory of the STN yields better motor outcomes, others report similar effects with leads placed in the associative or motor territory of the STN, while still others assert that placing a DBS lead “anywhere within a 6-mm-diameter cylinder centered at the presumed middle of the (...) STN produces similar clinical efficacy.” These discrepancies likely result from methodological differences including targeting preferences, imaging acquisition and the use of brain atlases that do not account for patient-specific anatomic variability. We present a first-in-kind within-patient demonstration of severe mood side effects and minimal motor improvement in a Parkinson’s disease patient following placement of a DBS lead in the limbic/associative territory of the STN who experienced marked improvement in motor benefit and resolution of mood side effects following repositioning the lead within the STN sensorimotor territory. 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging data were used to generate a patient-specific anatomical model of the STN with parcellation into distinct functional territories and computational modeling to assess the relative degree of activation of motor, associative and limbic territories. (shrink)

Duhem’s problem arises especially in scientific contexts where the tools and procedures of measurement and analysis are numerous and complex. Several philosophers of cognitive science have cited its manifestations in fMRI as grounds for skepticism regarding the epistemic value of neuroimaging. To address these Duhemian arguments for skepticism, I offer an alternative approach based on Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical account in which Duhem's problem is more fruitfully approached in terms of error probabilities. This is illustrated in examples such as the use (...) of probabilistic brain atlases, comparison of different preprocessing protocols with respect to their error characteristics, and statistical modeling of fMRI data. These examples demonstrate the ways in which we can better understand and formulate the general methodological problem and direct the way toward alternative approaches to neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science, in which we can be more balanced and productive in our scrutiny of the epistemic value of neuroimaging studies. (shrink)

Duhem’s problem arises especially in scientific contexts where the tools and procedures of measurement and analysis are numerous and complex. Several philosophers of cognitive science have cited its manifestations in fMRI as grounds for skepticism regarding the epistemic value of neuroimaging. To address these Duhemian arguments for skepticism, I offer an alternative approach based on Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical account in which Duhem's problem is more fruitfully approached in terms of error probabilities. This is illustrated in examples such as the use (...) of probabilistic brain atlases, comparison of different preprocessing protocols with respect to their error characteristics, and statistical modeling of fMRI data. These examples demonstrate the ways in which we can better understand and formulate the general methodological problem and direct the way toward alternative approaches to neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science, in which we can be more balanced and productive in our scrutiny of the epistemic value of neuroimaging studies. (shrink)

The fossil record is paleontology’s great resource, telling us virtually everything we know about the past history of life. This record, which has been accumulating since the beginning of paleontology as a professional discipline in the early nineteenth century, is a collection of objects. The fossil record exists literally, in the specimen drawers where fossils are kept, and figuratively, in the illustrations and records of fossils compiled in paleontological atlases and compendia. However, as has become increasingly clear since the later (...) twentieth century, the fossil record is also a record of data. Paleontologists now routinely abstract information from the physical fossil record to construct databases that serve as the basis for quantitative analysis of patterns in the history of life. What is the significance of this distinction? While it is often assumed that the orientation towards treating the fossil record as a record of data is an innovation of the computer age, it turns out that nineteenth century paleontology was substantially “data driven.” This paper traces the evolution of data practices and analyses in paleontology, primarily through examination of the compendia in which the fossil record has been recorded over the past 200 years. I argue that the transition towards conceptualizing the fossil record as a record of data began long before the emergence of the technologies associated with modern databases (such as digital computers and modern statistical methods). I will also argue that this history reveals how new forms of visual representation were associated with the transition from seeing the fossil record as a record of objects to one of data or information, which allowed paleontologists to make new visual arguments about their data. While these practices and techniques have become increasingly sophisticated in recent decades, I will show that their basic methodology was in place over a century ago, and that, in a sense, paleontology has always been a “data driven” science. (shrink)

This paper describes a now widely forgotten tradition in the nineteenth century which - to borrow a simile used or implied by the actors themselves - may be described as 'spectroscopic portraiture'. Quite unlike the later obsession with numerical precision in wavelength measurement, and also in stark contrast to the contemporary vogue of photographic mapping which presumptuously claimed 'mechanical objectivity', that is avoidance of any human intervention in the recorded data, there was among some spectroscopists a much greater preoccupation with (...) qualitative rather than quantitative aspects. The atlases of the solar spectrum by Cornu, Thollon, and Piazzi Smyth were supposed to convey the subjectively perceived Gestalt of the Fraunhofer lines, at the expense of precision. I shall argue that this was a systematic research programme addressed to a welldefined but small audience of specialists in the new subdiscipline of spectroscopy which was distinct from other practices such as spectrum analysis, which was directed mainly at chemists. Apart from this, the new tradition can also be identified by the dense net of cross-references in the publications of the various members, and by their critique of earlier work. This tradition of spectrum portraiture started with Kirchhoff's 1861-2 high-resolution chromolithographic plates of the solar spectrum, which were printed off a half-dozen different stones in order to render most faithfully the various line intensities. Focusing especially on the tension between representational goals and technical possibilities in the rapidly developing printing industry, I then trace the emerging tradition through its apogee to the close of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Wójcicki has provided a characterization of selfextensional logics as those that can be endowed with a complete local referential semantics. His result was extended by Jansana and Palmigiano, who developed a duality between the category of reduced congruential atlases and that of reduced referential algebras over a fixed similarity type. This duality restricts to one between reduced atlas models and reduced referential algebra models of selfextensional logics. In this paper referential algebraic systems and congruential atlas systems are introduced, which abstract (...) referential algebras and congruential atlases, respectively. This enables the formulation of an analog of Wójcicki’s Theorem for logics formalized as π-institutions. Moreover, the results of Jansana and Palmigiano are generalized to obtain a duality between congruential atlas systems and referential algebraic systems over a fixed categorical algebraic signature. In future work, the duality obtained in this paper will be used to obtain one between atlas system models and referential algebraic system models of an arbitrary selfextensional π-institution. Using this latter duality, the characterization of fully selfextensional deductive systems among the selfextensional ones, that was obtained by Jansana and Palmigiano, can be extended to a similar characterization of fully selfextensional π-institutions among appropriately chosen classes of selfextensional ones. (shrink)

The present-day languages and language situation of the Silk Road regions of Central Asia reflect the consequences of the former use of many different languages and the multilingual trading along these routes, as demonstrated by the existence today of a number of hybridized languages whose emergence may in part be attributable to the trading activities on the Silk Road. These languages have, until very recently, received little attention, if any, by linguistic scholars. It has been mainly through the large Language (...) Atlases project mentioned in note 1 below that interest has become focused on them. (shrink)

The main features of a new online database of scientific illustrators are portrayed. We list illustrators of scientific publications of all genres (especially atlases, articles, textbooks) who were active between 1450 and 1950, thus excluding illuminators of medieval manuscripts as well as illustrators still active. Currently (Sept. 26, 2012), we already have more than 3,461 entries, with particular emphasis on anatomy, dermatology, botany, zoology, mineralogy, astronomy, and general natural history. Access to the database with its 20 search fields is free (...) and open to all interested users at www.uni-stu ttgart.de/hi/gnt/dsi/. (shrink)

The main features of a new online database of scientific illustrators are portrayed. We list illustrators of scientific publications of all genres (especially atlases, articles, textbooks) who were active between 1450 and 1950, thus excluding illuminators of medieval manuscripts as well as illustrators still active. Currently (Sept. 26, 2012), we already have more than 3,461 entries, with particular emphasis on anatomy, dermatology, botany, zoology, mineralogy, astronomy, and general natural history. Access to the database with its 20 search fields is free (...) and open to all interested users at www.uni-stu ttgart.de/hi/gnt/dsi/. (shrink)

Here moral problems created by the use of constructive imaging technologies within the life sciences are discussed. It specifically deals with the creation of dichotomies, such as gender, race and other differences, created and manifested through the contingent use of scientific and computational models and methods, channelling the production process of scientific results and images. Gender in technology studies has been concerned with destabilizing essentialist and dichotomous co-constructions of gender and technology. In the technological construction process gendered social constructions of (...) stereotypes and inequalities both of the technological models and of the presumptions in life sciences become structural properties of the artefacts, again flowing back into the seemingly objective results and knowledge of the life sciences. Here we will deal with the construction of gender differences via biomedical imaging and the creation of norms in atlases. Additionally, the de-contextualized images, showing idiosyncratic selections and reducing complexity are used to popularize gendered assumptions about biological facts. (shrink)

The “Human Genome Project” was completed in 2003, shifting the focus to proteome and transcriptome research. One approach to proteomics involves the comprehensive visualization of the localization of proteins in all tissues and organs. We discuss in situ phospho‐protein atlases, which are systematized representations of the localization of proteins. Protein atlases provide important information about the identity and presence of proteins in specific organs, tissues and cells under physiological and pathological conditions. Antibody‐based immunohistochemical analysis is a powerful method for generating (...) a protein atlas. However, it is difficult to localize phosphorylated proteins under in vivo physiological conditions, even with immunohistochemistry, because these proteins tend to be dephosphorylated or phosphorylated due to the experimental manipulations. We also discuss an improved immunohistochemical method for precisely detecting phosphorylated protein, using the detection of phosphorylated ERK1/2 as an example. We consider that it is possible and useful to generate a phospho‐protein atlas. (shrink)

Les atlas linguistiques sont-ils des corpus? Nous voudrions ici montrer pourquoi certains atlas ne sont pas des corpus et comment leur informatisation pourrait, néanmoins, permettre de les exploiter comme tels. Le questionnement auquel font écho ces lignes est celui de la possibilité d’une informatisation de l’Atlas linguistique de la Wallonie (ALW), envisagée dans un premier temps comme l’intégration d’échantillons des publications dans des bases de données, exploitables via une interface de consultation en ligne. Ce travail consisterait à réduire la matière (...) de l’enquête qui avait été enrichie lors de l’édition des matériaux. Cependant, nous voudrions montrer la part d’analyse qu’il est souhaitable de conserver lors de cette réduction. (shrink)

L’interrogation en Italie du Nord : ce que les corpus nous disent et les questions qu’ils laissent ouvertesCet article traite de l’interrogation dans les variétés de l’Italie du Nord, plus précisément celles du ladin dolomitique. Une discussion sur les corpus disponibles, leurs avantages et leurs inconvénients est complétée par la présentation de mes enquêtes dialectales : méthodologie et données recueillies. Ainsi, on verra comment la recherche basée sur des corpus déjà existants et l’enquête de terrain peuvent se compléter, les données (...) des atlas linguistiques offrant un point de départ indispensable à des investigations plus spécifiques et nécessaires. (shrink)

L’interrogation en Italie du Nord : ce que les corpus nous disent et les questions qu’ils laissent ouvertesCet article traite de l’interrogation dans les variétés de l’Italie du Nord, plus précisément celles du ladin dolomitique. Une discussion sur les corpus disponibles, leurs avantages et leurs inconvénients est complétée par la présentation de mes enquêtes dialectales : méthodologie et données recueillies. Ainsi, on verra comment la recherche basée sur des corpus déjà existants et l’enquête de terrain peuvent se compléter, les données (...) des atlas linguistiques offrant un point de départ indispensable à des investigations plus spécifiques et nécessaires. (shrink)

Le Corpus oral et sonore de l’espagnol rural(COSER) est un corpus d’enquêtes orales qui a pour but l’étude de la grammaire dialectale dans la péninsule ibérique. Dans cet article, les caractéristiques du COSER et la méthodologie suivie sont décrites et comparées à celles des atlas pour ce qui concerne la recherche sur la grammaire dialectale. Grâce au COSER, de nombreux aspects syntaxiques peu connus ou totalement ignorés des dialectes espagnols ont pu être étudiés, tels que plusieurs paradigmes pronominaux, la substitution (...) du subjonctif et l’accord neutre de matière. De plus, la répartition géographique de ces aspects a parfois été considérablement élargie, et les explications traditionnelles ont été remplacées par de nouvelles, en se basant sur une meilleure connaissance des données. L’étude de la grammaire dialectale s’avère être une importante source d’information favorisant une meilleure compréhension des nombreux croisements des principes linguistiques, comme l’« Agreement Hierarchy », par exemple, et ouvrant la voie à de nouvelles approches permettant de tester leur validité. (shrink)

Le Corpus oral et sonore de l’espagnol rural(COSER) est un corpus d’enquêtes orales qui a pour but l’étude de la grammaire dialectale dans la péninsule ibérique. Dans cet article, les caractéristiques du COSER et la méthodologie suivie sont décrites et comparées à celles des atlas pour ce qui concerne la recherche sur la grammaire dialectale. Grâce au COSER, de nombreux aspects syntaxiques peu connus ou totalement ignorés des dialectes espagnols ont pu être étudiés, tels que plusieurs paradigmes pronominaux, la substitution (...) du subjonctif et l’accord neutre de matière. De plus, la répartition géographique de ces aspects a parfois été considérablement élargie, et les explications traditionnelles ont été remplacées par de nouvelles, en se basant sur une meilleure connaissance des données. L’étude de la grammaire dialectale s’avère être une importante source d’information favorisant une meilleure compréhension des nombreux croisements des principes linguistiques, comme l’« Agreement Hierarchy », par exemple, et ouvrant la voie à de nouvelles approches permettant de tester leur validité. (shrink)