This paper invites discussion on the proposition of compiling a Palestinian Arabic emotive lexicon that would incorporate in its entries, in addition to cognitive definitions, the emotions, associations, connotations, metaphors, idioms, and non-verbal expressions that are commonly associated with a given word. My main working hypothesis is that semantics must address emotions, i.e., that words, and not only their peripheral elements, carry emotive content. Ignoring these, empathies (temporary term), the manner in which expression is “understood” within a given culture, is partial, at best. Research is to be carried out both quantitatively, in field research, and qualitatively, by literary analysis. The many theoretical, as well as the practical, pitfalls of this suggestion are taken into consideration. The paper's appendices include a sample entry and a sample questionnaire.

“The natives of all unknown countries are commonly called Indians” Maximilian of Transylvania, De molucco (1523)

On November 17, 1307, the Armenian king, Het'um II, was assassinated by a Mongol, recently converted to Islam, the noyan Bularghu. In this paper I will look at this assassination, which has often been seen as significant in the context of the conversion of the Mongols of Persia to Islam, and also at the effects, or perceived effects, of that conversion, especially regarding Ilkhanid foreign policy. I shall consider the attitude of the Ilkhans to the small Armenian kingdom centred on Cilicia, now in south-eastern Turkey, which, by 1307 had shrunk from the size and importance it had enjoyed in the middle of the thirteenth century. First, I intend briefly to describe Armenian relations with the Mongols, from the irruption of the latter until about 1307; then I shall discuss the assassination, the sources and reasons for it; next I shall look at the conversion of the Mongol rulers of Persia to Islam, and any effects that this may have had on Ilkhanid foreign policy; finally I shall consider how both this conversion and the assassination have been interpreted by historians, and what this event actually shows us about the effects of the Mongol Ilkhans' conversion to Islam on their relationship with their subject, Christian, Armenian satellite.

The interpretation of the Rigveda presents enormous problems for Vedic scholars, as Stephanie Jamison recently acknowledged in a paper on translating the Rigveda delivered at the Eleventh UCLA Indo-European Conference held in 1999. “It is discouragingly common to find passages in the Rig Veda that do not make sense without the silent supplying of additional material”. (2000: 13)

In the autumn of 1929, a Kyôto-based journal for popular medicine reported that the dean of sexology, Habuto Eiji, had committed suicide after having suffered from neurasthenia (shinkei suijaku) for a long time. A practicing gynaecologist, Habuto had been the editor of the sexological journal Seiyoku to Jinsei (Sexual Desire and Humankind), the author of numerous books on sexual issues, and the co-author, together with Sawada Junjirô, of an abridged Japanese version of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, entitled Hentai Seiyokuron (1915). He also was involved in the translation of Havelock Ellis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1901–1928), the twenty Japanese-language volumes which were advertised under the title Sei no Shinri as early as in 1927. Among other sexologists, Habuto had been a chief theorist on the causes of neurasthenia. Physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, pedagogues, and sexologists agreed with him that neurasthenia primarily afflicted men and was caused by overpowering exhaustion that was in turn the result of certain sexual practices. Modern commentators like Habuto speculated that neurasthenia was the result of masturbation or – even worse – homosexuality.