The Andalusi origins of the Berbers?
Building on the contributions of H.T. Norris, Joaquín Vallvé Bermejo, Eduardo Manzano Moreno, Maya Shatzmiller and others about the Berbers, this article uses the difference between the political situation in al‐Andalus and the Maghrib in the eighth century to argue for a possible Andalusi origin of a particular use of the category “Berber.” Since before the Arab conquests the sources did not imagine that the “Berbers” inhabited northwest Africa and that today it is common to do so, the article introduces the idea of a Berberization to account for that transformation. It argues that al‐Andalus was an important early site of production of a specific notion of what Berber meant and seeks to show categories such as Arab and Berber did not refer to an unchanging objective reality and that they did not always carry the same connotations or support the same understandings. Embracing the limits posed by the historical record, the article participates in the effort of historians to replace ideologically informed convictions with a more nuanced delineation of the boundaries of the knowable.
Indicios de participación ḏimmí o muladí en los asedios carolingios a Tortosa (804/806-809)
The following article analyzes the concepts used in the Astronomer’s Vita Hludowici imperatoris to specify the Andalusian combatants defending Tortosa from Carolingian attacks between 804/806 and 809 AD. Of all these terms, Mauri and cives stand out above the rest and, consequently, receive special treatment. After comparing them with other data provided by Latin, Muslim and archaeological sources, the study concludes that the first of these concepts makes reference to Andalusian sailors groups, which are known as baḥriyyūn in Arabic literary works, and the second to Hispano-Gothic elites from the city of Tortosa
Conception of a Language Learning Environment Based on the Communicative and Actional Approaches
This paper's aim is to give a conceptual framework about the conception of a Computer Assisted Language Learning environment based on the communicative and actional approaches. In this environment, the learner is implicated in a task that he/she has to complete by interacting with a partner using his/her language competencies. Given a task, different ways exist to accomplish it and the different competencies of the learner can then be solicited with different types of interaction. Works accomplished in human computer dialogue give models to manage this interaction.