Ada Purity’s scientific contributions

Women are crucial to the survival of the nation state and the propagation of political-religious ideals. In Spain what began as an emergency call to render social services developed into a nationalistic mobilization of women for the fatherland. The Spanish Falange incorporated the women's wing, the Sección Femenina in its affairs to promote ideals that it conceived as truly feminine. In the same vein, the leader, Pilar primo de Rivera, promoted Falangist ideologies through its use of historical feminine models while maintaining the Falangist doctrines of self-sacrifice, submission and subjugation of the female to the male. Events in post war Spain however, caused fundamental changes in Spanish society which demanded a change in the principal role of the Spanish woman. Contradictions became evident in the addresses of Pilar primo de Rivera as well as in the organization's publications for women. This paper presents selected addresses which show the incongruity of Falangist ideologies with changing times.

Resumen Es un hecho que los idiomas varían con respecto a la parte del discurso que utilizan para expresar una noción gramatical o la otra, es decir, cada lengua posee sus propios mecanismos específicos. Uno de tales mecanismos en el idioma igbo se llama " sufijos extensionales ". La metodología adoptada en el trabajo es descriptiva y el intento es mostrar cómo unas nociones gramaticales expresadas a través del uso de los sufijos extensionales en igbo se realizan en español. Abstract It is a fact that each language has specific mechanisms through which it expresses grammatical notions. One of such mechanisms in the Igbo language is the use of so called " extensional suffixes ". The aim in this paper is to show through descriptive analysis how certain notions morphologically realised in the Igbo language through the use of extensional suffixes morphologically appear in Spanish.

The four linguistic varieties accepted (today) as the separate languages of Spain since her unification as one country are Castilian, Catalan, Galician and Basque (Mar-Molinero, 1997). The aforementioned languages, except Castilian, have come a long way in the history of the Iberian Peninsula to be accorded recognition in the 1978 Spanish Constitution. The existing linguistic conflicts in Spain go as far back as the 18 th century through to the 20 th century. These conflicts, propelled by nationalistic and political ideas of the ruling class, resulted in successive suppression and outright prohibition of the use of Spain's minority languages. This paper traces these conflicts in Spain from the 18 th century. It will be seen that each minority linguistic group reacted differently to the conflict situation, but with far-reaching consequences for its sustenance in the 21 st century. The insights from the developments in Spain is related to the indigenous languages in Nigeria in the hope that the educational framework for the promotion of Spain's minority languages enacted with the onset of democracy, would encourage a change in our educational language policy in Nigeria to the benefit and furtherance of the indigenous languages.

The need for a cross-dialectal Igbo dictionary has always been felt. The signs of this can be found in Koelle's Polyglotta Africana (1854) and in Armstrongs's wordlist (1967) amongst others, which contained words from several Igbo dialects. However, inspite of the gradual increase in the number of Igbo dictionaries (Echeruo 1998; Igwe 1999), none of them can be described as cross-dialectal. There is therefore a need to reflect on how a cross-dialectal dictionary of the Igbo language can be developed. The paper summarizes the history of the development of the Spanish Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (The Panhispanic Dictionary of Doubts) as an analogy to explore the possibilities of a cross-dialectal Igbo dictionary. The conclusion is that the Spanish Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (Panhispanic Dictionary of Doubts) could serve as a model for the development of a cross-dialectal Igbo dictionary, without one however losing sight of the peculiarities of the Igbo language.

Celebrating ten years of democratic rule in Nigeria provides an opportunity to also look across the shores of our country and see how the dividends of democratic rule is contributing to the maintenance and development of a language. The country of focus in this paper is Spain, the region, to be exact, is the autonomous region of Catalonia, and the language in question is Catalan (Català), one of the regional languages in Spain. The Catalan language underwent suppression and even prohibition during the Franco era of dictatorship (1939-1975). This notwithstanding, it survived this difficult period as its speakers continued to impart the language to their children (though secretly). With the onset of democracy, Catalan experienced a resurgence that has led to its being a language of prestige even within Spain itself. This paper looks at the factors that led to the sustenance of Catalan during the period of dictatorship. It also examines how the democratic process has been utilised by the speakers of the language for its development. It is hoped that the Catalan experience can serve as a basis for reflection on the opportunities a democratic setting can offer to our own languages in Nigeria.