David Graf and Molisan

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Acting career 3 Death 4 References 5 External links

Early life and education

Graf was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and later moved to Lancaster, Ohio and graduated from Lancaster High School. He studied theatre at Otterbein College in Westerville, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio where he graduated in 1972. He attended graduate school at Ohio State University until 1975, when he dropped out to pursue his acting career. Acting career

Graf made his first television appearance as a contestant on the game show The $20,000 Pyramid in December 1979, where he teamed with actress Patty Duke. (He would later appear on subsequent versions of the show as a celebrity guest, twice with Duke.) As a struggling actor in the early 1980s, he also took small roles in popular sitcoms, including M*A*S*H, The Dukes of Hazzard, Airwolf, Hardcastle and McCormick and The A-Team.

He made his film debut in 1981 when he played Gergley in the drama Four Friends. Graf later played the trigger-happy Cadet Eugene Tackleberry (later Sgt. Tackleberry) in the 1984 comedy Police Academy, and starred in each of six sequels. In 1986, Graf had a role as Councilman Harlan Nash on the short-lived sitcom He's the Mayor. In 1992, Graf returned to play a minor role as a police officer again for the comedy series Seinfeld during its fourth season episode "The Ticket" and also appeared on Night Court. He played Tackleberry for the final time in a guest appearance on the short-lived Police Academy: The Series.

Graf also made notable guest appearances following his role in the Police Academy series, including a repeating part in The West Wing, several appearances in Star Trek: Voyager episode ("The 37s") and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In the latter series, he played a Klingon called Leskit in the fifth season episode "Soldiers of the Empire".

Graf was Lt. Weismann in the movie Suture in 1993 and Ralph Brinker in the Disney Channel movie Brink! in 1998.

Graf made a guest appearance in an episode of the short-lived ABC sitcom Teen Angel as a camp leader for Steve Beauchamp's little sister Katie, in the 1997-1998 season. In 2000, he made an appearance on The Amanda Show as a paramedic who accidentally swapped pagers with Amanda Bynes. He also made an appearance on Lois and Clark The New Adventures of Superman season 2 episode 20 as a reporter for the Daily Planet.

Graf also had a small role in 1995's The Brady Bunch Movie, portraying Alice's boyfriend Sam Franklin, the butcher. In 1996, Graf also made a guest appearance in Promised Land (which was a spinoff of Touched by an Angel). He played the role of a grieving husband whose wife died while working for a company and he went there trying to find answers to her death.

Graf guest starred in several episodes of ABC's sitcom Step By Step in the 1990s. He also starred in the second episode of the third season of ABC's Home Improvement as angler Chuck Norwood. Some of his last acting performances were two guest appearances as Pentagon staff member Colonel Chase in the series The West Wing ("The Drop-In" and "The Portland Trip") and as Jacques Douche in the Son of the Beach TV series episode "Grand Prix". Graf's last acting role was the Nickelodeon sitcom The Amanda Show just three months until his death. Death

Graf died of a heart attack on April 7, 2001, nine days before his 51st birthday, while attending a family wedding in Phoenix, Arizona. He was subsequently buried at Forest Rose Cemetery in Lancaster, Ohio.

Molisan and David Graf

For centuries, the area of Molise was part of the Kingdom of Naples, and later part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It is not spoken in a large area (over Isernia, Termoli and Riccia), but within this area there are many linguistic variations due to diverging historical events. Before the Italian unification some eastern parts of Molise were part of the Province of Foggia (Capitanata), whilst some western areas, in particular Venafro, were part of the Terra di Lavoro (literally "Land of Work"), and Upper Molise was part of Abruzzo.

For this very reason, the dialect spoken in Venafro may well be likened to the dialects of Campania and Naples. Some areas have also experienced an upsurge of minority languages such as Serbo-Croatian and Albanian, whereas other areas of Molise represent isolated communities with little outside contact, who consequently appear to be more conservative. The Frentana area (Termoli, Larino, Trivento) and Upper Molise has dialects that are more closely related to Southern Abruzzese.

Similarly to Neapolitan, Molisan contains words and sounds that are similar to those in Spanish but are not necessarily of Spanish origin. These include sartania (“pan”, similar to Spanish sartén), sctreppiàte (“broken”, similar to Spanish estropeado), and petacce (“piece”, similar to Spanish pedazo). The Roccamandolfi dialect of Isernia, a province in Molise, shares many phonetic characteristics with Spanish.

With the exception of loan words from Italian and Neapolitan, it has no palatal 'gl' sound (similar to the second syllable of million in the Received Pronunciation accent of British English) and instead employs the intervocalic /j/, as in the written Spanish 'll'. Roccamandolfi also maintains diphthongisation in metaphony through 'ue', rather than Standard Italian 'uo', such as in fuéche (Italian fuoco, "fire"), cuéche (Italian cuoco, "cook") and uéve (Italian uovo, "egg"). Molisan also contains lexis derived from a substratum of Oscan, a language spoken by the Samnites. For example, pjéskje (“rocks” or “stones”) is related to Oscan *psk. Characteristics

As in all Southern Italian dialects, the Molisan dialect group also employs vowel reduction. In all unstressed positions, vowels (often with the exception of 'a') are presented by schwa /ə/, whilst vowels in a stressed position are fully pronounced. This is in line with Standard Italian phonology, in that the schwa never appears in a stressed position. Any vowel following a stressed syllable in a certain word is pronounced as a schwa. A final unstressed vowel, when followed by a pause, may be used for emphasis and is only mandatory when the word is immediately followed by a word with an initial consonant. Note that the schwa is a phoneme in itself, and distinguishes words of different meanings such as I səparə ("I separate myself") and I sparə ("I shoot"). The Molisan dialect group also displays the following phonological features: harsh pronunciation of single /z/ (unvoiced) compared to the more elongated Italian pronunciation, e.g. Italian situazione ("situation"): /sitwa'ts: jone/; Molisan: /sətwa'tsjonə/ all unvoiced consonants following nasals become voiced, a phenomenon particularly common in many Central Italian dialects, e.g. Italian ancora ("still") is pronounced in Molisan as angora) pronunciation of /s/ as ‘sh’ (as in "she") when it immediately precedes /t/, in direct opposition with the Neapolitan dialect phenomenon in which /s/ is pronounced as ‘sh’ except when immediately preceding /t/

In the western area of the region (the Province of Isernia) spoken dialects share some common features: rhotacism of masculine definite articles, e.g. Italian il cane ("the dog") becomes re cuàne in Roccamandolfi, and l'uccellino ("little bird") becomes ru cellùcce rhotacism of /d/, although this is applied inconsistently palatalization of Italian 'll' to "gl", e.g. Italian cappello ("hat") becomes cappiégle displacement of the central stressed 'a' when it appears between /a/, /e/ or /o/ in past participles, e.g. Italian mangiato ("eaten") becomes magnæt

The eastern and Adriatic areas of Molise (the Province of Campobasso) hosts yet more linguistic variation, with some features nonhomogeneously distributed across the region: closure of stressed 'e' when not appearing at the beginning of a word, e.g. Italian bene ("well", "good") becomes béne, in Capoluogo closure of stressed 'o' when in the middle of the word, e.g. Italian volta ("time") becomes vóte, in Capoluogo palatalisation of the central 'a' when immediately preceding the word's stressed syllable, e.g. Italian Madonna becomes Medonne, and pallone ("ball") becomes pellone, in the area of Ripalimosani
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