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Examining a multilingual dataset of Twitter and Instagram messages posted by a variety of actors (NGOs and individual activists, small brands, and others) during the 2020 and 2021 Fashion Revolution Week campaigns for a more sustainable fashion system, we analyze frequently occurring discursive representations and self-representations that include individual mentions of persons or small brands. We show that individual mentions are mostly proposed in the tweets and Instagram messages posted by small brands and that they count as argumentation from example. Arguments based on a locus from example are part of two simultaneous argumentative patterns, responding to different issues and using two different maxims, respectively based on induction and from a principle 'from truth to possibility'; in the latter case, brands represent themselves as best practice cases, showing that a more sustainable fashion system is possible because it is already happening. Our findings contribute to explaining how the activity type of digital activism successfully integrates multiple goals of different actors (citizens, NGOs, brands) in the campaigning by offering the possibility of simultaneous argumentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the politics of space, freedom and creativity through the prism of novelistic discourse in Margaret Atwood's novel Hag-Seed (2016), which is a twenty-first-century adaptation of Shakespeare's play, The Tempest (1610–1611). Hag-Seed, set in a Canadian prison, narrates the revenge orchestrated by the protagonist Felix on his antagonists Tony and Sal. Felix, an instructor in a prison-reform programme called the Fletcher's Correctional Program where he teaches Shakespeare to the inmates, asks them to predict the future of the characters in The Tempest. The prisoners demonstrate agentivity as they bring their individual perspectives to bear on their interpretations. This paper locates its analysis within one such interpretation provided by the prisoners, and Felix's interpretation of bondage and freedom within creative spaces, based on the words 'Set me free' uttered by Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest. Can freedom exist as a discourse without the accompanying discourse of bondage? How does creativity within sub/cultural spaces mediate agentivity? The trope of prison shapes discourses on space and creativity in Hag-Seed. By considering the interpretations generated by the prisoners and the novelistic discourse, I explore the politics of creativity as moderated within and through the discourse of space, and its implications for freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue on "Human-Plant Interfaces: Relationality, Knowledge and Practices" briefly makes a case for the ethnography of the human-plant interface by referring to three interrelated aspects that emerge from the set of papers that follow. These aspects involve the radical interconnectedness of humans, plants and things; the need to consider the agentivity of plants; and challenges to methodological orthodoxies. This task calls up key theoretical orientations that seek to include plants in research, description and theorisation. Further, the papers collected here gather perspectives from a range of plant practitioners and locate them in their respective circuits of knowledge. The planthropologies and plantographies produced show that plants are situated in a network of ecologies, sites, practitioners, philosophies and practices of knowledge making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the current paper is to investigate how Case is assigned to non-canonical nominal expressions which are distinct from Case-marking on canonical subject and object arguments. More specifically, we focus on Case marking to nominalized verbs in Korean Long-Form negation constructions. As other nominal expressions get Case in Korean, the nominalized verbs with the -ci marker in Long-Form negation constructions can also get either NOM or ACC. However, the distributions of Case marking in this paper show that Case markers attached to the nominalized verbs are not randomly assigned, but it is systematically given depending on syntactic and semantic properties of the nominalized verbs. This paper proposes two distinct conditions as follows: the negated auxiliary verb anh (i) assigns only ACC Case to its nominalized verb complement or (ii) assigns either NOM or ACC Case allowing free Case alternation. To solve the puzzle of distinct Case assignment, this paper argues that agentivity is the important factor in deciding Case marking on the nominalized verb. Evidence from the data further proves that if nominalized verbs have +Agent feature, then the feature can percolate up to the Case assigner anh, and it eventually forces to assign only ACC Case back onto the nominalized verb. If not, the auxiliary verb anh cannot have +Agent feature and assigns either NOM or ACC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our everyday life is increasingly permeated with digital objects that carry out smart and complex functions. The latest (but certainly not final) advancement of smart digital applications – is to be identified the creation of a field, at once conceptual and material, of things denominated smart objects (henceforth SOs). This technological evolution is so pervasive that it is referred to as smartification. Smart objects have some distinctive features including in particular varying degrees of agency, autonomy and authority. There is no doubt that the SO category is extremely broad, various and intrinsically fuzzy, it is evident that the phenomenon is by no means easy to define: which objects are really smart and which are not? But above all: what do we mean in semio-linguistic, and not psychological nor merely phenomenological terms, when we attribute the qualifier smart to an artifact? What is clear is that a new, or at least different (and controversial) relationship is developing between objects and subjects, or rather between human beings and objects inhabiting the spaces of social action: that is, a new system of objects, to cite Baudrillard (1968), or a new "society of objects" (see Landowski and Marrone 2002). In this paper we will focus on a type of smart physical device designed to interact with its users in the domestic sphere, assisting them in a variety of tasks – such as for example Amazon Echo, capable of connecting to Alexa, an intelligent personal assistant based on machine learning, or the more recent Google Assistant. Our semiotic-oriented – or, more precisely, potentially socio-semiotic/ethno-semiotic – analysis will deal with these issues theoretically by concentrating on the problem of identity, which is anthropologically, but also and above all philosophically, sensitive. We shall look at the impact of technological devices on the perceptive/cognitive systems of human beings, starting with a reflection on the practices of interaction, signification and interpretation that also involve digital objects with a possible impact on everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory paper interrogates the various ways in which knowledge about plants has historically been generated. It first examines how plant knowledge is located in and understood by traditional studies of plants, such as ethnobotany. It pushes at the accepted boundaries of plant studies where related concepts like anthropocene and planetary challenge the certainties felt in ethnobotanical and other plant studies. It thus contributes to a growing body of work that wants to examine the imponderabilia of plant life. Second, the paper questions the orthodoxies concerning knowledge transfer and suggests an alternate set of transfer lines. The paper shows that plant practitioners do not consider the acquisition and production of plant knowledge as simply an intellectual matter or one of mere curiosity but rather as requiring particular bodily and psychic states that enable access to deeper and hidden plant knowledge. These states are "known" to plants and they can choose to reveal them to plant practitioners or not. The paper closes with the argument that plant blindness holds the key to reading the magical properties of plants and, in part, suggests their occult and esoteric uses and agentivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of verbal help constructions in English and Norwegian. It is based on data from the English–Norwegian Parallel Corpus, and discusses 11 constructions in all, nine of which have a close parallel in the other language. The constructions vary in syntactic complexity from the simple intransitive, on the one-hand, to complex-transitives containing infinitive complements, on the other. The hypothesis is advanced that the simpler the basic syntactic structure of a construction, the more likely it is to be translated by a construction with a similar syntax. This hypothesis receives no support from the data. On the contrary, it is more complex constructions, containing an explicit helpee, that are more likely to be translated by a syntactically similar construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spanish reverse-psychological verbs, the experiencer argument can have accusative or dative case marking. Transitivity-based approaches identify different factors that influence this accusative-dative alternation(Miglio, Viola G., Stefan T Gries, Michael J Harris, Eva M Wheeler & Santana-Paixão Raquel. A strong predictor for accusative case marking in Spanish r-psych verbs is the animacy of the stimulus. However, there are also instances where the stimulus is inanimate and the experiencer is case marked accusative. In this paper, I provide an analysis of such instances, drawing on corpus data and native speaker judgments. I argue that agentivity, measured on a scale, is a factor that better accounts for the accusative-dative alternation exhibited by Spanish reverse-psychological verbs. I first propose a definition of agentivity and diagnostics for it; then I present evidence that there is a correlation between higher degrees of agentivity and accusative case marking and lower degrees of agentivity and dative case marking. The agentivity scale presented is not unconditional as there are several factors that contribute to case marking. Nevertheless, the agentivity scale accounts for accusative case marking with inanimates and also serves to highlight some parallels between causative verbs and reverse-psychological verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed appraisal of selected papers from Halpert et al. 2009 (Proceedings of the 2007 Workshop in Greek Syntax and Semantics at MIT) is offered here. It must be recognized that the selections represent only a small section of the wide spectrum which is Greek Linguistics today. The five papers selected for attention here reflect the reviewer's main interests but the volume as a whole contains a rich array of subjects, of theoretical orientations, and of language areas treated (beyond Greek). What is especially pleasing and encouraging about the entire volume is the number of non-Greek linguists who were chosen to offer commentary on papers and who were interested and familiar enough with Greek linguistic research to enter into scientific dialogue as commentators with the authors. Thus, Greek Linguistics is no longer isolated and its contribution is not restricted to Greek but it creates, extends and stimulates linguistic researchers everywhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in many other Germanic languages, Modern Danish combines the verb få 'get' and a semantic main verb in the supine form (the uninflected perfect participle). Three main types of the construction are found: an agentive type typically interpreted as expressing successful intentional action and two non-agentive types: one with a ditransitive main verb and promotion of the indirect object to subject status, and one with a non-valency-bound subject typically interpreted as a Beneficiary. Based on a functional framework, the paper presents a corpus study of the construction and an analysis unifying all three main types in a common Affactive Construction whose functional contribution is the specification of the subject as an Afficiary (Beneficiary or Maleficiary). The distinction between agentive and non-agentive interpretation is analysed as a voice distinction between active and passive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nasleđe is the property of University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Philology & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reflects on research on medicinal plants in the Matzikama Local Municipality, Western Cape, in order to elaborate on methodological possibilities and their problematic in such studies. Classical ethnographic research is usually conducted from an anthropocentric viewpoint, but our intimate engagement with plants compelled us to experiment with a range of methodological tools in order to gain deeper and wider insight into plant worlds. We paused, spent time to dwell with plants, drew on all our senses and learned new ways to be attentive to plants and their more-than-human sociality and entanglements. This expanded our perceptual skills as we reassessed how to study, engage plants with care and think about and with them afresh. The thrust of our efforts was to draw plants from the margin of research, without anthropomorphising them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A phenomenon often termed “optional ergative marking” is found in a number of genetically unrelated languages. Yali, a Trans-New Guinea language spoken in West Papua, shows striking similarities to optional ergative systems as described in the literature. This paper focuses on the relation between agentivity and discourse prominence, and argues in favour of a systematic distinction between semantic and syntactic contexts as conditioning factors for optional ergative marking. It further provides new evidence for the close interplay of ergative marking and what has been termed “discourse prominence” in descriptions of some other languages and shows that in Yali, optional ergative marking operates on both the global and the local level of discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first objective of this paper is to provide justification for the claim that variation between the prepositions por 'by' and de 'of' introducing the subject argument in Spanish nominalisations should not be explained as primarily paralleling sentence-level voice or aspectual distinctions. The strongest arguments against assuming a direct analogy between the clausal and the phrasal levels with respect to these functional categories are, on the one hand, that the use of agentive por-phrases is far from limited to nominals which can reasonably be claimed to bear a resemblance to a passive structure and on the other, that de-marking of the Agent is fully compatible with an activity reading of the nominal, as opposed to a result reading. Secondly, as an alternative, it is proposed that the use of por vs. de relates to the perceived degree of agentivity of the subject referent, correlated with the degree of affectedness experienced by the object referent and that por functions as a semantic marker overtly signalling agentivity rather than a syntactic marker of subjective Case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the ongoing public controversy surrounding fashion sustainability, this paper sets out to identify misalignments that relate to the definitions of sustainable fashion. It does so by examining the discourse of different agents in this polylogical argumentation - fashion companies and the European Parliament as well as citizens, small brands and NGOs - as revealed through documents and tweets published online. Our findings show misalignments in the opening stage of the argumentative discussion at the level of explicit and implicit definitions of sustainability as well as in how the agents responsible are discursively portrayed. We argue that the existence of these misalignments may explain the ongoing controversy surrounding sustainable fashion: the different actors do not share univocal starting points and representations of this phenomenon. Methodologically, this paper also advances research on argumentative polylogues, by demonstrating a method for comparing argumentation by different actors using different data sources. • Introduces the concept of argumentative misalignments in public controversies. • Analyzes misalignments in implicit and explicit definitions of sustainable fashion. • Proposes a method to empirically analyze argumentative polylogue • Integrates argumentation analysis with the analysis of how agentivity is represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Signos is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Signos is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Jezikoslovlje is the property of University of Osijek, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Études de Stylistique Anglaise is the property of Societe de Stylistique Anglaise and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper we analyse Spanish verbal constructions that accept both the clitic se and the prefix auto- in order to determine whether these formations are or are not more agentive than the corresponding non-prefixed constructions (autocriticarse vs. criticarse). The proposal arises from the discussion about the different semantic values observed in formations with auto- and explores the distinctive features of such formations in contrast to those without auto-. We carried out a twofold analysis: first, we applied a set of tests of agentivity and control to a sample of 130 verbs with auto- extracted from the Modern Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA) and compared the sample with its non-prefixed pronominal pairs (i.e. verbs with clitic se). Second, we carried out a series of surveys using similar tests with Spanish speakers to guarantee the acceptability of the corpus interpretations. We argue that prefixed constructions show a higher degree of agentivity and control by external arguments, which results in the impossibility of bidirectionally replacing these constructions with those that only have the clitic se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mandarin Chinese modal particle de has several interesting aspects to explore in formal semantics. Its interpretations include ability, disposition, and opportunity modalities. The three uses are all universal quantifiers. This paper focuses primarily on the ability use. This use has an agentivity requirement on the de subject. The semantics for ability de given in this paper makes reference to an enhanced Belief-Desire-Intention agent model and nicely captures the agentivity requirement. Ability de is incompatible with a past-denoting temporal phrase, except when the temporal phrase associates with certain focus sensitive elements or otherwise receives focus intonation. I argue that the general incompatibility of ability de with a past-denoting temporal phrase stems from the semantic requirement that the topic time of an ability de sentence should coincide with or follow the evaluation time of de, which is the utterance time by default. On the other hand, there are temporal shifters which can backward-shift the evaluation time to the topic time and as such, salvage otherwise ungrammatical ability de sentences that contain a past-denoting temporal phrase. The paper also discusses, albeit to a lesser extent, the disposition and opportunity uses of de. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Teotitlán Zapotec, some, but not all, verbs undergo stem alternation in the 1st person forms, in addition to the attachment of the pronominal enclitics that encode the subject argument. We argue that stem alternation and pronominal cliticization are independent from one another and that each encodes different grammatical features, agent and subject, respectively. The phenomenon discussed in this paper is peculiar in two respects. First, stem alternation as the exponent of the agent is cross-linguistically rare (although it is common within the Otomanguean languages). Furthermore, the category of agentivity has not been studied in detail in Zapotecan languages, but this paper shows the pervasiveness of agentivity in the Teotitlán Zapotec grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses ergativity in Bumthang. In 2016, Donohue & Donohue reported on the variable use of the ergative case marker in Bumthang transitive clauses. They identified a number of largely pragmatic, semantic, and informational structural contexts that license the use of the ergative case on the subjects. Given the nature of the factors involved we examined similar conditions for arguments of monovalent verbs, not a typical context for receiving ergative case if structural conditions were uniquely determining case, but which would likely also be sensitive to these same factors. We find that there are some contexts in which the sole argument of an monovalent verb can bear ergative case, drawing on some of the same features, but not identical to those relevant for transitive verbs. In particular, the notion of agentivity is of paramount importance for licensing ergative case arguments of monovalent verbs, and we discuss the set of factors that need to coincide for this to happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Miedzy Oryginalem a Przekladem is the property of Ksiegarnia Akademicka Sp. zo.o and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Historical sociolinguistics has favoured the interest in tracing heterogeneity and vernacularity in the history of language, reconstructing the sociolinguistic contexts and directions of language change as well as socially based variation patterns in remote speech communities. But this treatment of language variation and change macroscopically, longitudinally, unidimensionally and focused on the speech community as a macro-cosmos can be revealingly complemented with other views microscopically, cross-sectionally, multidimensionally and privileging individuals and their community of practice as a micro-cosmos. This conveys a shift from the study of collectivity and inter-speaker variation to that of individuality, intra-speaker variation and authenticity. The aim of this paper is to show results of the microscopic investigation of intra-speaker variation and the use of stylistic choices as linguistic resources for persona management within the micro-cosmos of late Medieval England, through the application of current multidimensional socio-constructionist models to historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the behaviour of the orthographic variable (TH) in the letters written by members of the Paston family. In addition to tracing language change, the data obtained from private letters provide us with the possibility of reconstructing the sociolinguistic values in medieval times. Ultimately, this study’s contribution is to account for the social meaning of inter- and intra-speaker variation in the sociolinguistic behaviour of speakers at the individual level as a linguistic resource for identity construction, representation, and even social positioning in interpersonal communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the linguistic resources used by speakers to profile the participants in taboo actions, focusing on expressions for the concept abortar 'to abort' in Spanish sociolinguistic interviews. The tokens referring to the action are analysed in terms of linguistic features that affect agentivity at the level of verbs, subjects and objects. The combination of different linguistic features is classified in three levels of agentivity (prototypical agents, non-prototypical agents and non-agents) with various sublevels. The presence of modals further contributes to reducing agentivity, causing the maximally agentive profiling to be rather infrequent. Second, though the direct construal abortar is generally preferred, the levels of agentivity interplay with onomasiological variation. Third, social variables are not significantly correlated with the levels of agentivity. The paper concludes that mitigating agentivity is a euphemistic strategy against the taboo of a fully agentive woman who aborts, based on the cultural conceptualization of unwanted abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics, this paper analyzes the discursive construction of human rights violations in the report of the Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, also called Rettig Commission. We show that there is a strong contrast in how the victims and perpetrators are represented in the case descriptions. While the victims are clearly identified, the perpetrators are not identified individually. Moreover, through a variety of strategies, the agent of the human rights violations often remains vague or unexpressed. Furthermore, we show that different sources of information are included in the event description - entailing different windows of attention - save the perpetrator's testimonies. By doing so, the report clearly privileges in its discursive construction of the events the non-attribution of responsibility over the completeness of information principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tsujimura and Aikawa (J Assoc Teach Jpn 33: 26-43, ) argue that objectless zi-verbs in Japanese uniformly have the unaccusative argument structure based on two tests for unaccusativity (resultative predication and quantifier floating). In this paper, we provide new evidence against their uniform unaccusative analysis. Applying several other diagnostics for external/internal argumenthood in Japanese, we demonstrate that objectless zi-verbs instantiate a full range of argument structure configurations: (a) transitive (e.g., zi-satu-suru 'kill oneself'), (b) unaccusative (e.g., zi-kai-suru 'collapse by itself'), and (c) unergative (e.g., zi-sui-suru 'cook for oneself'). We further show that our new analysis framed in terms of the Lexical Conceptual Structure not only derives the various properties of the three types of objectless zi-verbs but also derives the different argument structural functions and meanings that the zi-morpheme is associated with in each type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of this paper are to analyse the semantic determinants of the prepositional passive using verb meaning as a criterion, and to discuss related theoretical perspectives using corpus data. A coarse-grained classification of prepositional verbs is implemented, as a result of which activity verbs and verbs of experience are both acknowledged as passivizable predicates on a general basis. Assuming the paradigm of agentivity properties as proposed in Dowty (1991) and related literature, it is argued that [cause] and [sentience] are both necessary and sufficient in order to explain the passivizability of the above-mentioned verb types or classes. It is claimed that [cause] ranks higher than [sentience] for (transitive) active structures but not for prepositional passive structures, and that [animacy] lies at the bottom of this contrast. Although object affectedness is assumed to be part of the definition of [cause], and therefore not to be a necessary condition for the prepositional passive, objects of experience verbs are explicitly argued not to be affected entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using video-recordings from one day of a theater project for young adults, this paper investigates how the meaning of novel verbal expressions is interactionally constituted and elaborated over the interactional history of a series of activities. We examine how the theater director introduces and instructs the group in the Chekhovian technique of acting, which is based on "imagining with the body," and how the imaginary elements of the technique are "brought into existence" in the language of the instructions. By tracking shifts in the instructor's use of the key expressions invisible/imaginary/inner body or movement through a series of exercises, we demonstrate how they are increasingly treated as real and perceivable bodily conduct. The analyses focus on the instructor's attribution of factual and agentive properties to these expressions, and the changes that these properties undergo over the series of instructions. This case demonstrates the significance of longitudinal processes for the establishment of shared meaning in social interaction. The study thereby contributes to the field of interactional semantics and to longitudinal studies of social interaction. • Instructions of the Chekhovian acting technique to a group of novices are examined. • The 'inner body' as a creative resource becomes increasingly established as common ground. • The meaning of 'inner/invisible/imaginary body' is constituted and enriched over an interactional history. • Bodily practices are used to convey the meaning of imaginary objects and actions. • Factual and agentive properties of expressions change over the interactional history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synergies Espagne is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic bases for a pattern of conventionalization of two types of iconic handshapes are described. Work on sign languages has shown that handling handshapes (H- HSs: those that represent how objects are handled or manipulated) and object handshapes (O- HSs: those that represent the class, size, or shape of objects) express an agentive/non-agentive semantic distinction in many sign languages. H- HSs are used in agentive event descriptions and O- HSs are used in non-agentive event descriptions. In this work, American Sign Language ( ASL) and Italian Sign Language ( LIS) productions are compared (adults and children) as well as the corresponding groups of gesturers in each country using 'silent gesture.' While the gesture groups, in general, did not employ an H- HS/O- HS distinction, all participants (signers and gesturers) used iconic handshapes (H- HSs and O- HSs together) more often in agentive than in no-agent event descriptions; moreover, none of the subjects produced an opposite pattern than the expected one (i.e., H- HSs associated with no-agent descriptions and O- HSs associated with agentive ones). These effects are argued to be grounded in cognition. In addition, some individual gesturers were observed to produce the H- HS/O- HS opposition for agentive and non-agentive event descriptions-that is, more Italian than American adult gesturers. This effect is argued to be grounded in culture. Finally, the agentive/non-agentive handshape opposition is confirmed for signers of ASL and LIS, but previously unreported cross-linguistic differences were also found across both adult and child sign groups. It is, therefore, concluded that cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors contribute to the conventionalization of this distinction of handshape type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse Spanish verbal constructions that accept both the clitic se and the prefix auto- in order to determine whether these formations are or are not more agentive than the corresponding non-prefixed constructions (autocriticarse vs. criticarse). The proposal arises from the discussion about the different semantic values observed in formations with auto- and explores the distinctive features of such formations in contrast to those without auto-. We carried out a twofold analysis: first, we applied a set of tests of agentivity and control to a sample of 130 verbs with auto- extracted from the Modern Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA) and compared the sample with its non-prefixed pronominal pairs (i.e. verbs with clitic se). Second, we carried out a series of surveys using similar tests with Spanish speakers to guarantee the acceptability of the corpus interpretations. We argue that prefixed constructions show a higher degree of agentivity and control by external arguments, which results in the impossibility of bidirectionally replacing these constructions with those that only have the clitic se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least three DOM-related constructions can be observed in Ancient Greek, but only one of them has received due consideration in the DOM bibliography (Bossong 1998). In this paper I will deal with the other two: the partitive genitive and a borderline instance of alternation in case marking of objects due to aspectual and affectedness variations in the interpretation of the predicate. I will also deal with the relation of the neuter accusative of unspecific objects with DOM, a relatively neglected construction. Central to the relation of Ancient Greek with DOM is the fact that its case marking is both universal and obligatory (or 'symmetrical' in two different uses of the term). This explains why in Ancient Greek the functions differentiated by DOM are not Subject and Object, but Object and Extensions to core. Following other authors, I present here some examples of Spanish that show how the 'differentiating' function (Comrie 1989) is not enough to explain DOM, even in the classical example of a DOM system, thus making clear the necessity to include constructions as the two mentioned above in a comprehensive definition of DOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines novice writers' strategies in the (non-)representation of authorship in academic writing drawing on data from the Corpus of Academic Learner English and a native-speaker control corpus. The analysis focuses on the quantitative and qualitative use of pronouns, subject placeholders, as well as verbs and inanimate nouns that frequently occur in academic writing. The findings indicate that even advanced learners are insecure about the (non-)representation of authorship in academic texts, but lack the resources to report events and findings without mentioning an author-agent. The learner data evidence a significant overrepresentation of first person pronouns and subject placeholders as default strategies to suppress the author-agent. This imbalanced clustering is argued to be due to a significant underrepresentation of constructions with inanimate nouns as subjects that are preferred reporting devices in abstracts and research articles in the humanities. The paper concludes by addressing implications for language teaching, testing and assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with some restrictions on the formation of -able adjectives from object experiencer verbs in comparison to subject experiencer verbs, focusing on English and Greek. Building on Oltra-Massuet (2013), the paper assumes that there are two places of attachment for -able, a high one, which combines with a structure including passive Voice, and a low one, which combines with a smaller structure. While subject experiencer verbs combine with low -able in both languages, the behavior of object experiencer verbs is not uniform. The unavailability of high -able formation with object experiencer verbs is correlated with the unavailability of passivization. In English, only those object experiencer verbs that yield a well-formed passive can combine with high -able. In Greek, OE verbs do not form passives or -able adjectives. The differences between English and Greek are accounted for by appealing to differences in their Voice systems, with specific reference to passive formation.

This paper tested an assumption of the gradient model of split intransitivity put forward by Sorace (“Split Intransitivity Hierarchy” (SIH), 2000, 2004), namely that agentivity is a fundamental feature for unergatives but not for unaccusatives. According to this hypothesis, the animacy of the verb’s argument should affect the processing of unergative verbs to a greater extent than unaccusative verbs. By using eye-tracking methodology we monitored the online processing and integration costs of the animacy of the verb’s argument in intransitive verbs. We observed that inanimate subjects caused longer reading times only for unergative verbs, whereas the animacy of the verb’s argument did not influence the pattern of results for unaccusatives. In addition, the unergative verb data directly support the existence of gradient effects on the processing of the subject argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roper Kriol exhibits variation in the shape of the first-person singular pronoun in subject position. This paper provides an account of the numerous syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors that appear to influence the selection of either ai or mi based predominantly on a study of a corpus of the written language. It is claimed that the synchronic distribution of ai and mi is an innovation primarily motivated by speaker reanalysis of the semantic entailments frequently associated with English subject and object arguments – effectively evidence of the partial grammaticalisation of agentivity in these varieties. This work has implications for our understanding of ‘agentivity’ as a cross-linguistic, cognitive category and for the dynamic relationship between semantic roles and the morphosyntactic encoding of grammatical relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the hypothesis that prominence phenomena on different levels of linguistic structure are systematically related to each other. More specifically, it is hypothesized that prominence relations in morphosyntax reflect, and contribute to, prominence management in discourse. This hypothesis is empirically based on the phenomenon of agentivity clines, i.e. the observation that the relevance of agentivity features such as volition or sentience is variable across different constructions. While some constructions, including German DO-clefts, show a strong preference for highly agentive verbs, other constructions, including German basic active constructions, have no particular requirements regarding the agentivity of the verb, except that at least one agentivity feature should be present. Our hypothesis predicts that this variable relevance of agentivity features is related to the discourse constraints on the felicitous use of a given construction, which in turn, of course, requires an explicit statement of such constraints. We propose an original account of the discourse constraints on DO-clefts in German using the 'Question Under Discussion' framework. Here, we hypothesize that DO-clefts render prominent one implicit question from a set of alternative questions available at a particular point in the developing discourse. This then yields a prominent question-answer pair that changes the thematic structure of the discourse. We conclude with some observations on the possibility of relating morphosyntactic prominence (high agentivity) to discourse prominence (making a Question Under Discussion prominent by way of clefting). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While self-organization has been an integral part of academic discussions about the distinctive features of living organisms, at least since Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgement, the term 'self-assembly' has only been used for a few decades as it became a hot research topic with the emergence of nanotechnology. Could it be considered as an attempt at reducing vital organization to a sort of assembly line of molecules? Considering the context of research on self-assembly I argue that the shift of attention from self-organization to self-assembly does not really challenge the boundary between chemistry and biology. Self-assembly was first and foremost investigated in an engineering context as a strategy for manufacturing without human intervention and did not raise new perspectives on the emergence of vital organization itself. However self-assembly implies metaphysical assumptions that this paper tries to disentangle. It first describes the emergence of self-assembly as a research field in the context of materials science and nanotechnology. The second section outlines the metaphysical implications and will emphasize a sharp contrast between the ontology underlying two practices of self-assembly developed under the umbrella of synthetic biology. And unexpectedly, we shall see that chemists are less on the reductionist side than most synthetic biologists. Finally, the third section ventures some reflections on the kind of design involved in self-assembly practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While understanding and expressing causal relations are universal aspects of human cognition, language users may differ in their capacity to perceive, interpret, and express events. One source of variation in descriptions of caused motion events is agentivity, which refers to the attribution of a result to the agent's action. Depending on the perspective taken, the same event may be described with agentive or non-agentive interpretations. Does language play a role in how people construe and express caused motion events? The present study investigated the use of agentive vs. non-agentive language by speakers of different languages (i.e., monolingual speakers of English and Korean, and Korean learners of English). All three groups described prototypical causal events similarly, using agentive language (active transitive sentences). However, when it came to non-prototypical causal events (where the agent was not shown in the scene), they diverged in their choice of language: English speakers favored agentive language (passive transitive sentences), whereas Korean speakers preferred non-agentive language (intransitive sentences). Korean learners of English patterned with Korean speakers, demonstrating L1 influence on their use of English. These findings highlight the effects of language on motion event construal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the work of the American microbiologist Lynn Margulis, this paper proposes an overview of the ontological, epistemological and methodological contribution made by scientific and anthropological analyses concerning bacteria. The aim is to show how attention to bacterial microfauna has led to a renewed understanding of both the living world and materiality, opening up a horizon of thought for living matter. Bacteria transform organic and inorganic matter and appear therefore to be capable of agentivity, of doing and acting. In order to understand, from their point of view, the meaning of materials, and to think about matter through the prism of its particular combinations and specific transformations, an alchemist reading of the bacterial world, based on the new materialisms, allows us to underline the entanglement of matter and interactions, and to deepen the decentring in a more-than-human direction.

The present paper reports two acceptability-rating experiments and a supporting corpus study for Polish that tested the acceptability and frequency of five verb classes (WATCH, SEE, HATE, KNOW, EXHIBIT), entailing different sets of agentivity features, in different syntactic constructions: a) the personal passive (e.g. zachód słońca był oglądany ‘the sunset was watched’), b) the impersonal -no/-to construction (e.g. oglądano zachód słońca ‘people/they/one watched the sunset’), and c) the personal active construction (e.g. niektórzy oglądali zachód słońca ‘some (people) watched the sunset’). We asked whether acceptability ratings would show identical acceptability clines across constructions affected by agentivity, as predicted from Dowty’s (1991) prototype account of semantic roles with feature accumulation as its central mechanism, or whether clines would vary depending on syntactic construction, as predicted from Himmelmann & Primus’ (2015) prominence account that uses feature weighting to describe role-related effects. In contrasting the applicability of these two accounts, we also investigated whether previous research findings from German replicate in Polish, thereby revealing cross-linguistic stability or variation. Our results show that the five verb classes yield different acceptability clines in all three Polish constructions and that the clines for Polish and German passives show cross-linguistic variation. This pattern cannot be explained by role prototypicality, so that the experiments provide further evidence for the prominence account of role-related effects in sentence interpretation. Moreover, our data suggest that experiencer verbs interact differently with the animacy of the subject referent, yielding different results for perception verbs (SEE), emotion verbs (HATE), and cognition verbs (KNOW).

Transitivity in the Cholim variety of Tangsa is seen to be a grammatical feature with low functional load. It is viewed in terms of three factors: the form of the verb (simplex, middle and causative), the relationship to markers of agentivity and anti-agentive, and the verbal agreement system of Cholim. Using traditional texts, the paper explores in detail the issues raised by an examination of transitivity, and relates the findings to the treatment of transitivity in other Tibeto-Burman languages and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses the semantic constraints on impersonal passives in several languages, including German and Dutch. Corpus data support earlier assumptions that the situation denoted by impersonal passives is a homogeneous (e.g. atelic) event. Telic (or unaccusative) verb lexemes can be used in the impersonal passive if they are forced into event-structural homogeneity. I will attempt to derive this event-structural restriction from the referential demotion of the subject argument. In this view, the telicity restriction is not a strict independent constraint but rather an epiphenomenon of the referential non-individuation of the argument undergoing a change of state. Another widely acknowledged claim is that impersonal passives in some languages including German, Dutch, and Icelandic are restricted to human (or animate) agents. I will show that this condition turns out to be too restrictive for Dutch and German, once real discourse data are considered. In order to capture the cross-linguistic variation, I will draw upon notions related to proto-agentivity instead of animacy. In my analysis, both constraints on impersonal passives are tied to the meaning of the demoted argument. The event-structural telicity restriction is a consequence of its demoted referential properties, animacy is an effect of its proto-agent properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of third person plural impersonal constructions into passive ones with the aim of determining the conditions most conducive to the emergence of a canonical passive, i.e. one which is both promotional (with an overt lexical subject) and agentive (with an overt agent). On the basis of cross-linguistic data it is argued that the required conditions are, on the one hand, the existence of a morphological alignment which does not distinguish between the O of a transitive clause and the S of a passive one and, on the other hand, the availability of highly grammaticalized third person plural impersonals, i.e. ones which can be used in episodic contexts and with different types of agents, among them individual and specific ones. The documented rarity of promotional passives originating from third person plural impersonal constructions is attributed to the rarity of the coincidence of the above two sets of independent factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss the typology of the main thematic roles in clause structures with a subject that does an action and an object that is affected by the action. I intend to rediscuss the concept of "action", in order to justify the "action-process" label assigned to such structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the social media debate on sustainable fashion on the basis of a multilingual dataset of Instagram posts and tweets. We focus on how women are discursively represented in terms of agentivity and how this is associated to different argumentative strategies. Our findings reveal a clear link between an argumentation denouncing the “ill” of the fashion system and women represented as victims; and between arguments proposing a “cure” to the problem and women represented either as recipients of a positive action or as agents bringing about change. Positive representation of women as agents is often made through arguments based on concrete examples, which show that change is already happening.

• Constructions involving non-agentive subjects tended to change during translations. • No processing differences between non-agentive and agentive subjects were found. • The translation of non-agentive subjects seems proceed automatic in most cases. This paper aims to analyze the translation of typical inanimate Subject Themes in the popular scientific register from English to German. Taking into account contrastive differences between English and German, we assumed that English sentences containing a combination of inanimate Subjects and agentive verbs would pose a translation problem that could potentially be reflected in translation shifts and increased values for reading and typing related measures of cognitive effort. A translation experiment was designed to test this assumption. We triangulated keystroke logging and eye tracking data from 13 professional translators and tested the results using linear mixed regression modeling. Our results show that the stimuli that included an inanimate Subject were more prone to be changed in the translations. However, the animacy of the Subject did not have a significant effect on the behavioral measures. A possible explanation for this finding is that animacy of the Subject is so salient for German translators that they change it without extensive deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]