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This paper investigates the adoption of ongoing community sound change by individuals by considering it as an instance of second-dialect acquisition. Four ongoing changes in Dutch, all involving the move from one-allophone to two-allophone systems, make this possible: these ongoing diachronic changes are simultaneously a source of synchronic variation between Netherlandic Dutch and Flemish Dutch. The paper investigates the adoption of these differences by sociolinguistic migrants: Flemish-Dutch speakers who migrated to the Netherlands to start their university studies. Participants were tracked over the course of nine months, using a rhyme-decision task and a word-list-reading task. Results show robust differences from Netherlandic-Dutch controls, which do not diminish over the nine months. While longer-term accommodation to these same changes has been found elsewhere, it appears that nine months is not enough time. The implications of these findings for various subfields of linguistics, particularly sound change and second-dialect acquisition, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of genocidal intent is rarely overtly available. Prosecutors arguably avoid prosecuting the crime of genocide because of its too-high evidentiary threshold. This paper argues that psychology, linguistics, and biology provide some of the tools that courts should revert to in the proof of the dolus specialis. Every genocide is characterised by dehumanisation. There is an intrinsic connection between the génocidaire 's understanding of the victims as dehumanised 'others' and the intent to destroy a group. Social psychology has shown that the perpetrator sets apart the victim group as inferior, subhuman, and a threat to the in-group. Dehumanising discourse exposes the perpetrators' understanding and ideologies and makes the victim group discernible. Linguistic research reveals the significance of metaphors for dehumanisation and intergroup hostility. Lastly, research on bio-signals such as heart rate, breathing, skin conductance response or EEG can assist in measuring the impact of dehumanisation and provide the courts with yet another tool to prove genocidal intent. Through recourse to a palette of conceptual and theoretical approaches, this paper provides an account of the ways in which a dark constellation of metaphor, dehumanising ideology, and psychological othering coalesce to form genocidal intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Chinese tradition, the interrelationship between philology and literature is at its most contentious when it comes to the issue of authenticity. It was not until the Qing (1644–1912) that the case of the Shangshu 尚書 finally reached a resolution—so goes the conventional account regarding the parts of the compilation now labelled "inauthentic" (wei 偽). This paper invites us to rethink this philological question as a literary one. It shows how a set of genre and narrative strategies gives rise to a range of different but compatible textualizations that do not lend themselves to the distinction between the "authentic" and the "inauthentic." Instead, the Shangshu illustrates a literary history where writing appropriates, lays claim to, and derives discursive authority from the oral form, reflecting a much broader literary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the ordering of connecting subordinate and coordinate clauses in Japanese-Thai translation to examine whether it is possible to maintain information flow from the source text. Japanese preposed clauses were translated using both preposed and postposed clauses in the Thai translated text. Preposed clauses were used widely when they provided: 1) listed information; 2) grounded information for comprehending main clauses; 3) the framework within which main clauses are held; 4) temporal sequences; and 5) information linking prior context to a new discourse topic. Postposed clauses were used mainly to modify main clauses. In cases where clauses provided the information needed to comprehend subsequent clauses, professional translators attempted to place the clause sentence initially, despite a preference for sentence-final occurrence arising from Thai syntactic constraints. This demonstrated norms in Japanese-Thai translation in terms of awareness among professional translators of the significance of information flow in the source text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language acquisition is a fundamental phenomenon in the linguistic enterprise. Chomsky claims that, "the human brain provides an array of capacities that enter into the use and understanding of Language (the language faculty (FL))". Using the descriptive approach, this paper explores, justifies, and determines the place of the human linguistic capacity to articulate and engage postproverbials vis-a-vis Chomsky's model of grammar and few scholarly positions. This article aims at providing evidence that, compared to others; Chomsky's idea of linguistic competence is the most appropriate account for the use and understanding of postproverbials. The study revealed that the first sentences/the intermediate proficiency stage presents humans with the capacity to develop, use, and understand postproverbials, and this attains full development at the advanced fluency stage to establish postproverbial as one of the capacities that the human brain provides, located in the FL, and that its use and understanding is consciously employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of levels can be found in many everyday expressions, such as top-level destination, entry-level sales, low-level panic, high risk level, basic-level research, high level of care, level of meaning, level of knowledge, level of freedom, and level of importance. I argue that these are metaphorical expressions in which the respective abstract concepts can be understood in terms of the more palpable experience of the levels to which we are accustomed through the handling of liquids. By looking at the interaction between SCALE and ITERATION image schemas, this article examines an embodied interpretation of levels, layers and water columns in the context of containers to facilitate a better understanding of these experiences and their use as a source domain for conceptual metaphors in language, science and mathematics. The conceptual analysis in this paper is limited to English expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abui is a Papuan language spoken in Alor Island, South-East Indonesia. Although there are rich studies on the Abui language and its structure, research on Abui toponymy, which aids the understanding of language, culture, and society, deserves greater attention. This paper analyzes features of Abui society through Abui toponyms collected using Field Linguistics and Language Documentation methods. It finds that, because place names communicate valuable information on peoples and territories, Abui toponyms reflect the agrarian lifestyle of Abui speakers and, more broadly, the close relationship that the people have with their landscape. Furthermore, Abui toponyms express positive traits in the Abui culture like kinship ties and bravery. Notwithstanding, like other pre-literate and indigenous societies, oral stories are commonly used to explain how places are named. This paper augments the existing Abui toponymic studies on the connection between names and the places they name and provides a deeper understanding of the Abui language, culture, and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosody is often conceived of as an important but surface realization of morphosyntactic constructions that are otherwise deemed complete. This paper challenges that view of prosody as a disambiguating, highlighting or scope-marking device, and provides evidence for the inclusion of prosody as a core formal means for the coding of cleft constructions in Kabyle, in interaction with morphosyntax. The demonstration is conducted through the recursive analysis of an annotated corpus of spontaneous data, and results in a precise formal definition of Kabyle clefts constructions, whose function is shown to be the marking of narrow focus. Résumé: La prosodie est souvent conçue comme un marquage de surface de constructions morphosyntaxiques par ailleurs considérées comme complètes. Cet article remet en question cette vision de la prosodie comme dispositif de désambiguïsation, de mise en évidence ou de marquage de la portée, et prouve la nécessité d'inclure la prosodie comme moyen formel à part entière, essentiel au codage des constructions clivées en kabyle, en interaction avec la morphosyntaxe. La démonstration est menée à travers l'analyse récursive d'un corpus annoté de données spontanées, et aboutit à une définition formelle précise des constructions clivées en kabyle, dont la fonction est de marquer la focalisation étroite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lhokpu is a hitherto undescribed and unclassified Trans-Himalayan language spoken by some 2,500 speakers in southwestern Bhutan. Fieldwork in 2015 now enables linguistic research on the language, including accounts on its phylogenetic position within the language family. This paper presents morphological, lexical, and phonological evidence for a closer phylogenetic relationship between Lhokpu and Dhimal (southeastern Nepal). Dhimal is conventionally grouped together with Toto under "Dhimalish." We argue in this paper that the similarities between Lhokpu and Dhimal are equally profound and numerous, and that Lhokpu, Dhimal, and Toto are three closely related languages within the Trans-Himalayan family. Le lhokpu est une langue transhimalayenne qui n' a été ni décrite ni classée jusqu' à présent. Le lhokpu est parlé par environ 2500 personnes dans le sud-ouest du Bhoutan. Des enquêtes de terrain menées en 2015 permettent de faire désormais des études linguistiques approfondies, comme déterminer la position phylogénétique du lhokpu dans la famille transhimalayenne. Cet article démontre sur la base de preuves morphologiques, lexicales et phonologiques la parenté entre le lhokpu et la langue dhimal, parlée au sud-est du Népal. Le dhimal est de manière conventionnelle classée avec la langue toto dans un groupe « dhimalish ». Dans notre article, nous argumentons que les parallèles entre le lhokpu et le dhimal sont comparables à ceux existant entre le dhimal et le toto, et que le lhokpu, le dhimal et le toto sont trois langues étroitement apparentées au sein la famille transhimalayenne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of two thematic issues (the second of which will appear as BAALL 13:1) guest-edited by the late Edit Doron and by Tania Notarius, with the contribution of Nora Boneh, dedicated to the theoretical linguistic study of Biblical Hebrew. Already in 2005, within a collection titled I Universal Grammar in the Reconstruction of Dead Languages i , edited by Katalin É. Kiss (Berlin: Mouton), Edit compared features of clause structure in Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew. Tracing the emergence of the quantifier I kol i "all/every/each" (Doron to appear), Doron showed how the Modern Hebrew universal quantifier I kol i emerged from the Biblical Hebrew nominal cognate. The main descriptive claim is that Biblical Hebrew is a verb-framed language, meaning that locative verbs involving change of location encode directionality in the verb and not via the accompanying prepositions (see Talmy 1985). [Extracted from the article]

The paper attempts to take a different look into the Law of Nations through the role of dragomans (official translators) in the making of modern International law. Addressing the power of language above its mere linguistic meaning, also considering the way it is taught, socially shaped, productive and lasting, this paper intends to illustrate the general epistemic framework governing dragomans as an original social and professional body in order to better understand their unforeseen impact on the Ottoman understanding of and integration into modern international law. The paper argues that legal transformations are also the result of legal translations, which intrinsically imply the cultural and social backgrounds of the translators. It discusses how the progressive formation of the cosmopolitan professional body of dragomans led to both develop a bolted technicality and contribute to the uniformization of legal thought and language by the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptual innovations in science ('paradigm shifts' in the sense of Kuhn) come with changes in the meaning of basic terminology in that field. Linguistics is no exception. But linguistics is in the peculiar position that it comprises the study of the meaning of linguistic items, and the way these meanings change. Some basic ideas of cognitive semantics, especially the concept of metonymy, shed light on the risk of miscommunication in a scientific field in a period of innovation. Paradoxically, these risks are instantiated in a controversy in the field of linguistics itself that was triggered by the then new, Darwinian understanding of evolution. The paper ends by exploring a recent theoretical innovation (the 'usage-based' approach, especially its most recent variants) that holds a promise for overcoming the controversies, provided theoretical linguists accept that terminology also in their own field is to be semantically more precise than in everyday language use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secular approach to development has treated religion as anti-developmental. However, the history of how development was part of missionary activity, such as the provision of health and educational infrastructure in some African countries, has been widely acknowledged. In this paper, therefore, we contend that the marginalisation of religion in development discourse is a result of a faulty and fractured understanding of religion. We argue that sustainable development, if attainable in contemporary Africa, would require that organised and institutional religions in Africa as well as their religious cosmologies, convictions and orientations feature and remain integral to such processes. With reference to neo-Pentecostal economies in Africa, we intend to discuss why and how religion -- religious cosmologies, ontologies and institutions -- is indispensable in the sustainable development process in Africa. Specifically, keeping in focus the human dimensions of development, we intend to argue that the beliefs, teachings and activities of neo-Pentecostal churches on human salvation, progress and/or transformation, such as prosperity and wealth creation, which has seen them emerge on the socioeconomic scene, indicate the potentials of neo-Pentecostals in particular, and religion in general, to contribute immensely to sustainable development. This, however, is not to gloss over some of the challenges they potentially pose to sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Appendici to the Leiden University Resolutions of Curators and Mayors form a rich collection of documents from different genres, including letters, statutes and testimonies. Spanning the period between the founding of Leiden University in 1575 until its temporary dissolution in 1811, these documents are well-suited for historical linguistic research of Dutch in general, and for those interested in the relationships between norm and language in particular, as the period covers a key period in the codification of Dutch (ca. 1550–1804). In this data paper, the author introduces and describes the Leiden University Resolutions Appendici Corpus (LURAC), a single-domain (i.e., context of interaction), multi-genre diachronic corpus of 103,451 words, consisting of samples of the Appendici to the Leiden University Resolutions for ten time periods of 25 years between 1575 and 1811. Both raw data and metadata are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that the increasing importance of Mandarin in education and public life has led many younger Chinese-Malaysians to regard Mandarin as their mother tongue and part of their cultural identity rather than a heritage language. Fewer studies have documented the language repertoires of middle-aged and older Chinese-Malaysians. This paper presents a qualitative study of Mandarin use conducted with six Chinese-Malaysians aged 40 and older. The participants reported extensive use of Mandarin in the domains of home, work, religion, and cultural maintenance, which were served by a heritage language in the past. This indicates that the use of Mandarin by the older generation Chinese-Malaysians to engage with the contemporary linguistic world is influenced by hegemonic local and global factors. This study therefore highlights the significance of Mandarin as both an element of cultural identity and an instrument of heritage language loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The removal of "Phimai, its Cultural Route and the Associated Temples of Phanomroong and Muangtam" from the the World Heritage Tentative List in 2019 indicates the change of focus of the Thailand State Party away from this emsemble originally included as components of the Phimai cultural route. This paper discusses the reasons behind this change, the values and OUV as well as advantages and disadvantages of these two proposals in the context of World Heritage nomination. It concludes that the proposal of the Ensemble of Phanom Rung was made after work on nominating the Phimai cultural route faced management obstacles and disputes between the responsible organization and local people, rather than on the values of the cultural route itself. As for the ensemble, the main concern is that this serial cultural heritage site still requires extensive study to justify the proposed criteria. Therefore, the Phimai cultural route, with its advantages in strong and verifiable values, may be reconsidered for World Heritage nomination when management issues are resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to narrow the gap between diachronic linguistics and research on population dynamics by presenting a mathematical model corroborating the notion that the cognitive mechanism of asymmetric priming can account for observable tendencies in language change. The asymmetric-priming hypothesis asserts that items with more substance are more likely to prime items with less substance than the reverse. Although these effects operate on a very short time scale (e.g. within an utterance) it has been argued that their long-term effect might be reductionist, unidirectional processes in language change. In this paper, we study a mathematical model of the interaction of linguistic items that differ in their formal substance, showing that, in addition to reductionist effects, asymmetric priming also results in diversification and stable coexistence of two formally related variants. The model will be applied to phenomena in the sublexical as well as the lexical domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews recent studies on metaphor theories applied to the classical corpus and argues that approaches from cognitive linguistics are essential for the re-interpretation of Greek and Latin texts. Its main focus are two monographs, Andreas T. Zanker's Metaphor in Homer and Tommaso Gazzarri's Theory and Practice of Metaphors in Seneca's Prose. The volume of collected papers on spatial metaphors in ancient texts edited by Fabian Horn and Ciliers Breytenbach proposes that the Lakoff-Johnson approach to cognitive metaphor is productive and that mappings from empirically accessible domains construct abstract concepts in spatial models of mental activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All texts, including all legal texts, are constructed in language. All legal constructs and discriminations are an effect of language. As such, linguistics and text analysis should be considered a necessary adjunct to legal studies and, in particular, to critical legal studies. While the disciplines of linguistics and law are increasingly interacting, there is a paucity of linguistic analysis in the field of the international laws of war. This paper seeks to open doors to collaboration, by viewing the texts of the international laws of war from three linguistic perspectives: as a 'register', as a 'corpus', and in terms of their lexicogrammatical patterning. In terms of register, the international laws of war herald a new form of textual practice, the function and effects of which are subject to debate. As a corpus, some dominant lexical habits of these texts are explored and interpreted for their ideological implications and reactances. Finally, an examination of covert lexicogrammatical meanings in this register, via a small extract from Article 8 of the Rome Statute, illuminates the contradictory meanings that these texts navigate. These three perspectives offer a preliminary glimpse into the value of linguistic analysis for critical perspectives on the international laws of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The body of international law that regulates the conduct of armed conflicts has been known, at various points in time, as the law of war, the law of armed conflict, and international humanitarian law. While 'the law of war' was a term widely used in State practice throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, both 'the law of armed conflict' and 'international humanitarian law' were terms introduced in the 20th century by one organisation: the International Committee of the Red Cross. In this paper, we use international law and corpus linguistic tools in a pilot study, examining how the terms were first introduced into international law and how quickly they were incorporated (if at all) into the practice of States. Using the ongoing conflict involving Israel and its neighbours, this pilot study charts the appearance and recurrence of these terms in the practice of States in the United Nations to examine how the terms were received and used. We conclude by offering some initial assessments, noting that, while the terms were largely considered unproblematic at their introduction, practice in relation to their deployment suggests deep tensions regarding the nature and purpose of the law and how and when it applies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The translation of philosophical works is a topic that merits our attention both in respect of philosophical understanding and linguistic structure, although it is the former rather than the latter that prevails in discussions in Chinese academia. By drawing upon that branch of modern linguistics known as the lexical field theory, this paper attempts to analyze a host of related problems, including the following: readability as a basic requirement of translation, difficulties in translation caused by the syntactic-typological distance of source and target languages, consistency of translated terms in general, consistency of semantically related terms in translation, consistency of translated terms regarding the syntagmatic axis and the paradigmatic axis, the use of monosyllabic, disyllabic, or polysyllabic Chinese terms in translation, translation of long or rare terms into Chinese, the middle way between 'under-translation' and 'over-translation,' identification of lexical fields for the systematic treatment of translated terms, and finally the in-depth understanding of original texts in their source languages as a prerequisite of any serious attempt of translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically and economically, the Congo has been considered one of the most internationalized states of Africa. The idea that African cultural plurality was minimized during the colonial era has to be reconsidered because textual negotiations and exchanges (cosmopolitan and vernacular, written and oral) have been frequent during and after colonization, mostly in urban areas. Through multilingual examples, this paper aims to question the co-construction of linguistic and literary pluralism in Congo and to advocate for the necessity of a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach, to understand the common life of African vernacular and cosmopolitan languages. I show that world literature models based on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of negotiation between center and periphery thus have to be replaced by a concept of multilingual global history. Finally, I propose the notion of "planetary literature" as a new way of understanding the interconnection between literatures taking care of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges for Cognitive Linguistics in charting the role of conceptualizations in the human world is how to address the frontier between social and cognitive dimensions of those processes that depend on conceptualization. The case that forms the topic of this paper is the conceptualization of rationality, including specifically rational decision-making in relation to economic dilemmas. I am going to take up the concept of rationality with a view to highlighting the connections between on the one hand its complex conceptual structure and on the other hand its complex societal role, focusing on a crucial context, that of determining and implementing economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining two Judaeo-Arabic adaptations of Qiṣṣat al-ğumğuma 'The Story of the Skull' (Cairo JC 104 and CUL T-S 37.39) alongside two Muslim Middle Arabic versions (CUL Qq. 173 and BnF Arabe 3655) from the Ottoman period, this paper explores the extent of linguistic similarities and divergences on the level of adverbial subordination, and the means through which these are expressed. It questions the long-established methodological boundaries imposed on the study of Middle Arabic, in which linguistic features of confessional varieties are generally examined in relation to Classical Arabic grammatical rules and modern spoken dialects, rather than other contemporaneous denominational varieties of written Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A standard comparison in Indo-European linguistics equates Vedic tvátpitāraḥ 'having you as father' and Ancient Greek compounds in -πατωρ, e.g., εὐπάτωρ 'having a good father, lineage'. Many scholars describe this equation as resulting from "Internal Derivation": the second-member of the compound would exhibit amphikinetic inflection, internally derived from a noun with hysterokinetic inflection. This paper reassesses the philological evidence for the long-vowel forms of Vedic - pitār -. Because the long-vowel forms are confined to one Vedic school (Taittirīyans), it is argued that the short-vowel forms such as - pitar - reflect the inherited Indic vowel length in these compounds. Following this reassessment, I question to what extent the second-members of possessive compounds (e.g., Gk. -πατωρ) reflect an "amphikinetic" paradigm. I argue that the forms are "amphikinetic" only to the extent that they show an o -grade suffix in Greek, and that defining such second-members as amphikinetic both overgenerates (predicts unattested forms) and undergenerates (fails to predict attested accents). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for quantifying diversity within a group of related languages and correlating the patterns found with known historical developments, as a way of testing a variety of hypotheses, regarding subclassification, reconstruction, the influence of language contact, the relative consistency of the speed of language change, etc. The methodology is applied to Arabic dialects, for which there is a wealth of synchronic variation as well as considerable historical documentation on both linguistic and migration history. The goal is to establish a more solid empirical basis for inferring diachronic conclusions based on comparative analysis of synchronic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the emergence of national state martyrs in modernity. The investigation postulates a connection between procedures of legitimization of political authority and martyr figurations. It considers martyrological representations as linguistic performances, opening a civil religious space. On the basis of genealogical discourse analysis, the author argues that through secularization the figure of the martyr underwent a transition from the sacral and theological to the profane and political sphere of meaning. In the final part, the paper analyzes the ideological implications of the representation of politician Aldo Moro, killed in 1978 by the Red Brigades, as a state martyr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a basic descriptive overview of the adpositional system in Kurdish supported by illustrative examples from the Sorani dialect. Based on this, two classes are identified: simple and compound. Their morphological, syntactic and semantic properties are discussed in detail, highlighting the distinctions among them. The classification is further supported by the application of an extended P projection as proposed in Saeed (2015) which shares the basic ideas of Svenonius' (2010) model of spatial P projection providing a new perspective of the role of spatial adpositions. I also examine the categorial status of several bound morphemes which attach to complements of some adpositions and argue that they are clitics associated with specific locative meanings. I propose the existence of PLACE head as a solution to the syntactic status of the locative clitics. I also show that postulating PLACE in the P projection does not clash with the existence of AxPart as they are two distinct elements syntactically and semantically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the existence of a discontinuous root morpheme in the Semitic languages. Although this notion is often used in the analysis of these languages, it has been claimed in some surface-oriented studies to be a mere theoretical artifact. The first part of this paper presents two arguments from the realm of verbal inflection. It is shown that no surface form can serve consistently as the base for other forms in either Modern Hebrew or Chaha, two Semitic languages. It is further argued that some morphophonological processes in Chaha must be regarded as applying to the root. Applying such processes to the surface stem would result in incorrect forms. The second part of the paper treats discontinuous effects in nominal formations. It is argued that agentive nouns in Modern Hebrew can be built either on another noun or on the root. Without the notion of the root, one is obliged to list all the cases which we propose are root-derived. Such listing obscures the entirely regular and consistently predictable form of root-derived agentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss the relevance theoretic view of shared content and ask how one can use the theory to understand in what situations communication is successful and when it's not. The paper is meant as a case study in the philosophy of linguistics, in which I aim to draw some conclusions based on a particular debate between two very influential groups of theorists. I look at Cappelen and Lepore's (2007) critique of Sperber and Wilson (1995) and claim that, contrary to standard conceptions in philosophy, it is possible to be a coherent similarity theorist about communicated content, postulating another level of content as the locus of identity. I emphasize the importance of basing a similarity view of communication on a foundation of identity, and argue, against Wedgwood (2007), that it's not possible for relevance theorists to abstract away from this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will revisit the frequent use of the periphrastic construction of a form of the verb ‮היה‬‎ + participle in the Temple Scroll (TS). As others have noted, TS preserves by far the largest number of cases of this construction in the Qumran corpus, and these cases overwhelmingly involve the yiqṭol of ‮היה‬‎. The use of the construction has also been given compositional weight, serving as a source-critical indicator in prominent theories of the diachronic development of TS. This essay provides a detailed analysis of how the periphrastic construction functions in TS, compares that function to the use of the construction in other Qumran texts, and asks what, if anything, the construction's distribution might be able to tell us about the processes by which the Temple Scroll was composed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary literature from Mauritius, a heterogeneous multilingual production, is entangled within a complex transnational topology, where several increasingly recognized authors have deployed multiple identities through personal and editorial mobility. They benefit from (and participate in) the diversification of publishing structures, instances of dissemination, and audiences, while others hold very little symbolic capital. This paper discusses several key issues to understand the island's multifaceted and unequal literary microcosm. It traces certain historical, linguistic and cultural predispositions of the Mauritian text today, addresses the reasons and implications of literary scale-shifting beyond the local, examines the modalities of trans/international recognition, and raises the issues at stake when translating these works. The island is hereby considered as a paradigmatic example of an emerging literary space on the postcolonial "periphery", both contributing to challenging established canons, while remaining tributary to persisting hierarchies in the global literary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction between arguments developed under the different means of interpretation of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is often described in language evoking balancing. The present paper offers a linguistic perspective on this phenomenon. First, it aims to clarify in what situations balancing is actually taking place during an interpretive exercise. Then, it demonstrates how linguistic knowledge can sharpen our assessment in this context. It is shown with examples that help to establish the adequate weight of interpretative arguments developed under the means of interpretation of ordinary meaning. International law and its rules are not displaced in this exercise, but merely better understood by examining their operation through language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to analyse and clarify a linguistic-eschatological aspect of Comenius's language project. First, it investigates hypotheses concerning the origin of language in the works of key figures in the language planning movement: Bacon, Mersenne, Comenius, Dalgarno and Wilkins. Second, it inquiries into their theological justifications for language planning and into the problem of cessationism. Third, it examines the dignity and role of the existing languages according to Comenius and focuses on the notion and goal of the new, perfect, ultimate language as imagined by him. Fourth, it elucidates Comenius's idea of the final language through the prism of his biblical exegesis and his understanding of sacred history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that an anonymous epigram about the commentator Crassicius marrying Cinna's Zmyrna is a satirical poem playfully evoking the incest of Zmyrna in order to make a more pointed critique of the genre of commentary. The poem suggests that like Zmyrna herself, the Zmyrna is libidinous, an unfaithful and Catullan mistress who cannot be trusted by her commentator. The poem therefore invites the reader to think more broadly about the relationship between author and commentator and about issues of textual ownership. In antiquity, poems are often imagined as sexual partners, while conversely sex itself is conceptualised as a grammatical activity. Sexuality therefore becomes a site for thinking about grammar and literary criticism and the relationship of commentator to text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how the space designed by 'bad' emperors such as Nero and Domitian is described in Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius. It argues that these authors use space to depict these emperors as tyrants. First, we will study how Roman emperors use space to fashion their memory. Their design of space is subject to interpretation, in particular as regards Roman emperors who were praised during their lifetime, but were considered tyrants after their death. In later historiography and biography, the depiction of their imperial space fulfils several functions. These functions, which together make this space appear as 'tyrannical' space, are the focus of the second part of the article. Finally, this negative framing of tyrannical space is complemented by the strategy of avoiding mention of certain spatial elements at all. I shall argue that this forgetting of tyrannical space can be explained by its potentially positive memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The currently popular model of decasuative derivation has been criticized on various grounds, both typological and comparative. This paper assesses both the critique and the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to apply Bausani's notion of "Islamic language" to the case of the Albanian language, analysing the cultural and linguistic evolution of its literature according to the various stages of the nation-building process, which concerned also the creation (re-invention) of a standard alphabet. To do so, this work firstly examines the literary production of Albanian Muslim writers during the Ottoman period and then analyses the gradual literary de-Islamisation that invested Albanian culture from the period of Rilindja (Rebirth) until the cultural revolution of the Communist atheist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to establish Proto-Iranian *l by focusing on a variety of words in (I) Persian and (II) Zaza, many of which are of intrinsic etymological interest. In addition, (III) other etymologically noteworthy Zaza words are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a series of sequential cosmological and eschatological maps drawn by Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) in his second recension of al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi 1845+). These images, drawn from the visual language of the rational sciences, map the images of revelation into the cosmology of the day so as to show the vastness of God's cosmos and the limits of the intellect. Ibn al-ʿArabī, aware of the limits of his medium, explicitly states that these should be a "single composition." He uses visual cues to mark shifts of perspective, helping the reader visualize the interconnections that bind together this multidimensional representation of the cosmos. By considering their placement and their relation to the narrative, I also argue that the final two maps are a representation of two eyes, identifying the cosmos and the reader as reflections of God, a contemplative use that is lost in their transmission history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the conventional interpretation of the doe-comparison in Ps 42:1 based on linguistic indications and a biological phenomenon. When the verb ערג is considered as a form of crying out and not of longing, it can be recognised that the næpæš is not only trying to reach God but is also constructively influencing the praying person towards this goal. This leads to a new perspective on the self-perception of the praying person and the role of the næpæš throughout the prayer. After initially rejecting the needs of the næpæš , in the last stanza, the praying person is finally transforming the performative screaming into formulated prayer: lament, petition, and praise. By turning to lament they are taking up the doe's call and vindicating the næpæš 's intentions as essential and justified expressions of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant studies have investigated postproverbial expressions from sociological, feminist, and philosophical perspectives with insufficient attention paid to the linguistic representations of social identity in such expressions. This study, therefore, examines how social identities are constructed through postproverbials among Yoruba youths with a view to exploring the social realities that conditioned the representations of new identities in such expressions. The study adopts Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics and Tajfel and Tuner's Social Identity Theory as framework. Ten (10) postproverbial expressions, which are from anonymous and the written collections of Yoruba proverbs by Yoruba scholars form the data. Linguistic substitutions and code-mixings characterise such expressions. Postproverbials are a conveyor of rationalist, religious, hedonistic, and economic identities, which are conditioned by western influence and are transported by the generation of conscious Yoruba youths. The paper inferred that, though proverbs and postproverbials are context-dependent, postproverbials explicate a paradigm shift in the postmodernist discourse and refract Nigerian socio-cultural realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of language contact and multilingualism on the encoding of transfer events in the heritage variety of Javanese spoken in Suriname. Alongside Javanese, this community also speaks Sranantongo and Dutch, of which Sranantongo had the longest contact history with Javanese. It is shown that this long period of contact had a structural influence on the expression of transfer events in Surinamese Javanese: Surinamese speakers use double object constructions and two-predicate constructions more frequently than homeland Javanese speakers, a change which we argue to be due to contact with Sranantongo. In addition, Surinamese Javanese speakers overgeneralize one of the two applicative suffixes found in transfer constructions, a phenomenon that results from simplification processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gadamer's question "Are Poets Falling Silent?" is motivated by the "linguistic need" (Sprachnot) of modern lyric indicative of the "forgetfulness of language" (Sprachvergessenheit) that prevails today. In Paul Celan's late work, Gadamer finds poetry that, bordering on the cryptic, stands on the verge of silence. Nevertheless, he insists that these poems do speak and that the title of Celan's poem series, Breath-crystal , figures the truth of the poetic word. From this standpoint the paper discusses Gadamer's hermeneutic understanding of the poetic word treating the constitutive elements of the poetic word as an event of language, the way this conception of the poetic word both embraces and yet departs from the usual understanding of the radical turn to language in modern lyric, and the meaning of Gadamer's claim regarding the truth of the poetic word that fulfills the original saying power of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A puzzling fact about linguistic norms is that they are mainly stable, but the conventional variant sometimes changes. These transitions seem to be mostly S-shaped and, therefore, directed. Previous models have suggested possible mechanisms to explain these directed changes, mainly based on a bias favoring the innovative variant. What is still debated is the origin of such a bias. In this paper, we propose a refined taxonomy of mechanisms of language change and identify a family of mechanisms explaining self-actuated language changes. We exemplify this type of mechanism with the preference-based selection mechanism that relies on agents having dynamic preferences for different variants of the linguistic norm. The key point is that if these preferences align through social interactions, then new changes can be actuated even in the absence of external triggers. We present results of a multi-agent model and demonstrate that the model produces trajectories that are typical of language change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There are two main theories of ontological commitment: the quantifier view, and the truthmaker view. Since there are some truths that apparently commit us to certain entities, but actually do not, any ontological commitment theory must also contain an ontological reduction theory. Advocates of the quantifier view propose the paraphrasing method of reduction, while some advocates of the truthmaker view propose the supervenience method. In this paper, after a brief discussion of the quantifier view, the author proposes a modified version of truthmaker-based ontology, and shows that a plausible account of the supervenience method can be deduced from his version. He then shows that the supervenience method could explain why the paraphrasing method is successful. The author also argues that according to the truthmaker view we must accept composite objects as something over and above the particles which constitute them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]