bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Remedies First, Liability Second: Or Why We Fail to Agree on Optimal Design of Intermediary Liability
Authors: Husovec Martin
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses remedies for online intermediary liability with special emphasis on remedies for intellectual property (IP) infringement. The chapter describes damages and injunctions, their scope and goal, while also analysing the costs of these remedies. In particular, this chapter highlights how IP scholars in the area of intermediary liability have now spent over two decades trying to answer when an intermediary should be liable for its users’ actions. What if throughout that time too much emphasis had been placed on the second-order issue of optimal design? Can that question be answered without first knowing what an intermediary is or should be obliged to perform as a consequence of such legal qualification? This chapter argues that policy debates concerning optimal design of intermediary liability should reflect an inverse order of inquiry in order to elicit useful insights.
Empirical Approaches to Intermediary Liability
Authors: Erickson Kristofer , Kretschmer Martin
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers what empirical evidence may contribute to the debates around online intermediary liability. What do we need to know in order to frame the liability of intermediaries and, a fortiori, what does the relationship between theory and empirics imply for the wider issue of platform regulation? This chapter evaluates the performance of so-called intermediary liability safe harbours, which have been operating for almost two decades in multiple jurisdictions. The chapter also tackles the problem of transparency of algorithmic decision-making in the ‘black box society’ and how that affects users. In doing so, this chapter reviews the body of empirical studies on copyright intermediary liability during the twenty-year period from 1998 to 2018, drawing on the Copyright Evidence Wiki, an open-access repository of findings related to copyright’s effects. Based on the survey of this body of research, the chapter identifies and discusses five key sub-fields of empirical inquiry pursued so far: the volume of takedown requests; the accuracy of notices; the potential for over-enforcement or abuse; transparency of the takedown process; and the costs of enforcement borne by different parties. Finally, the chapter identifies some of the gaps and limitations in this existing body of scholarship, and offers a number of recommendations for future research.
The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Internet Intermediary Liability in Latin America
Authors: Lara Gálvez Juan Carlos , Sears Alan M.
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on intermediary liability in Latin America, with special emphasis on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) provisions that have been included into every bilateral FTA the United States has entered into since 2002, thus promoting their inclusion in the national law of other countries. However, these provisions are controversial, and whether they drive the internet economy or create a more restrictive online space is a matter of debate. This chapter analyses the impact of such provisions in Latin American countries and the state of their implementation in national jurisdictions. In particular, this chapter reviews implementation and proposed implementation of the DMCA model in Chile, Costa Rica and other CAFTA bloc countries, Colombia, and Peru. It also discusses the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to create new intermediary liability rules and how the same language was ultimately included in the revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which became the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).
On Pins and Needles
Authors: Musser Amber Jamilla
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the figure of the self-made man as expressed through two 2013 costume exhibits—the Rhode Island School of Design Museum’s exhibit on the dandy and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit on punk. These exhibits forge a line of continuity between the punk and dandy that hinges on likening the safety pin to the straight pin. This chapter analyzes the differing epistemologies produced by each object in the context of men’s fashion. While the safety pin beckons amateur users and implies danger (while actually preventing it), the straight pin conceals the talent and work of others (the tailor). These objects therefore reveal different relationships to agency and temporality. The two exhibits produce a normative idea of masculinity as premised on spectacularity as performed through self-making and subversion while shifting the conversation away from the racialized contexts in which these practices of tailoring emerged. Material history allows us to nuance spectacularity and its politics.
Remember Me
Authors: Ulrich Laurel Thatcher
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the eighteenth-century concept of sensibility as it took form in popular culture in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Although later generations made fun of the weeping sentimentality of parlor poetry and embroidered memorials to the dead, nineteenth-century Americans believed that a pen mark on a page or a twined lock of hair could animate invisible chords in the body that connected one person to another through memory. To write about Mormonism in relation to sensibility may seem odd, since to outsiders the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seemed the epitome of grim-faced patriarchy, with its embrace of polygamy and attempt at theocratic government. A closer look at the rich materials preserved in its archives shows the many ways in which early Saints used common cultural forms to express unique religious belief such as baptism for the dead. Latter-day Saints celebrated plural unions in the language of sentimental friendship. Like other Americans, they used tangible things to cross boundaries of space and time.
Mastery, Artifice, and the Natural Order
Authors: Domínguez Torres Mónica
Published: May 2020

Since ancient times, pearls have been put to a wide range of uses—from decorative functions garnishing religious and secular objects, to medicinal applications for the cure of several maladies. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in particular, European scholars and aristocrats avidly collected and studied diverse specimens that became available thanks to new trade routes and markets. By means of these organic gems, scientists sought to understand nature’s mysteries while artists showed off their ingenuity and creative power. Especially appealing were large, irregular pearls, which were often transformed into expensive objects of virtue treasured over generations: an oddly formed pearl could become the body of a lion, a dragon, or a monster, whose heads, legs, and tails were recreated with gold, enamel, and other precious materials; or they could be transformed into a mermaid or a triton referencing thus the marine nature of the precious gem. They could even take the form of a caravel or a black captive, referring thus to the industry and commercial networks that made such treasures available to European patrons. Then as now, the labor cost of such desirable objects was concealed behind a veneer of beauty and opulence. In reality, by the turn of the sixteenth century, the pearl trade had become one of the most brutal forms of human exploitation. This chapter seeks to unveil the significance of objects usually deemed as innocuous decorative items.
Street “Luxuries”
Authors: Calaresu Melissa
Published: May 2020

The history of eating on the street presents particular challenges as the extant material culture is especially limited. This chapter reveals the variety of food sold on the streets of early modern Rome through the study of a series of images of street sellers printed in the late sixteenth century in response to the growing ethnographic interest of travelers to the city. This chapter turns on its head what was considered a luxury in the early modern economy as these images suggest the range of foodstuffs which cannot be simply understood as daily necessities to meet the basic nutritional needs of the city’s inhabitants such as raw cooking materials or hot fast food. Instead, these images suggest that labor-saving products such as hulled rice or even products such as sweetmeats, which were normally associated with the work of the steward of an aristocratic house and the elite “dressing” of the table, were being sold on the streets. Therefore, despite the inherent ephemerality of the act of selling and eating food and the lack of surviving material culture, these images reveal the complexity of determining social distinction through food choices in early modern Rome.
Persons and Things in Marseille and Lucca, 1300–1450
Authors: Lord Smail Daniel
Published: May 2020

In later medieval Europe, a rising tide of wealth changed the material regime and, with it, the relationships that defined the matrix of persons and things. Some of our best evidence for the changes afoot in the era can be found in the massive documentation generated by the legal institutions of the period. Featured in this chapter are household inventories and inventories of debt collection from the cities of Marseille and Lucca. Although the things found in these documents are not tangible, the approach known as “documentary archaeology” allows us to treat the words that describe them as fragments or traces left by things that once existed. Many of the things found in people’s houses were used for the purposes of social distinction, whether the individual pursuit of prestige or status, through competitive consumption and display, or a group’s pursuit of group identity, through the display of badges or totems that define membership in a group.
Chronology and Time
Authors: Loveluck Christopher
Published: May 2020

This chapter uses material culture, textual sources, and associated social practices to explore how cycles of time and memory influenced the development of coastal societies and their expressions of identity in northwest Europe, between c. 500 and 1050. There are three themes. First, how memories of earlier material culture traditions and social practices were used to create new identities in eastern and western maritime Britain, between c. 450 and 600. Second, how cycles of maritime orientation on the part of coastal societies in England and Denmark varied between c. 650 and 1000, despite situation next to the sea, maritime resources, and communications. And third, how social practices, representation, and memory were used in major port towns of Flanders and England, in emulative and competitive relations between seafarer-merchant-patricians and older landed elites, between c. 900 and 1050.
The Numinous Body and the Symbolism of Human Remains
Authors: Allison Christopher
Published: May 2020

This chapter engages the concept of the numinous and applies it to the material culture of the sacred body in American material culture, with two examples from early American history. It introduces early twentieth-century scholar Rudolph Otto’s idea of the numinous, and it proposes that it can help dispel confusion over the nature of sacred matter, leading to a better grasp of the phenomenological complexity of religious material culture, especially as it relates to the body. The chapter focuses on two bodies, that of nineteenth-century American missionary to Liberia Ann Wilkins and famous eighteenth-century preacher George Whitefield. These bodies are used as case studies to demonstrate the prevalence of numinousness, even among American Protestants who had traditionally eschewed material religion. The author makes the claim that the invisibility of religion is a verdant precondition for its materialization.
Kwa
Authors: Dakubu Mary Esther Kropp
Published: May 2020

The chapter surveys the history of both the external and the internal classification of the Kwa family of languages within the Niger-Congo phylum. While Benue-Congo plays a primary role with respect to external relations, the hotly debated issue of the internal cohesion of the family as a whole is a central question in the discussion of Kwa subgrouping. The chapter takes a critical look at the arguments that have been brought forward in this discussion, in particular those involving lexicostatistics, lexical innovation, and sound changes, and establishes five subgroups that are considered to be uncontested. In addition, this chapter discusses contact phenomena within the Kwa family.
Cognition and Language
Authors: Fleisch Axel
Published: May 2020

The convergence between a linguistically motivated interest in cognition, on the one hand, and descriptive and typological interests, on the other, causes a growing number of scholars to recognize the need for enhanced linguistic anthropological work in the African context, which promises to be beneficial to both the study of human cognition and a richer understanding of African language cultures. By looking at how certain key areas of cognitive linguistics (conceptual metaphor, spatial language, temporality) have been applied to the study of African languages, this chapter focuses on the intersection of both perspectives: that of descriptivists and typologists. Current trends in the study of African languages that address language and cognition draw on grammaticalization studies, neo-relativism, and the emergence of linguistic areas by cross-linguistic conceptual convergence. How these relate to each other is briefly outlined in the second part of this chapter.
Narratives
Authors: Möhlig Wilhelm J. G.
Published: May 2020

Despite the high complexity of oral art in Africa, some of its features are shared by almost all narrative cultures. The most prominent criterion appears to be the truth aspect—whether a storyteller considers his narration as rendering facts or fictional matters. To the category of telling facts belong historical reports (chronicles) and ethno-texts, i.e. descriptions of special handicrafts, economic activities, and legal concepts. The main genres falling under the category of fiction are fables, animal tales, and fairy tales. According to the basic definition of truth and fiction at least three borderline genres emerge: anecdotes, legends, and epics. Modern scholarly interests are mainly directed towards the comparison of narrative types and motifs, the performance aspect, and the exploitation of oral narrations as sources for the reconstruction of precolonial history.
Kumam
Authors: Hieda Osamu
Published: May 2020

Kumam is a Western Nilotic language that is spoken in central Uganda. This chapter focuses on the formation of a double downstep high tone, the function of middle sentences, and evidentiality in complementation. Kumam is a tone language with a low and a high toneme, exhibiting a double downstep high tone as a feature. Aspect (imperfective vs. perfective) is marked obligatorily with a suprasegmental morpheme, while tense is not marked in verbal complexes. Tense is expressed lexically. Kumam has no passivization, but middle sentences function as a passive equivalent instead. Kumam has two types of complementation, “paratactic” and “hypotactic”, that are different syntactically and semantically. For instance, when perception verbs are followed by a “paratactic” clause, they express direct perception. When they are followed by a “hypotactic” clause, they express indirect perception. There is the relationship between the complement types and evidentiality.
Khoisan
Authors: Honken Henry
Published: May 2020

This chapter presents a brief historical survey of research on languages grouped under the name Khoisan, consisting of three distinct language families: !Ui (also known as Northern Khoisan), Khoe (also known as Central Khoisan), and Tuu (also known as Southern Khoisan), Kwadi in Angola, as well as two languages spoken in Tanzania, Hadza and Sandawe. All extant members of this areal grouping have clicks. Many Khoisan languages have become extinct over the centuries, and in modern times, due to the more prestigious status of other languages, in particular in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. A brief survey is presented of the phonetic and phonological features of these languages as well as of their sociolinguistic status. Also, the digitization of recently collected language materials as well as materials from the past is discussed.
Chadic
Authors: Caron Bernard
Published: May 2020

The Chadic family is best known by Hausa and its 45 million speakers, while the other 170 or so languages count between 500,000 and a few thousand. Given their common genetic origin, what does it mean to be a Chadic language, not only in terms of retentions and innovations from their common Afro-Asiatic origin, but also from a typological point of view? The chapter begins by listing and locating the Chadic languages, while making an attempt at estimating their number of speakers. It then characterizes the typical Chadic language, describing its phonology, morphology, sentence structure, and function marking. The next section studies the relationship between Chadic and Afro-Asiatic in terms of retention and innovation. The section after that explores the typology of the Chadic family and its relationship with the Macro-Sudan belt and Africa as a linguistic area. The conclusion presents a brief assessment of the development of Chadic linguistics.
Sidaama
Authors: Kawachi Kazuhiro
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes the grammatical structure of Sidaama (Sidamo), a Highland East Cushitic language spoken in the south-central part of Ethiopia. Although more than three million people speak Sidaama, there has been relatively little research on the language. The introduction gives background information on the Sidaama language and the Sidaama people. The phonology section lists phonemes, consonant clusters, and geminates, and describes the suprasegmentals; it also presents morphophonemic rules. The section on parts of speech deals with types of nouns and verbs, similarities and differences between adjectives and nouns as well as between adjectives and verbs, various pronominal forms, and clitics. The morphology section discusses reduplication of verb roots, suprafixes on nouns and adjectives, and suffixes on nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Finally, the syntax section discusses grammatical relations, word order issues, external possessor constructions, and relative clauses.
Adamawa
Authors: Kleinewillinghöfer Ulrich
Published: May 2020

The so-called “Adamawa” languages are spoken in the sub-Saharan savannah belt, along the Upper Benue and its tributaries and in isolated pockets in southern Chad. Insufficient documentation and the marked linguistic diversity of the numerous language groups and isolates subsumed under “Adamawa” largely contributed to its contested status. So far, no convincing evidence was presented that “Adamawa” is indeed a distinct genetic unit, as proposed in earlier classifications. Within “Adamawa” only a minority of languages have preserved the heritage of a noun class system. Yet the remarkable morphological resemblances—supported by lexical correlates and typological analogies—found in class languages in two distinct “Adamawa” groups, as well as in various class languages of Central Gur, provide the strongest evidence contesting the validity of “Adamawa”. A larger Adamawa-Gur continuum which apparently occupied a contiguous area in the savannah belt before it became broken up appears to be more feasible.
Omotic
Authors: Köhler Bernhard
Published: May 2020

The Omotic language family belongs to those entities within the Afro-Asiatic phylum which are controversially debated. With regard to external classification some authors maintain that Omotic should be subsumed under the western branch of Cushitic, whereas others place it directly under Afro-Asiatic—besides Cushitic, Chadic, Semitic, Egyptian, and Berber. There are even hypotheses that at least parts of Omotic, if not the whole family, are not Afro-Asiatic at all. The present chapter reviews the various approaches and arguments which have emerged during the history of research. In the course of the discussion, some of the most salient features of Omotic languages will be outlined. It will become clear that Omotic can indeed be established as a relatively independent branch of Afro-Asiatic.
Dialectology and Linguistic Geography
Authors: Lafkioui Mena B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses linguistic divergence and convergence processes from a dialectological and areal viewpoint so as to better understand the challenges that defining Africa’s linguistic macro- and micro-profile presents. The dialectology part focuses on a case study of dialectometry classification founded on Berber geolinguistic data, whereas the part on linguistic geography contrasts the different current approaches to the African territory. The chapter emphasizes that the study of language variation, change, and diffusion in Africa is in need of research which is more objective, integrating without intermingling genetic and non-genetic concepts and results, and also takes into account both the linguistic (system-internal) and the extralinguistic (social, geographical, ecological, historical) context.
Niger-congo, with a Special Focus on Benue-congo
Authors: Good Jeff
Published: May 2020

Niger-Congo is the largest referential language group in Africa. The extent to which it represents a true genealogical grouping is not established, though there is a large core set of members of the family that all specialists currently accept as related. These languages spread across sub-Saharan Africa, and their most significant common feature from a comparative perspective is a distinctive type of noun class system. The largest subgroup of Niger-Congo is Benue-Congo, which includes the Bantu languages that dominate the southern part of the continent. From a typological perspective, Niger-Congo languages are quite varied, especially with respect to their degree of morphological elaboration. This is also true of Benue-Congo, with some of its languages having an isolating morphological character and others showing extensive agglutinating morphology. Future comparative work on the family would likely benefit from greater integration of the results of sociolinguistic investigations into models of its historical development.
Gur
Authors: Miehe Gudrun
Published: May 2020

Within Niger-Congo, Gur is one of the families with the most highly developed agglutination systems in both the nominal and the verbal phrase. At the same time, the morphology of the Gur languages is characterized by a high rate of reduction and restructuring processes which can be best studied in the context of the nominal class systems, which reveal almost all evolutionary stages. Besides some lexical items, the reconstruction of a relatively high number of nominal class markers confirms the family’s strong relationship with Adamawa and Benue-Congo languages. The modern verbal systems are characterized by different aspect systems (marked by different verbal stems or suffixes) and by preverbal tense markers; post-verbal clitics denote assertion. Serial verb constructions are found in all languages, but more or less complementary to verbal derivations. Diathesis is expressed by moving patients to the subject position. Word order change is another prominent evolutionary phenomenon within the family.
Iraqw
Authors: Mous Maarten
Published: May 2020

Iraqw is spoken in northern Tanzania and is the largest South Cushitic language, with roughly half a million speakers. The phonological inventory is characterizedby, inter alia, the opposition of short vs. long vowels, the occurrence of lateral consonants—ejective affricate /tl/ and fricative /hl/—and a two-tone system which is grammatically (but not lexically) significant. Nominals are subject to a three-way gender distinction, which includes an interesting feature “plural” besides masculine and feminine. The gender of a noun is defined by agreement. The complexity of the Iraqw language lies in the rich inflectional element that forms a separate word independent of the verb, the so-called “selector”. Selectors are present in every sentence except for imperatives and are used with nominal and verbal complements and, for that reason, are to be seen as the root for inflectional forms.
Sign Languages
Authors: Nyst Victoria
Published: May 2020

African sign languages present a rich field for linguistic research. Locally evolved sign languages include an old village sign language like Adamorobe sign language (Ghana), and the very young village sign language of Bouakako (Côte d’Ivoire). They also include the emerging national sign language of Guinea-Bissau, following the establishment of the first deaf school in 2004, and the young family sign language of Berbey in Mali. Studies on locally evolved sign languages find structure and characteristics that seem to be typologically rare, based on the current set of (mainly Western) sign languages studied. In many countries, the sign language situation is highly multilingual, with deaf schools using a sign language that either originated in a Western country or was heavily influenced by one or more Western sign languages. More sign language research is badly needed to establish, improve, and expand facilities to provide deaf citizens with access to society.
Poetry
Authors: Vierke Clarissa
Published: May 2020

This chapter offers an overview of poetry in African languages from all over the continent, which is, on the one hand, the most universal and the most specific literary form. Most African cultures did not have a specific term for literature before colonialism, but have long traditions of rhythmically bound speech reserved for special occasions and used to promote the most important ideals and aspirations of society which have proved flexible to newly emerging styles. Given the beauty, vitality, and long history of poetry and its diversity rooted in its intimate connection with respective cultural contexts, concepts of aesthetics, and language form, the chapter starts by making heuristic use of generic categories, like epic and praise poetry, to be able to both draw comparisons and highlight cultural specifics. It pays attention to poetry’s changing media across time while also going beyond the typical dichotomy of “traditional” and “modern” poetry.
Tone
Authors: Odden David
Published: May 2020

The vast majority of African languages are tonal, and they have played a major role in the formation of theories of tone, especially since the advent of autosegmental tonology. Spread and shift of tone, floating tones and tone melodies, and downstep are well-documented properties of African tone, manifesting the fact that tones owe little allegiance to the segments realizing them. There is considerable diversity in the typology of African tone systems, with some languages attesting six distinctive pitch levels or having three-element contours on a syllable-by-syllable basis, and others sparsely specified for tone, resembling so-called pitch-accent systems. Numerous languages employ abstract tone patterns in meaningful ways, often marking tense with particular arrangements of the basic tone levels in the language. This chapter surveys the main features of tone in the languages of Africa.
Ubangi
Authors: Pasch Helma
Published: May 2020

Since Greenberg (1963) the languages of the Adamawa-Ubangi family of Niger-Congo have been classified as forming a genetic unit. Before they were considered isolate languages or isolate dialect clusters. Greenberg’s classification has been a matter of debate from the beginning, since most of the languages concerned are not well known and the evidence does not hold. Boyd claims that the internal classification of Ubangi cannot be proved, nor its relation to Adamawa, and Dimmendaal (2011) classifies Ubangi as a phylum out of Niger-Congo. Blench considers the group a geographic unit, not a genetic one. At the same time many linguists see the Adamawa and the Gur languages on a continuum.
Color Term Systems
Authors: Payne Doris L.
Published: May 2020

A study of over seventy African languages suggests that Africa displays a strongly areal distribution of different “basic color term” (BCT) systems, and there is obvious impact of salient cultural activities, language contact, urbanization, and education on the evolution of color term systems. The smallest systems, containing BCTs for ‘red’, ‘black’, and white’, are predominantly in western Africa, though some East African Nilo-Saharan languages also appear to have this system. Most West African languages fall into Greenberg’s Niger-Congo phylum, but there is strong debate about whether these are a single genetic group. Southern African “Khoisan” and southern Narrow Bantu often have moderately elaborated systems with around five probable BCTs. The greatest elaboration and variation occur in Afro-Asiatic and some Nilo-Saharan languages of north and eastern Africa, with up to seven or eight BCTs plus salient “color+pattern” vocabulary.
Kordofanian
Authors: Quint Nicolas
Published: May 2020

The two dozen or so Kordofanian langages are all endemic to the Sudanese province of South Kordofan (also termed the “Nuba Mountains”). Together they make up the Kordofanian branch, i.e. one of the primary subdivisions of the Niger-Congo phylum. This chapter summarizes the available information about these languages. First, it lists all known Kordofanian languages and the five families or sub-branches (namely Heibanian, Talodian, Lafofa, Rashadian, and Katloid) into which they are distributed. Second, it provides an overview of the field of Kordofanian studies. Third, it examines the most salient linguistic characteristics of Kordofanian languages in the domain of phonology, morphology (noun classes, verb extensions), and the lexicon. Building upon systematic comparisons between the diverse Kordofanian families and languages, it also proposes reconstructed Proto-Kordofanian roots for dozens of items. The conclusion recapitulates the main scientific challenges and questions that Kordofanian studies are expected to address in the future.
Pragmatics and Communication
Authors: Bearth Thomas
Published: May 2020

While pragmatics is committed to viewing language as goal-driven human activity in specified interactional settings, its application to African contexts, besides offering a means of evaluating the universality of its concepts in predominantly oral settings (negative face, Gricean maxims), reveals areal properties of language use and design. Straightforward correspondence between use and specific features of design is rare apart from speech routines (e.g. greetings), but discourse/grammar interfaces generate structured fields of pragmatic inquiry (information structure, deixis). Culture-driven constraints bear on usage (e.g. taboos) and on negotiation of inferential meaning, while lexically coded metapragmatics opens a little-explored field of hermeneutical reflection indigenous to African communities (speech act vocabulary, proverbs focusing on verbal behavior, repair mechanisms). Broadening the scope of inquiry to the societal dimension of communication while reducing its verbal component to zero level, the chapter concludes with some observations on silence as a pragmatic strategy in African public discourse.
Cara
Authors: Vossen Rainer
Published: May 2020

Cara is a highly endangered, little-documented Central Khoisan (Khoe) language of the East Kalahari branch, spoken by a small number of persons in Botswana’s Central District. The chapter begins with a brief description of phonological inventories on the segmental (consonant and vowel phonemes) as well as suprasegmental level (tones). Derivational and inflectional aspects are discussed, separately for nominals and verbals, under morphological headings such as gender-based noun class system, pronominal paradigms (personal, demonstrative, possessive, and interrogative), structure of finite verbs, verbal extensions, tense and aspect, modality, and negation. The syntactic characteristics dealt with are word order, coordination, subordination, declarative sentences, questions, and relative clauses.
African Language Types
Authors: Vossen Rainer
Published: May 2020

The goal of this chapter is to describe major salient features in the structures of African languages and their approximate distribution. A typological classification is not aimed at. The chapter begins with a sketch and discussion of typological subject areas generally, followed by a review of previous studies in African comparative typology that highlights the broad spectrum of objectives and methodological operations, as well as the basic principles of typological classification. The presentation of salient typological features of African languages is divided into phonological and morphosyntactic characteristics. Special emphasis is laid on noun class systems, which are widely found in Africa, case marking, verbal extensions, and serial verb constructions.
Afro-Asiatic Overview
Authors: Porkhomovsky Victor
Published: May 2020

The chapter presents a short sketch of the history of the Afro-Asiatic language family (often labeled a macro-family or language phylum), beginning with the history of the names Semitic and Hamitic. Changes in the composition of Afro-Asiatic are examined with a special focus on the correlation between Semitic and Hamitic. The place of Hamitic theory in Hamito-Semitic studies and its theoretical premises are discussed, as well as the reasons to reject the concept of original binary composition of the family and the very notion of Hamitic. All this led to changing the name of the family from Hamito-Semitic to Afro-Asiatic, which comprises five or six independent branches: Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic (as an independent branch or part of Cushitic). The present state of the art in comparative Afro-Asiatic and possible external links of Afro-Asiatic are also discussed.
Eastern Sudanic
Authors: Dimmendaal Gerrit J. , Jakobi Angelika
Published: May 2020

Eastern Sudanic, the largest Nilo-Saharan subgroup in terms of number of languages, is spread over a vast area from Chad towards Eritrea and southwards towards central Tanzania. In spite of considerable phonological variation (for example concerning vowel harmony) and morphosyntactic typological variation (for example concerning the tripartite number marking, differential object marking, and differential subject marking, or the presence versus absence of coverbs, light verbs, converbs, or pluractionality) within this branch, a range of diagnostic features provide clues to the genetic coherence as well as to the divergence of Eastern Sudanic, thereby supporting its classification as a valid subgroup of Nilo-Saharan.
Yukuben
Authors: Anyanwu Rose-Juliet
Published: May 2020

Yukuben is a Benue-Congo (Niger-Congo phylum) language spoken by some 20,000 persons along the foot of the mountains separating Cameroon and Nigeria. The vowel system is based on [ATR] harmony, and the consonant inventory is complex and fairly symmetric. Nouns are arranged in classes with an agreement system. In the verbal structure aspect and mood are more relevant than tense, whereby the aspect system is considered under two main broad sub-systems, precisely perfective and imperfective. The basic word order is SVO. The chapter gives a neat overview of the phonological system, of word categories, derivational and inflectional processes, and syntactic patterns such as subordination and coordination.
Conversation Analysis
Authors: Rüsch Maren
Published: May 2020

Conversation analysis, which began to evolve in the 1960s, studies the structure of talk, and how speakers organize a mostly fluent talk without many gaps or overlaps in order to guarantee maximal mutual understanding. It is based on the analysis of natural speech in a culturally natural environment. In this chapter, basic concepts of conversation analysis as well as the methods used by scholars are explained. A collection of examples from several African languages illustrates terminologies such as turn-taking strategies, sequence organization, and repair of trouble-sources in talk and provides an insight into new linguistic approaches to conversation analysis, especially in African settings.
Modified Chester Step Test in a Healthy Adult Population: Measurement Properties and Development of a Regression Equation to Estimate Test Duration
Authors: Coll Fiona , Hill Kylie , Burrows Sally , Watson Carol , Edgar Dale
Published: May 2020

Objective

Healthy working-aged adults performed the modified Chester Step Test (mCST) to (1) determine the effect of repetition on test duration, (2) report cardiorespiratory and symptom responses, (3) establish a regression equation to estimate duration, and (4) calculate the minimal detectable change of the test.

Methods

In this observational study conducted in a hospital physical therapy, adult participants aged 25 to 65 years who were healthy performed the mCST twice. This submaximal test required participants to step on and off a 20-cm step at a standardized cadence that increased every 2 minutes. The criteria for test completion were either a heart rate equal to 80% of age-predicted maximum or the onset of intolerable symptoms. The primary measure was time to test completion during the mCST (seconds). Cardiorespiratory and symptom responses were also collected during the mCST.

Results

A total of 83 participants (40 men, mean [SD] age = 44 [12] years) completed data collection. There was no systematic effect of test repetition with median test duration of the first test (522 seconds, range = 400–631 seconds) and second test (501 seconds, range = 403–631 seconds). The test elicited moderate symptoms of breathlessness and leg fatigue. In the multivariable model, age, sex, weight, and height were retained as significant predictors of test duration (R2 = 0.48). The minimal detectable change was 119 seconds.

Conclusions

The mCST is a reliable and valid clinically applicable test of aerobic capacity in working-aged adults. Independent pretest predictors can be used to estimate the clinical time required to complete the test.

Impact

The mCST was stable between test repetitions, suggesting no learning effect. For any given individual, a test duration change of 2 minutes represents change was beyond the natural variability. The mCST has good applicability to clinical settings.
Association of functional (GA)n microsatellite polymorphism in the FLI1 gene with susceptibility to human systemic sclerosis
Authors: Yamashita Keita , Kawasaki Aya , Matsushita Takashi , Furukawa Hiroshi , Kondo Yuya , Okiyama Naoko , Nagaoka Shouhei , Shimada Kota , Sugii Shoji , Katayama Masao , Hirohata Shunsei , Okamoto Akira , Chiba Noriyuki , Suematsu Eiichi , Setoguchi Keigo , Migita Kiyoshi , Sumida Takayuki , Tohma Shigeto , Hamaguchi Yasuhito , Hasegawa Minoru , Sato Shinichi , Kawaguchi Yasushi , Takehara Kazuhiko , Tsuchiya Naoyuki
Published: May 2020

Objective

Susceptibility genes that can account for characteristic features of SSc such as fibrosis, vasculopathy and autoimmunity remain to be determined. In mice, deficiency of Friend leukaemia integration 1 transcription factor (Fli1) causes SSc-like disease with these features. The human FLI1 gene contains (GA)n microsatellite, which has been shown to be associated with expression level. Because microsatellite polymorphisms are difficult to capture by genome-wide association studies, we directly genotyped FLI1 (GA)n microsatellite and examined its association with SSc.

Methods

Genomic DNA from 639 Japanese SSc patients and 851 healthy controls was genotyped for (GA)n microsatellite using the fragment assay. The cut-off repeat number for susceptibility to SSc was determined by receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis. Association with susceptibility and clinical characteristics was examined using logistic regression analysis. FLI1 mRNA levels were determined using quantitative RT-PCR.

Results

Based on the ROC analysis, (GA)n alleles with ≥22 repeats were collectively defined as L alleles and alleles with ≤21 repeats as S alleles. (GA)n L alleles were significantly associated with susceptibility to SSc (P = 5.0e-04, odds ratio 1.34, additive model). Significant association was observed both in diffuse cutaneous and limited cutaneous SSc. Among the SSc, (GA)n L alleles were significantly enriched in the patients with a modified Rodnan total skin thickness score ≥10 compared with those with a score <10. FLI1 mRNA levels were significantly decreased in healthy controls carrying (GA)n L alleles as compared with non-carriers.

Conclusion

Extended repeat alleles of FLI1 (GA)n microsatellite may be associated with lower FLI1 mRNA levels and susceptibility to human SSc.
Ultraviolet Mutagenesis Coupled with Next-Generation Sequencing as a Method for Functional Interrogation of Powdery Mildew Genomes
Authors: Barsoum Mirna , Kusch Stefan , Frantzeskakis Lamprinos , Schaffrath Ulrich , Panstruga Ralph
Published: May 2020

Powdery mildews are obligate biotrophic fungal pathogens causing important diseases of plants worldwide. Very little is known about the requirements for their pathogenicity at the molecular level. This is largely due to the inability to culture these organisms in vitro or to modify them genetically. Here, we describe a mutagenesis procedure based on ultraviolet (UV) irradiation to accumulate mutations in the haploid genome of the barley powdery mildew pathogen Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei. Exposure of B. graminis f. sp. hordei conidia to different durations of UV-C radiation (10 s to 12 min) resulted in a reduced number of macroscopically visible fungal colonies. B. graminis f. sp. hordei colony number was negatively correlated with exposure time and the total number of consecutive cycles of UV irradiation. Dark incubation following UV exposure further reduced fungal viability, implying that photoreactivation is an important component of DNA repair in B. graminis f. sp. hordei. After several rounds of UV mutagenesis, we selected two mutant isolates in addition to the parental B. graminis f. sp. hordei K1 isolate for whole-genome resequencing. By combining automated prediction of sequence variants and their manual validation, we identified unique UV-induced mutations in the genomes of the two isolates. Most of these mutations were in the up- or downstream regions of genes or in the intergenic space. Some of the variants detected in genes led to predicted missense mutations. As an additional insight, our bioinformatic analyses revealed a complex population structure within supposedly clonal B. graminis f. sp. hordei isolates.
Differential Susceptibility of Diverse Salix spp. to Melampsora americana and Melampsora paradoxa
Authors: Crowell Chase R. , Bekauri Mariami M. , Cala Ali R. , McMullen Patrick , Smart Lawrence B. , Smart Christine D.
Published: May 2020

Melampsora spp. willow rust is the most serious disease of shrub willow bioenergy production in the northeastern United States. Recent phylogenetic studies have identified several Melampsora spp. present on willow in the Northeast; however, in-depth understanding of Melampsora spp. host susceptibility remain unresolved. In this study, a panel of 82 rust isolates collected from the northeastern United States were genotyped via ribosomal DNA sequencing and a subset of these isolates were assayed for host susceptibility. This work revealed that Melampsora americana is the most prevalent species in the sampled geographic region and that there is potential for rust resistance breeding using the Salix spp. taxa assayed. Additionally, leaf morphology traits of these Salix spp. hosts were quantified for correlation analysis, revealing that trichome density and stomata density are possible contributors to resistance. This work provides foundational rust pathology information, which is crucial for M. americana resistance breeding.
Palliative care, resuscitation status, and end-of-life considerations in pediatric anesthesia
Authors: Erondu Mgbechi U. , Mahoney Daniel P.
Published: May 2020

Purpose of review

To familiarize pediatric anesthesiologists with primary palliative care procedural communication skills and recommendations for discussions involving complex medical decision-making or advance care planning, such as discussions about resuscitation status.

Recent findings

Recent publications highlight the benefits of pediatric palliative care (PPC) for seriously ill patients and their families, and how PPC principles might be applied to perioperative communication and decision-making. Both prospective and retrospective reports reveal improved quality of life, symptom management, and avoidance of unnecessary interventions when PPC is introduced early for a child with serious illness.

Pediatric anesthesiologists will, at some point, care for a child with serious illness who would benefit from PPC. It is important that all members of the perioperative care team are familiar with primary PPC procedural communication skills and models for approaching discussions about goals of care, shared decision-making, and advance care planning. Pediatric anesthesiologists should be incorporated as early as possible in team discussions about potential procedures requiring sedation for seriously ill children.
Conjoined twins in 2020 – state of the art and future directions
Authors: Frawley Geoff
Published: May 2020

Purpose of review

A number of high profile conjoined twin separations have been extensively covered by the world media. Anaesthesia for conjoined twins is a procedure rarely experienced by paediatric anaesthetists. The increased survival of the twins has prompted discussion as to the most appropriate selection of patients, teams and hospitals to provide exceptional anaesthetic care.

Recent findings

The number of conjoined twins presenting for surgery remains low with many infants not surviving foetal or early neonatal life. Anaesthetic management of less common conjoined infants such as craniopagus twins has highlighted the benefit of careful patient selection, extensive preoperative investigations and meticulous multidisciplinary team planning. The role of simulation of possible adverse perioperative events has been highlighted. Three dimensional anatomical models and virtual reality systems have permitted surgical planning in advance of actual intervention. A number of legal and ethical concerns have been reported especially in the setting of emergency separation where surgery is likely to contribute to death of one of the twins.

There appears to be an expanding role for international teams with extensive separation experience becoming involved in international teleconferencing to improve patient management in low-resource countries. Whether the perioperative outcome is better when the conjoined twins are transferred to major centres for surgery or teams operate in the twin's country of origin remains to be seen.