bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Abortion by Assault: Violence against Pregnant Women in Thirteenth-and Fourteenth-Century England
Authors: Butler Sara M. (Sara Margaret)
Published: July 2012

According to medieval common law, assault against a pregnant woman causing miscarriage after the first trimester was homicide. Some scholars have argued, however, that in practice English jurors refused to acknowledge assaults of this nature as homicide. The underlying argument is that because abortion by assault is a crime against women, male jurors were loath to impose the death penalty. A reexamination of the material notes that while conviction rates for assault on pregnant women were low, the English believed such assaults were felonies. Moreover, the role played by husbands as plaintiffs makes it clear that this was not merely a women's issue. Abortion by assault was never an easy judgment for jurors to deliver. In particular, the medical expertise required to pass judgment on such a case presented jurors with difficulties that may have prevented conviction of abortion by assault in many cases.
"The Horrors of Matrimony among the Masses": Feminist Representations of Wife Beating in England and Australia, 1870–1914
Authors: Aitken Jo
Published: July 2012

Although historians have identified violence against wives as a particular concern for late-nineteenth-century feminists, this article argues that class politics limited feminists' engagement with the problem of wife beating. English feminists used tales of working-class brutes who beat and maimed their wives to demand the vote for educated and propertied women; however, the class dynamics of such tales made them impolitic for Australian feminists fighting for the vote in a country with a proud tradition of universal manhood suffrage. Stories that revolved around passive victims and irredeemable brutes remained largely unconnected with feminist critiques of marriage. Leaders of the English women's movement used wife beating mainly to construct women's suffrage as a selfless duty middle-class women owed to their suffering sisters. In Australia, feminists infused these tales with their faith in progress and the possibilities of a new land and came to understand wife beating as predominantly a problem of the past and the Old World.
From Temporary Wife to Prostitute: Sexuality and Economic Change in Early Modern Southeast Asia
Authors: Andaya Barbara Watson
Published: July 2012

The historical study of women and gender in Southeast Asia is relatively new, and has concentrated almost exclusively on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article provides a deeper base to the discussion by examining changing attitudes toward sexual relationships between foreign men and local women during the early modern period. When Europeans arrived in the region in the early sixteenth century, they found that foreign traders commonly entered into a temporary marriage with local women who also helped them in trade. The rise of patriarchal states, penetration of elite values, increase in the number of foreign males, expansion of urban centers, and growth of prostitution acted together to change attitudes toward sexuality. Because foreigners increasingly preferred slaves or ex-slaves who could act as both servants and sexual partners, the status of the temporary wife was permanently eroded.
Farm Daughters and Industrialization: A Comparative Analysis of Dairying in New York and Sweden, 1860-1920
Authors: Sommestad Lena , McMurry Sally
Published: July 2012

Both Swedish and American dairying industrialized at about the same time. Centralized factories removed processing from the farm household, where women traditionally had dominated production. In Sweden, the central involvement of women in dairy production continued as women were trained to work in buttermaking factories using up-to-date technology. In the United States, however, the number of women working in cheese factories quickly diminished and soon reached negligible proportions. Why did change in dairying have such different results for women? This article argues that young rural women made varied choices based on the vastly different structure of wealth and opportunities in the two countries, and that they evaluated their choices on the basis of relative wages as well as according to the values of personal development, status, and independence.
Eugenics, Spirituality, and Sex Differentiation in Edwardian England: The Case of Frances Swiney
Authors: Robb George
Published: July 2012

Frances Swiney, a prominent Edwardian suffragist and Theosophist, used both scientific/eugenic ideas and spiritualism to argue that women represented a higher stage of evolutionary development than men and that women therefore should assume positions of greater prominence in British society. Although eugenics lent scientific authority to feminism, its emphasis on physical reproduction also meant that women were increasingly defined in terms of their childbearing potential and that anything which interfered with motherhood, such as careers, was a threat to civilization. Swiney proved instrumental in circumventing the eugenic dilemma and its seeming biological imperative by redefining eugenics as a moral and spiritual enterprise in which women could modify evolution through force of will. In particular, Swiney drew upon Theosophical spiritualism to argue that human evolution would reach its highest phase in the feminization of the species. Frances Swiney's work helps complexify the Victorian women's movement and remains important to that feminist paradigm which has sought to define women in terms other than biological.
Mapping Racial Boundaries: Gender, Race, and Poor Relief in Barbadian Plantation Society
Authors: Forde-Jones Cecily
Published: July 2012

This article explores problems the intersections of race, gender, and class created in the construction of the identities and material realities of white women in Barbados during the era of plantation slavery. Of the diverse racial groups that settled in the plantation societies, white women represent one of the most invisible and least analyzed. Their experiences have attracted minimal attention from Caribbean scholars, yet historical records reveal that white women played significant socioeconomic and political roles. As reproducers of the human state of freedom, their sexuality posed a potential threat to white dominance, and there is some evidence that their social and sexual autonomies were constrained and regulated. This article analyzes the dispensation of poor relief as a strategy the patriarchal white ruling class utilized to maintain the boundaries of "whiteness" by incorporating impoverished white women into a sphere of white superiority.
Militant Hindu Nationalist Women Reimagine Themselves: Notes on Mechanisms of Expansion/Adjustment
Authors: Bacchetta Paola
Published: July 2012

This article explores modes in which women militants from India's most extensive Hindu nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have used Hindu nationalist discourse to produce themselves as political agents. The author compares personal narratives of three Hindu nationalist women militants from three different generations to the official discourse of the RSS and its affiliated women's organization, Rashtra Sevika Samiti. Notwithstanding the diversity of the women's life trajectories, identities, perspectives, and modes of political engagement, there are also some commonalities. All three women selectively modify official Rashtra Sevika Samitidiscourse to justify their personal, intellectual, emotional, physical, and spatial expansion as new political agents. Simultaneously, they reproduce official RSS antifeminist and anti-Muslim stances, thereby ensuring their own confinement within the Hindu nationalist order which ultimately men dominate. Thus, the women end up adjusting to their (newly conceptualized and expanded, albeit still subordinate) place within that order.
Shaker Women and Sexual Power: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Shaker Village of Harvard, Massachusetts
Authors: Thurman Suzanne
Published: July 2012

This article traces the careers of Roxalana Grosvenor and Fidelia Grosvenor, members of the Shaker village of Harvard, Massachusetts, whom the community expelled in 1865 for claiming a divine call to introduce the celibate Shakers to a new dispensation based on procreation. Examining the Shakers' "orthodox" position on celibacy as well as the changing range of ideas concerning sexuality and female power found within Shakerism in the mid- to late-nineteenth century provides a context in which to assess the Grosvenors' heresy, its challenge to Shaker orthodoxy, and its impact on Shaker women.
Pliny’s Natural History and the Flavian Templum Pacis : Botanical Imperialism in First-Century c.e . Rome
Authors: Pollard Elizabeth Ann
Published: July 2012

The gardens in the first-century c.e . Flavian Templum Pacis are best understood as formal colonial botanical gardens populated with exotic flora of the type catalogued by Pliny in his Natural History. These gardens, along with the spice market (Horrea Piperataria) located next to the Templum Pacis on the Sacred Way in the center of Rome, were monumental statements of imperial power over the world as the Romans knew it. Both the transplantation to and the sacred offering within the Templum Pacis of botanicals that Romans acquired through conquest in the east and long-distance trade with India were ways to assert ideological and economic power within the Indo-Mediterranean network of exchange.
“Notorious and Convicted Mutilators”: Rammohun Roy, Thomas Jefferson, and the Bible
Authors: Zastoupil Lynn
Published: July 2012

This article links two famous individuals from different parts of the world who produced in the same year (1820) similar extracts of the four gospels. It argues that this was the result of globalizing processes that diffused unconventional views of the Bible to three continents and made international celebrities out of heterodox writers. The hitherto unconnected stories of Rammohun Roy and Thomas Jefferson are also used to shed light on a long, bitter controversy in Britain about the doctrine of the Trinity, a controversy that followed the flow and counterflow of ideas and people between core and periphery fashioned by empire.
The Liberty Principle and Universal Health Care
Authors: Sachs Benjamin
Published: July 2012

A universal entitlement to health care can be grounded in the liberty principle. A detailed examination of Rawls's discussion of health care in Justice as Fairness shows that Rawls himself recognized that illness is a threat to the basic liberties, yet failed to recognize the implications of this fact for health resource allocation. The problem is that one cannot know how to allocate health care dollars until one knows which basic liberties one seeks to protect, and yet one cannot know which basic liberties to protect until one knows how health care dollars will be allocated. The solution is to design the list of basic liberties and the health care system in tandem so as to fit each other, such that every citizen is guaranteed a set of basic liberties and access to the health services needed to secure them.
Psychiatry, Religious Conversion, and Medical Ethics
Authors: Post Stephen G.
Published: July 2012

The interface between religion, psychiatry, and ethics is often a locus for considerable controversy. This article focuses on the response of American psychiatry to religious nonconformism, and to religious conversion generally. At issue is the societal pressure against unpopular religious movements. The author argues for an ethic that conserves the freedom of religious conscience, and that guards against inquisitions in the guise of medical expertise and nosology.
In the Light of the Splendor: Veritatis Splendor and Moral Theology
Authors: Wildes Kevin Wm.
Published: July 2012

In the last 25 years, Roman Catholic moral theology has debated issues ranging from the sources of moral theology to the role of ecclesiastical authority in moral theology. In 1993, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor , which addresses issues in fundamental moral theology. The encyclical must be understood against the background of ongoing debates since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on birth control (Humanae Vitae) . It is not clear what the impact of Veritatis Splendor will be. However, it seems safe to say that it will be deployed in debates about issues such as birth control, artificial reproduction, sterilization, and abortion.
Toward An Expanded Vision of Clinical Ethics Education: From the Individual to the Institution
Authors: Solomon Mildred Z. , Jennings Bruce , Guilfoy Vivian , Jackson Rebecca , O'Donnell Lydia , Wolf Susan M. , Nolan Kathleen , Koch-Weser Dieter , Donnelley Strachan
Published: July 2012

This paper advances a new paradigm in clinical ethics education that not only emphasizes development of individual cli but also focuses on the institutional context within which health care professionals work. This approach has been applied to the goal of improving the care provided to critically and terminally ill adults. The model has been adopted by about thirty hospitals and nursing homes; additional institutions will soon join the program, entitled Decisions Near the End of Life . Here, we describe the history and rationale for this approach, its goals, pedagogical assumptions, and design.
Are the Patients Who Become Organ Donors under the Pittsburgh Protocol for "Non-Heart-Beating Donors" Really Dead?
Authors: Lynn Joanne
Published: July 2012

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) "Policy for the Management of Terminally Ill Patients Who May Become Organ Donors after Death" proposes to take organs from certain patients as soon as possible after expected cardiopulmonary death. This policy requires clear understanding of the descriptive state of the donor's critical cardiopulmonary and neurologic functional capacity at the time interventions to sustain or harvest organs are undertaken. It also requires strong consensus about the moral and legal status of the donor during dying and confirmation of death. There has been no need for the clarity and precision that this policy relies upon, and thus the needed research and conceptual work has not previously been generated. The empiric base and societal consensus are both too frail to provide justification for this policy at this time.
Germ-Line Gene Therapy and the Medical Imperative
Authors: Munson Ronald , Davis Lawrence H.
Published: July 2012

Somatic cell gene therapy has yielded promising results. If germ cell gene therapy can be developed, the promise is even greater: hundreds of genetic diseases might be virtually eliminated. But some claim the procedure is morally unacceptable. We thoroughly and sympathetically examine several possible reasons for this claim but find them inadequate. There is no moral reason, then, not to develop and employ germ-line gene therapy. Taking the offensive, we argue next that medicine has a prima facie moral obligation to do so.
Allocation of Resources at the Bedside: The Intersections of Economics, Law, and Ethics
Authors: Pellegrino Edmund D.
Published: July 2012

In the preceding article, Mehlman and Massey examine possible legal responses to the issues that confront physicians faced with treating patients who have insufficient financial resources. This commentary explores the same issues from the perspective of ethics, including a comparison of the way law and ethics interpret the physician-patient relationship, the ethical obligations of physicians that are inherent in that relationship, and the propriety of Mehlman and Massey's legal and ethical proposals to ameliorate physicians' conflicting obligations in providing or withholding care on grounds of conservation of society's resources.
Principlism and Its Alleged Competitors
Authors: Beauchamp Tom L.
Published: July 2012

Principles that provide general normative frameworks in bioethics have been criticized since the late 1980s, when several different methods and types of moral philosophy began to be proposed as alternatives or substitutes. Several accounts have emerged in recent years, including: (1) Impartial Rule Theory (supported in this issue by K. Danner Clouser), (2) Casuistry (supported in this issue by Albert Jonsen), and (3) Virtue Ethics (supported in this issue by Edmund D. Pellegrino). Although often presented as rival methods or theories, these approaches are consistent with and should not be considered adversaries of a principle-based account.
Development of An Institutional Policy on Artificial Hydration and Nutrition
Authors: Koshuta Monica A. , Schmitz Phyllis J. , Lynn Joanne
Published: July 2012

The issues involved in deciding whether to use artificial methods of delivering hydration and nutrition are often very difficult for patients, families, and health care providers. Once private and personal matters, these decisions now frequently involve the judicial system. Five years ago, Hospice of Washington recognized the need for a written policy and wrote the one published here. Its goal is to respect individual preferences and family concerns while addressing the nutrition and hydration needs of dying patients. The policy sets parameters on the issue, provides basic information, and encourages crafting the most fitting resolution to each situation.
Electronic Roundtables for Medical Ethics
Authors: Goodman Kenneth
Published: July 2012

Electronic mail creates special opportunities and burdens for academicians and others. This article first describes e-mail and how it works in a university setting. It then presents the transcript of an electronic exchange over the issue of multiple or repeat abortion. The debate was inspired by a case presented during "ethics rounds" for students at a university medical center. The value of e-mail in this case is considered, and the electronic medium is found to be useful for sharing ideas and stimulating debate about issues in medical ethics, as well as for educational purposes.
The Cost of Ethics Legislation: A Look at the Patient Self-Determination Act
Authors: Sugarman Jeremy , Powe Neil R. , Brillantes Dorothy A. , Smith Melanie K.
Published: July 2012

The Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) requires hospitals to ask patients upon admission whether they have an advance directive. Although the PSDA has received extensive criticism, little attention has been paid to the cost of the law, either during its legislative course or following its implementation. Nonetheless, several tangible and intangible costs are associated with the PSDA. Such costs may be incurred by different parties. This paper examines the costs and benefits of the PSDA and illustrates the extent of some of its tangible costs. The incremental start-up cost for one institution's response to the PSDA is estimated to be $49,304 ($1.31 per admission) and the total implementation cost of the program to be $114,528. In addition, the national incremental start-up cost for hospitals to implement the PSDA is estimated to be between $43,625,114 and $101,569,922. Finally, the potential implications of the PSDA for future governmental health care ethics regulation are discussed.
History of Organ Donation by Patients with Cardiac Death
Authors: DeVita Michael A. , Snyder James V. , Grenvik Ake
Published: July 2012

When successful solid organ transplantation was initiated almost 40 years ago, its current success rate was not anticipated. But continuous efforts were undertaken to overcome the two major obstacles to success: injury caused by interrupting nutrient supply to the organ and rejection of the implanted organ by normal host defense mechanisms. Solutions have resulted from technologic medical advances, but also from using organs from different sources. Each potential solution has raised ethical concerns and has variably resulted in societal acclaim, censure, and apathy. Transplant surgery is now well accepted, and the list of transplant candidates has grown far quicker than the availability of organs. More than 30,000 patients were awaiting organs for transplantation at the end of March 1993. While most organs came from donors declared dead by brain criteria, the increasing shortage of donated organs has prompted a reexamination of prior restrictions of donor groups. Recently, organ procurement from donors with cardiac death has been reintroduced in the United States. This practice had been mostly abandoned by the U.S. and some, though not all, other countries. Transplantation has been more successful using organs procured from heart-beating, "brain dead" cadavers than organs from non-heart-beating cadavers. However, recent advances have led to success rates with organs from non-heart-beating donors that may portend large increases in organ donation and procurement from this source.
The Goodness of Fragility: On the Prospect of Genetic Technologies Aimed at the Enhancement of Human Capacities
Authors: Parens Erik
Published: July 2012

Beginning with the assumptions that genetic technology will make possible the enhancement of some significant human capacities and that our society will have self-evident reasons to pursue such enhancements, this essay suggests less evident reasons to proceed with extreme caution. The essay asks: Will we, in our attempts to enhance humans by reducing their subjection to chance and change, inadvertently impoverish them? It explores how technologies aimed at enhancement might affect the good that is our experience of some forms of the beautiful and the excellent, the good that is relationships of care, and the good that is diversity across the life span. In the end, it speculates about the fundamental philosophical difference that underlies the disagreement between those who would tend to embrace a project to enhance human capacities and those who would tend to criticize such a project.
Potential Conflicts of Interest Generated by the Use of Non-Heart-Beating Cadavers
Authors: Burdick James F.
Published: July 2012

The non-heart-beating cadaver donor procurement process might come in conflict with the organ sharing system by diverting organs from potential recipients. It might also have a negative effect on public attitudes about transplantation. The process could start society down a slippery slope leading to extending donor criteria. Some of these scenarios are merely theoretical, but the procedure should be monitored to avoid such problems.
Beyond Pittsburgh: Protocols for Controlled Non-Heart-Beating Cadaver Organ Recovery
Authors: Spielman Bethany , McCarthy Cynthia Simmons
Published: July 2012

Much of the ethical debate about controlled non-heart-beating cadaver (NHBC) organ recovery has focused on the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) protocol. Some commentators have voiced serious reservations about the ethical acceptability of that protocol; others have argued that the protocol contains sufficiently stringent ethical safeguards to warrant a limited and carefully monitored trial at UPMC. UPMC is not the only organization pursuing controlled NHBC organ procurement, however. The study of organ procurement organizations described in this article suggests that controlled NHBC organ procurement is a practice that, if not yet widespread, is certainly no longer isolated to a few organizations in which it is carefully monitored. Rather, it is being carried out under a variety of circumstances, many of which are less carefully constrained ethically than at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The next stage of the ethical debate should focus on issues that are arising in a variety of settings as the practice spreads.
Cloning: Revisiting an Old Debate
Authors: Verhey Allen D.
Published: July 2012

The debate about cloning that took place 25 years ago, although directed toward a different sort of cloning, elucidates fundamental issues currently at stake in reproductive technologies and research. Paul Ramsey and Joseph Fletcher were participants in this early debate. The differences between Ramsey and Fletcher about the meaning and sufficiency of freedom, the understanding and weighing of good and evil, the connection between embodiment and personhood, the relationship of humans with nature, and the meaning of parenthood suggest both a broader agenda for the debate about cloning and a cautious move forward in the development of embryo splitting.
The Doctor as Double Agent
Authors: Angell Marcia
Published: July 2012

American doctors in the 1990s are being asked to serve as "double agents," weighing competing allegiances to patients' medical needs against the monetary costs to society. This situation is a reaction to rapid cost increases for medical services, themselves the result of the haphazard development since the 1920s of an inherently inflationary, open-ended system for funding and delivering health care. The answer to an inefficient system, however, is not to stint on care, but rather to restructure the system to remove the inflationary pressures. As long as we are spending enormous resources on an inherently inefficient and inflationary system we cannot justify asking doctors to withhold beneficial care to save money for third-party payers. Doing so serves a largely political agenda and endangers the patient-centered ethic that is central to medicine.
Moral Complicity in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research
Authors: Brown Mark T.
Published: July 2012

Direct reprogramming of human skin cells makes available a source of pluripotent stem cells without the perceived evil of embryo destruction, but the advent of such a powerful biotechnology entangles stem cell research in other forms of moral complicity. Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research had its origins in human embryonic stem cell research and the projected biomedical applications of iPS cells almost certainly will require more embryonic stem cell research. Policies that inhibit iPSC research in order to avoid moral complicity are themselves complicit in preventable harms to patients. Moral complicity may be unavoidable, but a Blue Ribbon Panel charged with assessing the need for additional embryonic stem cell lines may ease a transition from embryonic stem cell research to clinical applications of iPS cells.
Deliberative Democracy and Stem Cell Research in New York State: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Authors: Sulmasy Daniel P.
Published: July 2012

Many states in the U.S. have adopted policies regarding human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in the last few years. Some have arrived at these policies through legislative debate, some by referendum, and some by executive order. New York has chosen a unique structure for addressing policy decisions regarding this morally controversial issue by creating the Empire State Stem Cell Board with two Committees—an Ethics Committee and a Funding Committee. This essay explores the pros and cons of various policy arrangements for making public policy decisions about morally controversial issues in bioethics (as well as other issues) through the lens of Deliberative Democracy, focusing on the principles of reciprocity, publicity, and accountability. Although New York's unique mechanism potentially offers an opportunity to make policy decisions regarding a morally controversial subject like hESC research in accord with the principles of Deliberative Democracy, this essay demonstrates its failure to do so in actual fact. A few relatively simple changes could make New York's program a real model for putting Deliberative Democracy into practice in making policy decisions regarding controversial bioethical issues.
Will South Korea Follow the German Experience?: Democracy, the Migratory Process, and the Prospects for Permanent Immigration in Korea
Authors: Lim Timothy C.
Published: July 2012

Long portrayed as an ethnically pure and homogenous nation-state—the quintessential “historical nation”—it has generally been taken for granted that South Korea was immune to the processes of global migration. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, the barriers to large-scale migration began to break down. The reason is easy enough to discern: after decades of rapid and sustained industrialization, combined with a continuous increase in economic wealth, severe labor shortages started to appear in certain segments of the Korean economy. The demand for foreign labor, in short, overcame Korean fears of an “ethnic invasion.” Despite this, many observers assume that the country is still immune to the deeper political, cultural, and social changes that increasing in-migration typically bring. In particular, many believe that South Korea will avoid becoming a country of immigration. In this article, I challenge this view. I argue that the processes of migration tend to unfold in a broadly similar, but not exact manner in different countries—including in South Korea—regardless of their unique social, institutional, political, and cultural circumstances.
Transitional Emotions: Boredom and Distraction in Hong Sang-su's Travel Films
Authors: Choe Youngmin
Published: July 2012

This article explores the cultural significance of boredom and distraction in postmodern Korea by focusing on Hong Sang-su's holiday films. It posits that Hong's films about characters attempting to escape from the banalities of urban life can be seen to reveal, stylistically and thematically, the emotions and anxieties unleashed by excessive leisure in neoliberal Korea. By re-casting the absence of events in Hong's films as an existing affect of lacking, it challenges the adequacy of pre-existing affective paradigms in the understanding of boredom in neoliberal Korea. In recognition of the transient stage in which boredom as emotion finds itself, it proposes categorizing emotions at such historical junctures as "transitional emotions," drawing on theories that socialize rather than psychologize emotion by locating them as circulating inter-subjectively.
Semantic change and heterosemy in grammaticalization
Authors: Lichtenberk Frantisek
Published: July 2012

In Oceanic languages, elements that function or used to function as directional verbs of motion—'go', 'come', and 'return'—undergo a variety of grammaticalization processes. This study is an investigation of the semantic aspects of those developments, the factors that motivate the functional extensions, and the relations among the meanings/functions of the etyma. It is human conceptualization of phenomena (viz. metaphor and metonymy) that directly motivates the developments. Even though the various meanings/functions of an etymon are all historically related, synchronically there need not be any property exclusively shared by all of them. The nature of the motivations for the functional extensions provides support for the view of meaning as essentially subjective and open-ended.
The Greenbergian word order correlations
Authors: Dryer Matthew S.
Published: July 2012

This paper reports on the results of a detailed empirical study of word order correlations, based on a sample of 625 languages. The primary result is a determination of exactly what pairs of elements correlate in order with the verb and object. Some pairs of elements that have been claimed to correlate in order with the verb and object do not in fact exhibit any correlation. I argue against the Head-Dependent Theory (HDT), according to which the correlations reflect a tendency towards consistent ordering of heads and dependents. I offer an alternative account, the Branching Direction Theory (BDT), based on consistent ordering of phrasal and nonphrasal elements. According to the BDT, the word order correlations reflect a tendency for languages to be consistently right-branching or consistently left-branching.*
Iconicity and generative grammar
Authors: Newmeyer Frederick J.
Published: July 2012

A theme running through much of the functionalist literature in linguistics is that grammatical structure, to a considerable degree, has an 'iconic' motivation. This theme can be distilled into three rather distinct claims: (1) iconic principles govern speakers' choices of structurally available options in discourse; (2) structural options that reflect discourse-iconic principles become grammaticalized; (3) grammatical structure is an iconic reflection of conceptual structure. After presenting numerous examples from the functionalist literature in support of the idea that iconicity is widespread in language, I argue that claim (1) is irrelevant to generative grammar; claim (2), if correct, poses no challenge to generative grammar, despite a widespread belief to the contrary; and claim (3) has literally been built into standard versions of generative grammar. I go on to discuss the implications of iconic relations in language for the autonomy hypothesis and, at a more speculative level, for the evolution of language.
Phonetic Knowledge
Authors: Kingston John , Diehl Randy L.
Published: July 2012

This paper argues that the phonetic interpretation of phonological representations may be controlled as well as automatic, because contextual variation in the realization of distinctive feature values is a flexible and adaptive response to variation in the demands on the production or perception of these values between contexts. The principal evidence presented in support of this argument is that the variation in the phonetic realization of speech sounds between contexts or languages involves reorganization of articulations into distinct phonetic categories. Extensive evidence of such reorganization in the realization of the feature [voice] is presented.
Don't touch my projectile: Gender bias and stereotyping in syntactic examples
Authors: Macaulay Monica , Brice Colleen
Published: July 2012

This article presents the results of two studies which show that gender bias and stereotyping are widespread in the example sentences of syntax textbooks. Results from both studies indicate that little has changed over the past twenty-five years: virtually all of the authors favor male-gendered NPs as subjects and agents and regularly stereotype both genders. Throughout the paper we make reference to the LSA guidelines for nonsexist usage , pointing out the need for such guidelines, and highlighting the gaps in the current version.
On the syntax of obviation
Authors: Aissen Judith
Published: July 2012

This article explores the idea that obviation systems like those found in the Algonquian languages are a less parochial solution to syntactic organization than is generally thought. Some simple constraints on obviation provide interesting analyses of key facts in Algonquian. Once certain language-particular differences are recognized, a number of syntactic problems in two unrelated languages, Tzotzil (Mayan) and Chamorro (Western Austronesian), yield easily to solutions based on obviation, despite the absence of obviative-based morphology in either language. Hierarchy alignment constraints play a central role in the analysis. The account is articulated within optimality theory, which provides an appropriate framework for representing the fact that these languages must select from their resources for expressing transitive propositions the optimal mode of expression for each such proposition.
Identificational focus versus information focus
Authors: Kiss Katalin É.
Published: July 2012

This article argues that identificational focus, which expresses exhaustive identification and occupies the specifier of a functional projection, must be distinguished in language description from information focus, which conveys new information and involves no syntactic reordering. The properties of the two types of focus are established on the basis of Hungarian and English material. It is argued that the cleft constituent is the realization of identificational focus in English. Only -phrases are analyzed as identificational foci carrying an evaluative presupposition. The feature specification of identificational focus is shown to be subject to parametric variation: the focus operators of various languages are specified for the positive value of either or both of the features [ + exhaustive] and [ + contrastive].
The mechanisms of denial
Authors: Geurts Bart
Published: July 2012

Normally, the negation of a sentence S serves to reverse the assertion that S would have made, and does not affect other types of information S would have conveyed, such as presuppositions, implicatures, and so on. Occasionally, however, it seems as if negation is directed precisely at presuppositions, implicatures, or even at purely formal aspects of a sentence (such as intonation, pronunciation, and so on). The following are cases in point: Mary didn't visit the pizzeria in the Vatican, because there is no pizzeria in the Vatican./I'm not tipsy: I'm drunk./He didn't call the police, he called the po LICE . I call such sentences DENIALS , and I argue against the unitarian approach advocated by Horn and van der Sandt, among others, according to which denial is a homogeneous phenomenon that calls for a unified analysis. According to the alternative theory proposed here, there are several mechanisms of denial, but each of these is needed for independent reasons, and therefore no ad hoc mechanisms are necessary.
Spanish stress assignment within the analogical modeling of language
Authors: Eddington David
Published: July 2012

The advent of nonlinear phonology has resulted in an explosion of studies relating to Spanish syllable structure and stress placement, but most of these studies claim to represent linguistic competence and language structure, not actual mechanisms used by speakers in speech production and comprehension. The present study is couched within Skousen's ANALOGICAL MODELING OF LANGUAGE (AML) (1989, 1992, 1995). AML attempts to reflect how speakers determine linguistic behaviors such as stress placement. According to AML, when an unfamiliar word needs to be stressed, speakers access their mental lexicon, search for words similar to the word in question, then apply the stress of the word(s) found to the word in question. The 4,970 most common Spanish words served as the database for the study. AML correctly assigned stress to about 94% of these words. The errors it made closely reflect the pattern of errors made by Spanish-speaking children in a study by Hochberg (1988). Moreover, Aske's nonce word probe (1990) showed that native speakers are sensitive to a certain subpattern in Spanish stress assignment—a subpattern which does not receive representation in rule models. The analogical model of Spanish stress mirrors Aske's findings.
Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering
Authors: Arnold Jennifer E. , Losongco Anthony , Wasow Thomas , Ginstrom Ryan
Published: July 2012

Variations in postverbal constituent ordering have been attributed to both grammatical complexity (heaviness) and discourse status (newness), although few studies compare the two factors explicitly. Through corpus analysis and experimentation, we demonstrate that both factors simultaneously and independently influence word order in two English constructions. While past investigations of these factors have focused on their effects in language comprehension, we argue that postponing heavy and new constituents facilitates processes of planning and production.
The Extension of Dependency Beyond the Sentence
Authors: Mithun Marianne
Published: July 2012

This article examines several grammatical developments that have received relatively little attention, but that may be more pervasive than previously recognized. They involve the functional extension of markers of grammatical dependency from sentence-level syntax into larger discourse and pragmatic domains. Such developments are first illustrated with material from Navajo and Central Alaskan Yup'ik, then surveyed more briefly in several other unrelated languages. In some cases, secondary effects of such changes can reshape basic clause structure. An awareness of these processes can accordingly aid in understandingcertain recurringbut hitherto unexplained arrays of basic morphological and syntactic patterns, exemplified here with cases of homophonous grammatical markers and of ergative/accusative splits. Like developments described by Gildea (1997, 1998) and Evans (2007), they involve the use of dependent clauses as independent sentences, but the processes described here differ from those in both the mechanisms at work and their results.
Construction After Construction and its Theoretical Challenges
Authors: Jackendoff Ray
Published: July 2012

The English NPN construction, exemplified by construction after construction, is productive with five prepositions—by, for, to, after, and upon—with a variety of meanings, including succession, juxtaposition, and comparison; it also has numerous idiomatic cases. This mixture of regularity and idiosyncrasy lends itself to an account in the spirit of construction grammar, in which the lexicon includes specified syntactic structures matched with meanings. The internal syntactic structure of NPN violates standard principles of phrase structure, and the required identity of the two nouns (in most cases) presents descriptive difficulties. Furthermore, when NPN appears in NP positions, it can take normal NP complements and modifiers, and it has quantificational semantics despite the absence of a lexical quantifier. These peculiarities collectively present interesting challenges to linguistic theory. The best hope lies in a theory of grammar that (i) recognizes meaningful constructions as theoretical entities; (ii) recognizes a continuum of regularity between words and rules; and (iii) recognizes the autonomy of syntax from semantics and vice versa.
What Games Have to Offer: Information Behavior and Meaning-Making in Virtual Play Spaces
Authors: Adams Suellen S.
Published: July 2012

This article examines the information seeking behavior and meaning-making in virtual play spaces by employing the example of one such space. The researcher examines the means by which game players get the information needed to succeed in a game through the lens of everyday life information seeking, and how they make meanings in the play space through the lens of the dramaturgical approach. While this research emphasized a particular online game environment, the information seeking and meaning-making applies to many other virtual play spaces, both multiplayer and single player. If information seeking and meaning-making are taking place in virtual play spaces in the ways they appear to be, gaming in the library could be an important way to promote effective information seeking. The possibility of a new way of seeking information and meaning-making suggests several lines of investigation regarding the provision of information in other arenas that remain to be explored.
Serving the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the United States of America
Authors: Cylke Frank Kurt , Moodie Michael M , Fistick Robert E
Published: July 2012

Since the early 1930s federal legislation has enabled the Library of Congress to offer free library service to blind and physically handicapped individuals resident in the United States as well as to U.S. citizens overseas. Technological changes in the program have mirrored and sometimes anticipated transformations and developments in the world of consumer electronics. Braille is now accessible over the Internet by means of specialized keyboards; audiobooks, originally cut onto rigid shellac 78-rpm disks, have progressed to flexible discs and a refined analog cassette technology that will in turn soon be replaced by digital flash-memory cartridges playable on efficient, reliable, lightweight, and portable machines. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped looks forward to the inauguration of its new digital system in 2008.
Sharing a Vision to Improve Library Services for Visually Impaired People in the United Kingdom
Authors: Owen David
Published: July 2012

The United Kingdom has an unplanned, mixed library economy of services for visually impaired people compared with other developed countries. This article sets out the historical context within which this has come about; attempts made to improve these services since the creation of Share the Vision in 1989 via enhanced partnership working within and between the voluntary and public sectors; and practical measures to achieve this and campaigning work to include consideration of the needs of visually impaired people within mainstream services and to persuade the UK government to adopt a more proactive role. It sets out an ambitious vision statement for library services for visually impaired people in the UK that has still to be achieved.
A User's Perspective
Authors: Burrington Gillian A
Published: July 2012

This article is a personal account of the challenges faced by a library school lecturer who loses sight later in life. It illustrates the difficulties faced by visually impaired people in the United Kingdom in obtaining access to reading materials for work, educational, and leisure purposes. It also considers their future prospects.
Moving Image Preservation and Cultural Capital
Authors: Gracy Karen F
Published: July 2012

This article examines the changing landscape of moving image archiving in the wake of recent developments in online video sharing services such as YouTube and Google Video. The most crucial change to moving image archives may not be in regard to the collections themselves, but rather the social order that sustains cultural institutions in their role as the creators and sustainers of objectified cultural capital. In the future, moving image stewardship may no longer be the exclusive province of institutions such as archives and libraries, and may soon be accomplished in part through the work of other interested individuals and organizations as they contribute to and define collections. The technologies being built and tested in the current Internet environment offer a new model for the reimagined moving image archive, which foregrounds the user in the process of creating the archive and strongly encourages the appropriation of moving images for new works. This new archetype, which in theory functions on democratic principles, considers moving images—along with most other types of cultural heritage material—to be building blocks of creative acts or public speech acts. One might argue that the latter represents a new model for creating an archive; this new democratic archive documents and facilitates social discourse.
UNESCO'S Memory of the World Programme
Authors: Harvey D. R. (Douglas Ross)
Published: July 2012

UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme is one response to the challenges of preserving cultural heritage. This paper describes its activities, indicates its relationship to other large-scale programs to promote understanding of the importance of preserving heritage, introduces the Australian Memory of the World Program as a case study, and examines some of the issues surrounding the program.
Conformity and Subversion: Handwritten Newspapers from an Exiles' Commune, 1938–1943
Authors: Kenna Margaret E.
Published: July 2012

Handwritten newspapers from a commune of political exiles on one of the Aegean islands came to light 50 years after their first appearance and a survey of their contents has begun. There are more than 40 items, with seven differently titled newspapers catering to a variety of readers, from ordinary communards to political theorists and members of regionally-based sub-groups. A detailed discussion of particular issues of newspapers using theoretical insights from the works of Goffman and Foucault helps place the collection in its historical context.