bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Classification of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Authors: Ball Tali Manber , Stein Murray B.
Published: February 2013

This chapter reviews the current diagnostic criteria of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Areas of specificity and overlap with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder are discussed. Despite significant overlap in symptom criteria, clinicians can reliably distinguish between these conditions. The chapter then discusses boundaries of the PTSD diagnosis as it currently stands, specifically focusing on the relationship and comorbidity between PTSD and complicated bereavement, dissociative disorders, personality disorders particularly borderline personality disorder, somatoform disorders, and chronic pain. The proposed syndrome of complex PTSD, designed to capture reactions to prolonged interpersonal trauma, is also described. Finally, issues relating to the cross-cultural validity of PTSD are raised. Topics relevant to the upcoming revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) are highlighted throughout.
Future of Classification in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Authors: Keane Terence M. , Miller Mark W.
Published: February 2013

This chapter reviews the status of modifications to the definition of PTSD and proposed changes for DSM-5. We include a brief history of the diagnosis and trace its evolution in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). We discuss some of the current controversies related to the definition of PTSD including its location among the anxiety disorders, the utility of Criterion A and its subcomponents, and the factor structure of the symptoms. We review the rationale for the addition of new symptoms and modifications to existing criteria now and conclude with comments on future directions for research on PTSD.
Information Processing in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Authors: Ehlers Anke , Ehring Thomas , Kleim Birgit
Published: February 2013

The chapter reviews the contribution of information processing models to understanding the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder. Individual differences in cognitive processing during the trauma and basic memory mechanism, such as priming and associative learning, may help explain why people with PTSD involuntarily re-experience parts of the trauma in a wide range of situations. Individual differences in how people remember traumatic events may influence the likelihood of developing PTSD. Attentional bias to trauma-related cues and threatening interpretations of the trauma or its aftermath help explain why people with PTSD have many symptoms of anxiety even though the trauma is over. Cognitive strategies people use to deal with memories of the trauma, such as effortful suppression of trauma memories and rumination, help explain why some develop chronic PTSD whereas many recover from trauma. Finally, there may be cognitive vulnerability factors that increase the probability of developing PTSD in response to trauma. Directions for future research are outlined.
Assessing Acute Traumatic Stress Symptoms
Authors: Bryant Richard A.
Published: February 2013

There is significant change in acute stress reactions in the weeks after exposure to a traumatic event, which raises challenges for assessing the responses in the acute posttraumatic period. This chapter reviews the assessment tools and strategies that are appropriate in the acute period. It focuses initially on acute stress disorder (ASD) as a description of acute posttraumatic stress and as a predictor of subsequent PTSD. Psychometrically-validated scales are reviewed for both diagnostic and symptom responses in the acute period, with a critique of the limited ability of these measures to identify most people who are at high risk for subsequent PTSD. Finally, this chapter identifies mechanisms that may enhance our ability to identify maladaptive responses in the acute phase, and specific populations that need particular attention in the immediate period following trauma exposure. The weeks following exposure to a traumatic event are often characterized by considerable distress, fluctuating emotions, and changing environmental factors. This lack of emotional and contextual stability raises significant challenges for assessment of psychological states shortly after trauma. This chapter aims to provide an overview of assessment of psychological responses in the weeks after trauma. It commences with a review of the current evidence about the nature of acute posttraumatic stress reactions and discusses the different goals of assessment at this stage. Established psychometric instruments are then reviewed, including structured clinical interviews, self-report measures, and other tools relevant to acute reactions. The review then turns to other factors that can be assessed, including cognitive and biological factors, occurring in the acute posttraumatic period. Finally, the chapter outlines other procedural issues that need to be considered when assessing trauma survivors in the acute phase.
Treating Trauma-related Symptoms in Special Populations
Authors: Hinton Devon E. , Nickerson Angela
Published: February 2013

Though there is much research on the treatment of posttraumatic psychological reactions in survivors of civilian trauma, there is much less empirical evidence to drive interventions with survivors of other kinds of trauma, including persecution, torture, and sexual abuse, particularly in other cultural groups. This chapter illustrates some of the factors that should be taken into consideration when treating such populations. The chapter is divided into sections that address key issues relevant to special populations of trauma survivors: type of trauma, current stressors, comorbidity, anger, cultural issues such as culturally specific interpretations of trauma-related symptoms, and bereavement. We examine the implications for the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers of these issues. As this chapter indicates, the treatment of traumatic distress in special populations warrants more research to ensure that the optimal psychological interventions are available to such highly traumatized groups.
Traumatic Stress Disorders: Looking Back and Moving Forward
Authors: Sloan Denise M. , Beck J. Gayle
Published: February 2013

This chapter highlights some of the advances in traumatic stress disorders that have been described by contributors of this volume. The chapter also describes areas that will be important for the field to address in the years to come. These areas include advances in the classification of traumatic stress disorders, advances in biological and genetic markers of traumatic stress disorder, advances in assessment measures, especially measures developed for use with children and older adults, and advances in prevention and interventions.
Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom
Authors: Hasker William
Published: February 2013

This article focuses on the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, which has been the most discussed problem in this area in recent philosophy. It begins with a formal statement of the standard historical argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free will, an argument based on the idea that if God has foreknowledge of all future events and God's foreknowledge is infallible, then agents cannot act other than they actually do. It examines the most prominent proposed solutions to this problem, including the Eternalist solution, which appeals to the notion that God's knowledge is timeless; the Ockhamist solution, which holds that God's past beliefs are not accidentally necessary; and the Molinist solution, which relies on God's “middle knowledge” that every creature would freely choose to do in any situation of libertarian free choice.
Chaos, Indeterminism, and Free Will
Authors: Bishop Robert C.
Published: February 2013

This article begins with a discussion of modern efforts to clarify and define the meaning of physical determinism. It distinguishes four features of the Laplacean vision of physical determinism—differential dynamics, unique evolution, value determinateness, and absolute prediction—and the relevance of each to free-will debates. It then turns to the role of indeterminism in quantum mechanics and discusses current philosophical debates about the nature of indeterministic or probabilistic causation. It also considers debates about the possible relevance of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics in physical systems to free will as well as the possible relevance of recent research on far-from equilibrium physical systems pioneered by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine. The article concludes with some general remarks about the causal completeness of physical explanations and the possibility of emergent phenomena in physical systems.
The Causal Closure of Physics and Free Will
Authors: Bishop Robert C. , Atmanspacher Harald
Published: February 2013

This article focuses on the thesis known as the causal closure (or causal completeness) of physics (CoP)—that all physical events can be fully explained by physical causes governed by the fundamental laws of physics. This thesis raises well-known questions central to free-will debates about the nature and possibility of the “mental causation” of physical events (e.g., beliefs, desires, intentions). If all causes are physical causes, as CoP implies, it would seem that psychological states or events must be fully reducible to physical events or they would be epiphenomenal. The discussion also introduces a notion of “contextual emergence” (according to which lower-level descriptions of events in physical terms contain necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for higher-level descriptions in mental terms) and argues that such a notion of contextual emergence allows one to answer objections to the possibility of mental causation.
The Consequence Argument Revisited
Authors: Speak Daniel
Published: February 2013

This article surveys the most recent versions of the Consequence Argument and objections to them. It considers objections made to some of the more well-known versions of the argument and recent attempts by defenders to answer these objections by offering reformulated versions of it. Many objections involve a principle van Inwagen called “Beta,” which is regarded by many as the most controversial assumption of the argument. Beta is a “transfer of powerlessness” principle, which states, roughly, that if you are powerless to change something “p” (e.g., the past or the laws of nature), then you are also powerless to change any of the logical consequences of “p.” The discussion considers various formulations of Beta as well as purported counterexamples to it and responses to these counterexamples by current defenders of the Consequence Argument.
Moral Sense and the Foundations of Responsibility
Authors: Russell Paul
Published: February 2013

This article discusses another important class of new compatibilist theories of agency and responsibility, frequently referred to as reactive attitude theories. Such theories have their roots in another seminal essay of modern free-will debates, P. F. Strawson's “Freedom and Resentment” (1962). This article disentangles three strands of Strawson's argument—rationalist, naturalist, and pragmatic. It also considers other recent reactive attitude views that have attempted to remedy flaws in Strawson's view, focusing particularly on the view of R. Jay Wallace. Wallace supplies an account of moral capacity, which is missing in Strawson's view, in terms of an account of what Wallace calls “reflective self-control.” The article concludes with suggestions of how a reactive attitude approach to moral responsibility that builds on the work of Strawson, Wallace, and others might be successfully developed.
Frankfurt-Friendly Libertarianism
Authors: Widerker David
Published: February 2013

This article begins by reviewing a major objection to Frankfurt-type examples made in past writings, called here as the “Dilemma Objection.” It explains why PAP has an initial plausibility for many persons. This plausibility is grounded, the article argues, in a principle called the “principle of reasonable expectations” (PAE): An agent is morally blameworthy for a given act only if, in the circumstances, it would be morally reasonable to expect the agent to have done something else. It argues that in situations of such kinds, agents can be held morally responsible for their actions, even in a libertarian sense. This views is called “Frankfurt-friendly libertarianism.” It argues that this more “Frankfurt-friendly” view is another possible option open to libertarians in response to Frankfurt-type examples.
Contributions of Neuroscience to the Free Will Debate: From random movement to intelligible action
Authors: Walter Henrik
Published: February 2013

This article discusses a range of recent research in cognitive neuroscience and social psychology with implications for free-will debates, including experiments of social psychologists showing that unconscious cognitive and emotional factors sometimes influence our actions and decisions although we are unaware of these influences and think we had our own conscious reasons to act; evidence from clinical neuroscience and studies of split-brain patients that our conscious reasons are sometimes confabulations; and neuroscientific studies of moral reasoning and cognitive control, among other topics. The article discusses the challenge of neuroscience to our everyday ways of thinking about morality and about moral and legal responsibility and argues that neuroscience may require that we revise our views to some degree about these matters in the future.
Self-Enhancement and Self-Protection Motives
Authors: Sedikides Constantine , Alicke Mark D.
Published: February 2013

People desire to maximize the positivity, and minimize the negativity, of their self-views. The tendency to exalt one's virtues and soften one's weaknesses, relative to objective criteria, manifests itself in many domains of human striving. We focus illustratively on three strivings: the self-serving bias (crediting the self for successes but blaming others or situations for failures), the better-than-average effect (considering the self superior to the average peer), and selective self-memory (disproportionately poor recall for negative self-relevant information). Nonmotivational factors (e.g., expectations, egocentrism, focalism, individuated-entity versus aggregate comparisons) are not necessary for the emergence of these strivings. Instead, the strivings are (at least partially) driven by the self-enhancement and self-protection motives, as research on self-threat and self-affirmation has established. The two motives serve vital functions: They confer benefits to psychological health and psychological interests (e.g., goal pursuit).
Evolution and psychology in philosophical perspective
Authors: Mameli Matteo
Published: February 2013

Humans are evolved organisms. This means that human minds have an evolutionary origin and that human psychological traits are, in one way or another, the product of evolution. This article explores the implications of this deceptively simple fact for the science of psychology. The question it addresses is whether and how knowing that human minds have an evolutionary origin can help understand the way modern human minds work. The true implications of the evolutionary origins of human minds are not always easy to unravel. Some mistakes can be avoided by steering away from simplistic views of evolution and development, and of the way they interact. Developmental plasticity, environmental change, niche construction, and cultural transmission have all played an important role in human evolution. Understanding such factors is thereby crucial for an accurate evolutionary account of human psychological traits.
Social knowledge in primates
Authors: Call Josep
Published: February 2013

Social knowledge emanates from psychological tradition and it has focused its attention on the individual as a unit of analysis rather than the group. This article focuses on the individual's knowledge about the psychological states of other individuals that govern their behaviour. David Premack and GuyWoodruff's seminal paper on whether the chimpanzee has a theory of mind sets the stage for this line of research by asking the question of whether chimpanzees attribute intentions to others in problem solving situations. Since then this orientation has extended its scope and included other psychological states such as perceptions, desires, knowledge, or beliefs. In the social world, both types of social knowledge are important. The article's focus is on theory-of-mind research or mindreading, or mental state attribution.
Culture in primates and other animals
Authors: van Schaik Carel P.
Published: February 2013

Social transmission is critical for any definition, because it creates heritability, the passing on of traits to the next generation, in a fundamentally new way: through behavioural induction rather than genetic prescription. This definition is broad enough to encompass both animal and human culture, without of course denying the abyss that separates human culture from that of animals. This article examines the mechanism of social transmission, social learning, as well as the source of culture, innovation, and aspects of evolution. Social learning does not need to involve copying of behaviour patterns, because the naïve animal often invents the same new behavioural skills independently. Some forms, however, do involve direct observation: copying of goals or outcomes, often referred to as emulation, or of the actual actions, usually called imitation, or some mix.
Childhood experiences and reproductive strategies
Authors: Belsky Jay
Published: February 2013

This article discusses one programme of theory-building dealing with childhood experience and reproductive strategy and relevant evidence. Before doing so, however, two foundational topics must be addressed. The first is the proposition that experiences early in life might shape developments later in life. The second is life-history theory, as this serves as the higher-level framework on which the article builds. For most students of child development, it is presumed that experiences in the early years of life influence individual differences in later development. The article suggests that the biological organisation of the human life course is something in need of explanation. Life-history theory is the metatheoretical framework within more general evolutionary theory that seeks to account for the timing of reproductive and lifespan developments in terms of evolved strategies for distributing metabolic resources between the competing demands of growth, maintenance, and reproduction.
Parental impacts on development: How proximate factors mediate adaptive plans
Authors: Bereczkei Tamas
Published: February 2013

In the light of the theory of evolution, parental impacts, like other environmental stimuli, are hypothesized to be processed by children's evolved psychological mechanisms. Various behavioural algorithms, decision rules, learning programs, and epigenetic rules transform input from the family context into behavioural output that presumably solved adaptive problems in evolutionarily relevant environments. This is why evolved physiological and psychological processes, considered as proximate mechanisms, are so crucial in the evolutionary explanations of human behaviour. This article clarifies the specific ways in which these mechanisms channel behavioural acts into adaptive decisions. A central task is to gain insights into the details of socialisation: how children process the information that comes from their parents and how this shapes adaptive patterns and states during development.
Life-history theory, reproduction and longevity in humans
Authors: Lummaa Virpi
Published: February 2013

The basic assumption underlying life-history theory is that natural selection has selected for an optimal combination of life-history traits that maximizes individual fitness. The best studied trade-offs include: investigating how individuals should allocate resources to reproduction versus their own growth and survival; and when reproducing, how should they divide their effort between current and future reproduction or between the number, sex, and quality of offspring. Co-ordinated evolution of all these principal life-history traits together determines the life-history strategy of the organism. The environment, in turn, determines the action of natural selection: traits may be adaptive only within reference to a particular environment and few, if any, traits are adaptive in all contexts. Life-history theory proposes that, generally, there should be no selection for living beyond one's reproductive capacity. Instead, the ‘surplus’ energy reserves which would allow post-reproductive survival are predicted to be better off spent earlier in one's life, during reproductive years.
Evolutionary psychology meets history: insights into human nature through family reconstitution studies
Authors: Voland Eckart
Published: February 2013

The genealogical data of family reconstitution studies is of interest to research inspired by Darwinian theory primarily for two reasons. First, they contain personal data and not highly aggregated statistics, such as are typically analysed in demography. Therefore, the individual- and family-oriented structure of the records permits analysis of the variation within populations. Second, family reconstitution studies achieve a temporal depth with overlapping generations that cannot usually be attained in anthropological demography studies of recent populations, most of which lack reliable historical records. The analysis of differential reproduction is, thus, the most important tool in heuristics available to the adaptationist programme of evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary psychology. This article explores these issues in more depth and raise the question of the growth of knowledge that family reconstitution studies have contributed to research on the evolved human psyche.
Temporal knowledge and autobiographical memory: an evolutionary perspective
Authors: Skowronski John J. , Sedikides Constantine
Published: February 2013

One characteristic of humans is that they have a sense of self. An examination of research and theory exploring the psychology of the self suggests that it has at least three important aspects. The first of these aspects is representation: the memory system contains mental structures that store and organize different kinds of self-relevant knowledge. In addition, some of the knowledge reflects episodic memories of specific life events. These memories contain perceptual details of events, as well as information about event contexts. The second attribute of the human self is that it maintains an executive function, regulating an individual's relation with the social and physical environment. The third attribute of the self is reflexivity. This term can be defined as the organism's ability to depict itself in its ongoing relation with other objects.
Evolutionary approaches to literature and drama
Authors: Carroll Joseph
Published: February 2013

Reintroduced into philosophical parlance by Edward Wilson, the term ‘consilience’ denotes that nature forms a unified field of determinate causal relations and that all fields of knowledge are thus integrally connected — including literature, drama, and the other arts. The common designation for that species-typical configuration — both in literary tradition and in evolutionary psychology — is ‘human nature’. Like most traditional literary theorists, adaptationist literary scholars argue that literary works are produced and consumed to fulfill the needs of human nature, that they depict human nature, and that they are constrained, in their formal organization, by the species-typical dynamics of human social interaction. This article describes the historical context of adaptationism, surveys the work that has already been published in adaptationist literary studies, and then considers some of the directions further research might take.
Visual word recognition
Authors: Rastle Kathleen
Published: February 2013

Understanding the mechanisms underlying skilled reading is at the center of modern psycholinguistics, and has been a topic of considerable interest since the beginnings of psychology as a scientific discipline. This article considers some of the theoretical and empirical issues that have shaped our understanding of one specific aspect of skilled reading—the recognition of single printed words—focusing in particular on aspects of this problem which are the subject of significant recent inquiry. It begins with a term used in early psycholinguistic theories to denote a mental dictionary thought to package together all of the orthographic (spelling), semantic (meaning), and phonological (pronunciation) information about known words: the mental lexicon. After discussing a theory of visual word recognition that consists of multiple levels of orthographic representation, the article looks at the interactive-activation model, neighborhood effects, masked form priming effects, and word recognition and the reading system.
Spoken language comprehension: insights from eye movements
Authors: Tanenhaus Michael K.
Published: February 2013

Recently, eye movements have become a widely used response measure for studying spoken language processing in both adults and children, in situations where participants comprehend and generate utterances about a circumscribed “Visual World” while fixation is monitored, typically using a free-view eye-tracker. Psycholinguists now use the Visual World eye-movement method to study both language production and language comprehension, in studies that run the gamut of current topics in language processing. Eye movements are a response measure of choice for addressing many classic questions about spoken language processing in psycholinguistics. This article reviews the burgeoning Visual World literature on language comprehension, highlighting some of the seminal studies and examining how the Visual World approach has contributed new insights to our understanding of spoken word recognition, parsing, reference resolution, and interactive conversation. It considers some of the methodological issues that come to the fore when psycholinguists use eye movements to examine spoken language comprehension.
Working Memory and Language
Authors: Gathercole Susan E.
Published: February 2013

This article examines what roles, if any, working memory plays in the human capabilities to handle language. One possibility is that language comprehension is dependent upon working memory, as a consequence of the ephemeral nature of the speech input. A second is that the working memory system supports the learning of language rather than language processing per se. The article argues that in fact this is by far the most significant contribution made by working memory to the human facility with language. Individually and in concert, the subsystems of working memory play vital and highly specific roles, both in language learning in particular and in learning more generally. The article first describes the concept of working memory, and then discusses sentence processing and short-term memory, vocabulary acquisition and verbal short-term memory, and specific language impairment and working memory.
Case in Role and Reference Grammar
Authors: Van Valin Robert D.
Published: February 2013

This article discusses the theory of case assignment in role and reference grammar (RRG). RRG is a monostratal, non-derivational theory which posits a direct linking between syntax and semantics; discourse-pragmatics may play a role in this linking. Case marking in RRG is handled rather differently than in other theories: first, it is not assigned on the basis of grammatical relations; second, it is not assigned on the basis of phrase structure configurations; and third, it may directly reflect the semantic or pragmatic status of an argument, in some languages. This article first summarises the linking system in RRG, concentrating on those aspects of it that are relevant to case marking. It then describes the basics of nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive case assignment, the treatment of other significant argument-marking cases (dative and instrumental), and the two most important complications affecting these case assignment rules. It concludes with a discussion of languages in which case assignment is strongly affected by discourse-pragmatics.
Case in Formal Semantics
Authors: de Hoop Helen , Zwarts Joost
Published: February 2013

Case has not received a lot of attention from formal semanticists, probably because the approach has mostly focused on languages with relatively sparse case systems. This article examines how formal tools are being used in the study of the meaning of case. There are many semantic aspects of case that lend themselves to such a treatment, such as argument structure, quantification, aspect, and space. This article looks at the application of formal semantics to case in the domains of argument structure and space. First, it considers work in which the central notions of grammatical function and noun phrase interpretation play an important role in relation to case marking. It then explores Keenan's (1989) semantic case theory, and de Hoop's (1992) and van Geenhoven's (1996) type-shifting approaches to case and voice alternations. Following Krifka (1992) and Kiparsky (1998), the article shows how the mereological approach can account for the semantics of partitive case in Finnish. The article concludes with a discussion on case and spatial structure.
Case and Declensional Paradigms
Authors: Blevins James P.
Published: February 2013

Case plays a central role in declensional paradigms, as reflected in the way that declensions are traditionally described as ‘case paradigms’. Case is often the declensional feature with the largest and most heterogeneous inventory of values, and much of the structure of declensional paradigms derives from patterns within the case system. Some types of patterns are more ‘purely morphological’ in the sense that they relate sets of forms that do not comprise any kind of natural morphosyntactic class. It is the prevalence and intricacy of these morphological patterns that make case paradigms particularly relevant for general theories of morphology. Three types of patterns are especially salient in case systems. The first involves a split within case systems. The second declension-internal pattern, which often cuts across other divisions, reflects the organisation of case forms within a paradigm into form classes or ‘cohorts’. The third pattern concerns the implicational structure that arises from the ‘relative informativeness’ of the members of a paradigm. This article explores the structure of case paradigms, focusing on case syncretism, implication and reversal, and stem syncretism.
Case, Grammatical Relations, and Semantic Roles
Authors: Primus Beatrice
Published: February 2013

This article presents an overview of the basic issues concerning the relationship between case, grammatical relations, and semantic roles such as agent and patient. In most approaches, semantic roles are directly linked to abstract grammatical relations for the core arguments of the clause. Cases are considered to be a surface expression of grammatical relations. All approaches that are concerned with the relationship between semantic roles and grammatical relations are able to capture the argument realisation of transitive verbs selecting highly potent agents and strongly affected patients such as ‘break’, ‘open’, or ‘hit’ in accusative languages. Approaches using role lists instead of semantic decompositions lack the means to cope with the large number of individual roles that are selected by the full range of verbs and with the reverse case pattern in ergative constructions. Accordingly, this article deals primarily with the relationship (or linking) between grammatical relations and semantic roles in different types of approaches. It also discusses role lists and role hierarchies, along with proto-roles and lexical semantic structures.
Case in Lanuge Comprehension
Authors: Bader Markus , Lamers Monique
Published: February 2013

Research on human language comprehension has been heavily influenced by properties of the English language. Since case plays only a minor role in English, its role for language comprehension has only recently become a topic for extensive research on psycholinguistics. In the psycholinguistic literature, these processes are called the human parsing mechanism or the human sentence processing mechanism (HSPM). According to the Strong Competence Hypothesis, the syntactic structures computed by the HSPM are exactly those structures that are specified by the competence grammar. This article assumes that the HSPM computes phrase-structure representations enriched by various syntactic features, in particular case features on noun phrases. After providing a short introduction into current research concerned with the HSPM, it explores how syntactic functions are assigned in the face of morphological case ambiguity, the role of case for identifying clause boundaries in languages like Japanese and Korean, the problem of syntactic ambiguity resolution, and whether markedness distinctions that have been postulated to obtain between different cases are reflected in language comprehension.
Evolution of Case Systems
Authors: Kulikov Leonid
Published: February 2013

New cases may arise by adding adverbs, postpositions, and (rarely) prepositions; by adding existing case markers to other case forms, which results in ‘multilayer’ case marking; from demonstrative pronouns or articles. New case forms may also go back to denominal adjectives and adverbials incorporated into the case paradigm. An important mechanism of the rise of new case(s) is the splitting of one case into two by borrowing of a new case marker from a different declension type. This article also discusses the main processes within case systems that do not lead to quantitative changes but help to resist phonetic erosion (stable case systems). The mechanisms used to avoid the merger of cases include the borrowing of new inflections from other cases and the adding of free morphemes to old case forms. On the basis of this diachronic typological overview, the article offers a tentative classification of the evolutionary types of languages and briefly explores the main factors determining the evolutionary type of a language.
Grammaticalization of Cases
Authors: Heine Bernd
Published: February 2013

This article deals with the fate of individual case markers and argues that case markers are grammatical forms, typically nominal suffixes (or clitics), whose main function is to assign a case property to the noun or noun phrase they govern. The focus is on core case functions A (subject of transitive clauses), O (object of transitive clauses), and S (subject of intransitive clauses), as well as peripheral case functions. While the article considers inflectional case expressions, which in the majority of instances are suffixes, it does not trace any rigid boundary between affixes and adpositions (prepositions or postpositions). In many, though not all, Indo-European languages, case affixes are old, they can be traced back to the earliest phases of development within this family and remain etymologically opaque. But there are other languages where their development can be reconstructed. This development is — with very few exceptions — unidirectional, being in accordance with the following principles of grammaticalisation: extension, desemanticisation, decategorialisation, and erosion. This article also discusses the behaviour of case categories in language contact.
Varieties of Accusative
Authors: Kittilä Seppo , Malchukov Andrej L.
Published: February 2013

The core function of the accusative case is to encode the affected participant in a transitive clause. Finnish is representative of a nominative-accusative language because it shows that Patient objects of canonical transitive clauses will be eligible for acc case marking. In many languages, acc marking extends beyond semantically transitive clauses taking Agent and Patient arguments (such as ‘kill’ or ‘break’). Affectedness, a defining property of a patient, is not the only feature that determines (acc) marking of Os. Given that pronominals frequently display idiosyncratic behaviour as compared to nouns, differential marking of pronominal and nominal Os may seem a merely morphological matter. Accusative markers may attach either to a direct object or to other elements of clauses. This article discusses the formal varieties of the accusative case and examines the role of other features such as animacy for object marking. It uses the term acc (case) in a broad sense which will include, apart from case proper, also other forms of ‘dependent-marking’ including clitics, particles, and adpositions. Finally, the article considers functional varieties and polysemy patterns.
Varieties of Dative
Authors: Næss Åshild
Published: February 2013

Of the commonly recognised case categories, the dative is perhaps the most difficult to define in a consistent, cross-linguistically valid way. In Greek and Latin, where the term originates, the dative case was used both for the goal/recipient argument of ditransitive verbs, and for the complements of certain intransitive verbs such as ‘help’, ‘obey’, or ‘trust’. These two types of argument are commonly taken to share the property of being ‘indirectly affected’ by the verbal event, and so given the label ‘indirect objects’. Case markers labelled ‘dative’ vary greatly in the range of functions they cover, although they must be assumed to share some common semantic core. It is fairly common for dative functions to be indicated by adpositions, as in English and many other languages of Europe. This article looks at the functional varieties of dative and its overlap with other cases such as dative-accusative syncretism, dative-allative syncretism, and dative-genitive syncretism.
Rare and ‘Exotic’ Cases
Authors: Malchukov Andrej L.
Published: February 2013

This article addresses rare phenomena in case marking, focusing on those which are exceptional in terms of distribution or function. First, it deals with cases deviant in distribution, then explores functionally unusual cases. It shows that in most cases, the rise of cross-linguistically unusual patterns can be straightforwardly explained in terms of functional and/or diachronic factors. Probably the best studied case of deviant distribution is the phenomenon of double case marking or Suffixaufnahme. Some of the most spectacular instances of multiple case marking come from Australian languages such as Kayardild and Nyamal. Multiple case marking may also arise in languages with so-called ‘templatic’ morphology, if case markers are distributed across several slots in the template. A pattern reminiscent of double marking is case layering as familiar from Indo-Aryan languages where case markers of postpositional origin attach to the oblique form of the noun. This article also discusses head-marking and displaced case markers in Tsimshian and Iraqw.
Case Marking in Daghestanian
Authors: Daniel Michael , Ganenkov Dmitry
Published: February 2013

This article provides an overview of case systems in Daghestanian languages. First, it describes classification of the Nakh-Daghestanian, of which Daghestanian is a regional subset (rather than a genetic subgroup). In most Nakh-Daghestanian languages, declension mostly follows a two-stem pattern: all cases except nominative are derived from a common stem called oblique, while the nominative case is derived from a direct stem and is most often formally identical to it (thus being zero marked). The oblique stem is derived from the direct stem by adding various morphemes called oblique stem markers. A rare typological feature of the Daghestanian languages is the presence of an agreement position in some case markers, including genitives in human noun declension in Bagvalal (controlled by the class of the head) or affective in Andi and Tukita Karata and some locative forms in Dargwa and Lak. This article also describes case marking in Daghestanian languages as well as non-local cases, spatial forms, place names and natural locations, adnominal and predicative possession, and instrumental case.
Case in an Austronesian Language
Authors: Donohue Mark
Published: February 2013

The ‘classic’ paradigm of case marking assumes a unique and (pragmatically, semantically, or syntactically) coherent meaning for each phonologically distinct case. A different set of organisational principles govern case in Tukang Besi, an Austronesian language of central Indonesia. There is an unproblematic genitive case, an oblique case that marks modality, and two cases that mark core arguments (‘terms’), na and te. These case markers may not be reversed and the position of the two arguments is fixed. Although the clauses with P-agreement present a clear increase in the amount of morphology in the clause, they are more frequent in natural speech, and P-agreement markers are acquired earlier than the nominative agreement prefixes. Rather than being characterised as showing nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive or semantic alignment, the case systems of the western and northern Austronesian languages directly mark grammatical functions, bypassing the standard notions of ‘alignment’ entirely.
Atlantic Seafaring
Authors: Rodger N. A. M.
Published: February 2013

Without the ocean — or rather, the two oceans, the North and South Atlantic — we cannot account for many of the basic facts of Atlantic history. Only ships and seafaring made possible the construction of the Atlantic world. Two stages in the making of the Atlantic world need to be distinguished; the age of exploration, when the geography of the two oceans was yet to be determined, and the age of exploitation which followed. Besides knowledge of celestial navigation and the wind systems, there was one further key element of the Atlantic navigation system which was developed in the fifteenth century: the three-masted ship rig. Just as the wind and current systems favoured the Spaniards in the Caribbean, they favoured the Portuguese in the South Atlantic Ocean. The study of Atlantic navigation raises as many questions as it answers. It seems to account for the early success of Portugal and Spain, but also seems to make almost impossible the rise to prominence in international trade of such remote and unfavoured ports as London and Amsterdam.
Knowledge and Cartography in the Early Atlantic
Authors: Edney Matthew H.
Published: February 2013

This article considers the configuration of the Atlantic by Europeans through the production, circulation, and consumption of spatial information, specifically in the form of maps. It examines each of the several cartographies associated with the early modern Atlantic within their respective knowledge domains. Europeans slowly developed the idea of the Atlantic in order to organise and understand the waters, shores, peoples, and places that they encountered as they sailed westward and southward away from Europe. Understanding the contributions of cartography to the formation of the Atlantic requires an appreciation of the historical limits to the various practices and institutions of making and using maps. It should be considered, for example, the way in which Christopher Columbus, when he headed out into the Ocean Sea in 1492, set aside one way of conceptualising and representing the world and began working in another. He had conceived of his direct voyage to the Indies through participation in the general scholarly discourse of geography (then generally known as ‘cosmography’), which understood the earth to be a sphere and already mapped it using latitude and longitude.
The Iberian Atlantic to 1650
Authors: Schwartz Stuart B.
Published: February 2013

The Castilians and Portuguese were the first Europeans to create systems of continual communication, trade, and political control spanning the Atlantic. Following medieval precedents and moved by similar economic and demographic factors, these two kingdoms embarked in the late fifteenth century on a course of expansion that led to the creation of overseas empires and contact with other societies and peoples. This process produced a series of political, religious, social, and ethical problems that would confront other nations pursuing empire. Portugal and Castile were sometimes rivals, sometimes allies, and for sixty years (1580–1640) parts of a composite monarchy under the same rulers. Their answers to the challenges of creating empires varied according to circumstances and resources, but they were not unaware of each others' efforts, failures, and successes nor of their common Catholic heritage and world-view that set the framework of their imperial vision, their rule, and their social organisation. This article focuses on the history of the Iberian Atlantic to 1650, the Atlantic origins and Caribbean beginnings, conquest and settlement to 1570, and imperial spaces and trade.
The Spanish Atlantic, 1650–1780
Authors: Altman Ida
Published: February 2013

During the years from the mid-seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, the Spanish empire exhibited increasing economic diversity and robustness and maintained its dominant position among European empires in the Americas without serious challenge, notwithstanding Spain's eclipse as a military power in Europe and maritime power on the seas. In size alone, Spain's possessions in the Americas dwarfed those of any other colonising nation and indeed, despite some losses in the Caribbean, were growing both in territorial extent and in the size and density of populations. Spanish America loomed large in the Atlantic world, and its peripheries in particular fell within the orbit of other nations that increasingly participated in and profited from its potential both as a market, especially for African slaves and manufactured goods, and as a producer of desirable raw materials. This article discusses the history of the Spanish Atlantic during the years 1650–1780, focusing on its population growth, reorganisation and reform of the region, and colonial revolts.
The British Atlantic
Authors: Chaplin Joyce E.
Published: February 2013

The phrase ‘British Atlantic’ brings together two terms that emerged rather belatedly (and perhaps unhelpfully) in the history of English colonisation. From the late seventeenth century onward, the English colonies underwent unprecedented population growth, which inspired new faith in colonists' ability to adapt to and dominate the New World. While other European empires may also have had either a degree of colonial autonomy or rapid population growth, only English-speaking colonists gained confidence from both characteristics. But this settler confidence was challenged, from the mid-eighteenth century onward, by the creation of a British empire with Atlantic dimensions. Because settlers in the English-speaking colonies had for a long time connected a non-British identity, meaning Englishness, to being an ocean away from England itself, the newly British and Atlantic empire was less inviting to them and the temptation to define Americans' political and natural interests as separate from Great Britain was eventually overwhelming. In Parliament and beyond, Britons and British Americans discussed the problems of slavery and openly contemplated how the slave trade and forced labour might not have an indefinite future.