bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Questionnaire Science
Authors: Oberski Daniel
Published: November 2016

Some textbooks on questionnaire design claim it is an art. That would make the criterion for a “good” question entirely subjective—a worrying conclusion given that surveys are often used to discover important facts about people. Are our discoveries about people also entirely subjective? This chapter shows that it is possible to study what a “good” or a “bad” question is by experimentation. There is already a body of scientific evidence on questionnaire design that can be taken into account when designing a questionnaire. The chapter reviews some of this evidence and shows how it can be used to the advantage of the survey researcher. Questionnaire science is far from complete. On the one hand, this means that some of our conclusions may still be more art than science. On the other, it means that we can agree on one aspect of questionnaire science: more of it is needed.
The Rise of Poll Aggregation and Election Forecasting
Authors: Jackson Natalie
Published: November 2016

This chapter discusses (1) the development of election poll aggregation and its use in popular election forecasts, (2) the technical and statistical demands of using polls this way, and (3) the controversies surrounding aggregation and forecasting. The first section covers how increases in publicly released polls resulted in poll averaging and aggregation websites becoming popular in the early 2000s, then how election forecasting using polls as the biggest predictors became popular in the media. The second section discusses how polls are aggregated and how aggregations vary. The focus then turns to how polls are used in election forecasts. Finally, common questions that arise from poll aggregation and forecasting are addressed: Are averages always better than single polls? Are there too many forecasts; do we need to aggregate the forecasts? Are we expecting too much from polls, which are meant to be snapshots, not predictions, by using them in forecasts?
Network Segregation and Policy Learning
Authors: Henry Adam Douglas
Published: November 2016

Learning is an important concept in the study of public policy and covers a range of actions where evidence is used to shape and improve decisions, including using science to inform responses to problems; adjusting policy based on successes and failures; and forming new beliefs about salient issues, their causes, and appropriate solutions. Network concepts are central to theoretical treatments of learning. Three assumptions are often made about networks and their role in learning processes: (1) most policy networks exhibit segregation, in the sense that network ties tend to exist among actors with shared traits, such as belief systems or institutional affiliations; (2) segregated networks inhibit policy learning; and (3) network segregation is a result of homophily. This chapter reviews the rich literature underlying each of these propositions and shows that the relationships between networks and learning are more complex than often assumed.
Networks and the Politics of the Environment
Authors: Berardo Ramiro , Alcañiz Isabella , Hadden Jennifer , Jasny Lorien
Published: November 2016

This chapter surveys recent research that utilizes the measures and techniques of social network analysis (SNA) to explain socioecological outcomes. The chapter focuses on the role of key characteristics of networks—including density and fragmentation, bonding and bridging social capital, brokerage and leadership—in promoting adaptive governance and co-management, and in turn, successful environmental management outcomes. It argues that network structures affect the ability of actors to coordinate their behavior, cooperate with one another, share information, and adapt their behavior to new circumstances. The chapter concludes by discussing limitations and future directions for research, drawing attention to the need for more work integrating ecological and social networks, comparative SNA, and analyses of network formation and evolution.
Shakespeare’s Anatomies of Death
Authors: Sugg Richard
Published: November 2016

This chapter looks at figurings of death, suicide, bereavement, and the afterlife in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear. It considers the ways in which these seemingly universal phenomena are shaped and coloured by distinctive early-modern attitudes to gender; the afterlife; honour; and the Christian soul. How does Shakespeare’s language circle around, or break down before, the imagination or the fact of death? How do death, suicide, or bereavement relate to different forms of early modern identity? The sheer ephemerality of the human body is one key element: the dust of a king is indistinguishable from that of a pauper. Yet, more chilling than the promiscuous revolutions of dust, what seems to have been most troubling of all was death's annihilation of language itself.
Shakespeare’s Tragedy and English History
Authors: Hadfield Andrew
Published: November 2016

In the history plays of the 1590s Shakespeare covers most of late medieval English history, representing the struggle between the rival claimants to the crown and the people as a tragedy. Shakespeare was influenced by the verse tragedies in A Mirror for Magistrates—as well as by Holinshed’s Chronicles—which presented history as a series of stories from which relevant morals could be drawn. In following A Mirror Shakespeare had one eye on the present, articulating the fear that history might repeat itself and produce yet another tragedy. In his plays Shakespeare represents a series of kings with varying personalities and abilities struggling to rule in trying circumstances, each living out his own tragedy, leaving the audience to work out the relevance and significance of the plays. In this chapter I provide specific readings of Richard II, Richard III and King John.
Authorial Revision in the Tragedies
Authors: Werstine Paul
Published: November 2016

Accepting that the controversy over Shakespeare’s possible revision of his tragedies has largely passed, this chapter explores the centuries-long speculation that the dramatist rewrote some of the works that are received as his greatest: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. Like today’s editors, their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors never found evidence persuasive enough to make the claim of authorial revision with certainty when there is variation between early printed texts of the tragedies, or even to tell the difference between such revision and possibly extra-authorial playhouse adaptation. Some recent editors’ decisions to edit the tragedies as if they could be known to have been rehandled by Shakespeare appear to arise principally from theory-driven motivations, in the absence of any evidence to support them and in the presence of documentary evidence that resists them.
Shakespearean Tragedy in the Nineteenth Century United States
Authors: Smith Gay
Published: November 2016

Shakespeare’s tragedies fell out of favour with American audiences in the second half of the nineteenth century, following the 1861‒5 Civil War. Exceptionally, Julius Caesar—as a play about revolutionary senators attempting to restore their republic by assassinating their ‘monarch’—gained in popularity after the war. Junius Brutus Booth’s Cassius was highly regarded by Walt Whitman; a decade after Booth’s death his sons were the most celebrated Shakespearean tragedians in the United States, and in 1864 the three Booth brothers performed together in Julius Caesar. The play’s politics became a reality when John Wilkes Booth assassinated the American president, justifying his shooting of Abraham Lincoln with the claim that the President, like Caesar, aspired to be a king. In the following years Edwin Booth produced and acted his own script for Julius Caesar before audiences intrigued by how Shakespeare’s play reflected their own recent history.
Shakespearean Tragedy in Latin America and the Caribbean
Authors: Rauen Margarida Gandara , Modenessi Alfredo Michel
Published: November 2016

The authors of this essay address a post-colonial concern with place and displacement as they provide historical and theoretical background, and review works by critics, creative writers and artists who have variously interpreted, staged, and appropriated Shakespeare’s tragedies in Latin America and the Caribbean. They argue that political statements are always at the core of such work, whether it reflects a purist and universalist perspective, or a radical stance that accentuates diversity issues. The region encompasses numerous cultural differences between the many larger and smaller territories of Spanish-speaking countries, and the vastness of Portuguese-speaking Brazil. As a result, the works that emerge from such complex geo-political borders reflect the ambivalence of frontier zones, while revealing a continued division between cultural dependence and the deliberate transgressive treatment of European material.
Preposterous Nature in Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Authors: Armstrong Philip
Published: November 2016

Nature is always a slippery word, not least in Shakespeare’s tragedies. This chapter focuses on the plays’ evocations of and engagements with material nature, in regard to both the external environment (for example weather, plants and animals) and the human body (for example the various humoural substances and vital spirits that constitute what Gail Kern Paster calls the ‘psychophysiology’ of the early modern body). In so doing, the chapter seeks to demonstrate some of the differences between Shakespearean representations of nature and those bequeathed by what Bruno Latour calls ‘the Modern Constitution’.
Collegia and their Impact on the Constitutional Structure of the Roman State
Authors: Perry Jonathan S.
Published: November 2016

Focusing on a few key passages, derived principally from law codes and literary sources, this chapter sketches out the legal situation of collegia vis-à-vis “the state”. However, this material is weighed against the rich epigraphic evidence (i.e. inscribed documents) that suggests the widespread and, in practical effect, unrestricted nature of Roman associations. It suggests that the appearance of governmental interference and regulation, from the late Republic throughout the Principate, was itself merely a pretext, as the government continued to encourage the development and proliferation of collegia as a means of social and political control. It questions whether the senate and the emperors had an interest in actually regulating and licencing collegial assembly, and whether legal texts can be reconciled with the inscriptional material attesting extensive collegial organisation, particularly in Italy and the Empire’s western provinces.
Legal Education and Training of Lawyers
Authors: Harries Jill
Published: November 2016

This chapter focuses on legal education. It surveys Justinian’s command-and-control model of legal education compared to the unstructured, ad hoc and sociable methods of instruction practised under the Republic by a Servius, or, under the Empire, by a Papinian—or, for philosophy, by a Plotinus. For centuries, Romans had operated in line with what had worked for them. Lawyers in their seminars would not necessarily have taught “to” the order of topics present in Scaevola’s treatise on the Civil Law (or Sabinus’ abbreviated version) or to the Edict, but they would have been aware of them as frameworks for the written outcomes of their oral discussions. As the fashion for teaching from core texts and a set syllabus took hold, discussion of written text became the central, but not exclusive focus, of legal instruction and the way was open for the construction of the definitive legal syllabus by Justinian.
Greek Philosophy and Classical Roman Law
Authors: Giltaij Jacob
Published: November 2016

This chapter explores the relation between Greek philosophy and classical Roman law, focusing on various currents as intellectual backgrounds to the works of individual jurists as well as apparently philosophical notions and theories present in the Roman legal sources. These notions range from systematic considerations such as the subdivision of certain legal categories, to moral and ethical concepts like justice and natural law. Even though there are many methodological difficulties associated with exploring the relation between Greek philosophy and Roman law, it seems certain the Roman jurists employed Greek philosophy in a scientific manner in their legal practice, to define and elucidate points of law, and perhaps even to develop new legal theories.
Social Status, Legal Status and Legal Privilege
Authors: Taylor Tristan S.
Published: November 2016

The legal categories under the Roman law of persons tell us relatively little about social status. The impact of social status on law is best understood through an examination of elite views of rank and social status. Rank and social status were closely connected as these elite markers of social esteem were requirements for admission to elite ranks. Social status bore a complex relationship to legal status: possession of the legal statuses of citizenship and free birth was a prerequisite for certain ranks, which conferred social status. Legal rules helped guide the behaviour of the social elite. Social status, rather than legal status, conferred advantages in the law, both in the structure of the legal system and through the monopoly of members of the social elite over the application of the law. These advantages could be mitigated by recourse to the patronage or petitioning of an official or the emperor.
More than Codes
Authors: Mantovani Dario
Published: November 2016

The concept of a code, heavy laden with modern meaning, is not well suited as a historiographical category for interpreting the reality of Roman law. The risk of anachronism is increased by the fact that the modern ideology of codification has not only drawn on ancient catchwords (in particular from the constitutions to Justinian’s enactments), but has also altered their meaning. The Romans were no less aware of the need to organise and render accessible the law and responded to this need in different ways depending upon the particular epoch (from the XII Tables to Justinian). An overview of these types of responses point to a complex system of communication, giving rise to a “written space” within which the work of jurists operated alongside norms (appearing in various forms and with varying degrees of efficacy) promulgated positively and rendered public.
Manumission
Authors: Mouritsen Henrik
Published: November 2016

While manumission has been practised in almost all slave societies the Romans appear to have freed their slaves with unparalleled frequency. The chapter looks at three aspects of Roman manumission: the status of freedmen, the Augustan reforms of manumission and the legal discourse on freedmen under the Empire. It is suggested that the background for the Roman practice of enfranchising former slaves should be sought in the social and legal structures of early Rome, which delegated many “state” functions to the heads of households. The enfranchisement of freedmen was compatible with the political structures of the Republic, but in response to changes to the Roman citizenship the first emperor introduced a new legal framework, which remained until late Antiquity. The details of this framework were refined over the following centuries, as jurists explored a wide range of complex legal issues associated with manumission and the place of freedmen in society.
Defining Gender
Authors: Perry Matthew J.
Published: November 2016

This chapter examines how law contributed to the definition and establishment of gender in the Roman world, and ways that gender shaped the law. Lawmakers and jurists established distinct legal statuses for men and women, and it was critical to elucidate precisely how individuals fit into this legal framework. Even when not deliberately defining gender to clarify law or legislating overtly gendered matters, legal sources reveal gendered thinking. In establishing the specific rules governing Roman society, lawmakers and jurists drew upon and reproduced prevalent and entrenched assumptions and beliefs about the nature of men and women and their place in the world. The final section of the chapter outlines the legal regulation of sexuality, critical to defining gender norms in the Roman world. The proper performance of sexual conduct was an important element of gender archetypes; those individuals who deviated from established standards were deemed problematic and potentially dangerous.
Child and Parent in Roman Law
Authors: Vuolanto Ville
Published: November 2016

This chapter concentrates on the issues in which the Roman jurisdiction of the Empire intervened in the relationships between parents and their (minor) children. It discusses the ownership and use of the property of the children, the consequences of legal incapacity of the children, guardianship, limits of patria potestas and filial and parental duties. Children were to be constantly under someone else’s authority. This meant not only restrictions in managing property, and in incapacity to represent oneself or others, but also some privileges. Moreover, while patria potestas was an important tool in organising family finances, in propagating Romanness and proper family relationships during the Roman Empire, it was not without limits. The powers of the fathers were balanced by the requirement of pietas between parents and the children.
Ownership and Power in Roman Law
Authors: Colognesi Luigi Capogrossi
Published: November 2016

Private ownership played a central role in all periods of Roman society. In its early development, the Roman law of property knew two different ways in which private ownership of res mancipi and res nec mancipi could be transferred. In the late third century BC, the Roman jurists and the praetor were able to distinguish clearly between simple possession and full ownership: dominium ex iure Quiritium. Later on, they separated from this same dominium certain entitlements to use and enjoyment, which they classified as iura in re aliena. On one side, the original bundle of powers of the owner was hived off to constitute the usufruct, which coincided with what we might refer to as the “ordinary enjoyment” of the object. On the other side many praedial servitudes were created which allowed a landowner to make a limited use of another’s land. This chapter surveys that process.
Multidimensional Poverty Indices
Authors: Duclos Jean-Yves , Tiberti Luca
Published: November 2016

This chapter reviews and assesses issues involved in the measurement of multidimensional poverty, in particular the soundness of the various “axioms” and properties often imposed on poverty indices. It argues that some of these properties (such as those relating poverty and inequality) may be sound in a unidimensional setting but not so in a multidimensional one. Second, it addresses critically some of the features of recently proposed multidimensional poverty indices, in particular the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) recently put forward by the United Nations Development Program. The MPI suffers from several unattractive features that need to be better understood (given the prominence of the index). The MPI fails in particular to meet all of three properties that one would expect multidimensional poverty indices to obey: continuity, monotonicity, and sensitivity to multiple deprivation. Robustness techniques to address some of the shortcomings of the use of such indices are briefly advocated.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Authors: Boadway Robin
Published: November 2016

This is an overview of the methods used to evaluate projects or policies when a normative approach is taken based on individual preferences. The evaluation of individual welfare change is first outlined and related to the concepts of willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept. The use of individual welfare measures in project evaluation is outlined. This is followed by approaches to aggregating individual welfare changes. The case for ignoring equity considerations based on the compensation criterion is critically discussed. The use of a social welfare function for cost-benefit analysis is presented, and it application to project evaluation outlined. Several extensions are considered, including the evaluation of non-marketed commodities, the treatment of uncertainty, and multi-period project evaluation. Throughout, the conceptual difficulties of measuring and aggregating welfare change are emphasized.
Does the Choice of Well-Being Measure Matter Empirically?
Authors: Decanq Koen , Neumann Dirk
Published: November 2016

This chapter discusses and compares five measures of individual well-being, namely income, an objective composite well-being index, a measure of subjective well-being, equivalent income, and a well-being measure based on the von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities of the individuals. After examining the information requirements of these measures, the chapter illustrates their implementation using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for 2010. This study finda sizable differences in the characteristics of the individuals identified as worst off according to the different well-being measures. Less than 1% of the individuals belong to the bottom decile according to all five measures. Moreover, the measures lead to considerably different well-being rankings of the individuals. These findings highlight the importance of the choice of well-being measure for policy making.
Preference Inconsistency
Authors: Shafir Eldar
Published: November 2016

A discrepancy between standard economic assumptions and observed behavior centers around individual preferences, which are assumed to be well ordered and consistent, but descriptively shown to be inconsistent and malleable. Not having at their disposal a reliable procedure for assigning values to options, people construct their preferences in the context of decision. As a result, the attractiveness of options depends on, among other things, the nature of other options in the set, the procedure used to express preference, the context of evaluation, and the decision-maker’s self-conception. The varieties of psychological experience underlying preference inconsistency are reviewed, and their implications are discussed. Preference inconsistency, it is proposed, is the outcome not of distracted shortcuts or avoidable errors, but of fundamental aspects of mental life that are central to how people process information. Although people endorse basic consistency criteria, their preferences are inherently inconsistent, with important implications for policy and welfare.
Lifetime Well-Being
Authors: Ponthiere Gregory
Published: November 2016

This chapter reviews recent contributions in positive and normative economics concerned with how individuals plan, over their uncertain lifetime, their consumption and health-affecting activities, and with the design of the optimal public policy in that context. The chapter first emphasizes that contemporary theories aimed at explaining how individuals plan their lives rely on unequal forms and degrees of rationality. On the normative side, it argues that there exists a tension between, on the one hand, optimal policies derived from a utilitarian social welfare function, and, on the other hand, optimal policies derived from an ex post egalitarian social welfare function. Actually, optimal policies under utilitarianism—encouraging savings, annuitization, and prevention—increase expected lifetime well-being, but at the cost of reducing the realized lifetime well-being of the unlucky short-lived, which raises inequalities in realized lifetime well-being.
Social Ordering Functions
Authors: Maniquet François
Published: November 2016

This chapter presents the fair social ordering approach to policy assessment. In an economic model, a social ordering function (SOF) associates each economy in the domain with a complete ranking of the allocations. This chapter describes the main achievements of the SOF theory. It presents two applications, which show how SOF’s can be used to evaluate policies. The first application concerns labor income taxation. The second application concerns the measurement of poverty. Finally, This chapter discusses the relationship between the SOF approach and some other approaches to the construction of criteria to evaluate policies.
Inequality and Poverty Measures
Authors: Cowell Frank
Published: November 2016

The theory of inequality measurement can be founded on a few very simple principles concerning the comparison of income distributions. This chapter discusses the standard principles and the types of inequality indices that follow from them. It shows how these principles and indices can be related to conventional approaches to social-welfare analysis. Adjusting a few pieces within this same framework enables one to derive alternative, novel types of inequality indices and lays the basis for commonly-used types of poverty indices. The chapter also covers other general approaches to distributional comparisons including first-order and second-order dominance and their interpretation in terms of inequality and poverty.
Multidimensional Indicators of Inequality and Poverty
Authors: Chakravarty Satya , Lugo Maria Ana
Published: November 2016

This chapter reviews the main features of multidimensional indices of inequality and poverty. For each of these cases, the discussion is divided into two approaches: a direct approach, where desirable properties are specified and a measure of inequality or poverty obtained; and the inclusive measure of well-being approach, where an index of individual well-being is defined in a first step, and the measure of inequality or poverty obtained in a second step. The emphasis will be on the properties that different measures satisfy and on the main justifications put forward when properties disagree. A systematic comparison between indices, whenever appropriate, is presented. Several policy applications of the indices are also discussed.
QALY-Based Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
Authors: Abellan Jose Maria , Herrero Carmen , Pinto Jose Luis
Published: November 2016

This chapter introduces the main ideas about the use of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) in the evaluation of health policies. It starts by explaining the theoretical underpinnings of the QALY model understood as individual utilities. Afterward, it reviews the empirical evidence about the descriptive validity of the main assumptions supporting the model. Then, it explains the main preference elicitation techniques (visual analog scale, time trade-off, and standard gamble). It also shows the practical psychological problems faced by these techniques, such as the existence of context-dependent preferences. The chapter ends by explaining how QALYs are used in priority setting, in particular, the rules governing resources allocation decisions using QALYs, the ethical implications of these rules, and the relationship between cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis.
Competitive Motherhood from a Comparative Perspective
Authors: Valentine Katherine A. , Li Norman P. , Yong Jose C.
Published: November 2016

Mothers play an important role in helping their children achieve maximal reproductive success. We explore how mothers across species manipulate birth sex ratios favoring the sex that will be best suited to their environments and how maternal competition affects offspring reproductive success in nonhuman mammals as well as humans. The Trivers-Willard hypothesis, resource competition hypothesis, resource enhancement hypothesis, and maternal dominance hypothesis are considered with respect to maternal birth sex ratio manipulation. Next, the primate literature is reviewed as inspiration for hypotheses on maternal competition for positive offspring outcomes. Nonhuman primates as well as humans are argued to compete for status, breeding opportunities, and allomothers (i.e., caregivers apart from the mother), and these factors have an impact on their reproductive success. Status is passed on from mother to offspring, amplifying the effects of competition for status. Future directions are delineated to fill in gaps in the existing literature.
Jonson and Performance
Authors: Steggle Matthew
Published: November 2016

For Una Ellis-Fermor, there is a ‘deeply inherent non-dramatic principle’ in the drama of Ben Jonson, a fundamental dislike of theatricality, and a pursuit instead of ‘psychological truth’. Conversely, theatre directors such as Sam Mendes see Jonson’s plays as beautifully engineered blueprints for performance, and locate the psychological truth of Jonson precisely in performance on the stage. This chapter considers current approaches to the whole question of Jonson in performance. It examines the idea of an antitheatrical Jonson, rooted in Jonson’s own critical writings and developed by Ellis-Fermor, Herford and Simpson, and Jonas A. Barish, among others. It contrasts that with the more theatre-friendly version of Jonson which informs much recent performance criticism. The chapter builds up to a reading of the metatheatrical and performance aspects of the most often staged Jonson play of all: Volpone.
Epilogue: The English Novel at the End of the 1760s
Authors: Downie James Alan
Published: November 2016

This chapter analyzes the market for the English novel at the end of the 1760s. As far as British fiction is concerned, there were peaks and troughs during the 1760s rather than a steady upward curve, but by the end of the century getting on for 100 new novels were appearing annually in contrast to the forty listed for the year 1770. What was being offered to the reading public during the period were ‘Probable Feign’d Stories’ satisfying the most basic requirements of what Ian Watt called ‘formal realism’, a development in which Henry Fielding played an influential role. The chapter shows that, at the end of the 1760s, the British novel was patently flourishing, thanks in large part to the publishing of several innovative forms of prose fiction such as the Gothic and the sentimental novel.
The Acquisition of Complements
Authors: de Villiers Jill , Roeper Tom
Published: November 2016

The development of complementation engages high-level parametric variation, a variety of separate modules, and very specific lexical variation across the possible grammars in UG. In particular, finiteness, argument structure, control, empty categories, and recursion all present separate challenges and create an intricate grammatical acquisition path for any child. The essential question is: how does the CP node expand from small clauses to infinitives to tensed clauses? The next question is: how does the grammar interface with cognition, as complements express propositional attitudes, and false beliefs? We survey empirical research that documents descriptive work on the growth of complementation and theoretical research addressed to linking rules and movement rules. We survey both what is known and new questions that need to be investigated.
Case and Agreement
Authors: Hagstrom Paul
Published: November 2016

Children’s use of case and agreement morphology offers a window into the structure of their developing grammatical systems. Children acquiring English commonly produce accusative pronouns in subject position, and use verb forms lacking agreement morphology. The systematic patterns in these errors and correlations between them have been the subject of a great deal of research over the past few decades. This chapter lays out some of the results to date and the theoretical interpretations they have led to, as well as points of debate on methodology. The discussion centers around English, with other languages considered where predictions differ, and the topics include a general overview of the relation of case and agreement, optional/root infinitives, default case, and morphological access.
Acquiring Possessives
Authors: Marinis Theo
Published: November 2016

The concepts of possession and ownership are among the first to be expressed by children when they start acquiring language. This chapter starts with an overview of the properties of possession cross-linguistically followed by a review of the literature on the acquisition of possession in five languages—English, German, Greek, Hebrew, and Japanese. The studies on the acquisition of possession are discussed in relation to learnability issues and avenues are identified for future research on the acquisition of possession.
Acquisition of Comparatives and Degree Constructions
Authors: Syrett Kristen
Published: November 2016

This chapter looks at the acquisition of comparatives from formal, theoretical, and cross-linguistic perspectives. It begins by reviewing children’s aberrations from adults in the form of the comparative constructions that they produce through at least age 6, and then turns to theoretical accounts of comparatives and degree constructions across a range of languages to pinpoint specific areas in the construction of a comparative in which children’s representations and interpretations may go astray, or converge with adults. A range of studies and methodologies used over the years are reviewed in order to present a clear picture of what we currently know about children’s developing understanding of comparison and comparatives, and to clear a path for future research in this area.
Quantification in Child Language
Authors: Lidz Jeffrey L.
Published: November 2016

This chapter addresses role of cognitive, information processing and learning mechanisms underlying children’s acquisition of quantifiers in natural language. We discuss the cognitive mechanisms that provide content to quantificational expressions, constraints on possible quantifier meanings, and the role of syntax in identifying a novel word as quantificational. We also examine the syntax and semantics of quantifiers in development, examining interactions between multiple scope bearing expressions in a single sentence. We explore the grammatical and psycholinguistic constraints at play in shaping children’s acquisition and use of quantificational expressions, highlighting factors that can mask children’s competence in this domain.
Scalar Implicature
Authors: Papafragou Anna , Skordos Dimitrios
Published: November 2016

We review experimental evidence regarding the development of scalar implicature in children. Scalar implicatures are inferences that arise when utterances like “Mary ate some of the cakes” are interpreted as “Mary ate some but not all of the cakes.” The evidence suggests that, even though the mechanism for generating scalar implicatures in children is in many respects adult-like, children nevertheless face limitations in computing such conversational inferences from what the speaker said. We highlight the importance of the findings for the development of pragmatic inference, language acquisition, and communication in general. We also identify open questions and promising areas for future research.
Computational Approaches to Parameter Setting in Generative Linguistics
Authors: Sakas William
Published: November 2016

This article presents a non-exhaustive history of research that employs computational modeling of human language acquisition in Chomsky’s principles and parameters framework. The history underscores a tension that has evolved in the field between deterministic (triggering) and nondeterministic (search) approaches. Though it is now clear that the original and widely accepted conception of triggering was flawed, results from recent computational modeling efforts indicate that a modified deterministic triggering theory of human language acquisition may be viable after all.
Phonotactics and Syllable Structure in Infant Speech Perception
Authors: Zamuner Tania S. , Kharlamov Viktor
Published: November 2016

Phonotactics and syllable structure form an integral part of phonological competence and may be used to discover other aspects of language. Given the importance of such knowledge to the process of language acquisition, numerous studies have investigated the development of phonotactic and syllabic knowledge in order to determine when infants become sensitive to these sound patterns and how they may use this knowledge in language processing. Considering that infants’ first exposure to linguistic structures comes from speech perception, we provide an overview of the perception-related issues that have been investigated experimentally and point out issues that have not yet been addressed in the literature. We begin with phonotactic development, examining a wide range of sound patterns, followed by a discussion of the acquisition of syllable structure and a brief summary of various outstanding issues that may be of interest to the reader, including production-related investigations and phonological modeling studies.
Learning with Violable Constraints
Authors: Jarosz Gaja
Published: November 2016

This chapter provides a broad overview of recent research on constraint-based learning of phonology. The review covers the major results and the contributions of a wide range of approaches, comparing the computational properties and learning implications of these theories. Specifically, the review encompasses learning in classic OT as well as learning in related frameworks that formalize constraint interaction as (probabilistic) weighting or ranking. The learning problem is decomposed into several subproblems that highlight the complexity of the learning problem facing the child learner. The discussion emphasizes the challenges posed by these various subproblems, the insights and differences of the proposed solutions, and the outstanding questions that require further research.
The Genetics of Spoken Language
Authors: Ganger Jennifer
Published: November 2016

This chapter reviews recent research on the genetics of spoken language, both behavioral and molecular, and explains the methodologies for non-geneticists. Twin studies, which have benefited from statistical advances and larger sample sizes in recent decades, have progressed from merely establishing the presence of heritability in language to making claims about whether sub-domains of language (such as vocabulary and syntax) share common genes. Molecular studies have identified at least ten promising genes associated with reading impairment, Specific Language Impairment, and speech-language impairment, but in most cases have only begun to explore the pathways from gene to behavior.
Argument Structure
Authors: Viau Joshua , Bunger Ann
Published: November 2016

Children acquiring any language must develop an understanding both of how event components are encoded in verb meanings and of the argument structure of those verbs, that is, how the participants of the event that each verb describes map onto linguistic arguments. This chapter begins with an overview of the major issues in the study of argument structure, including a consideration of the balance of power between verbs and constructions as it pertains to the encoding of thematic relations and a comparison of theoretical approaches with an eye toward learnability. The core of the chapter consists of a comprehensive synthesis of the current state of developmental research on argument structure.
The First World War and its Legacy in the Middle East
Authors: Rogan Eugene
Published: November 2016

The First World War proved a crucial turning point in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. Under conditions of total warfare, conscripts and civilians suffered greater losses and depredations than in any other conflict in the region before or since. The Great War also led to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after four centuries of rule over the Arab lands, to be replaced by a modern state system actively negotiated between the Entente Powers in the course of the war. While the borders of Middle Eastern states have proven remarkably enduring over the past century, so too have the problems engendered by the wartime partition diplomacy.
A War over the People
Authors: Seferdjeli Ryme
Published: November 2016

This chapter provides an overview of the Algerian War of Independence. The first part looks at the colonial period and at the origins of the Algerian nationalist movement. The second part is a detailed account of the war. The third part discusses some important characteristics of the Algerian war, such as the nature of the war, the use of violence, the significance of international diplomacy, and the large-scale participation of women. In addition, this last section examines how, during the war, Algerian women were incorporated into the war strategy of the French authorities and the French army as well as that of the FLN-ALN by looking at the itinerary of two high-profile women during the war: Djamila Bouhired and Nafissa Sid Cara.
The Role of Non-State Actors and Institutions in the Governance of New and Emerging Digital Technologies
Authors: Leiser Mark , Murray Andrew
Published: November 2016

New digital technologies pose particular problems for regulators. The utility of these technologies is maximized by linking them to the Internet. But Internet technology does not respect national borders, thereby undermining the traditional legitimacy of the Westphalian state to regulate activity within its jurisdictional borders. This has led to the development of competing cyber-regulatory models that attempt to bridge the gap between traditional Westphalian governance and the new reality of the global digital space. Many of these, although not all, fit within post-Westphalian literature. Some, drawing from globalization and post-Westphalian models, seek to identify and deploy key governance nodes. Such models identify roles for non-state actors, private corporations, and supranational governance institutions. The unhappy relationship between old-world, Westphalian legal governance and new-world, post-Westphalian governance generates ongoing conflict and is the backdrop to this chapter which identifies and discusses a number of case studies in digital governance.
Regulating Workplace Technology
Authors: Novitz Tonia
Published: November 2016

The development of workplace technology has tended to reflect the interests of employers in promoting profitability, whereas worker concerns have been acknowledged in legislation that restricts the most egregious of employer practices. This chapter explores that history and the current legal and regulatory framework, which is explicable with reference to resistance. However, it is suggested that we could also view technology in the workplace as potentially enabling of workers, enhancing their capabilities in overcoming disability, building voice, and accessing learning opportunities. Extending the agenda for regulation in this way has the potential to offer a more positive picture of possibilities in relation to technology in the workplace and more could yet be done to realize these.
A Developmental Perspective on Substance Involvement From Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood
Authors: Jackson Kristina M.
Published: November 2016

Substance use is a developmental disorder, with clear age-graded trends reflecting initiation in adolescence, increased use through emerging adulthood, and a decline thereafter. A developmental framework places substance use behavior both within the context of normal development and in relation to the interplay between environmental and person-specific characteristics, where underlying risk may manifest as a substance use problem in the face of an enabling environment. Individuals have changing vulnerabilities to substance use and related problems that are due to chronological aging as well as attributable to the normative developmental tasks and role transitions that may serve as a turning point directing an individual toward or away from substance use. Against the backdrop of normative patterns are distinct developmental trajectories that are likely linked to different etiological pathways and that, through valid testing of developmental theory, can inform the content and timing of prevention programs targeted to reach high-risk subgroups.
A Brief History of Upper Limb Ideomotor Apraxia
Authors: Heilman Kenneth M.
Published: November 2016

To successfully interact with the environment, goal-oriented movements made by human limbs must be guided by instructions from the brain. Loss of the ability to program purposeful skilled movements, in the absence of any motor, sensory, or cognitive deficit that could fully account for this disability, is called apraxia. Several types of apraxia were described by Hugo Liepmann in the beginning of the 20th century: ideomotor apraxia, where patients make spatial movement and postural errors as well as temporal errors, limb-kinetic apraxia, where patients are unable to perform precise independend and coordinated finger movements and ideational apraxia, where patients fail to correctly sequence a series of action. More recently, three other types of apraxia have been described: conceptual apraxia, where patients have a loss of mechanical knowledge; dissociation apraxia, where patients are impaired at performing a skilled act in response to stimuli in one modality but can perform normally when the stimulus is given in another modality; and conduction apraxia, where patients are impaired at action imitation. This chapter, using an historical approach, reviews the signs associated with each of these forms of apraxia, as well as their pathophysiology.
The Attributed to Aristotle
Authors: D'Ancona Cristina
Published: November 2016

The pseudo-Theology of Aristotle is the most important example of the exposure of the cultivated Arab readership to Neoplatonism in Aristotle’s garb. Plotinus’s doctrines are construed as the exposition genuinely made by Aristotle himself. Plotinus’s One and Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover merge, and the Plotinian principles Intellect and Soul are endowed with the task of letting the power of the First Cause expand until it reaches the world of coming-to-be and passing away. The great chain of being has its beginning in the First Principle: the One, the Pure Being, and Pure Good: every degree depends on it, and its power reaches the sublunar beings through the medium of Intellect and Soul. This causal chain is dominated by the pattern of the double journey of the soul, the way down along the necessary declension of the degrees of being, and the way back toward its homeland.
Kātibī (d. 1277), Taḥtānī (d. 1365), and the
Authors: Street Tony
Published: November 2016

The Epistle for Shams al-Din on the Rules of Logic is a much-studied textbook written by Najm al-Din al-Kātibī (d. 1277). It is a compact and difficult treatment of logic that concentrates above all on modal syllogistic, though it touches on all the major topics covered in the Arabic logical tradition. It reflects the results of the further development of Avicenna’s project of modifying Aristotelian logic, a project that attracted enormous attention through the thirteenth century. The Shamsiyya, as the epistle is commonly referred to, was initially received with some hostility, but came to be accorded a central place in the madrasa curriculum in the fourteenth century, in large part because of the commentary on it written by Qutb al-Din al-Razi (d. 1365).
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 908/1502), Glosses on ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Qūshjī’s Commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s
Authors: Pourjavady Reza
Published: November 2016

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 908/1502), a distinguished scholar of Shiraz in the late fifteenth century, composed many works in logic, theology, philosophy, and ethics. Moreover, he had several written and oral disputes with another outstanding scholar of Shiraz, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 903/1498). These heated debates, which stretched over a period of more than two decades, significantly influenced Dawānī’s and his intellectual competitor’s thought. It also became widely disputed for centuries throughout the Islamic world—in Iran, the Ottoman lands, central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. The controversy between Dawānī and Dashtakī animates a number of their respective writings, especially their glosses on ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Qūshjī’s commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād. This chapter focuses on major metaphysical disputes presented in these glosses.