bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Graduation within the scope of Attitude in English and Spanish consumer reviews of books and movies
Authors: Carretero Marta , Taboada Maite
Published: February 2014

This chapter reports research on evaluative language in English and Spanish consumer-generated reviews on books and movies. Within the Appraisal framework, a contrastive study is carried out on the spans of Graduation embedded in spans of Attitude in 64 reviews. A qualitative analysis, covering a syntactic description of these expressions of Graduation and proposals for doubtful cases, is followed by a quantitative analysis based on the parameters of language, subtypes of Graduation, product evaluated and positive or negative evaluation. The results show that the overall distribution of the main subtypes of Graduation spans in the English and the Spanish reviews is similar, but the consideration of each parameter in detail uncovers a number of differences between the reviews written in the two languages. In particular, the results point to possible pervasive differences in the expression of Affect in English and Spanish.
The expression of evaluation in weekly news magazines in English
Authors: Martínez Caro Elena
Published: February 2014

This chapter investigates the expression of evaluation in a corpus collected from weekly news magazines in English in an attempt to address two main research questions. I investigate, first, the linguistic patterns regularly associated with the expression of evaluation in this written register and, second, the place of evaluative expressions in this discourse type and the implications for the organization of the text. The analysis has identified five main patterns associated with evaluation: copular constructions, cleft constructions, lexical means, markers of modality and other devices, such as conditional or comparative clauses in contexts of evaluation. For the second question, evaluation has been found to concentrate in some texts either at the end or at a point where it reflects the views of a third party in the story. However, there is insufficient evidence to claim that in news magazines evaluation tends to occur at boundary points in the text.
Evaluation in emotion narratives
Authors: Romano Manuela
Published: February 2014

Narratives are cognitive means of organizing and constructing our experience in a particular way. In emotion narratives, narrators do more than report propositional information; they need to attract the listener’s empathy and understanding. By applying sociocognitive and functional models of language and discourse (Herman 2003; Redeker 2006; Bernárdez 2008) in order to complement the Labovian approach to narratives, this study shows (i) that, in this specific text type, evaluation – the expression of the narrator’s emotions – is not an independent section, but suffuses the whole texts from beginning to end, and (ii) that the recurrent linguistic and pragmatic strategies chosen in order to disclose highly personal information – discourse markers, repetitions, repairs, profusion of details, etc. – are related to the specific linguistic activity and discourse context.
Evaluative discourse and politeness in university students' communication through social networking sites
Authors: Santamaría García Carmen
Published: February 2014

This chapter explores evaluative discourse on social networking sites (henceforth SNSs), paying special attention to the role played by the expression of attitude and positive politeness in the management of interpersonal rapport. The corpus for the study consists of a random sample of 100 messages exchanged among university students in the United Kingdom and the United States on a particular site, i.e., Facebook, during the two-year period 2010–2012. Analysis is approached from the theories of appraisal (Martin and White 2005; Bednarek 2008) and politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987); and the methodology for processing the data borrows quantitative techniques from Corpus Linguistics. The findings indicate that specific contextual features of SNSs seem to trigger the production of attitudinal meanings of affect, judgement and appreciation, which are exploited for the relational work involved in the construction and maintenance of positive face.
Evaluating the Bilingual Education Program in Warlpiri schools
Authors: Disbray Samantha
Published: February 2014

The Bilingual Education Program in the Northern Territory was established in 1973 to deliver an effective education to students in remote Indigenous schools. In 2008, the NT Government closed the Program, citing low student achievement in English literacy as its rationale. This chapter evaluates the program according to a wider set of criteria, with particular focus on the Warlpiri schools. It considers the training of local staff, community involvement in schools, the development of curriculum, and extensive literature and linguistic documentation. These criteria are not prominent in government evaluations, yet are identified in national and international literature as key to achieving student outcomes (UNESCO 2008a, 2008b; Silburn et al. 2011) and echo priorities expressed by Indigenous adults involved in education.
The reconstruction of inflectional classes in morphology
Authors: Koch Harold
Published: February 2014

This paper surveys the approaches that have been taken to the synchronic description of the inflectional classes of verbs of the Pama-Nyungan family of Australian languages, highlighting problems with the application of the concept of the morpheme, and the notion of “conjugation markers”. It then summarizes and critically assesses attempts to reconstruct the prehistory of Pama-Nyungan verb inflection, considering primarily the contrasting approaches of Dixon (1980, 2002) and Alpher (1990). The methodological requirements for such a reconstruction are then discussed. Finally, the proposed principles are applied first to the internal reconstruction of verbs in Walmajarri, a language of the Ngumpin-Yapa subgroup, then to the comparative reconstruction of some Pama-Nyungan (monosyllabic) verbs that display heterogeneous patterns of inflection.
Downgraded curriculum? An analysis of knowledge in new curricula in Scotland and New Zealand
Authors: Priestley Mark , Sinnema Claire
Published: February 2014

The development, since 2000, of new national curricula across the Anglophone world signals a number of policy trends, including: a move from the explicit specification of content towards a more generic, skill‐based approach; a greater emphasis on the centrality of the learner; and [ostensibly] greater autonomy for teachers in developing the curriculum in school. These policy shifts have attracted some criticism, especially from social realist writers, who claim that the new curricula downgrade knowledge. This paper offers a contribution to this debate; an empirically based analysis of two new curricula, New Zealand%s Curriculum Framework and Scotland%s Curriculum for Excellence. We conclude that, while these curricula continue to accord considerable importance to knowledge in their statements of policy intent, the social realist critique is at least partially justified, since both curricula are characterised by a lack of coherence and mixed messages about the place of knowledge.
Quadratic serendipity finite elements on polygons using generalized barycentric coordinates
Authors: Rand Alexander , Gillette Andrew , Bajaj Chandrajit
Published: February 2014

We introduce a finite element construction for use on the class of convex, planar polygons and show that it obtains a quadratic error convergence estimate. On a convex

n
n

-gon, our construction produces

2
n

2n

basis functions, associated in a Lagrange-like fashion to each vertex and each edge midpoint, by transforming and combining a set of

n
(
n
+
1
)

/

2

n(n+1)/2

basis functions known to obtain quadratic convergence. This technique broadens the scope of the so-called ‘serendipity’ elements, previously studied only for quadrilateral and regular hexahedral meshes, by employing the theory of generalized barycentric coordinates. Uniform a priori error estimates are established over the class of convex quadrilaterals with bounded aspect ratio as well as over the class of convex planar polygons satisfying additional shape regularity conditions to exclude large interior angles and short edges. Numerical evidence is provided on a trapezoidal quadrilateral mesh, previously not amenable to serendipity constructions, and applications to adaptive meshing are discussed.
Interaction of the HOPS complex with Syntaxin 17 mediates autophagosome clearance inDrosophila
Authors: Takáts Szabolcs , Pircs Karolina , Nagy Péter , Varga Ágnes , Kárpáti Manuéla , Hegedűs Krisztina , Kramer Helmut , Kovács Attila L. , Sass Miklós , Juhász Gábor
Published: February 2014

Homotypic fusion and vacuole protein sorting (HOPS) is a tethering complex required for trafficking to the vacuole/lysosome in yeast. Specific interaction of HOPS with certain SNARE (soluble NSF attachment protein receptor) proteins ensures the fusion of appropriate vesicles. HOPS function is less well characterized in metazoans. We show that all six HOPS subunits (Vps11 [vacuolar protein sorting 11]/CG32350, Vps18/Dor, Vps16A, Vps33A/Car, Vps39/CG7146, and Vps41/Lt) are required for fusion of autophagosomes with lysosomes in Drosophila. Loss of these genes results in large-scale accumulation of autophagosomes and blocks autophagic degradation under basal, starvation-induced, and developmental conditions. We find that HOPS colocalizes and interacts with Syntaxin 17 (Syx17), the recently identified autophagosomal SNARE required for fusion in Drosophila and mammals, suggesting their association is critical during tethering and fusion of autophagosomes with lysosomes. HOPS, but not Syx17, is also required for endocytic down-regulation of Notch and Boss in developing eyes and for proper trafficking to lysosomes and eye pigment granules. We also show that the formation of autophagosomes and their fusion with lysosomes is largely unaffected in null mutants of Vps38/UVRAG (UV radiation resistance associated), a suggested binding partner of HOPS in mammals, while endocytic breakdown and lysosome biogenesis is perturbed. Our results establish the role of HOPS and its likely mechanism of action during autophagy in metazoans.
Kdm3a lysine demethylase is an Hsp90 client required for cytoskeletal rearrangements during spermatogenesis
Authors: Kasioulis Ioannis , Syred Heather M. , Tate Peri , Finch Andrew , Shaw Joseph , Seawright Anne , Fuszard Matt , Botting Catherine H. , Shirran Sally , Adams Ian R. , Jackson Ian J. , van Heyningen Veronica , Yeyati Patricia L.
Published: February 2014

The lysine demethylase Kdm3a (Jhdm2a, Jmjd1a) is required for male fertility, sex determination, and metabolic homeostasis through its nuclear role in chromatin remodeling. Many histone-modifying enzymes have additional nonhistone substrates, as well as nonenzymatic functions, contributing to the full spectrum of events underlying their biological roles. We present two Kdm3a mouse models that exhibit cytoplasmic defects that may account in part for the globozoospermia phenotype reported previously. Electron microscopy revealed abnormal acrosome and manchette and the absence of implantation fossa at the caudal end of the nucleus in mice without Kdm3a demethylase activity, which affected cytoplasmic structures required to elongate the sperm head. We describe an enzymatically active new Kdm3a isoform and show that subcellular distribution, protein levels, and lysine demethylation activity of Kdm3a depended on Hsp90. We show that Kdm3a localizes to cytoplasmic structures of maturing spermatids affected in Kdm3a mutant mice, which in turn display altered fractionation of β-actin and γ-tubulin. Kdm3a is therefore a multifunctional Hsp90 client protein that participates directly in the regulation of cytoskeletal components.
Nucleolus-tethering system (NoTS) reveals that assembly of photobodies follows a self-organization model
Authors: Liu Yin , Liu Qi , Yan Qingqing , Shi Leilei , Fang Yuda
Published: February 2014

Protein–protein interactions play essential roles in regulating many biological processes. At the cellular level, many proteins form nuclear foci known as nuclear bodies in which many components interact with each other. Photobodies are nuclear bodies containing proteins for light-signaling pathways in plants. What initiates the formation of photobodies is poorly understood. Here we develop a nucleolar marker protein nucleolin2 (Nuc2)–based method called the nucleolus-tethering system (NoTS) by artificially tethering a protein of interest to the nucleolus to analyze the initiation of photobodies. A candidate initiator is evaluated by visualizing whether a protein fused with Nuc2 forms body-like structures at the periphery of the nucleolus, and other components are recruited to the de novo–formed bodies. The interaction between two proteins can also be revealed through relocation and recruitment of interacting proteins to the nucleolus. Using the NoTS, we test the interactions among components in photobodies. In addition, we demonstrate that components of photobodies such as CONSTITUTIVELY PHOTOMORPHOGENIC 1, photoreceptors, and transcription factors tethered to the nucleolus have the capacity to form body-like structures at the periphery of the nucleolus, which contain other components of photobodies, suggesting a self-organization model for the biogenesis of photobodies.
Automated analysis of giant unilamellar vesicles using circular Hough transformation
Authors: Hermann Eduard , Bleicken Stephanie , Subburaj Yamunadevi , García-Sáez Ana J.
Published: February 2014

Motivation: In order to obtain statistically relevant results, the study of membrane effects at the single-vesicle level requires the analysis of several hundreds of giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs), which becomes a very time-consuming task if carried out manually. Complete and user-friendly software for fast and bias-free automated analysis has not been reported yet.

Results: We developed a framework for the automated detection, tracking and analysis of individual GUVs on digital microscopy images. Our tool is suited to quantify protein binding to membranes as well as several aspects of membrane permeabilization on single vesicles. We demonstrate the applicability of the approach by comparing alternative activation methods for Bax, a pore-forming protein involved in mitochondrial permeabilization during apoptosis.

Availability and Implementation: The complete software is implemented in MATLAB (The MathWorks, Inc., USA) and available as a standalone as well as the full source code at http://www.ifib.uni-tuebingen.de/research/garcia-saez/guv-software.html.

Contact:  ana.garcia@uni-tuebingen.de

Supplementary information:  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Plutarch's Moralia
Authors: Van Hoof Lieve
Published: February 2014

The non-biographical output of Plutarch of Chaeronea (b. c. 45–d. c. 120 ad) is traditionally grouped together under the label “Moralia” (alternative titles include “Moral Works,” “Morals,” “Ethika,” and “Ethica”). Although by no means all works within the group deal with ethics, an important subgroup, placed at the head of the collection since the late 13th century, does, and has given the collection its title. In modern editions, the Moralia comprise seventy-eight texts, thirteen of which, including the famous texts On the Education of Children and On Music, are generally taken to be spurious (see Lost Works, Fragments, and Spuria). As can be seen in the so-called Lamprias catalogue, a late antique list of Plutarchan works, Plutarch’s non-biographical output was originally much larger, and so was the preponderance of ethics within it. Among the extant Moralia, one finds essays, dialogues, and letters on topics as diverse as peace of mind, the face that can be seen on the moon, and the fortune or virtue of Alexander the Great. In line with ancient rhetorical theory, these texts can be divided according to the aim or aims they pursue: their primary aim is to move, to teach, or to entertain the reader. Although these different aims go hand in hand with distinctive argumentative strategies and authorial self-presentation, the boundaries between these groups are by no means strict. In modern scholarship, Plutarch’s Moralia have received much less attention than his biographical output. In the last few years, however, several monographs and edited volumes on important texts, subgroups, and themes of the Moralia, as well as on the Moralia as a text corpus have significantly enhanced our understanding and appreciation of this multifarious group of texts. While many studies on Plutarch’s Moralia are in English and widely available, a considerable number of publications on the topic have appeared in languages other than English and may be hard to find in British or American libraries, except in universities where Plutarch studies are high on the agenda.
Stoicism
Authors: Bénatouïl Thomas , Reydams-Schils Gretchen
Published: February 2014

Stoicism was a dominant philosophical movement in Antiquity from the end of the 4th century bce (starting with Zeno of Citium) to the end of the 2nd century ce (Marcus Aurelius). From the Early Stoa, in the Hellenistic period, we have only fragments preserved, whereas we do have some complete texts for Stoicism in the Roman imperial era. Another major bibliographical tool, in addition to this article, is found in Long and Sedley 1987 (cited under Collections of Fragments and Testimonies of Hellenistic Stoicism), with updates provided in the French translation by Jacques Brunschwig and Pierre Pellegrin (Paris: Flammarion, 2001). Secondary literature on debates between Stoicism and other schools of thought have been included in this article, as well as studies addressing its reception history.
Friendship, Kinship and Enmity
Authors: Crook Zeba
Published: February 2014

Friendship in any age is a difficult concept to pin down. What constitutes friendship? What is true friendship? What is the difference between friends and acquaintances? More complex even is the use of the language of friendship in relationships where feelings of friendship are absent. Friendship is a feeling, a rhetorical topos, and an institution with culture-specific rules. Friendship in the Greek and Roman periods (which include of course the biblical periods and cultures) is complex because of the highly stratified social structure of the ancient Mediterranean. Ancient writers struggled with the question of whether friendship could transcend social strata, and their feelings on the matter are a point of contention among modern scholars. By and large, there appears to be a consensus that while Aristotle, the earliest to theorize on friendship, thought that it could only occur between two people of equal social status, by the Hellenistic era friendship could happen between status unequals. That this is the case is suggested by the angst reflected in ancient writings concerning the ability to distinguish friends from flatterers (Plutarch in particular). Yet, it complicates considerably our ability to know whether ancient writers mean real affective friendship language when they use friendship language to describe relationships of dependence and patronage. What is more, friendship language becomes intertwined with kinship, especially in groups whose members feel closely united. There, the language of fictive kinship is used to denote a collection of people with presumably strong and positive feelings for one another. After all, friendship is a form of voluntary kinship—one generally chooses one’s friends, and there may be some people with whom one is friendly for nearly an entire lifetime, as with kin. And of course, friendship can be reflected or echoed in texts even where the precise language is not used. Finally, ancient writers also reveal an abiding concern with friendships that end in what we might call enmity. As we do, they recognized that friends can be fickle and that friendships can reach a breaking point.
Anātman
Authors: Sarao K.T.S.
Published: February 2014

The term ātman (Pāli. attā/atta) is often translated into English as “self, soul, or ego.” As compared to this, anātman (Pāli. anattā), which is the antonym of ātman, may be translated into English as “no-self, no-soul, no-ego.” Due to its non-acceptance of the existence of ātman, Buddhism is sometimes referred to as anātmavāda (Pāli. anattavāda i.e., “the teaching of no-self”). After the death of the Buddha, due to conflicting interpretations within the Buddhist monastic order (saṃgha) as well as differences of the Buddhists with the non-Buddhists, many powerful and compelling arguments were produced by Buddhist scholastic communities of India to support the view that the “self” or “person” (Pāli. puggala, Skt. pudgala), conceived as an enduring entity, simply does not exist and that everything is a succession and in flux, there being nothing that is substantial or permanent. However, the notion of the person gave rise to many problems that Buddhist philosophers of the later period attempted to resolve. One line of thinking within the Buddhist community of philosophers, for instance, appears to have advocated the “doctrine of the person” (Pāli. Puggalavāda, Skt. Pudgalavāda) implying that a substantial self may indeed exist. Now as the Buddhist notion of anātman is becoming better known, more and more contemporary scholars have begun to hint at the ostensible parallels between Western and Buddhist methods applied to unravel the mysteries of the self and personal identity. The Buddhist concept of anātman is inextricably linked with many other aspects of early Buddhist teaching such as skandhas (Pāli: khandhas. aggregates), nāma-rūpa (name-and-form), pratītyasamutpāda (Pāli: paṭiccasamuppāda. dependent arising), anitya (Pāli: anicca. impermanence), duḥkha (Pāli: dukkha. suffering), karma (Pāli: kamma), rebirth, and nirvananirvāṇa. Further, in Mahāyāna thought this concept was enlarged to encompass śūnyatā (Pāli: suññatā. emptiness), ālayavijñāna (ground consciousness), and tathāgatagarbha (buddha-nature). In other words, no scholarly study of the Buddhist concept of anātman can be satisfactorily accomplished without fully comprehending the aforementioned. The present bibliography does not deal with these concepts that have been dealt with extensively elsewhere.
Occasionalism
Authors: Ott Walter
Published: February 2014

Occasionalism is the doctrine that God is the only true cause. What appear to be causes in the natural world—a lightning strike that sets off a forest fire, for example—are only “occasions” for God to act. Such natural events are merely correlated, not causally connected. The same holds true for human action: One’s desire to move one’s arm toward the chocolate ice cream is only an occasion for God to move one’s arm. Such a view seems outlandish, at best a historical curiosity. Since the modern period, occasionalism has been dismissed as an ad hoc answer to the Cartesian problem of interaction: If minds are not physical things, how can they act on bodies? Occasionalism simply denies that there is any interaction at all, hence the problem is dissolved. But in fact, occasionalism antedates the Cartesian problematic by many centuries. And even in the modern period, its real motivations have more to do with the nature of divine creation and causation itself than with the problem of interaction. While occasionalism has few adherents today, its rejection of genuine causal connections in the sublunary world was an important source for the views of David Hume in the eighteenth century and David Lewis in the twentieth.
Identity in Physics
Authors: Krause Décio , Arenhart Jonas R. B.
Published: February 2014

Traditionally, the problem of identity is closely associated with the problem of individuality: What is it that makes something being what it is? Approaches to the problem may be classified into two classes: reductionism and transcendental identity. The first group tries to reduce identity to some qualitative feature of the entities dealt with, while the second either grounds identity on some feature other than qualitative properties or else take it to be primitive. The debate is generally centred on the validity of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII), which states that qualitative indiscernibility amounts to numerical identity. If PII is valid, then reductionism concerning identity is at least viable; if PII is invalid, then reductionism seems less plausible and some form of transcendental identity seems required. It is common to say that objects in classical mechanics are individuals. This fact is exhibited by postulating that physical objects obey Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics; if we have containers A and B to accommodate two objects a and b, there are four equiprobable situations: (1) both objects in A, (2) both in B, (3) a in A and b in B, and finally (4) a in B and b in A. Since situations (3) and (4) differ, there may be something that makes the difference—a transcendental individuality or some quality. In quantum mechanics, assuming that we have two containers A and B to accommodate objects a and b, there are just three equiprobable situations for bosons: (1) both objects in A, (2) both in B, (3) one object in A and one in B. It makes no sense to say that it is a or b that is in A: Switching them makes no difference. For fermions we have only one possibility due to the exclusion principle: (1) one object in A and one in B. Again, switching them makes no difference whatsoever. The dispute in quantum mechanics concerns non-individuality on the one side and individuality (be it reductionism or transcendental individuality) on the other. That distinction was grounded on the fact that quantum particles may be qualitatively indiscernible, and, as the statistics show, permutations are unobservable. The actual debate concerns whether some form of reductionism may survive in quantum mechanics or whether some form of transcendental identity should be adopted on the one hand and whether non-individuality is a viable option. Furthermore, a third option, Ontic Structural Realism (OSR), proposes that we transcend the debate and choose a metaphysics of structures and relations, leaving the controversial topic individuals × non-individuals behind.
Early Childhood Education and Development in Mexico
Authors: Mejia-Arauz Rebeca , Toledo-Rojas Vanessa , Aceves-Azuara Itzel
Published: February 2014

Early childhood education around the world focuses on the first years of life, usually from birth through six years of age. In Mexico official and academic institutions agree with this, but the reality is that in Mexico research is scarce and so are applied programs that focus specifically on all the varied factors involved in education during this period of life. For that reason, this article includes bibliographic material that presents conceptions, reflections, and research on childhood education and development that considers a wider age range, up to twelve years old. This article provides specific ages when the information is available, but some publications refer to childhood in general. In order to provide a clear picture of Mexican childhood, this article follows several criteria for selecting the publications presented. First of all, the literature chosen here is supported with empirical research data, except in few cases in which the publication is the product of institutional debate or reflections that affected social or educational policies. In terms of empirical research, the works chosen here is produced by leading researchers in their field. In order to provide a more complete view of the country, also included is work that encompasses diverse communities and in different regions of the country, even if the research was not so recent or had some other limitation. Also, because the study of childhood education and development has been undertaken by different social science disciplines, these are also represented in the selection presented here. A final interesting note to add is that UNICEF reports that as of the early 21st century half of the children in the world live in urban areas. Mexico is no different than the rest of the world, with an increasing migration from rural areas to the major cities in the country. However, although there is clear preoccupation in some institutions about the effects contemporary urban life has on children’s well-being and development, little research has been conducted in Mexico regarding how urban contexts and the life practices involved in it affect children’s educational, psychological, and sociocultural development. In contrast, after the Zapatista movement that started in 1994, much effort was made to study indigenous children’s education and development, particularly the problems they face with language in schools, which resulted in a solid and consistent work published at a national and international level. Therefore, a selection of this excellent material is also included.
Sexualities in Latin America and the Caribbean
Authors: Perez Justin , Babb Florence E.
Published: February 2014

As elsewhere around the globe, diverse sexual practices, expressions, and subjectivities are found throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. During the last several decades, scholars and activists have come to view sexuality as critical to our understanding of difference and inequality across societies and through time. Like gender and race, sexuality is generally understood to be historically and culturally constructed, rather than as an essential and unchanging feature of human societies. Because attention to sexuality emerged principally from those concerned that heteronormative sexuality had been taken for granted, and non-heteronormative sexuality had been viewed as deviant or as playing a minor part in Latin America and the Caribbean, recent sexuality scholarship has more often examined underrepresented groups, including diverse and non-normative sexual orientations and gender identities. In what follows, themes taken up include Foundational Works and Overviews; Anthologies; Journals; Historical Approaches; Literary Studies; Culture and Society; Lesbian Identities and Experience; Gay Men’s Identities and Experiences; Queer Lives and Sexualities; Trans and Travesti Experiences and Gender Non-conformity; Sex Work and Sex Tourism; HIV/AIDS, Sexual Health, and Reproductive Politics; Sexual Citizenship and Social Movements; and Transnationalism, Migration, and Diaspora. A number of the works included here could be cross-referenced in several sections. There is broad coverage of over four decades of scholarship. It is important to note that, over four decades, the language and categories for sexual orientation and gender identity have evolved, in society and in scholarship. Over time, categories once considered derogatory or offensive have been re-appropriated, while other terms that were once widely used have fallen out of favor. Changes in terminology speak to the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of the field. For the purposes of this article, the vocabulary and terminology of the reviewed work is used. Furthermore, it is worth noting that full-length monographs are privileged over articles, and there is an emphasis on English-language scholarship, and greater inclusion of scholarship in the humanistic social sciences, cultural studies, and history than from literature and the arts. Likewise, while a greater number of works examine men’s lives than women’s lives, this trend reflects the more public lives of men as well as the state of research, which for the case of LGBT studies traditionally gave more attention to gay men than to lesbian, bisexual, and trans experience and communities. For related works on women and gender in postcolonial Latin America, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article on Gender in Postcolonial Latin America.
Dependencies
Authors: Mel’čuk Igor
Published: February 2014

Linguistic dependency is a binary relation between lexemes (≈ words) in an utterance; it is antireflexive, antisymmetrical, nontransitive, and acyclic. Dependency is best represented by an arrow: X→Y, meaning “Y depends on X”; X is called the governor of Y, and Y is a dependent of X. Dependency made its appearance in linguistics through syntax, so that, even in the early 21st century, when linguists talk about dependency, more often than not they mean “syntactic dependency.” This, however, leads to logical mistakes, because, in point of fact, natural language features at least three major types of dependency: semantic, syntactic, and morphological, which should by no means be confused. (For simplicity’s sake, still other types of linguistic dependency are ignored here: in particular, communicative dependency between semantemes and compounding dependency between radicals within compound lexemes, such as takes place in German compounds of the type Nacht←zug ‘night train’ versus Zug←nacht, literally, ‘train night’ = ‘night on a train’.) As follows from the aforementioned characterization of dependency, all three types of linguistic dependency are syntagmatic by nature: they hold between the elements co-occurring in the same utterance. Although the study of linguistic dependency is a relatively recent domain, the corresponding literature is huge. This article will not try to cover it thoroughly; on the contrary, in order to achieve good surveyability, only the sheer minimum will be cited. Given the nature of this article, some formal statements are, from the factual viewpoint, only approximate (as some secondary linguistic phenomena are not taken into account). The goal of the article is to present the state, in the early 21st century, of the dependency approach in linguistics, describing it as rigorously and formally as possible. This approach’s historical evolution as well as the use of dependencies in other approaches are left out. It is necessary to emphasize that the state of the art in the domain is such that much attention must be dedicated to the system of concepts and the terminology instead of simply introducing the corresponding titles.
Semantic Roles
Authors: Levin Beth
Published: February 2014

The meaning of a predicate, especially a verb, may be characterized via the relations that its arguments bear to it. Semantic roles—also known as thematic relations, theta roles, participant roles, and deep cases—are labels for certain recurring predicate-argument relations. They have proved attractive because they provide a way of representing commonalities across different uses of the same predicate or across uses of distinct but semantically related predicates that may be obscured because arguments with certain semantic roles may have various syntactic realizations. Thus they provide a level of abstraction for the statement of generalizations concerning a variety of linguistic phenomena. In particular, argument realization generalizations are often stated over a thematic hierarchy, a ranking of semantic roles. However, semantic roles have not lived up to their initial promise. It has proved impossible to find a small set of roles that can be applied across all verbs in a language, let alone across languages. Yet this desideratum must be met if semantic roles are to figure effectively in accounts of linguistic phenomena. Further, some generalizations involving semantic roles seem to require reference to coarse-grained roles, whereas others require reference to fine-grained roles. Moreover, reliable diagnostics are difficult to identify even for the roles cited most often. Although these difficulties have led some researchers to reject semantic roles, others have taken alternative approaches, including the use of generalized semantic roles, which are inspired by the notion of prototype, with no single property being necessary or sufficient for an argument to bear such a role. Despite these drawbacks, semantic roles continue to be useful in stating linguistic generalizations, and so descriptive, if not theoretical, uses of semantic role labels persist across subfields, including language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. Furthermore, semantic roles are useful in natural language processing. Since semantic roles have been implicated in phenomena involving argument structure, the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Argument Structure should be consulted for additional relevant resources. Acknowledgments: For discussion of the material in this article, the author is grateful to Scott Grimm, Chris Manning, Malka Rappaport Hovav, and two reviewers, as well as the students in her autumn 2012 lexical semantics class.
Metaphor
Authors: Johnson Mark
Published: February 2014

For nearly 2,500 years, since the time of Aristotle, scholars assumed that metaphor was simply a matter of language—cases in which a word with a literal meaning could have a second meaning, which Aristotle claimed was “similar” to the first. According to this comparison theory, any cognitive content a metaphor might have would supposedly be reducible to a set of literal similarity statements. Consequently, while metaphors were seen as powerful rhetorical and poetic devices of language, they were deemed nonessential for stating fundamental truth claims, which could supposedly be reduced to literal concepts and propositions. During the last half of the 20th century, however, this dominant Aristotelian perspective was shown to be wrong. A growing body of cognitive-science research on meaning, conceptualization, reasoning, knowledge, and language called for a radical rethinking of the nature and operations of metaphor. This empirical research was the basis for what came to be known as conceptual metaphor theory. It was discovered that metaphor is conceptual rather than linguistic in nature, that we think by using metaphor—not rarely or obscurely—but constantly, and that most metaphorical thought is not based on perceived similarities in the world. Instead, conceptual metaphors are frame-to-frame mappings, where frames are basic structures of everyday thought. Conceptual metaphors thus consist of “source domain” frames that are mapped onto “target domain” frames, with most of the inference structure found in the source domain carried over to the corresponding target-domain structure. This process gives rise to metaphorical reasoning. Linguistic, psychological, and neuroscientific methods of inquiry and explanation continue to shed new light on how metaphors are learned, how they structure conceptual systems, and how they shape our reasoning in all aspects of our lives. Scholars are now investigating the working of metaphor in languages and cultural systems across the world and throughout history. In addition to this cross-linguistic research, metaphor has been explored in other modes of symbolic interaction besides language, such as art, music, architecture, dance, theater, and ritual. In a few short decades, metaphor has moved from the margins to the center of the study of mind, thought, and language. First regarded as a peripheral linguistic phenomenon to be studied only in literary theory and aesthetics, metaphor is now recognized as a fundamental process of human conceptualization and reasoning.
Kra-Dai Languages
Authors: Jenks Peter , Pittayaporn Pittayawat
Published: February 2014

Kra-Dai (also called Tai-Kadai and Kam-Tai) is a family of approximately 100 languages spoken in Southeast Asia, extending from the island of Hainan, China, in the east to the Indian province of Assam in the west and south to the Malay Peninsula. The term Kra-Dai was suggested in Weera Ostapirat’s 2000 work “Proto-Kra” (Ostapirat 2000, cited under “Kra-Dai beyond Tai”) after two important branches in the family: Tai, the group including Thai and Lao, and Kra, a smaller, less-studied group of languages spoken in Southern China. Other significant subgroups of Kra-Dai include the Kam-Sui languages, spoken primarily in southern China, and the Hlai and Ong Be languages, spoken on Hainan Island in China. The more traditional name for the family, Tai-Kadai, is problematic because the term “Kadai” does not refer to any valid subgroup. The homeland of Kra-Dai languages is most likely in Southern China, due to the large number of diverse Kra-Dai languages spoken there. From there, Kra-Dai speakers spread south through northern Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, and west through Yunnan, Myanmar, and Assam province in Northeast India. The more far-flung languages mostly come from the Southwestern Tai subgroup, languages which are closely related to Thai. Proto Kra-Dai is yet to be reconstructed, although recent reconstructions of Tai, Kra, and Hlai represent clear progress toward this goal. The higher phylogeny of Kra-Dai is uncertain. While Chinese scholars, including the eminent Fang-Kuei Li, have argued that Kra-Dai is Sinitic, this connection is tenuous due to clearly demonstrable waves of Chinese loanwords into Kra-Dai. Many other scholars have adopted the hypothesis of Paul K. Benedict, who proposed a genetic relationship between Kra-Dai and Austronesian. Kra-Dai languages tend to have rich consonant and vowel inventories and up to nine lexical tones. These languages tend to be morphologically isolating with a tendency toward short, mono- or disyllabic words. However, Kra-Dai languages possess productive derivational morphological processes, including reduplication and compounding, which can result in relatively long words. Kra-Dai languages are primarily head initial with basic SVO word order, employ numeral classifiers for individuation, and make use of serial verb constructions. There is some variation in word order between Kra-Dai languages. For example, while most Southwestern Tai languages have the order noun-numeral-classifier, non–Southwestern Tai Kra-Dai languages have the order numeral-classifier-noun. Among the Kra-Dai languages, Standard Thai is the best studied by a wide margin. Lao, the national language of Laos and a close relative of Thai, has also been studied in some detail. The other well-described languages tend to be in the Tai branch of Kra-Dai. The documentation and description of non-Tai languages of Kra-Dai is much more limited, especially documentation published in English; much of the documentation that does exist on these languages is in Chinese.
Masculinity in Film
Authors: Gallagher Mark
Published: February 2014

In film studies as in other disciplines and in cultures at large, masculinity remains a contested category, tied not only to dominant social values but also to marginal groups and practices, somehow understood as monolithic and stable but always multiple and fluctuating. Formative work on masculinity in film and cultural studies has sought both to establish the patterns involved in cinematic representation of men (usually adult men, and often with classical Hollywood cinema as the area of study) and also to disentangle cultural categories of masculinity and femininity from biological categories of male and female. (We can leave aside here the semantic problem that, in film studies as in English-language usage generally, the term “gender” has come to mean male or female, with “sex” designating only sexual activity.) As an outgrowth of 1970s feminist film studies, studies of film masculinity were initially (and often remain) concerned with the politics of representation, linking screen images and narratives to conditions in historical reality while often simultaneously theorizing men and masculinity in terms of psychoanalytic models derived from Sigmund Freud (b. 1856–d. 1939), Jacques Lacan (b. 1901–d. 1981), Louis Althusser (b. 1918–d. 1990), and others. Relatedly, Marxism, poststructuralism, and other models of ideological critique have been used to understand film masculinity’s position in political and social structures of power. Much scholarship on film masculinity approaches the subject from multiple vantage points. Considerations of the body routinely involve discussions of sexuality or race, for example, and approaches to masculinity in genre films often involve claims about cultural contexts. Section commentaries here thus include considerable if not exhaustive cross-referencing. The plurality of categories considered in individual works reflects the emerging nature of masculinity studies in film. Some consensus has arisen about what terms and categories deserve attention, and the area of scholarship has not yet fragmented into discrete subspecializations focused narrowly on single categories. Indeed, masculinity is tied into so many other categories—gender at large; the practices and politics of representation; myriad cultural and historical contexts; questions of sexuality, psychology, anthropology, and sociology; and more—that efforts to limit the scope of masculinity studies would invariably close off essential contexts. Studies of film masculinity began in part as a way to extend feminist film studies’ fruitful investigations of spectatorship and representation. Work in the subject has subsequently illuminated virtually all areas of cinema and media scholarship.
Liability for International Environmental Harm
Authors: Ellis Jaye
Published: February 2014

Three main approaches to the legal consequences of transboundary environmental harm have been mooted by authors and by a succession of Special Rapporteurs to the International Law Commission (ILC): liability ex delicto, under which states would be responsible for transboundary harm if they failed to take reasonable measures to prevent the harm; liability sine delicto stricto sensu, under which states would be responsible to pay compensation for transboundary harm even in the absence of fault or negligence; and an equitable balancing of interests approach, often referred to as liability sine delicto lato sensu, under which transboundary harm may be permitted as long as it is reasonable and equitable. Three projects of the ILC are relevant here: the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, 2001 (the Articles on State Responsibility); the Draft Articles on the Prevention of Transboundary Harm from Hazardous Activities (the Articles on Transboundary Harm, formally titled International Liability for Injurious Consequences arising out of Acts not Prohibited by International Law); and the Draft Principles on the Allocation of Loss in the case of Transboundary Harm Arising out of Hazardous Activities (the Principles on Allocation of Loss)—all cited under International Instruments. This is a difficult and controversial topic, for both doctrinal and policy reasons. Transboundary environmental harm is generally not caused by state activity per se, but rather by private actors. The activities that give rise to it are often considered beneficial, and prohibiting them is rarely feasible. It may be difficult to identify an injured state, particularly if the environmental damage is felt in global commons areas. Proving causation can be immensely challenging. States have widely disparate capacities to ensure a high standard of environmental protection. Finally, determining what environmental damage ought to be compensated, and how the amount of compensation is to be calculated, raises complicated economic, political, and philosophical questions.