bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Code, and Other Laws of Blockchain†
Authors: Zou Mimi 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
There has been burgeoning interest among legal scholars in recent years regarding the implications of blockchain technology for the law. Two thoughtful monographs that go beyond the hyped claims of enthusiasts and cynics are Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright’s Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code and Kevin Werbach’s Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. While the two books have different focal points, both contain a common Laurence-Lessig-inspired theme of ‘code as law’ in which decentralised blockchain networks are viewed as a regulatory ‘modality’ or ‘architecture’ with its own system of rules. However, as this article argues, blockchain is not outside the law or the existing legal system. Code necessarily interacts with other modes of regulation, namely the market, social norms and law, in constraining the operation of blockchain applications such as smart contracts. This argument also situates smart contracts in a relational analysis of real-world contracting practices.
Negation and Presupposition
Authors: Beaver David , Denlinger Kristin 
Published: May 2020

AbstractOver a century of scholarship on presupposition has worked towards reconciling two seemingly contrary properties of these types of inferences: the ability to project through embedding like negation, and the ability to be cancelled explicitly. Describing these properties has been key to not only diagnosing presuppositions, but also differentiating them from other types of inferences like implicatures and entailment and understanding how a theory of presupposition could apply cross-linguistically. This chapter outlines different accounts of presupposition and negation, focusing on six different broad approaches: scope ambiguity, trivalent ambiguity, underspecification, metalinguistic negation, cancellation, and accommodation. These accounts differ with respect to whether they account for default projection, the mechanisms through which projection is derived, and whether entailments and implicatures are targeted by the same negation operators as presuppositions.
Language Endangerment, Documentation, and Revitalization
Authors: Essegbey James 
Published: May 2020

AbstractIn the late 1980s, the attention of linguists was drawn to the fact that the world’s languages are disappearing at an alarming rate. Since then, steps have been taken to revitalize those that can be revitalized but, most importantly, document the languages before they disappear. There is the perception, however, that even though Africa has about a third of the world’s languages, accounts of language endangerment do not take the specificities of the African situation into consideration. This chapter discusses the types of endangerment in Africa and the role African scholars are playing in documentation, as well as modest efforts at the revitalization of dying languages on the continent.
Bom-Kim
Authors: Childs G. Tucker 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The Bom-Kim dialect cluster in Sierra Leone, a member of the South Atlantic family within Niger-Congo, features an areally common segmental structure with a labial-velar (labiovelar) stop and prenasalized consonants, whereas tone is only marginally distinct lexically. It has a rather classic Niger-Congo noun class system, but a restricted system of verbal extensions or derivational suffixes. It combines a system of prepositions with postpositions, the latter specifying the search domain for objects. Next to the major categories nouns and verbs, there is a small category of adjectives and adverbs. Limited knowledge of ideophonic words among modern speakers of Bom-Kim may be interpreted as an instantiation of language obsolescence, as Bom-Kim is an endangered language.
Bende
Authors: Abe Yuko 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Bende (Sibhende [síβendé]) is a Bantu language (Niger-Congo phylum) spoken mainly in the Katavi region in western Tanzania, known as F12 in Guthrie’s reference classification. It is sometimes called Tongwe-Bende, since both ethnic groups are closely related linguistically, not to mention their cultural common ground. The number of Bende speakers is estimated to be 41,490 by Language of Tanzania Project (Chuo kikuu cha DSM 2009). Bende is a tone language with ten vowels (five each short and long) and nineteen consonants. Eighteen noun classes are listed for nouns, whereas verbs have rich morphological derivations and a complex conjugation system consisting of twenty-five patterns for simple affirmatives and nineteen patterns for simple negatives.
Wandala
Authors: Frajzyngier Zygmunt 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Wandala (Central Chadic) is spoken by about 45,000 people in Cameroon and northern Nigeria. The language has grammaticalized phonological means marking types of connections between the elements of the utterance, indicating an expected follow-up, a less expected follow-up, and the absence of a follow-up. The coding of some grammatical relations, such as subject and object, is distributed over a wide range of morphemes. Wandala has two tones. While in nouns both tones can be part of the underlying structure, the tones are not part of the underlying structure of verbs and carry only grammatical function. The language has a rich verbal morphology coding syntactic and semantic relations within the clause. Subject suffixes to the verb mark aspectual and modal functions different from those marked by subject pronouns preceding the verb. Inflectional markers on the verb indicate the grammatical relation of the noun phrase following the verb.
South Cushitic
Authors: Kießling Roland 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The South Cushitic or West Rift Cushitic languages split into two branches: Southern vs. Northern. While the Southern branch continues in Burunge, the Northern branch comprises Alagwa and Iraqwoid, which includes the dialects Gorwaa and Iraqw. Internal convergence of Alagwa towards the Southern branch produced bundles of Burunge/Alagwa lexical isoglosses which could easily be wrongly taken to reflect genetic inheritance. Languages such as Qw’adza, Aasáx, Ma’a/Mbugu, and Dahalo must be excluded from an internal classification of South Cushitic for various methodological considerations. Dahalo’s genetic position between South and East Cushitic has not been determined beyond doubt. Ma’a/Mbugu rather represents an extreme case of intertwining of Bantu and Cushitic, involving language shift and deliberate creation of an ethnolinguistic register. Finally, for both Qw’adza and Aasáx, poor overall documentary coverage and the contexts of data acquisition do not allow for reliable integration into an adequate internal classification.
Biali
Authors: Sambiéni Coffi 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter gives a brief description of the grammatical structure of Biali, an Eastern Gur language spoken in the north of the Republic of Benin. It examines major aspects of phonology (five vocalic phonemes; fifteen distinctive consonants; a tonal system contrasting high, mid, and low; syllable structure) and morphosyntax. The description of nominals highlights the noun class system consisting of fifteen classes and deverbal and denominal suffix-based derivation. Nominal compounding is characterized by the use of two or more lexemes expanded with class markers. Noun phrases, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals are also dealt with. Verbal description includes derivational processes, the TAM system, negation, focus, and adverbs.
Pidgin and Creole Languages
Authors: Sommer Gabriele 
Published: May 2020

AbstractPidgin and Creole Studies represent a well-established field in linguistics. In the African context, however, the study of pidgins and creoles is still much less advanced. African pidgin and creole (PC) languages fulfill vehicular functions, whereas not all lingua francas in Africa are to be regarded as pidgins and creoles. While a map shows the distribution of African PC languages arranged from North and West to Central, East and southern Africa, they are further grouped and characterized in the text according to their main lexifier languages, by their presumed origins, the major contact languages involved and—if known—the actual linguistic outcome(s) of these respective contact situations.
Morphology
Authors: Beyer Klaus 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe chapter firstly considers morphological typologies relevant for African languages and discusses their heuristics. It gives examples for focal members of each category and thereby hints at the wide variation of morphological types found in Africa. It then goes on to describe some salient concepts of African languages’ morphologies. Numerous examples show the far-reaching range of derivational and inflectional morphology. Some more special cases of tonal inflection and derivation are considered here as well as some aspects of the famous noun class systems. There is then a discussion of possibilities for a coherent morpheme classification. The final section of the chapter looks at diachronic aspects of morphology. It discusses the possibilities of morphological reconstruction and its value for language classification. It also throws some light on the theory of grammaticalization and its contribution to our understanding of the connection between morphology and syntax.
Songhay Languages
Authors: Souag Lameen 
Published: May 2020

AbstractSonghay is a language group of the West African Sahel region with more than four million speakers, distributed mainly in western Niger and northeastern Mali along the Niger River, but including outlying pockets scattered as far afield as Algeria, Ghana, and Sudan. Strong contact effects along the periphery—notably involving Berber in the north and Bariba and Hausa in the southeast, and Mande languages at an earlier stage—have resulted in a remarkable situation where different varieties may have nearly identical basic vocabularies but conspicuously different typologies. Cladistic and lexical evidence shows that much of the observed variation reflects contact influences quite different from those obtaining today. This chapter examines particularly morphology and syntax across the family. Special attention is given to innovations distinguishing the three principal subgroups (Eastern, Western, and Northern), and to the motivations for these changes.
Language Policy and Politics
Authors: Sure Kembo 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The chapter is a discussion of the nexus between language policy and the national sociopolitical policies and practices with regard to the distribution of opportunities, human rights, values, recognition, freedom, equity, fairness, and the resolution of disputes. Examples from Africa are discussed using a modified conceptual framework adopted from Patten (2001) in which he argues that “a language enjoys public recognition when it is possible to access services and/or conduct public business in that language.” Using the examples of South Africa and Ethiopia we see how the official multilingualism model fails to promote all languages in a complex plurilingual polity, as it inadvertently promotes strong languages to the detriment of weaker ones. The use of the language rationalization model also failed in Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia, where the state’s tinkering with language behavior patterns only helps to privilege some languages and disadvantage others.
African Languages in the Diaspora
Authors: Hollington Andrea 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe African continent has been characterized by migration for ages. This concerns not only inner-African migration but also migration from Africa to other places of the world. To be sure, this has resulted in a spread of African languages beyond the borders of the continent, while this spread has yielded various processes of transformation and language contact phenomena. This chapter seeks to examine the major linguistic processes and developments that are connected to African languages in the Diaspora. Moreover, some light will be shed on the role that African languages or the African linguistic heritage play in African Diaspora communities, especially with regard to their function as strong markers of cultural identity.
Words, Things, and Meaning
Authors: Schoenbrun David L. 
Published: May 2020

AbstractHow does one write African history without documents? Comparative and historical linguistics is a good place to begin. First, one classifies related languages and reconstructs the sequence and locations of their divergences. Then, one describes the patterns of interaction between them and between languages not sharing a common ancestor by tracking transfers of language material between them. Lastly, one reconstructs lexical forms and their semantic histories, building up bundles of words that constitute semantic fields. Ideally, this work unfolds in collaboration with paleoecologists, archaeologists, and historical anthropologists before working with anthropological geneticists. Together, such teams can sort out issues of chronology and semantic vagueness which bedevil historical linguistics in much of Africa south of the Sahara.
Reasserting the Centre: The Brexit Doctrine and the Imperative Mandate in British Politics
Authors: Ward Joseph W 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Despite the outpouring of scholarship on the motivations behind the 2016 EU referendum result and the preliminary impact of Brexit on British politics, comparatively little time has been spent analysing the government(s) entrusted with implementation. This article aims to address this gap in the literature, examining government management of the Brexit process as a case study through which to illustrate the continued relevance of the British Political Tradition in British politics. It argues that through Brexit implementation, the May government initiated a process of centralisation of both policy-making influence and administrative resources within Whitehall. This process was shielded externally by appeals to the referendum result as an imperative mandate parliament was obliged to implement. Although the political landscape of May’s premiership was characterised by flux, these internal shifts towards centralisation in the executive are proposed to have had a more sustained impact through the reassertion of aspects of Britain’s ‘power-hoarding’ constitutional settlement.
Individual Cortical Entropy Profile: Test–Retest Reliability, Predictive Power for Cognitive Ability, and Neuroanatomical Foundation
Authors: Liu Mianxin , Liu Xinyang , Hildebrandt Andrea , Zhou Changsong 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The entropy profiles of cortical activity have become novel perspectives to investigate individual differences in behavior. However, previous studies have neglected foundational aspects of individual entropy profiles, that is, the test–retest reliability, the predictive power for cognitive ability in out-of-sample data, and the underlying neuroanatomical basis. We explored these issues in a large young healthy adult dataset (Human Connectome Project, N = 998). We showed the whole cortical entropy profile from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging is a robust personalized measure, while subsystem profiles exhibited heterogeneous reliabilities. The limbic network exhibited lowest reliability. We tested the out-of-sample predictive power for general and specific cognitive abilities based on reliable cortical entropy profiles. The default mode and visual networks are most crucial when predicting general cognitive ability. We investigated the anatomical features underlying cross-region and cross-individual variations in cortical entropy profiles. Cortical thickness and structural connectivity explained spatial variations in the group-averaged entropy profile. Cortical folding and myelination in the attention and frontoparietal networks determined predominantly individual cortical entropy profile. This study lays foundations for brain-entropy-based studies on individual differences to understand cognitive ability and related pathologies. These findings broaden our understanding of the associations between neural structures, functional dynamics, and cognitive ability.
On the progression of COVID19 in Portugal: A comparative analysis of active cases using non-linear regression
Authors: Milhinhos Ana , Costa Pedro M. 
Published: May 2020

AbstractPortugal has been portrayed as a relatively successful case in the control of the COVID-19’s March 2020 outbreak in Europe due to the timely confinement measures taken. As other European Union member states, Portugal is now preparing the phased loosening of the confinement measures, starting in the beginning of May. Even so, the current data, albeit showing at least a reduction in infection rates, renders difficult to forecast scenarios in the imminent future. Using South Korea data as scaffold, which is becoming a paradigmatic case of recovery following a high number of infected people, we fitted Portuguese data to biphasic models using non-linear regression and compared the two countries. The results, which suggest good fit, show that recovery in Portugal can be much slower than anticipated, with a very high percentage of active cases (over 50%) remaining still active even months after the projected end of mitigation measures. This, together with the unknown number of asymptomatic carriers, may increase the risk of a much slower recovery if not of new outbreaks. Europe and elsewhere must consider this contingency when planning the relief of containment measures.
Estimation of COVID-19 case fatality ratio based on a bi-directional correction method
Authors: Hu Wanling , Liu Xiaoyun , Wang Tao , Zhou Changlong , Liu Dingfu , Zhang Yuanming , Hu Zhongli , Diao Ying 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe case fatality rate (CFR) can be used to predict the number of potential deaths in the epidemic and thus can reflect the appropriateness and quality of medical measures developed by public health. When a new disease breaks out, it is particularly important to accurately estimate the CFR. However, while the epidemic is still developing, the crude CFR is often lower than the true value and the hospital CFR is often higher than the true value due to differences in occurrence time, patient number, and treatment plans. Therefore, this study proposes a bi-directional correction method to estimate the CFR. COVID-19 data from China were used to evaluate this method. The results show that this method provides more accurate results than both the crude CFR and hospital CFR. Additionally, this method was used to estimate the CFR of COVID-19 in other countries, with an aim to provide a reference for prevention and control decisions for the COVID-19 epidemic and for the evaluation of medical efforts.
Factors Influencing Mental Health During Covid-19 Outbreak: An Exploratory Survey Among Indian Population
Authors: Ahmad Absar , Rahman Ishrat , Agarwal Maitri 
Published: May 2020

AbstractPurposeResearch on the impact of social distancing on mental health during epidemics is limited, especially in India. The purpose of this study is to scale the association between anxiety and socio-demographic factors during Covid19 lockdown among the general Indian population.Design/methodology/approachA descriptive cross-sectional nationwide study was designed to enrol the general population. The inclusion criteria for this study were Indian citizens aged 18 years and above. The study was conducted from 29th March to 12th April 2020, using an online google questionnaire. The anxiety among respondents was detected and measured using a Generalised Anxiety Disorder Scale which consists of 7 questions (in English), i.e. GAD-7.FindingsRespondees were 392, and from these participants, the prevalence of anxiety was 25.3 per cent. Based on the bivariate logistic regression analysis, the predictors of anxiety were gender, religion, occupation as business/self-employed, marital status, family size, health status and sleep deprivation.ConclusionThis study reports the prevalence of anxiety among Indian population who were grounded at their homes during lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic in the country.Limitations(1) The selection of participants through non-random sampling. (2) Because of the cross-sectional character of the study, causal conclusions cannot be drawn.Originality/ValueThis paper fulfils an identified need to study the mental health status of the population under situations like lockdown, thereby helping fill a persistent gap in Indian research on this issue.
The importance of the timing of quarantine measures before symptom onset to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks - illustrated by Hong Kong’s intervention model
Authors: Yuan Hsiang-Yu , Han Guiyuan , Yuan Hsiangkuo , Pfeiffer Susanne , Mao Axiu , Wu Lindsey , Pfeiffer Dirk 
Published: May 2020

AbstractBackgroundThe rapid expansion of the current COVID-19 outbreak has caused a global pandemic but how quarantine-based measures can prevent or suppress an outbreak without other more intrusive interventions has not yet been determined. Hong Kong had a massive influx of travellers from mainland China, where the outbreak began, during the early expansion period coinciding with the Lunar New Year festival; however, the spread of the virus has been relatively limited even without imposing severe control measures, such as a full city lockdown. Understanding how quarantine measures in Hong Kong were effective in limiting community spread can provide us with valuable insights into how to suppress an outbreak. However, challenges exist in evaluating the effects of quarantine on COVID-19 transmission dynamics in Hong Kong due to the fact that the effects of border control have to be also taken into account.MethodsWe have developed a two-layered susceptible-exposed-infectious-quarantined-recovered (SEIQR) meta-population model which can estimate the effects of quarantine on virus transmissibility after stratifying infections into imported and subsequent community infections, in a region closely connected to the outbreak’s source. We fitted the model to both imported and local confirmed case data with symptom onset from 18 January to 29 February 2020 in Hong Kong, together with daily transportation data and the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 from Wuhan and mainland China. After model fitting, epidemiological parameters and the timing of the start of quarantine for infected cases were estimated.ResultsThe model estimated that the reproduction number of COVID-19 in Hong Kong was 0.76 (95% CI, 0.66 to 0.86), achieved through quarantining infected cases −0.57 days (95% CI, −4.21 − 3.88) relative to symptom onset, with an estimated incubation time of 5.43 days (95% CI, 1.30 − 9.47). However, if delaying the quarantine start by more than 1.43 days, the reproduction number would be greater than one, making community spread more likely. The model also determined the timing of the start of quarantine necessary in order to suppress an outbreak in the presence of population immunity.ConclusionThe results suggest that the early quarantine for infected cases before symptom onset is a key factor to prevent COVID-19 outbreak.