scholarly journals Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism, and Etymology: The History of French, Chez

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Longobardi
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Diachronic Syntax ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parameter Resetting ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Diachronic Changes

Current theories place very mild constraints on possible diachronic changes, something at odds with the trivial observation that actual, “language change” represents a tiny fraction of the variation made a priori available by Universal Grammar. Much recent work in diachronic syntax has actually been guided by the aim of describing changes (e.g., parameter resetting), rather than by concerns of genuine explanation. Here I suggest a radically different viewpoint (the Inertial, Theory of diachronic syntax), namely, that syntactic change not provably due to interference should not occur at all as a primitive-that is, unless forced by changes in the phonology, the semantics, or the lexicon, perhaps ultimately by interface or grammar-external pressures, in line with the minimalist enterprise in synchronic linguistics. I concentrate on a single case, the etymology of Modern French chez, showing howthe proposed approach attains a high degree of explanatory adequacy.

scholarly journals Language Change and Language Acquisition

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.21 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Previous Generation ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Diachronic Changes

The aim of this paper is to present diachronic changes in terms of the conditions of first language acquisition. Grammars, seen as mental organs, may change between two generations. A change is initiated when (a population of) learners converge on a grammatical system which differs in at least one parameter value from the system internalized by the speakers of the previous generation. Learnability issues then connect to both language acquisition and language change, and understanding language changes depends on understanding how children acquire their native language. Acquisition is a process in which Universal Grammar (UG) interacts with a context-specific set of Primary Linguistic Data (PLD: the linguistic input to the child-learner) and uses these PLD as the source for triggers or cues that map the innate (preexperience) knowledge to a mature grammar. If a certain phenomenon has survived through many generations, it must have been reflected clearly in the PLD. Then, if we note that it has changed, something in the language performance of the previous generation must have changed, and thereby paved the way for a new interpretation. Innovation leading to linguistic variation in the PLD and gradual changes in PLD play a central role in the explanation here: the immediate cause of a grammar change must lie in some alternation in the PLD. We will look at how the language spoken in a certain community (E-language) may gradually become different from the language that originally served as the triggering experience. These changes in the E-language also mean changes in the input available to the child-learners of the next generation and a motivation for a different parameter setting has arisen.

THE FRENCH FOUNDATIONS OF HUTTON’S THEORY OF THE EARTH, PART TWO: HUTTON’S DEBTS TO ROUELLE

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-364
Author(s):  
GREGORY F.W. TODD
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Chemistry Teachers ◽  
History Of Geology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Almost All ◽  
High Degree

This contribution, in two parts, addresses a long-standing problem in the history of geology: Was the geological theory of James Hutton derived inductively from observations and scientific knowledge, or was it derived a priori as a speculative system? Hutton’s own writings do little to clarify the question, and the conflict in interpretations has remained at an impasse. This contribution proposes to resolve that conflict by focusing on the two years Hutton spent as a young man studying chemistry in Paris. I argue that Hutton studied with one of the great chemistry teachers of the eighteenth century, Guillaume-François Rouelle, and that Rouelle’s teachings provided the foundations of Hutton’s geological theory. Part One of this contribution reviewed evidence that Hutton was a student of Rouelle’s, and concluded with a high degree of confidence, but less than certainty, that Hutton did study with Rouelle. In this Part Two, it is argued that Hutton adopted almost all the geological ideas found in Rouelle’s lectures. This Part Two also proposes a reconstruction of the development of Hutton’s cyclical model of Earth strata, taken as the starting point of his broader theory, to show that it developed from observations and inductions, and his study with Rouelle, and was not developed as an a priori system. That conclusion will require a new interpretation of Hutton’s theory, which should now be understood as part of a continuum of geological knowledge developing during the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Problems with variable properties in syntax

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-19
Author(s):  
David Lightfoot
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Variable Properties ◽  
Generative Capacity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evaluation Metric

Like those birds born to chirp, humans are born to parse; children are predisposed to assign linguistic structures to the amorphous externalization of the thoughts that we encounter. This yields a view of variable properties quite different from one based on parameters defined at Universal Grammar (UG). Our approach to language acquisition makes two contributions to Minimalist thinking. First, in accordance with general Minimalist goals, we minimize the pre-wired components of internal languages, dispensing with three separate, central entities: parameters, an evaluation metric for rating the generative capacity of grammars, and any independent parsing mechanism. Instead, children use their internal grammar to parse the ambient external language they experience. UG is “open,” consistent with what children learn through parsing. Second, our understanding of language acquisition yields a new view of variable properties, properties that occur only in certain languages. Under this open UG vision, specific elements of I-languages arise in response to new parses. Both external and internal languages play crucial, interacting roles:  unstructured, amorphous external language is parsed and a structured internal language system results. My Born to parse (Lightfoot 2020) explores case studies that show innovative parses of external language shaping the history of languages. I discuss 1) how children learn through parsing, 2) the role of parsing at the two interfaces between syntactic structure and the externalization system (sound or sign) and logical form, 3) language change, and 4) variable linguistic properties seen through the lens of an open UG. This, in turn, yields a view of variable properties akin to that of evolutionary biologists working on Darwin’s finches; see section 7.

Resolving visual and conceptual interference among object concepts requires medial temporal lobe cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle M. Douglas ◽  
Louisa Lok Yee Man ◽  
Rachel N. Newsome ◽  
Haley Park ◽  
Hira M. Aslam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medial Temporal Lobe ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Brain Lesion ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Prefrontal Cortical ◽  
Visual Interference ◽  
Multiple Stimulus ◽  
Feature Overlap ◽  
Visually Based ◽  
High Degree

Semantic features, such as prototypical visual form or function, are often shared across multiple object concepts. How, then, are we able to resolve interference between object concepts that look alike but perform different functions (e.g., hairdryer and gun) or that do similar things but look rather dissimilar (e.g., hairdryer and comb)? We examined this issue in the current neuropsychological single-case study by asking whether perirhinal cortex (PRC) critically enables resolution of interference among object concepts at the level of their conceptually- and visually-based semantic features. We tested three patients with differing lesion profiles using a novel discrimination task involving stimuli for which visual and conceptual similarity were not linked across object concepts. We found that D.A., an individual with a brain lesion that includes PRC, was impaired at discriminating among object concepts when there was a high degree conceptual and visual semantic feature overlap among choices. We replicated this result in a second testing session. Conversely, patients with selective hippocampal or ventromedial prefrontal cortical lesions were unimpaired on this task. Importantly, D.A.’s performance was intact when (i) conceptual and visual interference among object concepts was minimized, and (ii) when the discriminations involved simple stimuli that did not require assessment of multiple stimulus dimensions. These results reveal a novel semantic deficit in a patient with PRC damage, suggesting that this structure represents object concepts in a manner that can be flexibly reshaped to emphasize task relevant semantic features.

THE R.J. CHAMBERS COLLECTION: AN “ARCHIVIST'S” REVELATIONS OF 20th CENTURY ACCOUNTING THOUGHT AND PRACTICE

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme W. Dean ◽  
Peter W. Wolnizer ◽  
Frank L. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Accounting Education ◽  
Hard Copy ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Archival Source ◽  
Inflation Accounting ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Accounting Standard Setting

A major, unique accounting archival source, the R.J. Chambers Collection comprises both hard copy and, utilizing cutting-edge search technology, internet accessible materials. From his academic beginnings, Chambers was an orderly person, an archivist of the extensive and varied evidence that underpinned his proposals for accounting reform. Opening research areas for accounting biography, the development of accounting thought, the history of accounting institutions, prosopography, public sector accounting history, and comparative international accounting history are foremost amongst the myriad justifications for seeking to unravel the accounting history “lodes” in archives such as the Goldberg, Chambers, and Briloff Collections [Potter, 2003]. The archiving of the meticulously kept Chambers papers from 1947–1999 provides an opportunity for unfolding the background to events previously withheld from accounting history scholars. Professional episodes in relation to inflation accounting, standard setting, proposals to reform accounting education, and the like that appeared prima facie to be worth investigating are now open to scrutiny from a different angle, with a different type of evidence available in this Collection. This Collection provides a high degree of archival provenance. In particular, it represents an orderly retention of past documentation of what Chambers wrote, and perhaps uniquely for accounting historians, received; thus, providing an extensive window from which to examine the disorderly present environment of acounting.

Scales and Units

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. de Luna
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
The North ◽  
First Case ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
River Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Approaches

This chapter uses two case studies to explore how historians study language movement and change through comparative historical linguistics. The first case study stands as a short chapter in the larger history of the expansion of Bantu languages across eastern, central, and southern Africa. It focuses on the expansion of proto-Kafue, ca. 950–1250, from a linguistic homeland in the middle Kafue River region to lands beyond the Lukanga swamps to the north and the Zambezi River to the south. This expansion was made possible by a dramatic reconfiguration of ties of kinship. The second case study explores linguistic evidence for ridicule along the Lozi-Botatwe frontier in the mid- to late 19th century. Significantly, the units and scales of language movement and change in precolonial periods rendered visible through comparative historical linguistics bring to our attention alternative approaches to language change and movement in contemporary Africa.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
History Of

In the conclusion, the intrinsic deconstructive power of philology is contrasted with external pressures moving philology in different political and religious directions. The positions of the main protagonists differed widely, but they show that the less they were institutionalized, the more freedom they had to present unorthodox theories. As in the case of natural science, biblical philology was a handmaiden of theology, but it could also be used against certain theologies. In the end, the accumulation of evidence regarding the history of the Bible and the transmission of its texts, could not fail to impinge on the authority of Scripture. The problems in the transmission of the biblical text were widely discussed in the decade leading up to the publication of the Theological-political Treatise. Readers of Spinoza were already familiar with the type of reasoning which Spinoza employed in the central chapters of his notorious work.

Verb-initial declaratives in Old High German and in later German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Main Part ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Diachronic Syntax ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Syntactic Properties

This chapter investigates the syntactic properties and the pragmatic behaviour of verb-initial declarative clauses in the history of German. The focus is on OHG because in this period, verb-initial declaratives represent a frequent, well-known alternative to canonical verb-second main clauses. It is argued that verb-initial declaratives are native in origin, and that they are derivable under a special interpretation of the verb-second rule. The main part of the chapter deals with the pragmatic properties of verb-initial declaratives in OHG, summarizing the various attempts at explaining the distribution of these orders and showing that further research is needed to arrive at a more adequate understanding of their function in the discourse. The chapter closes up with the discussion of the later development of verb-initial declaratives in German, sketching the controversial treatments of this question in the literature on German diachronic syntax.

scholarly journals Euglycemic Diabetic Ketoacidosis after a Single Dose of Empagliflozin in a Patient with Pancreatitis

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-218
Author(s):  
Marta Brandão Calçada ◽  
Luís Fernandes ◽  
Rita Soares Costa ◽  
Sara Montezinho ◽  
Filipa Martins Duarte ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Type 2 Diabetes ◽  
Diabetic Ketoacidosis ◽  
Drug Class ◽  
Clinical Suspicion ◽  
Laboratory Findings ◽  
Sodium Glucose Cotransporter ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Euglycemic Diabetic Ketoacidosis

Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) are the most recently approved drug class for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). Although they are largely well-tolerated, their intake has been associated with euglycemic diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) in some rare cases. We report the case of a 70-year-old male with type 2 diabetes and no history of DKA, who started therapy with empagliflozin one day before presenting with acute pancreatitis and laboratory findings consistent with euglycemic DKA. SGLT2i can induce euglycemic DKA from the first dose. Given the atypical presentation, a high degree of clinical suspicion is required to recognize this complication.

929 Not Another Abscess - A Case of Streptococcal Myositis Misdiagnosed as a Right Axillary Abscess

2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
O Oyende ◽  
J Jackman
Keyword(s):  
White Cell Count ◽  
General Surgeon ◽  
High Dose ◽  
General Anaesthetic ◽  
Microbiological Analysis ◽  
Reactive Protein ◽  
Affected Tissue ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Degree

Abstract Introduction Streptococcal myositis is a rare form of infectious myositis caused by Lansfield A beta-haemolytic streptococci. It is characterised by rapidly spreading inflammation that can result in severe systemic toxicity and necrosis of the affected tissue if not diagnosed and aggressively treated. Presentation We report a case of a 42-year-old male who presented with a one-week history of worsening right axillary swelling that progressed to painful swelling of his arm. Inflammatory markers were significantly elevated with a white cell count of 17 ×109/L and C-reactive protein of 212 mg/L. On examination, a fluctuant axillary swelling was appreciated, and a decision was made for incision and drainage under general anaesthetic. Intraoperative aspiration of his arm revealed copious purulent fluid prompting intraoperative orthopaedic consult and exploration of the anterior compartment in which there was extensive involvement of the biceps muscle. The microbiological analysis revealed gram-positive cocci in chains, and microbiology advice sought for tailoring of antibiotic regimen. He has recovered well. Discussion Though uncommon, the emergency general surgeon should have a high degree of suspicion when evaluating soft tissue infections to avert potentially disastrous outcomes. Conclusion Early diagnosis, aggressive management with high-dose intravenous antibiotics, and surgical debridement are principles to treat this rare, life-threatening infection.

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