What is a word in Brokpa?

This paper investigates the structure of phonological word and grammatical word in Brokpa, a Tibeto-Burman (Trans-Himalayan) language of Bhutan. Defining features of a phonological word include stress, tone, and segmental properties. A grammatical word is defined based on conventionalized coherence and meaning, fixed order of morphemes, and its behaviour in relation to derivational and inflectional marking. Grammatical and phonological words in Brokpa coincide in most instances. Typical mismatches include words involving non-cohering compounds and non-cohering reduplication. A formal distinction between phonological and grammatical word is the key to our understanding of the interactions between different parts of grammar in Brokpa, and help resolve potential ambiguities of the term “word” in this language.

The semiology of humour

A semiology-based approach to understanding humour is being developed and an interpretation of humour as a “counter-sign,” a two-faced sign within the space of conventionality, is put forward. The range of core attributes to interpret the phenomenon of humour is determined. The concepts of the “frame of significance,” “conventionality,” and “meta-communicative marker of conventionality” are elaborated. The general definition of humour is being formulated as a “sign-based identification of non-identifiable signs within the space of conventionality.” An outline is put forward to enable the formal distinction between satire, humour, irony, and jokes. The following questions are addressed: “Why does that which is funny cease to be so if it is repeated many times?”, “Why can the terrifying become funny when recollected?” “Why is the state of bewilderment not always funny but returning to it in one’s thoughts triggers laughter?”

Cyclic Expansion in Agree: Maximal Projections As Probes

When we couple the cyclic expansion of a probe’s domain assumed in Cyclic Agree (Rezac 2003, 2004, Béjar and Rezac 2009) with the lack of formal distinction between heads, intermediate projections, and phrases emphasized in Bare Phrase Structure (Chomsky 1995a,b) an interesting prediction arises. Maximal projections should be able to probe through the same mechanisms that allow intermediate projections to probe in familiar cases of Cyclic Agree. I argue that this prediction is borne out. I analyze agreeing adjunct C in Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) as a maximal projection that probes its c-command domain in second cycle Agree. This account derives C’s simultaneous sensitivity to DPs within its own clause and in the clause to which it adjoins. Therefore, I conclude that Amahuaca provides evidence that maximal projections can be probes. The account also yields insight into the syntax of switch-reference in Panoan and beyond.

Purity and Danger in Fin-de-Siècle Culture: A Psycho-historical Interpretation of Wagner, Stoker and Zola

According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the quest for purity is usually accompanied by fears of change, ambiguity and transgression. Translating Douglas’ insights into historical terms, one may assume that sensibilities about what is pure and what is impure grow stronger during times of intense social and political change, as exemplifi ed by the stormy decades around 1900. This period was characterized by a profound identity-crisis and at the same time was marked by a quest for purity. One may think of a deepened concern for hygiene, of the rise of racist movements, but also of an intense longing for cultural reform and regeneration. Notwithstanding their many differences, these phenomena are linked through their concern for the formal distinction between what is pure and what is impure. A study of the work of Wagner, Bram Stoker and Zola gives some insight into the language of purity, serves to show the religious meaning of formal categories of purity and impurity, and makes it clear that the quest for purity in one area is related to the quest for purity in another area.

Accounting for the Whole: Why Pantheism is on a Metaphysical Par with Complex Theism

Pantheists are often accused of lacking a sufficient account of the unity of the cosmos and its supposed priority over its many parts. I argue that complex theists, those who think that God has ontologically distinct parts or attributes, face the same problems. Current proposals for the metaphysics of complex theism do not offer any greater unity or ontological independence than pantheism, since they are modeled on priority monism. I then discuss whether the formal distinction of John Duns Scotus offers a way forward for complex theists. I show that only those classical theists who affirm divine simplicity are better off with respect to aseity and unity than pantheists. Only proponents of divine simplicity can fairly claim to have found a fully independent ultimate being.

Philosophy’s Joy

The chapter first follows Deleuze’s theory of crystal individuation into his reading of Hume. After returning to the motif of lightning, and in light of Deleuze’s reading of Kant, it then explicates Deleuze’s notion of the three syntheses in Difference and Repetition, which complicates Deleuze’s notion of the complementarity of virtual intensity and actual extensity, and which can be read as a sustained argument against the notion of a natural light in philosophy. From there, the chapter turns to Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s luminist expressionism, which sets an immanent, expressive light against an emanating, representational light, and which conceptualizes substance as a simultaneously white and diffracted light: lux and lumen. After following Deleuze’s reading of Proust, the chapter conceptualizes a Deleuzian historical studies by way of his formal distinction between events and matters-of-fact, the notion of the informal diagram in Francis Bacon’s paintings, and in Max Ernst’s strategy of frottage.

Hervaeus Natalis and his polemics with the early scotists about formalities and formal distinction in God

The article is devoted to Hervaeus Natalis, also known as Hervaeus drom Nedellec, who was an outstanding theologian at the end of 13th — beginning of 14th centuries (c. 1260–1323). Brief biographical information about Hervaeus is provided and his importance for medieval thought is emphasized. The subject matter of the article is the consideration of a formal difference, or formal distinction in God. The introduction of this concept is usually associated with the name of Duns Scotus, and there is every reason for this: although Duns was not the inventor of formal distinction as such, it was he who put it at the heart of his trinitarian theology. The concept of formal difference is inextricably linked to the concept of formalities, which in this context mean those ontological subunits in a concrete single essence between which there is a formal difference. The basic impetus to the introduction of both concepts was the necessity for rational expression of distinction between common divine nature and those relations by which Persons are constituted (relations of fatherhood, sonship, etc.), and also between different divine attributes. The task was, on the one hand, not to destroy the absolute real unity in God, and, on the other hand to explain certain differences that exist in him before any act of intellect, even divine intellect. Therefore, the notion of formality as a correlate “from the nature of the thing”, which corresponds to any attribute or relation, is conceivable in a separate concept.

Introduction: Lightning and Crystals

The introduction contours, by way of Deleuze’s notion of the dark precursors that pilot the dynamics of lightning, Deleuze’s notion of an immanent light or light of immanence, which he stakes against a natural and a divine light respectively. It shows that the moment of lightning encapsulates the logic of Deleuze’s luminous philosophy, in which difference is set against, but simultaneously complementary to, an indifferent diversity. Deleuze develops the idea of a formal distinction but ontological complementarity against the dualisms of idealisms and materialisms. ‘Lightning distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish itself from it’, Deleuze notes, defining difference as ‘this state in which determination takes the form of unilateral distinction’. Crystals, which align the actual and the virtual, and thus thought and life, are Deleuze’s figures of this unilateral and luminous distinction.