The proposal of a new provisional border of range of the acidophilous oak forest Calamagrostio arundinaceae-Quercetum petraeae Hartm. 1934 Scam. et Pass. 1959 in central Poland

The range of acidophilous oak forest from Quercetea robori-petraeae Br-Bl. et Tx. ex Oberd. 1957 in Central Europe depends largely on the syntaxonomical concept used and is still provisional. The most continental association from this class occurring in Poland is Calamagrostio arundinaceae-Quercetum petraeae Hartm. 1934 Scam. et Pass. 1959. It is present in western and central Poland, but its eastern boundary is not well known. The aims of the study were to survey and document new patches of Calamagrostio-Quercetum in central Poland, to check the internal variation of the association and to summary the known distribution of it in lowlands of central-western and central Poland. 23 phytosociological relevés were made within new stands together with soil sampling. New relevé data was subjected to the numerical Wards classification together with acidophilous oak forests datasets from western Poland and oak-pine forests ones from eastern part of the Country. The new dataset was similar to Calamagrostio-Quercetum. Three subassociations were distinguished. Soil parameters and oak site index did not differ from acidophilous oak forest stands from other parts of Poland. The provisional range of Calamagrostio-Quercetum in central Poland was proposed to be moved by circa 60–90 km to the north-east (approximately as far as the Vistula river line) in order to include south-western part of Mazowsze.

El sistema pronominal de objeto directo del español en contacto con el zoque de Chapultenango

This research aims to describe the Spanish language in contact with the Chapultenango’s Zoque language. Specifically, it provides evidence around the neutralization of the gender mark in the accusative pronominal system, showing a two-case simplified system in which the direct object pronoun (OD) is lo(s) and the indirect object pronoun is le(s), both of them without gender distinction. Likewise, it shows that this neutralization is an indirect contact-induced change in which internal variation of Spanish interacts with the grammatical structure of the Zoque.

The Chicken and the Egg

Which comes first, divine agency or the calculations of diviners? Both are integral to divination, other predictive methods, and the ‘hatching out’ of new creation stories among the Nuosu of Southwest China. In this article, I present ethnography on divination in which eggs evoke the person’s position in the world while the bodies or bones of chickens are indices of health or prosperity. When cracking open raw eggs, peeling open slaughtered chickens, or reading chicken bones, diviners creatively draw upon the assistance of spirits and their own calculatory reflections in ways that encourage internal variation within their craft. Through case studies on illnesses and a new family tradition, I show that Nuosu inhabit a hybrid world that features cosmological proliferation, to which the creativity of divination responds.

“Identity through difference”: Liminal Diasporism and Generational Change Among the Koryo Saram in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the case of the Koryo saram, the ethnic Koreans living in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, to reflect on how notions of diasporas, community, and identity have changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It contends that the Koryo saram are best understood through the lenses of diasporic conditions rather than as bounded communities, as such an approach allows for greater recognition of heterogeneity within these communities. While many Koryo saram continue to claim some form of Korean-ness, how they relate to issues of homeland-orientation and boundary maintenance evidences internal variation and growing in-betweenness. The community’s hybridity (“hyphenization”) and liminality (“identity through difference”) stand out when examining generational differences and are especially evident among the local Korean youth.

Standardisation and heritage language maintenance: preliminary interdisciplinary considerations with a case-based approach

Over the last few decades, emerging hybrid understandings of multilingualism and language belonging have contributed to a more inclusive perspective on language rights and policies. However, it is still debated how similar challenging views on language itself can also contribute to constructing inclusive policies of language maintenance, especially in a kaleidoscopic linguistic landscape such as that shaped by migratory phenomena. Against this background, this paper highlights a series of preliminary considerations regarding the interlocking dynamics among standardisation processes, language variation and international migration. Through an analysis of several relevant cases, it aims to identify how a hybrid understanding of language and its internal variation can contribute to a more effective, sensible and inclusive perspective on heritage language maintenance. Received: 26 February 2020Accepted: 06 November 2020

Digital Masorah: Toward an Index of Orthographic and Morphological Variation at the Lexical Level

This article proposes a computational method to extract orthographic and morphological variation within the boundaries of individual documents that are part of the Hebrew Bible or the Dead Sea Scrolls. In particular, it presents “profiles” of document-internal variation at the lexical level, e.g., at the level of individual words. This study a) describes the methods used to create an index of variation that can be navigated and explored in order to find meaningful patterns, and b) explores the new avenues for research such an index opens up. Whereas earlier contributions have focused on the underlying rules that affect linguistic variation, the aim of the present contribution is to create a representative sample of that variation. This sample is not at the level of individual phonemes or morphemes, but at the lexical level as there are clear indications that lexical selection played a significant role in ancient linguistic practices.

The Shifting Contours of the German Homeland

This chapter discusses the transformations in the area that counted as part of the homeland in post-World War II Germany. The West German setting is especially useful because it features the simultaneous loss of territories that differ in their ethnic composition; in economic value; whether they came to be excluded from the homeland, and, if they did, when this redefinition of the homeland occurred. Political movements in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) also differed in when, and even whether, they withdrew homeland territoriality from the various parts of the homeland Germany lost. The chapter then traces the withdrawal of homeland territoriality from Germany's lost lands and, leveraging the internal variation that characterizes the German experience, explains the timing of the changes that took place, and accounts for the absence of change where one might have expected it to occur. This historical process tracing shows that different logics of legitimation and domestic political mechanisms played a crucial role in explaining the pattern of stability and change in conceptions of the German homeland.