Accessibility and Historical Change: An Emergent Cluster Led Uncles and Aunts to Become Aunts and Uncles

There are times when a curiously odd relic of language presents us with a thread, which when pulled, reveals deep and general facts about human language. This paper unspools such a case. Prior to 1930, English speakers uniformly preferred male-before-female word order in conjoined nouns such as uncles and aunts; nephews and nieces; men and women. Since then, at least a half dozen items have systematically reversed their preferred order (e.g., aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews) while others have not (men and women). We review evidence that the unusual reversals began with mother and dad(dy) and spread to semantically and morphologically related binomials over a period of decades. The present work proposes that three aspects of cognitive accessibility combine to quantify the probability of A&B order: (1) the relative accessibility of the A&B terms individually, (2) competition from B&A order, and critically, (3) cluster strength (i.e., similarity to related A'&B' cases). The emergent cluster of female-first binomials highlights the influence of semantic neighborhoods in memory retrieval. We suggest that cognitive accessibility can be used to predict the word order of both familiar and novel binomials generally, as well as the diachronic change focused on here.

An end-user evaluation to analyze the effectiveness of cartograms for mapping relative non-motorized accessibility

Relative accessibility is a widely studied approach that recognizes access to major locations as subjective and shaped by individual circumstances (e.g., individual preferences, habits, and cultural norms). One missing element in the knowledge base is how relative accessibility can be effectively mapped for decision-making. To fill the research gap, this paper evaluates whether cartograms are an appropriate tool for mapping relative accessibility, taking the city of Zaragoza, Spain as a case study. The research design included three phases: (i) elaboration of grid-based maps on relative non-motorized accessibility; (ii) elaboration of cartograms on relative non-motorized accessibility; (iii) an end-user evaluation with 30 local practitioners to analyze the effectiveness of cartograms to map relative accessibility compared to grid-based maps. Participants signaled that diffusion-based cartograms could be complementary to grid-based maps, providing better visualization of spatial dissimilarity patterns of accessibility between population groups. However, participants noted greater difficulty in identifying Dorling cartograms as an effective technique for mapping relative accessibility. The paper closes with a review of the strengths and weaknesses of the potential application of these visualization techniques in the field of accessibility planning.

RECLAIMING OF HISTORICAL PIAZZA IN ISLAMIC CAIRO AL-HUSSEIN PIAZZA CASE STUDY

Urban public space and social interaction play an important role in the urban environment and can be a refuge from the hustle and bustle of city life. Public space refers to non-domestic physical sites that are distinguished by their relative accessibility such as parks, restaurants, cafes, the street. Al Hussein piazza is one of the oldest and largest areas in Fatimid Cairo. Many of the activities organized throughout the year periodically. In recent years, some infringements occurred formal or informal. It led to poor urban value. This study aims to evaluate the current situation of Al- Hussein piazza and redesign it from an integrated sustainable vision to reclaim it again for visitors. The methodology that was used in this study is a field survey of the piazza and do some interviews. The research shows that multiplicity causes deterioration in the region, which can be classified as physical degradation, environmental degradation, and social deterioration.

The “Belt and Road Initiative”: impacts on TEN-T and on the European transport system

China’s Belt and Road Initiative, announced in late 2013, includes the construction of land-based transport connections between Asia and Europe, the creation of an economic belt for Eurasian cooperation, and maritime routes between China and all continents with which it may trade. Within the European Union, it will interact with infrastructure and services provided in the private sector, by the Member States, and by the European Union including through the Trans-European Transport Network programme. This paper focuses on the scope for rail services between China and Europe to attract freight currently travelling by sea and air, and the resulting changes in relative accessibility and competitive attractiveness of different maritime and landlocked regions of Europe. It estimates that, by 2040, 3 million TEU of freight between the Far East and Europe might travel by rail, comprising 2.5 million TEU from sea and 0.5 million TEU from air. While it concludes that it is not possible to predict whether and where these transfers will require changes to the Trans-European Transport Network programme, it describes recommendations on how the programme should take the Belt and Road Initiative into account.

Relative Accessibility of District Centres in Slovakia by Public Transport in 2003 and 2017

Transformation of the transport system in Slovakia after 1989 has influenced the pattern of public transport. This article focuses on the analysis of public transport accessibility in district centres in Slovakia. The results show a decrease of connectivity in the network of direct bus and train connections and also a decrease in the number of direct connections between district centres in Slovakia in the period from 2003 to 2017. The main factors that have caused these changes include growing motorisation and individual automobile transport, zero-fare trains for selected categories of inhabitants since 2014, the construction of the motorway network, and the liberalisation of the public transport market.

Facing illegitimate motherhood in eighteenth-century Antwerp: how changing contexts influenced the experiences of single mothers

This article assesses the wide range of experiences of illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Antwerp. It exposes many instances of pauper agency, yet also cautions against simply assuming that all single mothers were similarly forceful in their dealings with illegitimacy. Four key factors affected the options a single mother had at her disposal in dealing with illegitimate pregnancy: the way poor relief was organised, the relative accessibility of judicial processes, the administrative settings, and the prevailing ideas about illegitimacy and morality among the general community. The article shows how these factors changed in the final quarter of the eighteenth century, impacting on the strategies that single mothers could adopt.

Intersubjectivity and engagement in Ku Waru

Following Evanset al.(2018a, 2018b), I use “engagement” to refer to grammatical encoding of the relative accessibility of an entity or state of affairs to the speaker and addressee. I refer to what is thereby encoded as the “engagement function”. How neatly does that function map on to grammatical categories of particular languages? Here I address that question with respect to the Papuan language Ku Waru, focusing on spatial and epistemic demonstratives, and definiteness and indefinite marking. I show that forms within each of those word/morpheme classes do serve engagement functions, but in cross-cutting and partial ways. I show how the engagement function is also achieved through poetic parallelism, prosody, gaze direction and other aspects of bodily comportment. In the examples considered, the engagement function is realised through interaction between those extra-linguistic features and the grammatical ones. The main thing that is added by grammatical engagement marking is an explicit signalling of the intersubjective accord that has been achieved on other bases. I hypothesize that that is true of engagement overall, and conclude by suggesting some ways to test that hypothesis and to advance the understanding of engagement more generally.