EXPRESS: Investigating Category Dynamics: An Archival Study Of The German Food Market

The contemporary German food market is marked by a large number of food items on retail shelves—the choice and abundance of products stand in sharp contrast to the market of the 1950s. We conduct a qualitative, interpretive analysis of the archives of a food magazine from West Germany between 1949 and 2014 to understand the changes the German food market has undergone. Drawing on category research, we discover three inter-related category dynamics that contribute to the change in the market: category member proliferation, category member valorization, and category member entanglement. We then discuss the implications of category dynamics and theorize how they drive category change.

Embodiment in Irish Sign Language Passives

Taking a cognitive linguistic approach, this paper explores passive constructions in Irish Sign Language (ISL). Adopting Foley & Van Valin’s (1984) concept of ‘macroroles’, we introduce the prototypical passive construction in ISL, a construction that incorporates several elements including a shift in focus from the Actor to the Undergoer, the recruitment of body partitioning, the use of an empty locus for establishment of an unspecified actor/s, and potentially, a body lean which may be coupled with averted eyegaze. We explore the viewpoint shifts that this construction allows signers, which support the cognitive grammar emphasis on the importance of construal. We also introduce a related category of constructions which recruit the signer’s body as a surrogate for unspecified actors. Unlike the prototypical passive, these constructions are less complex in that they do not recruit body partitioning, body leans or averted eyegaze. However, they are interesting because they seem to demand inferential readings where the surrogate represents external actors or, metonymically, institutions. In particular, we discuss the use of the signer’s body to represent an unspecified Actor and consider the role of embodiment as a lynchpin for understanding how passives operate. We present examples from the Signs of Ireland corpus and from the European Commission funded Medisigns project to illustrate these constructions in ISL.

Monad combinatorics

This chapter considers how the monadic formalization deals with interactions between the phenomena from the second part of the book by examining the pairwise interaction of all three phenomena. Distributive laws are introduced to combine monads. The chapter shows that only certain combinations of the monads from the second part have definable distributive laws. These results comport with linguistic intuitions. The option of using the related category-theoretic concepts of functors and applicative functors instead of monads is also considered. The chapter shows that functors are not powerful enough and that applicative functors introduce a tracking/layering problem that is inelegant. Also, the closure property of applicative functor composition, whereby the composition of any two applicative functors is also an applicative functor, overgenerates with respect to the data. Monads are therefore argued to be empirically superior to applicative functors in this domain precisely because they lack the closure property. Some exercises are provided to aid understanding.

3. Hierarchy of norms in international law

This chapter examines the hierarchy of norms and sources in international law. Establishing a hierarchy of norms and sources allows for a community to elevate certain fundamental principles over ordinary norms, and to establish order and clarity in the relations between norms, authoritative institutions, and legal subjects. In the last half-century, a special class of general rules endowed with peremptory legal force has emerged. Known interchangeably as ‘peremptory norms’ or ‘norms of jus cogens’, these are regarded as possessing a higher status to ordinary rules of international law, and would prevail over the latter in cases of conflict. As such, whether an ordinary rule exists in treaty or customary law, or is a general principle, it is null and void if in conflict with a rule of jus cogens. The chapter also studies a related category known as rights, or, more commonly, obligations erga omnes (‘owed to all’).

Hybrid community as a category in the perception of student groups

SummaryThe paper scrutinises the university as a place for functioning within the community of student groups with relations and activities which are conducive or detrimental to the creation of the community. An attempt was made to achieve two goals. First of all, to indicate the potential of a theoretical and practical category of a hybrid, as well as a newly introduced, related category of hybrid community. Secondly, in relation to own research findings on dean’s student groups, the potential of their application when perceiving the groups through the category of hybrid community.

Adults’ and Children’s Understanding of How Expertise Influences Learning

Adults and children use information about expertise to infer what a person is likely to know, but it is unclear whether they realize that expertise also has implications for learning. We explore adults’ and children’s understanding that expertise in a particular category supports learning about a closely related category. In four experiments, 5-year-olds and adults (n = 160) judged which of two people would be better at learning about a new category. When faced with an expert and a nonexpert, adults consistently indicated that expertise supports learning in a closely related category; however, children’s judgments were inconsistent and were strongly influenced by the description of the nonexpert. The results suggest that although children understand what it means to be an expert, they may judge an individual’s learning capacity based on different considerations than adults.

Practical Aspects of Definition of High-tech Industries and Products of Ukraine

The article accounts for the main approaches to determination and the components of the definition of high-tech industries and products in Ukraine. For this, existing versions in OECD and Eurostat countries are analyzed, where this indicator is common for determining the level of «advanced economies». Constant «leaders» were identified, who were in the group of «high-tech» industries to identify priority indicators. Among them is the production of pharmaceutical products; production of spacecraft and airborne vehicles; computer production; a system for creating and transforming (growing) material objects, including a 3D printer; infusion technologies, the importance of which increases; perspective methods of surface treatment and work from thermoplastics (key are growth technologies); materials, are effective at creation of perspective executive devices for growth technologies: composite and those which show their properties in small-sized structures. Thus, the necessity of defining this concept for Ukraine was justified. It is stated that in the normative legal and program acts the term «high-tech industries products» does not contain a special list of criteria, but only a list of such branches related to high-tech industries. Consequently, the definition of a related category allows us to propose the application for legislative regulation of exports, in addition to the concept of high-tech products, the broader concept of «the production of advanced production technologies», which includes the products of the basic branches of the economy and those which form a significant part of GDP. To determine the place of Ukraine in the world on the criterion of high-tech, the article examined the export-import structures of the industry. As a result, it was determined that Ukraine today is primarily an importer on the world market of high-tech products, because the foreign trade in high-tech goods is characterized by low shares of high-tech goods in total exports and a significant negative balance.

The Pleasures of Polyglossia in Emirati Cinema: Focus on ‘From A to B’ and ‘Abdullah’

<p>Polyglot films highlight the coexistence of multiple languages at the level of dialogue and narration. Even the notoriously monolingual Hollywood film industry has recently seen an increase in polyglot productions. Much of Europe’s polyglot cinema reflects on post-war migration. Hamid Naficy has coined the phrase “accented cinema” to define diasporic filmmaking, a closely related category. The present essay considers polyglot Emirati films as part of an increasingly popular global genre. It argues that the lack of a monolingual mandate is conducive to experiments with language choices, and that the polyglot genre serves best to emphasize efforts made to accommodate the diversity of cultures interacting in urban centers in the United Arab Emirates. Case studies of Ali F. Mostafa’s <em>From A to B</em> (2014) and Humaid Alsuwaidi’s <em>Abdullah</em> (2015) demonstrate the considerable contributions Emirati filmmakers have already made to a genre, which offers a powerful potential for cinema in the UAE. A comparative analysis identifies the extent to which each of the two films reveals elements inherent in three of the five sub-categories outlined by Chris Wahl.</p><p><em>Keywords</em>: Ali Mostafa; Emirati cinema; film analysis; Humaid Alsuwaidi; multilingualism; polyglot cinema </p>