Definiteness without determiners

The paper investigates conditions for the bare occurrence of noun phrases in the topic position of specificational copula clauses. It is shown that this is a predicate position for non-referential NPs. Specificational clauses in German are special because of the unusual alignment of the predicative position and the topic position. I show that the condition for the bare occurrence of NPs in this position is that the head noun denotes a functional concept. According to the theory of concept types by Löbner (2011), nouns denoting functional concepts are inherently relational and unique. I argue that relationality ensures the anchoring of bare NPs in the discourse via an anaphoric link to a bridging antecedent in previous discourse and qualifies them for being a topic in the sense of discourse-familiarity. The inherent uniqueness of functional concepts is the key to understanding why nouns denoting such concepts can occur bare without a definite article: Since the article in predicate NPs merely conveys uniqueness without referentiality as argued by Coppock & Beaver (2015) and functional nouns in predicate position are unique and non-referential, the definite article is redundant and can be omitted.

Light Design of Small Towns’ Coastal Areas

This paper touches upon the problems of development and illumination of small Russian towns located on the banks of rivers and water storage basins (as exemplified by master’s theses). These problems lie on the plane of preservation and effective use of architectural, historical, and cultural heritage of towns, their unusual aura and colour. In the experimental project of town development based on the town of Yurievets situated on the bank of Volga water storage basin, the authors propose an architectural-spatial functional concept of filling up the town territory with the ideas on original colour and light design in the evening and at night.

Public opinion in the management of social processes

The monograph is devoted to the analysis of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of the place and role of public opinion in the management of social processes in modern society. The author's structural and functional concept of public opinion occupies a central place in the work. The article presents a large theoretical material based on the results of the author's research, which allows us to formulate and justify a number of new scientific positions that open up a promising direction in the study of public opinion issues in the context of the sociology of management. It is intended for a wide range of specialists in the field of management sociology, heads of sociological services, teachers, postgraduates, students, and anyone interested in public opinion and its role in the life of modern society.

What does the concept of affordances afford?

Gibson once suggested that his ecological approach could provide architecture and design with a new theoretical basis. Erik Rietveld takes up this suggestion—the concept of affordances figures prominently not only in his philosophical and scientific work but also in the design practices he is engaged in. However, as Gibson introduced affordances as a functional concept, it seems ill-suited to capture the many dimensions of our lived experience of the (manufactured) environment. Can the concept of affordances also take on the expressive and aesthetic qualities of artifacts and buildings?

The emergence of a medieval pitch concept

ABSTRACTThe ninth century witnessed a fundamental change in the way Western musicians thought about music. Before the Carolingians assimilated ancient music theory, they had no functional concept of how the intervals between pitches of the scale differed from one another and how those differences affected melodic structure. The transition to interval-based thinking may be traced in writings about music. The first half of Aurelian of Réôme's mid-century Musica disciplina quotes from Boethius, Cassiodorus and other ancient authors, but fails to make sense of what they say about intervals. The second half describes the rise and fall of chant melodies without reference to intervals. Treatises of the later ninth century (the Enchiriadis treatises, Hucbald's Musica) are the first to treat music in terms of individual pitches and explain how patterns of whole tones and semitones define modes and scales. However, an early draft of Musica enchiriadis, the Inchiriadon, still displays no awareness of the role that semitones played. A parallel evolution occurred in notation. Neumes, which outline melodic direction but not precise intervals, can be documented from the second quarter of the ninth century and are likely older. They lack pitch content because musicians who invented them lacked a conceptual framework for understanding pitch. Pitched notations do not appear until late in the century and their use is confined to examples in theory treatises.

Stakeholder Management: Formulating a Primer for Practitioners

Stakeholder management is the act of balancing the competing preferences or claims of company stakeholders for the sake of competing, collaborating, and succeeding. The present manuscript structures a primer, in the shape of a pedagogical proposal about the topic of stakeholder management. For this purpose, it introduces the reader to terms and concepts that are necessary to understand stakeholder management as an alternative way to manage organizations in both utilitarian and ethical manner. It also offers sufficient grounding in the field that enables the reader to interpret the insights of stakeholder management as a dynamic and cross-functional concept. The present work addresses practitioners, students, scholars and instructors in any topic of the business administration domain, which desires to validate alternatives to the traditional view of a shareholder-oriented way to manage.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Exploring Global Populisms

It is now without question that populism is spreading around the globe. However, what populism is, how it should be understood and whether or not it is a useful and functional concept is still decidedly under debate. In this Special Issue of Populism, our authors dive into the heart of an emerging and explosive research agenda, and bring insight, empirical data and new ways of connecting populism to globalism in a worldwide context. In our introduction to the issue Emerging Global Populisms, we situate the contributing articles and discuss the contributions in light of the broader research on populism in a global setting.