Marking definiteness multiply: evidence from two varieties of Greek

Θέμα της μελέτης μας είναι οι πολυοριστικές δομές σε δύο νεοελληνικές ποικιλίες, την πρότυπη ελληνική (ΠΕ) και την καππαδοκική διάλεκτο (ΚΕ). Παρά την επιφανειακή ομοιότητα, οι δομές αυτές διαφέρουν ως προς τις συντακτικές και σημασιολογικές τους ιδιότητες. Για την ΠΕ υιοθετούμε την ανάλυση των Lekakou & Szendrői (2007, 2009, 2012, 2013), σύμφωνα με την οποία οι πολυοριστικές δομές είναι ένα είδος ονοματικής επεξήγησης, με την ιδιαιτερότητα ότι περιέχουν δομή ονοματικής απαλοιφής (noun ellipsis). Στην ΚΕ, η υποχρεωτική φύση του φαινομένου μας οδηγεί στην πρόταση ότι πρόκειται για ένα είδος μορφοσυντακτικής συμφωνίας. Συγκεκριμένα, τα άρθρα που συνοδεύουν το επίθετο είναι δείκτες ονοματικής συμφωνίας ως προς την οριστικότητα και προκύπτουν μετα-συντακτικά, στο θεωρητικό πλαίσιο της Κατανεμημένης Μορφολογίας. Υποστηρίζουμε ότι μια ενιαία ανάλυση της οριστικότητας στις δύο ποικιλίες είναι εφικτή, εφόσον δεχτούμε ότι σημασιολογική οριστικικότητα δεν εκφράζει κανένα από τα εκπεφρασμένα άρθρα, αλλά ένας φωνολογικά κενός τελεστής.

Construction studies in higher education and the use of digital technology

The construction industry wants graduate employees skilled in relationship building and information technology and communications (ITC). Much of the relationship building at universities has evolved through technology. Government and the ITC industry fund lobby groups to influence both educational establishments and Government to incorporate more ITC in education _ and ultimately into the construction industry. This influencing ignores the technoskeptics’ concerns about student disengagement through excessive online distractions. Construction studies students (n=64) and lecturers (n=16) at a construction university were surveyed to discover the impact of the use and applications of ITC. Contrary to Government and industry technopositivism, construction students and lecturers preferred hard copy documents to online feedback for assignments and marking, more human interface and less technological substitution and to be on campus for lectures and face-to-face meetings rather than viewing on-screen. ITC also distracted users from tasks which, in the case of students, prevented the development of the concentration and deep thinking which a university education should deliver. The research findings are contrary to the promotions of Government, ITC industry and ITC departments and have implications for construction employers where a renewed focus on human communication should mean less stress, fewer delays and cost overruns.

Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924–9) and the return to the gold standard

The general election of 29 October 1924 saw Winston Churchill return to Parliament as Constitutionalist MP for Epping after two years in the political wilderness. It also saw Stanley Baldwin swept back to Number 10 on a Conservative landslide. Speculation about whether Baldwin would cement Churchill’s drift from the Liberal fold by offering him office surfaced during the election campaign. Churchill nevertheless thought ‘it very unlikely that I shall be invited to join the Government, as owing to the size of the majority it will probably be composed only of impeccable Conservatives’. [ 1 ] Because of his anti-socialist credentials, his ability to reassure wavering Liberals through his opposition to protectionism – dropped by Baldwin after its rejection in the 1923 general election – and concern he could prove a rallying point for backbench malcontents, there was however much to commend giving Churchill a post. To his surprise, Baldwin offered Churchill the long-coveted office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, briefly held by his father before his ill-conceived resignation in 1887. Having arranged a meeting with his Labour predecessor, Philip Snowden, about outstanding business the new Chancellor set to work. Marking his political transition, a few days later Churchill resigned from the National Liberal Club.

Convergence in word structure: revisiting agglutinative noun inflection in Cappadocian Greek

Cappadocian Greek is reported to display agglutinative inflection in its nominal system, namely, mono-exponential formatives for the marking of case and number, and NOM.SG-looking forms as the morphemic units to which inflection applies. Previous scholarship has interpreted these developments as indicating a shift in morphological type from fusion to agglutination, brought about by contact with Turkish. This study takes issue with these conclusions. By casting a wider net over the inflectional system of the language, it shows that, of the two types of agglutinative formations identified, only one evidences a radical departure from the inherited structural properties of Cappadocian noun inflection. The other, on the contrary, represents a typologically more conservative innovation. The study presents evidence that a combination of system-internal and -external motivations triggered the development of both types, it describes the mechanisms through which the innovation was implemented, and discusses the factors that favoured change.

From syntagmatic to paradigmatic spatial zeroes: the loss of the preposition se in inner Asia Minor Greek

We trace the diachronic development of the preposition se in inner Asia Minor Greek from its use to mark a range of spatial functions to its ultimate loss and replacement by zero. We propose that, before spreading to all syntactic and semantic contexts, zero marking was contextually-dependent on the presence/absence of a prenominal genitive modifying the head noun of Ground-encoding NPs and on the presence/absence of Region-encoding postpositions. We attribute these developments to an informational load relief strategy aimed at producing more economical utterances as well as to language contact with Turkish, which favoured structural convergence on the adpositional level between the two languages.