Passives without actives: evidence from verbless complement clauses in Spanish

This paper proposes a constructionist analysis à la Goldberg (1995, 2003, 2006) of passive verbless configurations in Spanish lacking a felicitous active counterpart.Under the paradigmatic – rather than syntagmatic – view of passives invoked in this paper, configurations of the type in (1) above, attested with a number of verba cogitandi et dicendi, are handled as instances of the Impersonal Subjective-Transitive construction, whose general skeletal meaning is X (NP1) attributed Y (XPCOMP) by Z (NP2) in a direct, categorical way. Moreover, the analysis proposed here also provides a satisfactory account of the distribution of grammatical subjects and the XPCOMPs, while also capturing the commonalities with “regular” passives (i.e. those with a felicitous active counterpart). In addition, Spanish passive verbless complement configurations with se dice (‘is said’) are shown to illustrate a three-point continuum consisting of (i) non-grammaticalized configurations with an active counterpart, (ii) non-grammaticalized configurations without an active counterpart, and (iii) grammaticalized configurations without an active counterpart. From a synchronic point of view, the structural and semantico-pragmatic properties exhibited by the lower-level lo que se dice XPFOCUS construction, involving a focusing/emphasizer subjunct function (e.g. verdaderamente ‘really’) as well as a reformulatory connective use (e.g. o sea ‘that is’, en otras palabras ‘in other words’) appear to point to an early process of grammaticalization, exhibiting decategorialization as well as generalization of meaning in conjunction with a prominent increase in pragmatic function and subjectification (cf. Traugott 1988, 1995a, 1995b, 2003).

Plurilingual Interpretation in WTO Panel and Appellate Body Reports

This article analyzes the extent to which the Appellate Body and WTO panels compare the authentic texts in their examination of the WTO Agreements and the extent to which the parties themselves do so in their arguments. The texts of the WTO Agreements are authentic in English, French and Spanish. Article 33 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties governs the interpretation of treaties authenticated in two or more languages. WTO practice diverges significantly from the rules set out in Article 33 and the travaux préparatoires of the International Law Commission. The terms of a plurilingual treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each authentic text, which means that a treaty interpreter need not compare the authentic texts as a routine matter as a matter of law. Nevertheless, routine comparison of authentic texts would be good practice in the WTO context, since there are several discrepancies that could affect the interpretation of WTO provisions.

Social Work, Social Politics and Justice

"The disaster does not primarily lie in people and in the way that they perceive the circumstances, rather in the circumstances that doom people to powerlessness and apathy - circumstances which they could, however, change" (Adorno, 1966, p. 189). When Karl Marx writes to Friedrich Sorge in his letter of the 19.10.1877, regarding his critique of the opinion of his opponents Dühring & Co., that one must deal with "a whole crowd of immature students and pompous doctors who claim to give socialism a 'higher, ideal' turn, that is to say, to replace the materialistic basis (that demands serious, objective study if one wants to operate on it)… with modern mythology by means of their goddesses of justice, freedom, equality and fraternité" (Marx, 1973, p. 303; cf. Schiller, 1993, p. 199 onwards), this thus refers to fundamental problems with the concept of "justice" up until today. As the debate shows, it concerns the contextualization of the term "justice", its meaning in historically concrete as well as socio-political circumstances, and therefore a social analysis that is both representation and critique. Essentially it also concerns the question of the relationship between ideas and reality and the development of standards of historical systematic 'nature' out of social frameworks (see Frey, 1978; Theunissen, 1989).