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.

The Asia Minor Greek adpositional cycle: a tale of multiple causation

This paper examines the interplay of language-internal continuity and external influence in the cyclical development of the Asia Minor Greek adpositional system. The Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor inherited an adpositional system of the Late Medieval Greek type whereby secondary adpositions regularly combined with primary adpositions to encode spatial region. Secondary adpositions could originally precede simple adpositions ([PREPOSITION + PREPOSITION + NPACC]) or follow the adpositional complement ([PREPOSITION + NPACC + POSTPOSITION]). Asia Minor Greek replicated the structure of Ottoman Turkish postpositional phrases to resolve this variability, fixing the position of secondary adpositions after the complement and thus developing circumpositions of the type [PREPOSITION + NPACC + POSTPOSITION]. Later, some varieties dropped the primary preposition SE from circumpositional phrases, leaving (secondary) postpositions as the only overt relator ([NPACC + POSTPOSITION]) in some environments. In addition, a number of Turkish postpositions were borrowed wholesale, thus enriching the Greek adpositional inventory.

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.

The state and the development of an information society: Greek policy and experience

The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre-existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic-relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in-depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000–2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post-2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda.

Discipline-specific writing for business students: Research, practice and pedagogy

In the past few years strong arguments have been made for locating academic writing in higher education within the students’ disciplinary contexts in the belief that a full understanding of the role and dynamic of writing can only be achieved if it is examined as a social practice in its context of production. This chapter reports on a study that examined the conceptualisations of writing for business by a group of undergraduate and postgraduate lecturers and students at the business school of a British university. Based on a critical analysis of the literature reviewed for the study, and the data collected, the chapter contributes to existing writing pedagogy with a number of research-informed transformative pedagogical applications for teaching discipline-specific writing for business. Such applications which combine context-oriented practices (e.g. raising awareness of the role of disciplinary values in shaping writing) and text-oriented activities (e.g. discipline-specific referencing) aim at influencing the pedagogic agenda for teaching writing in higher education. The chapter concludes with questions for reflection and discussion that provide an opportunity for readers to reflect upon their own teaching environment.

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.

Voices in search of a reader: the polyphonic writing of António Lobo Antunes

This paper aims at analysing the writing of the Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes, considered one of the major writers in European Literature with 26 books published, by focusing on the strategies deployed in his texts of creating micro-narratives within the main frame, and conveying the elements of individual and collective memory, past and present, the self and the others, using various voices and silences. Lobo Antunes incorporates in his writing his background as a psychiatrist at a Mental Hospital in Lisbon, until 1985 (when he decided to commit exclusively to writing), his experience as a doctor in the Portuguese Colonial War battlefield, but also the daily routines of the pre and post 25th of April 1974 (Portuguese Revolution) with subtle and ironic details of the life of the middle and upper class of Lisbon‘s society: from the traumas of the war to the simple story of the janitor, or the couple who struggles to keep their marriage functional, everything serves as material to develop and interweave a complex plot, that a lot of readers find too enwrapped and difficult to follow through. Some excerpts taken from his first three novels and books of Chronicles and his later novel – Ontem não te Vi em Babilónia (2006) – will be put forward to exemplify the complexity of the writing and the main difficulties of the reader, lost in a multitude of narrators‘ voices. Recently, Lobo Antunes has commented on his work stating: What I write can be read in the darkness. This paper aims at throwing some light by unfolding some of the strategies employed to defy new borders in the process of reading.

Ditado: um percurso de aprendizagem entre pares

Projeto de Intervenção apresentado à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Didática da Língua Portuguesa no 1.º e 2.º Ciclos do Ensino Básico

Writing and living on the stage of history

This article studies the intercultural trajectory of a Portuguese female aristocrat of the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Her trajectory of intercultural transition from a Portuguese provincial lady into an independent owner of a sugar mill in tropical Bahia is documented through family letters, which provide a polyphonic representation of a movement of personal, family, and social transculturation over almost two decades. Maria Bárbara began her journey between cultures as a simple spectator-reader, progressively becoming a commentator-actor-protagonist-author in society, in politics, and in history. These letters function as a translation that is sometimes consecutive, other times simultaneous, of the events lived and witnessed. This concept of intercultural translation is based on the theories of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2006, 2008), who argues that cultural differences imply that any comparison has to be made using procedures of proportion and correspondence which, taken as a whole, constitute the work of translation itself. These procedures construct approximations of the known to the unknown, of the strange to the familiar, of the ‘other’ to the ‘self’, categories which are always unstable. Likewise, this essay explores the unstable contexts of its object of study, with the purpose of understanding different rationalities and worldviews.

The Sealed Letter: Escândalo, Sensacionalismo e Condição Feminina numa Apropriação Neovitoriana

Esta dissertação pretende analisar a obra literária de Emma Donoghue, The Sealed Letter (2008), considerando-a uma apropriação neovitoriana de um caso escandaloso verídico, sujeito a notícias sensacionalistas, tendo como plano de fundo a condição feminina na Grã-Bretanha oitocentista. Visa também realçar diversas questões relacionadas com o papel da mulher e a sua influência tanto na sociedade vitoriana como na sociedade actual. Analisando textos críticos da era vitoriana, para além da obra principal desta dissertação, procura-se também tentar entender de que modo a apropriação neovitoriana da condição feminina produz e mantém padrões culturais no século XXI.

Outpatient prescriptions practice and writing quality in a paediatric university hospital.

BACKGROUND: The writing of prescriptions is an important aspect of medical practice. This activity presents some specific problems given a danger of misinterpretation and dispensing errors in community pharmacies. The objective of this study was to determine the evolution of the prescription practice and writing quality in the outpatient clinics of our paediatric university hospital.¦METHODS: Copies of prescriptions written by physicians were collected from community pharmacies in the region of our hospital for a two-month period in 2005 and 2010. They were analysed according to standard criteria, including both formal and pharmaceutical aspects.¦RESULTS: A total of 597 handwritten prescriptions were reviewed in 2005 and 633 in 2010. They contained 1,456 drug prescriptions in 2005 and 1,348 in 2010. Fifteen drugs accounted for 80% of all prescriptions and the most common drugs were paracetamol and ibuprofen. A higher proportion of drugs were prescribed as International Nonproprietary Names (INN) or generics in 2010 (24.7%) compared with 2005 (20.9%). Of the drug prescriptions examined, 55.5% were incomplete in 2005 and 69.2% in 2010. Moreover in 2005, 3.2% were legible only with difficulty, 22.9% were ambiguous, and 3.0% contained an error. These proportions rose respectively to 5.2%, 27.8%, and 6.8% in 2010.¦CONCLUSION: This study showed that fifteen different drugs represented the majority of prescriptions, and a quarter of them were prescribed as INN or generics in 2010; and that handwritten prescriptions contained numerous omissions and preventable errors. In our hospital computerised prescribing coupled with advanced decision support is eagerly awaited.