Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios

The volume contains a selection of papers originally presented at the symposium on “Areal patterns of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic variation in grammaticalization scenarios” held on 12-14 March 2015 at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. The papers, written by leading scholars combining expertise in historical linguistics and grammaticalization research, study variation in grammaticalization scenarios in a variety of language families (Slavic, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Bantu, Mande, "Khoisan", Siouan, and Mayan). The volume stands out in the vast literature on grammaticalization by focusing on variation in grammaticalization scenarios and areal patterns in grammaticalization. Apart from documenting new grammaticalization paths, the volume makes a methodological contribution as it addresses an important question of how to reconcile universal outcomes of grammaticalization processes with the fact that the input to these processes is language-specific and construction-specific

The interactive ecology of construal in gesture: a microethnographic analysis of peer learning at an EMI university in China

Depictive manual gestures do not appear in isolation, but are motivated by a complex of experiential knowledge, communicative goals, and contextual-environmental factors (Harrison 2018; Kendon 2004; Müller 2014; Streeck 1993, 1994, 2009b). However, little is known about the incremental, moment-by-moment formulation of depictions in elaborate sequences of talk. Furthermore, questions endure about depiction as a learning resource within the contingent interactivity of the foreign language academic classroom. This study explores these questions in the context of subject-related student talk at a Sino-foreign university in China by focusing on how gesturers build expositions through intercorporeal and intersubjective sense making (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1945/2012). Drawing on empirical material from the corpus of Chinese Academic Written and Spoken English (CAWSE), I aim to contribute greater understanding of the intersubjective ecology of depictive gesturing. The study builds on previous research on depictive gestures in the classroom (e.g. Rosborough 2014; Roth & Lawless 2002) by focusing on sequences of gesturing within two distinct classroom tasks: i) dialogic explanations of complex systems and ii) interactional multi-party group discussions. By converging theories of intersubjectivity drawing on Cognitive Grammar (e.g. Langacker 2008; Blomberg & Zlatev 2014) and Conversation Analysis (Heritage & Atkinson 1984; Schegloff 1992), I use microethnography for the investigation of gesture as a cognitive practice (Streeck 2009b; cf. Erickson 1995; Streeck & Mehus 2005). The analysis engages concepts in phenomenology, ecological cognition and enactivism in order to illustrate the publicly displayable achievement of enactive construal in spoken exposition. These analyses expose the ways that speakers depict for intersubjective visualization of the topic-at-hand, and anticipate and react to affordances that occur within the landscape of interaction. Speakers design their depictions, by manipulating construal dimensions in three ways: i) depictions are integrated into the exposition for projecting and delimiting epistemic arenas where construal relations are tailored for specific structural aspects of the depictions, ii) depictions invite participatory frameworks for co-analysis of the topic-at-hand, and iii) speakers refashion their depictions to anticipate previous trouble. Furthermore, the analysis of the interactional order of the tasks illustrates the intercorporeality, the pre-reflective disposition towards sense-making, of construal in the moment-by-moment construction of academic classroom talk. This study has implications that problematize the notion of the body as a communicative resource by obscuring the notions of planning and strategy. Overall, the analysis shows that explanations and discussions involve finely grained attenuation of the corporeal dimensions of spoken language

Rule of Law : Contesting and Contested

The rule of law has become a watchword in international politics over the last few decades. It has been transformed from a descriptum into a prescriptum, a criterion for judging legal orders, transferred from the legal to the political sphere. For Hungary, its impact coincided with the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the advance of globalization in our unipolar world. But what did not become, could not become, an operative term in law, since it is not linked to a definition of facts that would allow it to become legally ascertained and established as a set of facts constituting a legal case. Because, by its very nature, it is not a class concept with sharp boundaries, but a concept of order that can only be clarified by characterization and through examples. It is what literature calls essentially contested, and what institutions and authors are constantly expanding with competing formulations, which has long since led to its internal emptying out. In its origin and development, it has never been anything other than the accumulated experience of civilizational self-growth in the operation of the law by the state, which has evolved in responses to the challenges of various places and times. That is, it is particular. And the way in which our present attempts to universalize this—in which, of course, mutual learning processes between nations and ages are also involved—is a mere artificial projection, which conceals the Westʼs urge to export the values that guide it. Not a yes or no category, but an ideal towards which we strive. Contradictory, with compromises, because if we attempted to satisfy it in its entirety, the conflicting values within it could extinguish each other; consequently, only a case-by-case weighing up of these values can ensure that a balance, optimally satisfactory there and then, is achieved.(Budapest: Ferenc Mádl Institute of Comparative Law 2021) 408 [ISBN 978-615-6356-02-4 & ISBN 978-615-6356-03-1 (eBook)] Preface /// BASICS: ʻRechtsstaatlichkeitʼ and ʻRule of Lawʼ: Divergent Paths of a Correlated Ideal // OUTLOOKS: Hyperrationality Standing for Anarchy in America (A Case Study on the Pattern of the Judicial Mind) / In Want of New Balances in Transition: Lithuania Searching for Its Own Path / Global Changes and Challenges to Law: Immutability and Mutability in Law // TRANSITION: Rule of Law: Imperfectly Realized, or Perfected without Realization? / Rule of Law – At the Crossroads of Challenges / Transition Marshaled by Constitutional Court Dicta under the Cover of Rule of Law (A Case study of Hungary) / The Revolution of 1956 in the Judgment of Ethics and Law (Or the Responding Ability of Law as a Post-totalitarian Dilemma / ʻFight for Lawʼ (Lessons from our Constitutional Debates) // Bordering Issues I: CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: The Challenge by the Taxi Blockade / Indivisibility of the Law and Rule of Law / Civil Disobedience: Pattern with no Standard? / Crossroads of Civil Obedience and Disobedience (A Moment of Constitutional Impotence in Hungary) // Bordering Issues II: COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PAST: On Setting Standards (Or the Dilemma in General) / The Right to Judge the Past (Or the Dilemma in Legal Particulars) / ʻRadical Evilʼ on Trial (On the Historical Setting, Political Aspects and Legal Conditions of Transitional Justice Facing the Crimes of Dictatorial Regimes) / Why Having Failed in Facing with the Past? / Coming to Terms with the Past under the Rule of Law / Retroactivity in Law /// Bordering Issues III: HUMAN RIGHTS / The Problematics of Human Rights /// PUZZLES AND THEORIES / Rule of Law, or the Dilemma of an Ethos: To be Gardened or Mechanized? / Transition in Hungary, Or What to Learn for Future Transformations? / Ideal or Idol? Traps in Understanding the Rule of Law / Rule of Law, Rechtsstaatlichkeit, État de Droit – Contesting and Contested /// Bibliography /// Index / Index of Sources of Law / Index of Name