What Do Definites Do That Indefinites Definitely Don't?

This paper investigates how (in)definiteness in word order; more specifically, how it in the ordering of objects in the Mittelfeld of German double-object constructions. As a starting point I take what I'll call the Indefinite Puzzle

Schubert calculus and shifting of interval positroid varieties

Consider k x n matrices with rank conditions placed on intervals of columns. The ranks that are actually achievable correspond naturally to upper triangular partial permutation matrices, and we call the corresponding subvarieties of Gr(k,n) the _interval positroid varieties_, as this class lies within the class of positroid varieties studied in [Knutson-Lam-Speyer]. It includes Schubert and opposite Schubert varieties, and their intersections, and is Grassmann dual to the projection varieties of [Billey-Coskun]. Vakil's "geometric Littlewood-Richardson rule" [Vakil] uses certain degenerations to positively compute the H^*-classes of Richardson varieties, each summand recorded as a (2+1)-dimensional "checker game". We use his same degenerations to positively compute the K_T-classes of interval positroid varieties, each summand recorded more succinctly as a 2-dimensional "K-IP pipe dream". In Vakil's restricted situation these IP pipe dreams biject very simply to the puzzles of [Knutson-Tao]. We relate Vakil's degenerations to Erd\H os-Ko-Rado shifting, and include results about computing "geometric shifts" of general T-invariant subvarieties of Grassmannians.Comment: 35 pp; this subsumes and obviates the unpublished http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.430