Tourism as a driver of economic growth and development in the EU-­27 and ASEAN regions. EU Centre in Singapore Research Brief December 2013

Tourism is a significant driver of economic and social development.  It stimulates economic growth by generating income, employment, investment and exports. It also generates valuable spin-­off benefits, including preservation of cultural heritage, improved infrastructure and local community facilities (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2013).  But, tourism can have positive or negative impacts depending on planning, development and management.        The  purpose  of  this  research  brief  is  to  demonstrate  the  economic  importance  of  tourism,   its  challenges  and  plans  for  tourism  development  in  the  EU-­‐‑271  and  ASEAN2  regions.  It   brings  together  data  from  several  sources  including  the  United  Nations  World  Tourism   Organization  (UNWTO)  and  the  World  Travel  and  Tourism  Council  (WTTC).     This  brief  is  divided  into  three  parts:      Part One describes performance of tourism sector in the  EU-­27 and ASEAN regions in terms of international tourist arrivals and receipts, contribution of tourism to GDP, employment, exports and investment.         Part Two outlines the EU-­27 and ASEAN plans for supporting tourism development while highlighting relevant initiatives.         Part three discusses some of the key challenges that accompany tourism development. It also outlines goals that policy makers should follow in making tourism more sustainable.

Flood Prevention and Sustainable Spatial Planning. The Case of the River Diakoniaris in Patras Authors: D. Vespiniadou, E. Athanasopoulou

The danger of floods from overflow of rivers that crosses urban regions is a frequent phenomenon that concerns many of European countries. In the framework of Sustainable Spatial Planning arise some serious questions for the way that should such phenomena be handled, apart from the purely hydraulic conventional interventions. Noteworthy that at his flow a river runs through usually at all the length completely dissimilar regions as long as they concern in geomorphology but also their urban characteristics (urban density, existing land uses etc). Through the experience of other countries, different approaches in institutional and urban metres will be studied. Also, the possibility of redesigning the flood region of urban rivers will be examinated, proposing suitable uses per case. The article will investigate the example of Diakoniaris River in Patras/Greece It is a river that crosses the coastal city of Patras in length of 4 kilometres roughly in address E-W, and in the past (1962,.2001) he has created catastrophic floods. Our approach focuses on the suggestion of proposed institutional regulations but also methodological approaches that concern in the flood-preventing protection of urban regions

The function of semantically motivated suffixes in gender inversion of Modern Greek derivatives

The main issue of this study is to show that semantically motivated suffixes, such as diminutives and augmentatives, for instance, may change the grammatical gender of nouns in highly inflected languages such as Modern Greek (henceforth MG). For example, a semantic marker of diminution (Melissaropoulou & Ralli 2008), say {-aki} of neuter (NTR) gender, attached to a stem of masculine (MSC) gender (by nature), will convert it into neuter, e.g. andr(as)MSC ‘man’ (natural gender), plus the diminutive     {-aki}NTR will invert to andrakiNTR ‘little man’. Similarly, korits(i)NTR ‘girl’, feminine (natural gender), plus the augmentative {-aros}MSC will become koritsaros ‘big girl’. Also aet(os)MSC ‘eagle’ masculine (natural gender), plus the diminutive {-opoulo}NTR will turn into aetopouloNTR ‘baby eagle’.Moreover, other categories of semantically motivated suffixes capable of changing gender, such as the case of –ieraFEM or –ierisMSC denoting a container and an agent respectively (Roché 2000), as well as –iaFEM standing for a fruit tree will also be investigated. The scope of the paper will be to show not only that, in MG, gender is inherent to the stem noun and not to the word (Ralli 2002), but also discuss both natural and grammatical gender (normally shown formally by an inflectional suffix) as an inevitable consequence of gender inversion by means of the afore mentioned suffixes. The notion of agreement regarding the gender of the noun qualifiers, e.g. enasMSC isichosMSC andrasMSC, ‘a quiet man’ vs. enaNTR isichoNTR andrakiNTR ‘a quiet little man’, will also be investigated as a result of gender inversion (Anastasiadi et al 2003).Furthermore, particular attention will be paid on the fact that the natural/biological gender remains the same at least semantically –as it is inherent to the stem- despite the attachment of a different gender grammatical suffix, only when the latter is either a diminutive or an augmentative. In all other cases, where the gender is indicated by form only, and not by sex, i.e. it is not natural, it converts to the gender of the suffix, e.g. tsaiNTR ‘tea’ plus –ieraFEM/‘container’ will be tsaγieraFEM ‘teapot’; miloNTR ‘apple’ plus –iaFEM/’fruit tree’ will be miliaFEM ‘apple tree’