Editorial. Ausbilden für die Sekundarstufe I: Die Schweiz im Spannungsfeld kontrastierender Ausbildungsmodelle

Die Sekundarstufe der obligatorischen Schulzeit hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten bis in die jüngste Gegenwart hinein in verschiedenen Kantonen der Schweiz vielfältige strukturelle und curriculare Reformen erfahren. Fragen nach ihrer Binnenstruktur bzw. vertikalen Gliederung und damit verbunden ihrer Integrationsfähigkeit und Durchlässigkeit standen dabei im Mittelpunkt. [...] Die vorliegende Nummer versammelt Beiträge, die unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf die Ausbildung für Lehrerinnen und Lehrer der Sekundarstufe I eröffnen. (DIPF/Orig.

Editorial. Former les enseignants du secondaire obligatoire: La Suisse au carrefour de modèles contrastés

Die Sekundarstufe der obligatorischen Schulzeit hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten bis in die jüngste Gegenwart hinein in verschiedenen Kantonen der Schweiz vielfältige strukturelle und curriculare Reformen erfahren. Fragen nach ihrer Binnenstruktur bzw. vertikalen Gliederung und damit verbunden ihrer Integrationsfähigkeit und Durchlässigkeit standen dabei im Mittelpunkt. [...] Die vorliegende Nummer versammelt Beiträge, die unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf die Ausbildung für Lehrerinnen und Lehrer der Sekundarstufe I eröffnen. (DIPF/Orig.

Unagreement is an illusion

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9311-yThis paper proposes an analysis of unagreement, a phenomenon involving an apparent mismatch between a definite third person plural subject and first or second person plural subject agreement observed in various null subject languages (e.g. Spanish, Modern Greek and Bulgarian), but notoriously absent in others (e.g. Italian, European Portuguese). A cross-linguistic correlation between unagreement and the structure of adnominal pronoun constructions suggests that the availability of unagreement depends on whether person and definiteness are hosted by separate heads (in languages like Greek) or bundled on a single head (i.e. pronominal determiners in languages like Italian). Null spell-out of the head hosting person features high in the extended nominal projection of the subject leads to unagreement. The lack of unagreement in languages with pronominal determiners results from the interaction of their syntactic structure with the properties of the vocabulary items realising the head encoding both person and definiteness. The analysis provides a principled explanation for the cross-linguistic distribution of unagreement and suggests a unified framework for deriving unagreement, adnominal pronoun constructions, personal pronouns and pro

And the survey said.... evaluating rationale for participation in gun buybacks as a tool to encourage higher yields

BACKGROUND: Gun buyback programs represent one arm of a multipronged approach to raise awareness and education about gun safety. METHODS: The city of Worcester, MA has conducted an annual gun buyback at the Police Department Headquarters since 2002. We analyzed survey responses from a voluntary, 18-question, face-to-face structured interview from December 2009 to June 2015 using descriptive statistics to determine participant demographics and motivations for participation. RESULTS: A total of 943 guns were collected, and 273 individuals completed surveys. The majority of participants were white males older than 55years (42.4%). Participants represented 61 zip codes across Worcester County, with 68% having prior gun safety training and 61% with weapons remaining in the home (27% of which children could potentially access). The top reasons for turning in guns were no longer needed (48%) and fear of children accessing the gun (14%). About 1 in 3 respondents knew someone injured/killed by gun violence. Almost all (96%) respondents claimed the program raised community awareness of firearm risk. CONCLUSION: The Worcester Goods for Guns Buyback has collected more than 900 guns between 2009 and 2015. The buyback removes unwanted guns from homes and raises community awareness about firearm safety

Case and the Event Structure of Nominalizations

This article explores the distribution of morphological case in Spanish nominalizations and shows that there is a connection between morphological case and event structure. Most nominals govern genitive case de on their internal arguments but some allow or require a different morpheme, a, reminiscent of Differential Object Marking (DOM). It is argued that the event structure of the nominalization is the crucial factor in choice of a, in as much as the latter is limited to process nominals that do not entail a change of state. The same distinction between process and change of state nominals is then extended to two other empirical puzzles regarding the interpretations of genitive arguments in nominalizations. I present a formal analysis assuming a syntax of events inspired in Ramchand (2008