The statutes of Iona : the archipelagic context

In recent decades, understanding of the historical development of Britain and Ireland has benefited significantly from the adoption of integrated approaches to the history of Britain and Ireland. While traditional national histories laid the foundation, the new British and Irish historiography has teased out many of the nuances arising from the interaction between the three kingdoms or four nations of Britain and Ireland. This approach has produced much scholarly work for both the medieval and early modern periods, although modern historians are still grappling with attempts to write a genuinely British history.1 For the early modern period in particular, the "three kingdoms" debate of the seventeenth century has advanced awareness of the complexity of regal union and the problems associated with one king ruling three distinct kingdoms. It is within this wider British context that James VI and I's efforts to integrate his three kingdoms need to be viewed. Although James's "earnist dispositioun to perfyte that Union"- brought about by his succession to the English throne on 1603-was thwarted by both the English and Scottish parliaments, James could not afford to govern either kingdom in isolation

In search of isoglosses: continuous and discrete language embeddings in Slavic historical phonology

This paper investigates the ability of neural network architectures to effectively learn diachronic phonological generalizations in a multilingual setting. We employ models using three different types of language embedding (dense, sigmoid, and straight-through). We find that the Straight-Through model outperforms the other two in terms of accuracy, but the Sigmoid model's language embeddings show the strongest agreement with the traditional subgrouping of the Slavic languages. We find that the Straight-Through model has learned coherent, semi-interpretable information about sound change, and outline directions for future research

The forgotten '45 : Donald Dubh's rebellion in an archipelagic context

The final rebellion of Donald Dubh, heir to the forfeited MacDonald lordship of the Isles, is usually examined within the context of Highland rebellions that occurred in the half century after forfeiture. However, the factors that motivated the Islesmen to rise in rebellion in 1545 are multi-faceted and can only be fully understood by placing the rising in a wider context, which considers national and archipelagic events. The discussion that follows explores the reasons why the Islesmen, almost unanimously, entered into agreement with Henry VIII to attack Scotland from the west and why this endeavour failed. At the same time, the article highlights Henry’s recognition of the strategic importance of the west which led him into alliance with Donald Dubh and his supporters

The Structure and Dynamics of a River Delta are Related Through its Nourishment Area, Suggesting Optimality

Scaling relations in tributary network geomorphology are well understood with respect to optimality. However, the scaling relations between structure and dynamics in distributary network geomorphology are less well understood. This is primarily due to the fact that nourishment area boundaries are difficult to map compared to tributary network catchment area boundaries. Furthermore, most previous work has focused either on the distributary channel networks or the delta’s partitioning of discharge. Here we show that, on the Wax Lake Delta (WLD) in Louisiana, the asymmetry in nourishment areas and downstream nourishment boundary width (∏) at a channel bifurcation, acts as a control upon the partitioning of discharge thereby influencing delta dynamics. We found that relationships between nourishment width, channel width, nourishment area, and discharge can be adequately described by power law functions. Linear power law relationships between discharge and nourishment width show demonstrate a link between a channel network’s structure and dynamics. This confirms that individual channel structure is a function of the dynamical competition amongst channels for unchannelized nourishment width and therefore individual channels cannot be considered independently. The uniformity of flux across the downstream nourishment boundary demonstrates the optimality of distribution of water and sediment flux across the unchannelized delta front and suggests self-regulation of the channel structure to achieve maximum entropy of the system. Leave one out cross validation shows that discharge can be predicted with increased accuracy using nourishment width compared to predictions using channel width. This empirically derived scaling relationship will allow for more accurate prediction of discharge partitioning using remote sensing and has important implications for delta geomorphology. These relationships have potential use in future monitoring and management of deltas

Short vs long stem alternations in Romance verbal inflection: the S-morphome

Some verbs in Romance (e.g. the reflexes of faciō 'do', dīcō 'say', habeō 'have', sapiō 'know', possum 'be able', and volō 'want') display alternations between a short (e.g. It. f-are, f-a, d-ire) and a long (e.g. It. fac-evo, dic-e, dic-evo) stem. This paper contains an exploration of the lexical and paradigmatic distribution of these stem alternations across Romance varieties to trace when they emerged, how, and why. The results suggest a comparatively early emergence as a result of the interaction between preexisting morphological predictability relations within the paradigm and an evolutionary preference for shorter forms in high-frequency word forms and lexemes