God’s Action in History

The explication of the Christian hope of resurrection requires Christianity to spell out the way in which God actually deals in the world. Only if we succeed, with regard to past, present, and future, in making the talk of God’s special action in history plausible, are we able to reasonably assert essential Christian beliefs. Yet due to past horrors, present ongoing suffering, and a future that promises of little else, it is precisely this talk that has become doubtful. This article tries to describe God’s action as a process enabling freedom and love in order to develop a theodicy-sensitive speech about God’s action

Specificity and definiteness in sentence and discourse structure

In this paper, I argue that this informally given list of characteristics covers only a certain subclass of specific indefinites. […] In particular, I dispute the definition of specific indefinites as "the speaker has the referent in mind" as rather confusing if one is working with a semantic theory. Furthermore, I discuss "relative specificity", it. cases in which the specific indefinite does not exhibit wide, but intermediate or narrow scope behavior. Based on such data, I argue that specificity expresses a referential dependency between introduced discourse items. Informally speaking, the specificity of the indefinite expression something [...] expresses that the reference of the expression depends on the reference of another expression, here, on the expression a monk, not the speaker

The interface of lexical semantics and conceptual structure deverbal and denominal nominalizations

Nominalizations can refer to events, instances of events or participants in an event. The particular reference is determined by the lexical semantics of the base and the suffix, and by the conceptual structure of the base. The comparison between deverbal and denominal nominalization in -ata in Italian reveals that the conceptual structure plays a crucial role in determining the reference of a nominalization. Italian nominalizations of -ata are productively derived from verbal and nominal bases. Derivations from verbal bases refer to a single event denoted by the base. Derivations from a nominal base N denote events or results corresponding to a limited number of pattems, such as a hit by N, a characteristic action of N, a period of N, a quantity that is contained in N, etc. The paper argues that the function of the suffix operates on the lexical meaning of the base, but the con~positiono f the lexical meaning of the base with the lexical meaning of the suffix is restricted by the conceptual properties of the base

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

Migration-by-Emulation Planets Web-Service

The availability of migration tools for older formats is often limited. Thus we suggest a different approach: using the original applications to access the object and transfer the latter into formats which can be accessed in today's environments. The appropriate environment for the digital artefacts could be provided through emulation. With the reproduction of the original environment, a large and diverse set of migration input/output paths becomes available. Working for the Open Planets Project the authors the authors created remotely accessible Web services integrated into the PLANETS testbed. These services demonstrate preservation workflows using migration together with the emulation of original environments

Public-private partnerships in agricultural research: an analysis of challenges facing industry and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

"Public-private partnerships offer potentially important opportunities for pro-poor agricultural research in developing countries. Yet in the international agricultural research community-and with regard to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) itself-we see few examples of successful public-private partnerships, and fewer examples where such collaborations have contributed to food security, poverty reduction and economic growth. This study assesses the opportunities for, and challenges to, creating and sustaining public-private partnerships between the international agricultural research centers of the CGIAR and leading multinational, research-based agribusiness companies. The study hypothesizes that the willingness and ability of public agencies and private firms to enter into partnerships are constrained by fundamentally different incentive structures; by insufficient minimization of the costs and risks of collaboration; by an inability to overcome mutually negative perceptions; by limited use of creative organizational mechanisms that reduce competition over key assets and resources; and by insufficient access to information on successful partnership models. The study methodology is based on interviews and discussions with key stakeholders and a wide review of the literature on public-private partnership. Tentative findings suggest that while incentives and perceptions do differ between sectors, sufficient common space exists or can be created through incentive structuring to facilitate greater partnership. However, both public- and private-sector partners inadequately account for and minimize the costs and risks of partnership. Similarly, partners discount the need for brokers and third-party actors to manage research collaborations and reduce competition between sectors. Finally, partners are operating without sufficient information on existing partnership experiences, lessons, and models, potentially contributing to a persistent or widening gap between sectors.intellectual property, Agricultural biotechnology, Research and Development, Property rights, Multinational firms, Collaborative research, Public-private partnership,