This chapter reconstructs some principal features of relative clause syntax in Proto-Indo-European. Following the methodology outlined in Chapter 2, it pays close attention to the behaviour of the reconstructed relative pronoun, *REL (Chapter 4), and its position in the PIE left periphery (Chapter 5). Moving away from *REL, it then turns to the more general structures of, and relations between, ‘plain’ relative and correlative clauses in PIE. The chapter is rounded off by a discussion regarding the semantic types of relative clauses in PIE and their syntactic form.

The question of whether transgender girls should be permitted to participate in girls’ sports has been one of the most politically contested and socially controversial of the last decade. Neither law nor medicine provides definitive answers. This book takes on the absolutist positions staked out by both the left and the right and argues in favor of a more nuanced framework that seeks to ensure all girls and boys –both transgender and cisgender – have access to the benefits of organized sports.

This book comes in two parts; the first, consisting of §§1–7, offers an informal axiomatic introduction to the basics of set theory, including a thorough discussion of the axiom of choice and some of its equivalents. The second part, consisting of §§8–14, is written at a somewhat more advanced level, and treats selected topics in transfinite algebra; that is, algebraic themes where the axiom of choice, in one form or another, is useful or even indispensable.

Violence is central to popular images of the Middle Ages. Where do clergy fit into this picture? In theory, they were meant to oppose violence and promote peace. But in practice, clergy sometimes took part in warfare. Recent scholarship shows that clergy even engaged in interpersonal violence, and this book pursues this theme further. It will draw on approaches from anthropology, gender and the ‘history of emotions’, which ask fundamental questions: What is violence? How can it be defined as legitimate or illegitimate? Is it innate or learnt behaviour? What purposes does it serve? How far is it gendered? What motivated it? And was the Middle Ages more violent than the present? In applying these approaches, the book seeks to understand how far clergy were separate from the violent culture of laymen around them. Various sources will be used to answer this central question, notably the papal penitentiary registers, church and secular court records and canon law. Legal theory sought to set clergy apart from laymen especially regarding violent crime, so the book will seek to compare this with judicial practice. It thus constitutes a study in legal and social history.

This chapter examines the arguments for transgender girls’ exclusion from girls’ sports that have dominated right-leaning public and political discourse. The chapter articulates the argument for exclusion based on fairness and contends that it cannot justify total exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports at every age and level. The chapter next uncovers the claims about human flourishing and personal dignity that also motivate arguments for exclusion and argues that such claims are too empirically dubious and normatively controversial to drive policy decisions.

Introduction

In an essay written some twenty-five years ago, Indian thinker Ashis Nandy describes popular Indian cinema as ‘the slum's point of view of Indian politics and society and, for that matter, the world’ (Nandy 1998, p. 2). The slum, a term for the urban lower-class settlements that constitute a significant portion of the landscape of every major Indian city, embodies the complexities of Indian society. It both aspires to and contrasts with the genteel urbanity of the upper-middle classes who are physically proximate to but separate from their slum-dwelling compatriots. The slum carries in it something of the rural and village worlds of migrants who make their home in it. It represents the profound social dislocation and alienation wrought by Indian modernity upon large sections of its population as well as new kinds of social relations that emerge as a result of these shifts and disruption. A physical space inhabited by Indian lower-middle classes and emerging middle classes but also a symbol of their aspirations, the slum is the beating heart of Indian political life. Nandy argues that the ‘passions of, and the self-expressions identified with, the lower-middle class—for that matter, the middle class as a whole—now constitute the ideological locus of Indian politics’ (ibid., p. 6). Inasmuch as it is a kaleidoscopic portrayal of the universe of the slum, Indian popular cinema, then, far from being an escapist fantasy or irrelevant lowbrow art, is an essential cultural form encapsulating the central concerns of Indian political and social life.

Writing over a century ago, Vladimir Lenin had talked of finance capital as the ‘coalescence of bank and industrial capital’ and of a financial oligarchy presiding over this capital that sat on the boards of directors of both banks and industrial establishments. But Lenin's concepts were located in the context of an inter-imperialist rivalry, where the finance capitals and financial oligarchies of different advanced capitalist countries were both country-based and engaged in conflict with their counterparts in other advanced capitalist countries over the acquisition of ‘economic territory’ (Lenin 1976).

Contemporary capitalism, however, is characterized by a muting of inter-imperialist rivalry. This muting is rooted, not in any agreement among capitalist powers to divide the world peacefully (as Karl Kautsky had visualized in what is called ‘ultra-imperialism’) but in the formation of an international finance capital, which is not essentially country-based and which, far from wanting to divide the world into different spheres of influence, actually wants to remove all such divisions so that it can move freely across the globe. Contemporary finance capital, therefore, is globalized (that is, international); it is not part of any national imperialist strategy, as it had been in Lenin's time; and it is employed not just in industrial production but also in rampant speculation that has given rise to several asset-price bubbles.

When scholars extend their models and hypotheses to encompass additional cases, they may need to adapt their concepts to fit new contexts. Giovanni Sartori’s work on conceptual traveling and conceptual stretching provides helpful guidance in addressing this fundamental task. Sartori’s framework draws on what may be called a classical understanding of conceptual hierarchies. Each successive concept as one moves down the hierarchy is a “kind of” in relation to the one above it – such that it may be called a kind hierarchy. Concepts have clear boundaries and defining properties shared by all cases deemed to fit the concept. This chapter examines the challenge to this framework presented by two nonclassical approaches: Wittgenstein’s family resemblances and Lakoff’s radial structures. According to these alternative perspectives, concepts may not be sharply bounded, and some attributes may not be shared by all cases viewed as corresponding to the concept. Because they only partly correspond to the concept, this may be called a part–whole hierarchy. With such patterns, strict application of a classical framework can lead to abandoning concepts prematurely or modifying them inappropriately. This chapter discusses solutions to these problems, suggesting that these two forms of hierarchy can productively be used together.

This concluding chapter argues that language is a first-order driver of economic behaviour and outlines where the research should go next. It extends the LENS framework beyond one-shot decisions to strategic settings shaped by beliefs, and outlines the co-evolution between language and behaviour. Large language models are proposed as virtual laboratories, while a quantitative utility approach must accommodate multidimensional, non-linear emotions and norms, and expand to visual cues (VENS). The chapter highlights applications – from policy design to norm-sensitive AI – alongside serious risks of manipulation, surveillance, and bias. It closes with a call for transparent, ethically governed models that explain and responsibly influence decisions.

Introduction

The climate crisis demands that we confront the economic models and modes of production that have led us to this precipice of destruction. The concept of climate justice takes into account ‘a variety of interrelated concerns – for the inequitable impact [the climate crisis] has on a range of already vulnerable communities, for participation and procedural justice, for the basic functioning and provision of needs in vulnerable communities, including ecological communities … [for] inclusion, transparency, compensation, and sustainability’ (Schlosberg and Collins 2015).

Applying a climate justice lens therefore requires us to look at the myriad impacts that extractive economic models have on the climate, the environment, and communities’ rights, safety, and wellbeing.

While much of the critique of extractive development has been (appropriately) focused on the extraction of fossil fuels, it is essential to also consider agriculture. In its current extractivist and industrial form, agriculture accounts for an estimated 22 per cent to 23 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (IPCC 2023, IPCC 2019). Industrial agriculture is also a significant contributor to the interrelated ecological crises of soil depletion, loss of biodiversity, loss of pollination, and destruction of the global water supply (Shiva 2016). Furthermore, as demonstrated in the case studies explored in this chapter, extractivist agriculture has been rooted in cycles of land grabbing and violence against local communities.

As Oxfam (2016) explains, ‘large-scale monoculture investments seek fertile land with good transport connections. In many places, this means displacing peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, depriving them of their traditional livelihoods.’

This chapter surveys how moral content shapes behaviour through language. It considers moral foundations theory and morality-as-cooperation theory, outlining their dimensions, correlates, critiques, and refinements. It then reviews lexicon-based approaches to normative analysis, from moral foundations dictionaries to newer MAC-aligned resources, and discusses the limits of current tools in separating personal, injunctive, and descriptive norms. Building on these insights, the chapter proposes language-based utility functions (LiMoLNoS and LiMoLENS) that integrate normative and emotional valuations to explain choices in economic settings. Overall, it argues that morality is multidimensional and measurable in text, enabling models that connect linguistic framing to decision-making and behaviour.