This chapter presents an overview of various issues related to English in Pakistan. A timeline of the language and education policy for English highlights notable events from the day of independence to the twenty-first century. Pakistani English is mostly used in the written medium though spoken and spoken-like written mediums on the internet are also emerging. The review of attitudinal research shows that generally students and other concerned groups of the society have a pragmatic view of accepting English. In terms of language features, Pakistani English has developed many distinctive features at various linguistic levels. There is also extensive language contact happening between English and regional languages, where both sides borrow from each other. Lastly, the review of various aspects of English in Pakistan presented in this paper shows that English might be in a stable state in Pakistan, at least for now.

Chapter 6, “Envisioning a Pluriversal Governance: Scientific and Indigenous Ontologies in the Amazon”, examines the prospects for including scientific and indigenous ontologies in the international governance of the Amazon. The Chapter assesses the different governance models for enlarging ecological democracy and having nature’s interests represented in political spaces. For this aim, it analyzes the most prominent scientific bodies dealing with the climate emergency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), compared to the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), the first scientist platform dedicated to the largest rainforest in the world. The Chapter proposes enlarging ecological democracy under a pluriversal governance in which nation-states, scientists, and Indigenous peoples would share the political stage to negotiate their different worldviews and the authority to represent their own natural worlds. This might trigger ontological clashes, but also the possibility of creating ontological coalitions around indigenous rights, the protection of nature, and the appropriate means to deal with the climate crisis in the basin.

Elizabeth Maconchy’s commissioned works were instrumental in establishing her career in the decades following the Second World War, providing financial stability and garnering artistic recognition in what had been a scant landscape. Following a period of limited performances due to wartime disruptions, illness, and family responsibilities, commissions from organizations such as the BBC, the Feeney Trust, and various arts councils enabled Maconchy to compose across multiple genres, including orchestral, choral, chamber, and operatic works. These commissions, which cemented her as an influential figure in British music, highlight her artistic adaptability: Celebrated works such as The Sofa and Héloïse and Abelard indicate her mastery of diverse dramatic genres, while her string quartets (the final four being commissioned) and Music for Strings highlight her command of instrumental textures. These works, which revitalized her public presence, also demonstrate the enduring importance of arts patronage in fostering creative excellence and sustaining musical innovation.

The conclusion brings together the book’s several arguments to explain the impact of the settlement legislation on family, community, and national life during our period. Discussions highlight how legal changes taking place in the Restoration era, and developed thereafter, affected English society and state formation in ways little imagined by the legislators, and how the focus on parish settlement has brought together an array of fields not often studied together and has enabled the book to engage with local experiences as well as broad processes of historical change.

There are similarities in the historical development of English in Brunei and Malaysia, two countries that share many socio-cultural and linguistic traits; yet at the same time, differences in the educational policies that have been adopted have seen English promoted more consistently in Brunei, while support for English-medium education in Malaysia has fluctuated in recent decades, and this has resulted in a substantial divergence in the current status of English in the two countries. This chapter describes the historical development of English in Brunei and Malaysia, traces changes in educational policy over the past few decades, discusses the current status of English, provides an overview of some of the features of Brunei English and Malaysian English, gives a snapshot of local literature in English, and finally offers a brief prognosis for the future of English in the two countries.

The interwar era was a formative period in Elizabeth Maconchy’s development as a composer, and much can be gleaned through a cross section of British musical circles between the First and Second World Wars. The endemic misogyny of the time, which affected the prospects of both earlier and contemporaneous female composers, had a profound impact on what opportunities were available to her as well as how her works were received. Many of the connections she made at this time – such as those forged with her professors and fellow students at the Royal College of Music – would endure for the rest of her career. Maconchy was interested in both continental modernism and Irish and Welsh nationalism, involved in the Macnaghten and Lemare concert series – which provided much-needed performance opportunities for young composers – as well as the pageant Music for the People, which furthered left-wing political causes such as anti-fascism, anti-racism, and class consciousness.

This chapter presents a selection of foundational topics from classical mechanics relevant to integrable systems. It includes a concise overview of the Arnold–Liouville theorem and its implications for integrability, along with a discussion of the Lax representation and its role in the formulation of classical scattering theory. Special attention is given to the Calogero–Moser–Sutherland models as illustrative examples. We explore how the rich structure of conserved quantities in classical integrable systems constrains the dynamics of scattering, leading to non-diffractive behavior. In particular, we demonstrate how the classical S-matrix factorizes into a sum of elementary two-body phase shifts, reflecting the underlying integrability of the system.

Now we have to dwell on the question of how we can achieve those objectives of Islamic qawmiyyat [nationhood; selfhood] in India which we defined in the previous publications. As far as we know, no ‘Muslim’ individual or group disagrees with this objective. The difference, if there be any, lies in determining the correct path to achieve this objective. Now, we need to critically analyse the various paths before us. The correct path will become evident after such an analysis.

Namibia has long been a stepchild of World Englishes research despite an increasing influence of English in the country. The current chapter is one of the first to introduce Namibian English (NamE) to a wider collection of World Englishes. It outlines its unprecedented emergence and development and offers an overview of the latest research findings on language attitudes and use, identity conceptions related to the English language, as well as local characteristics of NamE. Most importantly, the chapter highlights two aspects of NamE. First of all, it outlines NamE’s heterogeneous character, i.e. the existence of a number of subvarieties of NamE. Second, the chapter emphasizes its independent character and claims that it should be treated as a variety of English in its own right and not just an offshoot of South African English. Even though the last ten years have produced an impressive surge of interest into the variety and thus important research findings, research on NamE is still in its infancy. The current contribution is, hopefully, the starting point for a more thorough integration into the World Englishes paradigm.

We portray processes theories which claim that consciousness is related to or identical with a computational process in the brain. The global workspace theory (GWT) proposes that consciousness occurs when information is made widely available via a global neuronal workspace. Higher order theories (HOTs) propose that consciousness occurs when there is a higher-order process that describes a first-order sensory-cognitive process. We will also introduce the ‘small network argument’, which holds that extremely simple systems may fulfil the criteria of process theories and hence would be considered conscious.

With arguably the largest number of speakers of any postcolonial variety of English and a history stretching over four centuries, Indian English has received more attention in the literature than many other varieties. This chapter will track its emergence and development from the end of the sixteenth century onwards, from early English-speaking travelers and the earliest English trading ventures via the gradual extension of British colonial power over the subcontinent and its linguistic consequences, to the diffusion of English to ever greater sections of society at the start of the twenty-first century. Regarding the structure of Indian English, this chapter will take advantage of the large body of corpus-based research which has probed into the actual frequency and distribution of a wide range of Indian English features, allowing for a more empirical approach towards Indian English, encompassing its phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon and (discourse) pragmatics.

Overseas varieties of English emerged during the colonial period (c. 1600-1900) with features arising which stem partly from dialect input of the early settlers and partly from contact among dialect speakers and with indigenous groups along with some features which represent independent developments in new varieties. The external settings at the overseas locations also played a key role here. There are basic distinctions, such as that between settler and non-settler varieties which, despite certain caveats, still retain their validity in the field of variety studies. The internal developments in forms of English at overseas locations reveal patterns which allow of certain generalisations which help to recognise the developmental trajectories in the past and current pathways of change. Furthermore, new sources for the study of vernacular varieties have become available and yield new insights into variety formation during the colonial period.