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2144 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 7 of 108

The Meaning of Constructions

The Meaning of Constructions
  • Benoît Leclercq, Cameron Morin
  • Published online:
    16 May 2025
    Print publication:
    22 May 2025
  • This Element offers a primer for the study of meaning in a Construction Grammar approach. It reviews the main principles of meaning shared across constructionist frameworks, including its ubiquity in grammatical structure, its usage-based formation, and its nature as the output of cognitive representations. It also reviews the importance given to meaning in construction-based explanations of sentence composition, innovative language use, and language change. Paradoxically, the Element shows that there is no systematic framework delineating the rich structure of constructional meaning, which has led to theoretical disagreements and inconsistencies. It therefore proposes an operational model of meaning for practitioners of Construction Grammar. It details the characteristics of a complex interface of semantic, pragmatic, and social meaning, and shows how this framework sheds light on recent theoretical issues. The Element concludes by considering ways in which this framework can be used for future descriptive and theoretical research questions.
Data-driven Learning in and out of the Language Classroom

Data-driven Learning in and out of the Language Classroom
  • Pascual Pérez-Paredes, Alex Boulton
  • Published online:
    16 May 2025
    Print publication:
    12 June 2025
  • Data-Driven Learning (DDL) can be broadly defined as the use of corpus tools and techniques for learners and teachers of foreign or second language, typically in the form of concordances derived from authentic texts for inductive learning of lexicogrammar. This Element is a practical guide for language teachers and graduate students intending to explore or upgrade their use of corpora in the language classroom and beyond. In today's context, where advances in computing and information processing dominate our social and professional interactions, the use of corpora emerges as a prime resource with which to approach data-driven language learning and teaching, developing language awareness, noticing skills and critical thinking for learning that generative AI cannot do for you.
Poverty in Latin America

Poverty in Latin America
  • Feelings/Perceptions vs Material Conditions
  • Verónica Amarante, Maira Colacce, Federico Scalese
  • Published online:
    15 May 2025
    Print publication:
    12 June 2025
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  • This Element derives subjective poverty lines for seven Latin American countries based on a Minimum Income Question included in household expenditure surveys. It compares poverty incidence under the subjective and objective approach, finding subjective poverty is larger than objective for all countries. People identified as poor are generally poor by both measures or only subjective poor, although patterns of overlapping differ between countries. It explores the factors associated to considering oneself as poor - being subjectively poor- when the per capita household income is higher than the objective poverty line. Generally, unemployment and informality are associated with higher probability of subjective poverty. Other factors not directly involving income but reflecting high economic security also tend to reduce the probability of feeling poor. Finally, the welfare stigma effect does not seem to hold, at least in terms of subjective poverty. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
C. S. Lewis on the Soul, God, and Christianity

C. S. Lewis on the Soul, God, and Christianity
  • Stewart Goetz
  • Published online:
    12 May 2025
    Print publication:
    05 June 2025
  • C. S. Lewis was an adamant atheist when he entered Oxford University as a student in 1917. By 1931, he was an Oxford don and a Christian. Lewis was someone who did not think highly of climates of opinion, and in his book The Problem of Pain he warned against uncritically going along with them: 'I take a very low view of 'climates of opinion'. In his own subject every man knows that all discoveries are made and all errors corrected by those who ignore the 'climate of opinion'.' A climate of opinion exists today that either intentionally or unintentionally disenchants or debunks C. S. Lewis. In this Element, the author explains Lewis' belief in the existence of the soul and how it related to his conviction that happiness consists of experiences of pleasure and is the purpose of life, God exists, and Christianity is true.
Types and the Structure of Meaning

Types and the Structure of Meaning
  • Issues in Compositional and Lexical Semantics
  • Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Robin Cooper, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Peter Sutton
  • Published online:
    12 May 2025
    Print publication:
    05 June 2025
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  • Addresses the role of structure in semantic analysis from the perspective of theories of meaning using rich theories of types. Also relates the theory of frames to these type theories as introducing, to some extent, similar structure into semantic analysis. The authors show how a structured approach is necessary to appropriately analyse phenomena in areas as diverse as lexical semantics and the semantics of attitudinal constructions referring to psychological states. In particular, these are: polysemy taken together with copredication, and attitudes such as belief and knowledge. The authors argue that the very same structure required to define a rich system of types enables them to adequately analyse both of these phenomena, thus revealing similarities in two otherwise apparently unrelated topics in semantics. They also argue that such theories facilitate a semantic theory oriented towards a psychological and contextually situated view of meaning. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Egeria

Egeria
  • Theological and Ecclesial Knowledge Between Eastern and Western Traditions
  • Anni Maria Laato
  • Published online:
    12 May 2025
    Print publication:
    05 June 2025
  • Egeria's Itinerarium is a unique document. It is one of the few surviving works from antiquity written by a woman and is one of the first Christian travelogues depicting a pilgrimage to and in the Holy Land. In her Itinerarium, Egeria describes not only her travels but also the practices of pilgrimage and the liturgical life in Jerusalem at a time when both of these were developing rapidly. As Egeria's explicit goal is to communicate her observations and thoughts to her friends, a community of women in the west, this study focusses on Egeria's role as a communicator. Both the contents of her text – what she wanted to communicate and the techniques she used to mediate her experiences and learning to her friends, that is, how she chose to communicate, are scrutinized. Special attention is given to how Egeria describes lived religion in antiquity.
Science Fiction and Christian Theology

Science Fiction and Christian Theology
  • Victoria Lorrimar
  • Published online:
    06 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • Theologians often struggle to engage with scientific and technological proposals meaningfully in our contemporary context. This Element provides an introduction to the use of science fiction as a conversation partner for theological reflection, arguing that it shifts the science – religion dialogue away from propositional discourse in a more fruitful and imaginative direction. Science fiction is presented as a mediator between theological and scientific disciplines and worldviews in the context of recent methodological debates. Several sections provide examples of theological engagement in relation to the themes of embodiment, human uniqueness, disability and economic inequalities, exploring relevant technologies such as mind-uploading, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality in dialogue with select works of science fiction. A final section considers the pragmatic challenge of progress in the real world towards the more utopian futures presented in science fiction.
Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures

Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures
  • Geraldine Heng
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures is a guide to the terra incognita of the global literature classroom. It begins with a framing rationale for why it is valuable to teach early global literatures today; critically surveys the issues involved in such teaching; supplies details of some two dozen texts from which to build a possible syllabus; adds a comprehensive bibliography, and suggestions for student research and student involvement in co-creating course content; and furnishes detailed guidelines for how to teach some 10 texts. It should be possible for faculty and graduate instructors to take this Element and begin teaching its sample syllabus right away.
The Political Economy of China's Imperial Examination System

The Political Economy of China's Imperial Examination System
  • Erik H. Wang, Clair Z. Yang
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
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  • Just as councils and assemblies were central to European polities for centuries, the Imperial Examination System (Keju) constituted the cornerstone of state institutions in China. This Element argues that Keju contributed to political stability, and its emergence was a process, not a shock, with consequences initially unanticipated by its contemporaries. The Element documents the emergence of Keju using evidence from early Chinese empires to the end of the Tang Dynasty in the 10th century, including epitaphs and government documents. It then traces the selection criteria of Keju and trends in social mobility over the second millennium, leveraging biographical information from over 70,000 examinees and 1,500 ministers and their descendants. The Element uses a panel of 112 historical polities to quantify Keju's association with country-level political indicators against the backdrop of global convergence in political stability and divergence in institutions. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Evolutionary Price Theory

Evolutionary Price Theory
  • Harry Bloch
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    08 May 2025
  • Economic evolution involves structural change from within, so evolutionary price theory needs to address how prices facilitate and accommodate this structural change and how structural change in turn impacts on prices. Such analysis is impossible using neoclassical price theory in which endowments of inputs, production technology and consumer preferences are all treated as exogenously determined and the future is known or at least its probability distribution is known. An alternative theory of price determination outlined in this book is compatible with structural change from within and an unknown future. The theory employs an open-system ontology and a micro-meso-macro methodology. Prices have a dual informational role in evolutionary economics. As well as coordinating ongoing production and consumption activities, prices provide information to guide potential entrepreneurs and their financiers in evaluating the profitability of innovations. The latter role can substantially disrupt the order created in the former role.
Asymmetric Warfare

Asymmetric Warfare
  • Politics and Cultures of Violence in the Modern Era
  • Jacob Hagstrom
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    08 May 2025
  • The forces that fight asymmetric wars are so distinct that one side avoids direct military confrontation in favor of political, social, or otherwise unorthodox means of resistance. These conflicts have been a mainstay of modern times, though scholars have often separated them into various designations by era. Observers have referred, in chronological order, to Indian warfare, petite guerre (small war), guerrilla warfare, irregular or revolutionary war, and terrorism. The proliferation of labels over time has obscured the continuity of asymmetric wars throughout modernity. Stark distinctions in resources and capabilities have shaped the reasons why states and societies have decided to fight, and the manner in which they have fought. Across the modern era, mismatches arose in the domains of technology, intelligence production, and law. But in recent decades, so-called weak powers have neutralized many of the typical advantages of strong military states.
Diversification in the World of Data and AI

Diversification in the World of Data and AI
  • Gianvito Lanzolla, Constantinos Markides
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    04 September 2025
  • The datafication of digital reality and the diffusion of increasingly powerful AI systems have transformed the context within which diversification takes place, resulting in new realities for firms and necessitating new organizational capabilities. Building on their own field research and the existing literature on digitalization and diversification, the authors show how external technological and market changes influence the extent and type of diversification that firms can undertake. They argue that to succeed with digital diversification, new capabilities are needed and that these capabilities are not distributed evenly across firms. Only firms that possess these capabilities will undertake more diversification, with all other firms remaining focused. The authors finally argue that the necessary structures and the appropriate management of business units will differ from those used in the past because the digital context has brought to the fore new problems and risks for diversified firms. These are explored in this Element.
Insularity and Identity

Insularity and Identity
  • Prehistoric Britain and the Archaeology of Europe
  • Richard Bradley
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • The Element considers historiography – the extent to which insular prehistorians have integrated their findings with the archaeology of mainland Europe; and the ways in which Continental scholars have drawn on British material. An important theme is the cultural and political relationship between this island and the mainland. The other component is an up-to-date account of prehistoric Britain and her neighbours from the Mesolithic period to the Iron Age, organised around the seaways that connected these regions. It emphasises the links between separate parts of this island and different parts of the Continent. It considers the links across the Irish Sea as only one manifestation of a wider process and treats Ireland on the same terms as other accessible regions, from France to the Low Countries. It shows how different parts of Britain were separate from one another and how they can be studied in a European framework.
Embodied Epistemology as Rigorous Historical Method

Embodied Epistemology as Rigorous Historical Method
  • Lauren Mancia
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • This Element proposes that, in addition to using traditional historical methodologies, historians need to find extra-textual, embodied ways of understanding the past in order to more fully comprehend it. Written by a medieval historian, the Element explains why historians assume they cannot use reperformance in historical inquiry and why they, in fact, should. The Element employs tools from the discipline of performance studies, which has long grappled with the differences between the archive and the repertoire, between the records of historical performances and the embodied movements, memories, and emotions of the performance itself, which are often deemed unknowable by scholars. It shows how an embodied epistemology is particularly suited to studying certain premodern historical topics, using the example of medieval monasticism. Finally, using the case of performance-lectures given at The Met Cloisters, it shows how using performance as a tool for historical investigation might work.
The Marginal Cost of Public Funds

The Marginal Cost of Public Funds
  • Per-Olov Johansson, Bengt Kriström
  • Published online:
    05 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
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  • In a perfect market economy, the cost of raising another euro of tax revenue equals one. However, once distortionary taxes on goods and factors are introduced, the marginal cost of public funds, MCPF, typically deviates from one. Often it exceeds one, but one can also find cases where it falls short of one. This Element introduces the concept of the MCPF, sketches its history, and discusses a number of applications. It does this by undertaking economic evaluations of public sector projects involving a pure public good. An important distinction in the literature relates to where the government has access to lump-sum taxation versus where it must rely on changing a distortionary tax. These are often unit taxes or proportional taxes. Sometimes they are even introduced to alleviate a problem. An example is a tax on emissions of greenhouse gases. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Agent-based Macroeconomics

Agent-based Macroeconomics
  • The Schumpeter Meeting Keynes Models
  • Giovanni Dosi, Andrea Roventini
  • Published online:
    02 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • This Element is about agent-based macroeconomics in general, and in particular about a family of evolutionary, agent-based models (ABMs), which are called 'Schumpeter meeting Keynes' (or K+S). The K+S models knit together 'Schumpeterian' endogenous processes of innovation with 'Keynesian' mechanisms of demand generation. As with all well-constructed ABMs, the K+S models are populated by a multiplicity of agents which interact on the grounds of quite simple, empirically based, behavioural rules, whose collective outcomes are 'emergent properties' which cannot be imputed to the intention of any single agent. After the K+S model is empirically validated, the impacts of different combinations of innovation, industrial, fiscal, and monetary policies for different labour-market regimes and inequality scenarios are assessed. The Element offers a new perspective on macroeconomics considering the economy as a complex evolving system.
Descartes and the Non-Human

Descartes and the Non-Human
  • Emma Gilby
  • Published online:
    02 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
  • Descartes features heavily in ecocritical literature. He is often said to dismiss the non-human world as irrelevant and inanimate, and to espouse a harmfully instrumental attitude towards it. This Element goes into detail on the standard picture in circulation, while also outlining an alternative approach that it terms 'ecohistorical'. It aims to offer insights into the seventeenth-century context; and to explain in clear terms what Descartes said, what problems emerge with his account, and why a more precise understanding of these problems can be useful today. Reconsidering Descartes in this light involves extending prior arguments about his treatment of animals to a study of the natural world in general. Early modern narratives about the world's living networks are complex and interesting. When locally salient artefacts, attitudes, ideas, and vocabulary are highlighted, a more nuanced picture emerges, changing the relevance of Descartes for environmental thinking.
An Introduction to String Diagrams for Computer Scientists

An Introduction to String Diagrams for Computer Scientists
  • Robin Piedeleu, Fabio Zanasi
  • Published online:
    01 May 2025
    Print publication:
    29 May 2025
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  • String diagrams are a powerful graphical language used to represent computational phenomena across diverse scientific fields, including computer science, physics, linguistics, amongst others. The appeal of string diagrams lies in their multi-faceted nature: they offer a simple, visual representation of complex scientific ideas, while also allowing rigorous mathematical treatment. Originating in category theory, string diagrams have since evolved into a versatile formalism, extending well beyond their abstract algebraic roots, and offering alternative entry points to their study. This text provides an accessible introduction to string diagrams from the perspective of computer science. Rather than starting from categorical concepts, the authors draw on intuitions from formal language theory, treating string diagrams as a syntax with its own semantics. They survey the basic theory, outline fundamental principles, and highlight modern applications of string diagrams in different fields. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
The Metaphysics of Divine Participation

The Metaphysics of Divine Participation
  • Alexander J. B. Hampton
  • Published online:
    28 April 2025
    Print publication:
    22 May 2025
  • Participation has been central to the story of Western philosophy and theology for at least two millennia. It has been employed to conceptualise the relationship between God and creation, between universals and particulars, and between the One and the many. This Element approaches the concept systematically to acquire an appreciation of its breadth and depth under four fundamental themes: creation and the divine ideas, incarnation and salvation, being and multiplicity, and the human activities of naming, knowing and making. In doing so it examines some of the key thinkers in the participatory tradition, including Augustine, Irenaeus, Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa. Readers will be introduced to the key contours and manifestations of participatory metaphysics, and its role in Christianity's self-articulation. Together, these considerations will demonstrate how the metaphysics of participation has shaped the Christian tradition.
Monarchies and the Organization of Power

Monarchies and the Organization of Power
  • Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Compared (2100–1750 BC)
  • Juan Carlos Moreno García, Seth Richardson
  • Published online:
    28 April 2025
    Print publication:
    22 May 2025
  • This Element explores the organization of power in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and the interaction of diverse social actors between 2100 and 1750 BC. On the one hand, the forms of integration of towns and villages in larger political entities and the role played by local authorities, with a focus on local agency, the influence of mobile populations, the exercise of power in small localities, and the contrast between power reality and royal ideological claims, be they legal, divinely sanctioned, or other. On the other hand, the modalities of penetration of the royal authority in the local sphere, the alliances that linked court dignitaries and local potentates, and the co-option of local leaders. Finally, the influence of such networks of power on the historical evolution of the monarchies and the adaptability of the latter in coping with the challenges they faced to assert and reproduce their authority.

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