Afrikaans is spoken by a wide range of ethnic groups in Namibia, both as an L1 and an L2. Stell (2021) showed that, in its phonetic variation, Namibian Afrikaans forms a continuum between Whites and Blacks with Coloureds1 located in between. This article aims to find out whether a continuum can likewise be observed in the grammatical patterns of Namibian Afrikaans varieties. The dataset is based on a translation task, administered to L1 Afrikaans-speaking Whites and Coloureds and to L2 Afrikaans-speaking Damaras and Ovambos, whose respective L1s are Khoekhoegowab and Oshiwambo. The article finds a contrast between L1 and L2 speakers as the Damara and Ovambo Afrikaans varieties show evidence of L1 transfers. However, it also finds evidence of a continuum linking the Whites, Coloureds, and Damaras in the form of commonly shared Orange River Afrikaans features. The fact that Ovambo Afrikaans does not quite fit into this continuum, the article argues, has to do with the historically late exposure of Oshiwambo speakers to L1 Afrikaans varieties. Finally, the article attempts to match evidence of Khoekhoegowab influence on Damara Afrikaans with Den Besten’s (2001) and Roberge’s (1994a) reflections on historical contact between Khoekhoe and Cape Dutch.

This study reconstructs the fluvial dynamics of the Bras de Fer distributary in the Rhône Delta (France) during the Little Ice Age (LIA) in response to short-term climatic forcing. A multiproxy approach combining historical cartography, sedimentology, geochemistry, magnetic susceptibility, and hydrological archives reveals accelerated meander migration and extensive overbank accretion between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries CE. Increased flood frequency, coinciding with positive phases of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO+), promoted rapid lateral channel shifts and the formation of crevasse splay complexes along the outside bank of the Grande Ponche meander. The results demonstrate that, despite stable relative sea levels, deltaic morphology remained highly sensitive to decadal-scale climatic variability, highlighting the dominant role of hydrological extremes in shaping fluvial-deltaic environments of Rhône delta during the late LIA.

How does racial inequality shape who dies in war? Focusing on the era of United States military segregation, we argue that discriminatory societal institutions and prejudicial attitudes combined to reduce commanders’ beliefs about Black soldiers’ combat effectiveness. These biased assessments decreased the likelihood that Black soldiers were assigned combat occupational specialties, and that Black combat units received key frontline assignments. However, commanders’ biases also created a desire to preserve white lives. Accordingly, we expect Black soldiers received worse support. These choices shaped soldiers’ risk of death. Analyzing the case of World War I (WWI), we leverage data on over 44,000 infantry fatalities and show that white units incurred four times as many combat fatalities as comparable Black units. However, holding fixed exposure to combat, Black units suffered higher levels of noncombat deaths. Commanders thus deemed Black soldiers insufficiently qualified to fight as equals, but sufficiently expendable to die in war’s least consequential conditions.

We give a new criterion which guarantees that a free group admits a bi-ordering that is invariant under a given automorphism. As an application, we show that the fundamental group of the “magic manifold” is bi-orderable, answering a question of Kin and Rolfsen.

The development of a sound change can be influenced by linguistic and social factors, both within the language community and from cases of language contact. The present study is an examination of the internally generated ongoing tonogenesis process in Afrikaans, specifically analyzing production and perception of word-initial plosives among different age and gender groups. Results show that female speakers are devoicing significantly more often than male speakers, and the perception of female voices is influenced more by f0 levels than the perception of male voices. This study finds that gender is a larger predictor overall of tonogenetic patterns than age.*

This study analyzes 1,000 meta-analyses drawn from 10 disciplines—including medicine, psychology, education, biology, and economics—to document and compare methodological practices across fields. We find large differences in the size of meta-analyses, the number of effect sizes per study, and the types of effect sizes used. Disciplines also vary in their use of unpublished studies, the frequency and type of tests for publication bias, and whether they attempt to correct for it. Notably, many meta-analyses include multiple effect sizes from the same study, yet fail to account for statistical dependence in their analyses. We document the limited use of advanced methods—such as multilevel models and cluster-adjusted standard errors—that can accommodate dependent data structures. Correlations are frequently used as effect sizes in some disciplines, yet researchers often fail to address the methodological issues this introduces, including biased weighting and misleading tests for publication bias. We also find that meta-regression is underutilized, even when sample sizes are large enough to support it. This work serves as a resource for researchers conducting their first meta-analyses, as a benchmark for researchers designing simulation experiments, and as a reference for applied meta-analysts aiming to improve their methodological practices.

This article presents an acoustic analysis of vowel quality and duration in Chichicastenango K’iche’ (Maya) tense, lax and glottalized vowels through a controlled speech production experiment. The results show that most of the five tense–lax pairs can be distinguished through F1 and F2, with the high and mid lax vowels lower than their tense counterparts and the low lax vowel higher than its tense counterpart. Glottalized high and mid vowels have lax quality while glottalized low vowels have tense quality. The high lax vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ and their glottalized counterparts show a high degree of overlap with surrounding categories and appear to be in process of being lost, though they retain distinct phonological behavior. Glottalized vowels are longer than tense vowels, which are longer than lax vowels. The voice quality of glottalized vowels is highly variable and is influenced by context. Realizations with full closures are almost entirely absent. Neither vowel quality nor voice quality results show clear evidence in favor of either a one-segment or two-segment analysis for glottalized vowels.

This article discusses the variation between masculine and neuter anaphoric pronouns in Afrikaans, especially in reference to inanimate entities such as objects, abstracts, collectives, and masses. The fact that books, governments, and wine can be referred to as both hy ‘he’ and dit ‘it’ is well known, but it is surprising given what is known about pronominal gender systems. Such systems are usually organized according to clear semantic principles, yielding predictable choices. The article summarizes the available literature, provides new data from the NWU-Kommentaarkorpus, and presents an approach that helps to make sense of the synchronic variation and, to some extent, the diachronic developments.