Contrast, adversative and corrective can all be represented by er in Classical Chinese, but they are lexicalized respectively by er, danshi and ershi in Modern Chinese. The two lexicalization systems suggest that the opposition relations have commonalities as well as differences. In the framework of relevance theory and ‘three domains’, this study argues that the three opposition relations are in different cognitive domains, at different representational levels, and trigger different inferences, which accounts for their diverse lexicalizations in Modern Chinese. The opposition relations also have cognitive or metaphorical connections with each other, which justifies their unified actualization in Classical Chinese. The pragmatics-cognitive framework could also account for interlinguistic data.

One of the questions that still surrounds the history of auxiliary do is what function it had during the Middle English period (c.1100–1500). Scholars have put forward different hypotheses, suggesting that it could serve, among others, as a perfective marker (Denison 1985), agentive marker (Ecay 2015) and habitual marker (Garrett 1998). The present article reports on a quantitative study that aims to shed further light on this issue. By means of a collexeme analysis, this article investigates the semantic features of the infinitives that occur with auxiliary do in several Middle English corpora. The results show that auxiliary do was not connected to verbs with specific semantic profiles, but it was employed in different contexts and had various functions. Specifically, the data suggest that auxiliary do was used (i) as an accommodation tool to facilitate the use of low-frequency verbs, particularly of French origin, and (ii) as an aspectual particle to mark both perfectivity and habituality. It is argued that the multifunctionality of auxiliary do in Middle English played a crucial role in the preservation of the construction before it spread to the NICE (i.e. negation, inversion, code and emphasis) environments.

In our paper testing the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis that suffixes are easier to process than prefixes (Harris & Samuel 2025), we report little experimental support for the hypothesis. Several sources treat clitics as being similar to affixes (e.g. Himmelmann 2014, Asao 2015), and some argue that there is a parallel preference for enclitics over proclitics (Cysouw 2005, Dryer 2017). On this basis, we test an extension of the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis to clitics because if true, that too could explain the suffixing preference (as well as the putative enclitic preference). Cutler et al. (1985) also state a hypothesis about the processing of infixes. Udi provides an excellent language for testing both hypotheses, since each person clitic in this language can occur before the verb, after the verb, between morphemes of the verb or inside the verbal root, under certain circumstances (Harris 2002). Although European Portuguese does not place clitics inside roots, it utilizes the other three placements. We have conducted three experiments on each language. The results demonstrate that an explanation for either the suffixing preference or the putative enclitic preference is unlikely to be grounded in the processing factors suggested by Cutler & Hawkins.

Amidst the Russian aggression against Ukraine, peace and stability within the geostrategic region of the Western Balkans have come under the spotlight. While some have called for the “denazification” of the Balkans, others have firmly supported Ukraine. Among the six non-European Union states in the Balkans, the Republic of Serbia is perceived as the most visible and longstanding supporter, akin to a brotherly state, of the Russian Federation. This article aims to investigate President Vučić’s narrative in his Addresses to the Nation concerning the war in Ukraine. The objective is to gain a better understanding of Serbia’s foreign policy positioning with regard to the conflict in Ukraine. Anchored in the Regional Security Complex theory, the article examines President Vučić’s Addresses to the Nation from February 2022 to February 2023, revealing Serbia’s consistent insistence on independent decision-making in foreign policy matters, including in the context of the war in Ukraine. These Addresses to the Nation further reinforce the notion of Serbia’s multi-vector foreign policy, while also utilizing the war in Ukraine to reignite public discussions on the importance of Kosovo to Serbia’s foreign policy.

Georgia represents an interesting case to study the agency of small states in reshaping their regional identity and external environment. Although much of the world has considered Georgia as politically part of the South Caucasus region, the country’s political elites themselves have long attempted to escape the geographic boundaries of the South Caucasus region and relocate their country into Eastern Europe. We argue that Georgian elites were partially successful in their quest for foreign political identity change. Although they did not manage to entirely change the international perception about Georgia’s geographic belonging, the country has politically moved closer to Eastern Europe and is considered to be part of “Associated Trio” together with Ukraine and Moldova—and recently became an EU candidate. From a theoretical perspective, we argue that Georgia’s quest for foreign policy identity recalibration fits the constructivist paradigm of international relations well. It can be argued that Georgia’s political elites were partially driven by ideational factors and were ignorant of the balance of power in their external environment, which cost the country the lost wars and compromised territorial sovereignty.

Hobby metal detecting in Norway has grown since 2014. In the Norwegian recording system, all finds are catalogued by professionals at five regional museums. The examination of the dataset thus created allows the authors to look at regional and national patterns and discuss the inherently messy and ‘human’ nature of a seemingly quantitative material. Their study suggests that both archaeologists and detectorists influence the quality of the evidence and how representative the data are. They argue that metal detecting patterns are primarily the result of modern activities, such as management practices and the endeavours of a few very prolific detectorists in certain areas. Understanding these biases and systematically recording the activities of the actors involved is crucial if we are to make full use of the metal-detected material.

This paper presents a dictionary-based study of French loanwords in contemporary English in order to investigate the location of primary stress in these loanwords. Four factors are found to be significant predictors of the position of primary stress: endings, word complexity, the segmental structure of the final syllable, and syllable count. Moreover, this study confirms previous observations on the tendency for American English to have more final stress in French loanwords than British English. Finally, the implications of our findings are discussed in light of a model that assumes that English phonology consists of distinct interacting subsystems.