Collins & Postal (2014) argue that English NPIs have two distinct syntactic structures: a unary NEG structure and a binary NEG structure. They suggest that this distinction is generally valid for natural languages. This formal difference was taken to reconstruct the common distinction in NPI studies between strong and weak NPIs. The present analysis of Ewe NPIs seeks to provide cross-linguistic support for this dual conception of NPIs by showing that the ke-NPIs in this language are all properly analyzed exclusively as unary NEG structures.

The oratorio genre was regarded amongst the most edifying and instructive artforms of the Victorian era, and it was to these lofty ideals that George Tolhurst (1827–1877) aspired when composing his 1864 oratorio Ruth. The first work of its kind written in the British colony of Victoria, Australia, Ruth received an initially favourable local reception; Tolhurst was urged by the Melbourne press to aim higher and present his work to a wider and more discerning audience. Consequently, he took his work to London where it was roundly criticized, widely mocked and eventually dubbed ‘the worst oratorio ever’. It might be assumed that a work so poorly received in the cultural metropolis of London would be, like so much other Victorian music, immediately forgotten. However, through its notoriously bad reception, Ruth – in what Percy Scholes describes as a ‘succès de ridicule’ – found a cult following that has spanned from the nineteenth century to the present day. This article examines the critical reception of Ruth through the lens of colonial social relations, arguing that the treatment of Ruth in both London and Melbourne is emblematic of broader trends in the nineteenth-century relationship between parent state and settler colony. It also explores the surprising phenomenon of twentieth- and twenty-first-century consumption of Ruth in Britain, questioning whether the legacies of certain Victorian social and cultural prejudices relating to the artistic products of the colonies have been mitigated. Aesthetic and representational decisions made in recent revivals of Ruth suggest that cultural hierarchies forged during the Victorian era continue to be reinforced in the present day.

This paper assesses the vulnerability of Arctic fishing communities. We hypothesise that climate change related trends, such as increasing temperature and altered seasonality, and shocks, such as the breakdown of the Soviet Union or new fishing regulations, increase vulnerability of local Arctic peoples and compromise the sustainability of their livelihoods. Research shows that over recent decades local people have observed environmental changes and a significant decrease in the number of fish caught. Fishing regulations introduced after the collapse of the Soviet Union burdened fishers with quotas and temporal limitations that have hindered their fishing activities. While the adaptability of traditional fishing techniques to seasonally changing conditions might indicate the potential to adapt to future conditions under climate change, fishing regulations appear to limit this potential to adapt.

Network research in sociolinguistics suggests that integration in a local community network promotes speakers' retention of local linguistic variants in the context of pressure from external or standard dialects. In most sociolinguistic network research, a speaker is assigned a single score along an index representing the aggregate of several network and other social features. We propose that contemporary network methods in adjacent disciplines can profitably apply to sociolinguistics, thereby facilitating not only more generalizable quantitative analysis but also new questions about the relational nature of linguistic variables. Two network analysis methods—cohesive blocking and Quadratic Assignment Procedure regression—are used to evaluate the social network factors shaping the retreat from the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) in Raleigh, North Carolina. The data come from a 160-speaker subset of a conversational corpus. Significant network effects indicate that network proximity to Raleigh's urban core promotes retention of SVS features, and that network similarity between speakers corresponds to linguistic similarity. Contemporary social-network methods can contribute to linguistic analysis by providing a holistic picture of the community's structure. (Networks, sociophonetics, Southern Vowel Shift, dialect contact)*

This article explores the intertwining semiotics of language and embodiment in performances of Californian personae. We analyze two actors’ performances of Californian characters in parodic skits, comparing them to the same actors’ performances of non-Californian characters. In portraying their Californian characters, the actors use particularized jaw settings, which we link to embodied stereotypes from earlier portrayals of the Valley Girl and Surfer Dude personae. Acoustic analysis demonstrates that both actors also produce features of the California Vowel Shift in their Californian performances, aligning their linguistic productions with sound changes documented in California. We argue that these embodied stereotypes and phonetic realizations not only co-occur in parodic styles, but are in fact semiotically and corporeally intertwined, one occasioning the other. Moreover, the performances participate in the broader process of enregisterment, packaging these semiotic resources with other linguistic and extralinguistic features to recontextualize Californian personae in the present day. (Parody, performance, California, California Vowel Shift, embodiment, embodied stereotype, enregisterment)*

“Legal theology” must mean more than theological reflection on legal topics just as “feminist theology” means more than theological reflection on “women's issues.” This is no simple application procedure, but a dynamic interaction between two fields of play, each with an internal variety of methods, considerations, and arguments. Amidst the varieties of Christian theology, Christian feminist theology has distinct methodological features that reflect experiences of subjugation and political commitments to equality and mutuality. Similarly, Christian legal theology—should it in fact develop—cannot claim to represent all Christian reflection as though Christian theology is monolithic and neutrally applied to a stagnant list of legal topics. Rather, Christian legal theology would reflect a distinctive way of doing theology in light of experiences, commitments, and practices within the “world of law.” Given the variety internal to Christian theology and the world of law, the configurations for Christian legal theology are indeed myriad.

In this essay, I argue for the fittingness of restoring in the era of secularization the dialogue between theology, the rational discourse about the divine, and the jurisprudence of the secular legal system. From a secular point of view, it is suitable for legal thinkers and legal philosophers to be familiar with theology, just as it is best for an architect to be familiar with the type of soil on which to build a structure. From a theological point of view, it is also appropriate for theologians to be familiar with the secular-legal, just as it is suitable for an environmental soil scientist to know the type of structures that can be built on a landscape. Interactions, synergies, and communication between sciences play an important role in the development of a scientist's knowledge.

This paper examines the intersection between a distinctly Canadian legal culture and the legal architecture, symbolism and iconography of its Supreme Court building in Ottawa. I begin from the premise originally put forward in Resnik and Curtis’s study of legal architecture. I proceed with an analysis of the Court’s history, aesthetic and decorative elements, geography and design, artistic and legal vision of the architect, and the social, political and historical contexts in which it was created, as well as key legal and constitutional concepts embodied by the Court’s legal architecture and a comparative analysis with another courthouse in Montreal (the Édifice Ernest Cormier). The paper demonstrates that the challenges of creating a courthouse that reflects the legal traditions and evolving social norms as well as the aspirations of a dynamic, democratic and pluralistic society are almost impossible. It remains a problematic question whether the image of justice that the Court evokes to the observer is the most ‘eloquent three dimensional representation of the role the Supreme Court has assumed in the life of the nation’ (Canada and Supreme Court, 2000, p. 207).

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Lashly, this paper explores what may be deduced about this stoker, who accompanied Scott on both his expeditions, from archived unpublished correspondence and artefacts. It draws particularly on letters he wrote to Reginald Skelton and Robert Gibbings and concludes that Lashly, in addition to being a physically strong member of Scott's teams, was also a thoughtful and perceptive man with the ability to report and reflect beyond what might have been expected of someone of his background and education. Though modest, Lashly was proud of what the he and his colleagues had achieved and remained an enthusiast for Antarctic matters all his life.