This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial position in the history of English. Earlier work (Los 2009; Dreschler 2015) proposed that main-clause-initial PPs in Old English primarily function as ‘local anchors’, linking a new clause to the immediately preceding discourse. As this function was an integral part of the verb-second (V2) constraint, the decline of local anchors was attributed to the loss of V2 in the fifteenth century, so that only the contrasting and frame-setting functions of these PPs remain in PDE. This article tests these hypotheses in the syntactically parsed corpora of OE, ME, EModE and LModE texts, using the Pentaset-categories (New, Inert, Assumed, Inferred or Identity; Komen 2011), based on Prince's categories (Prince 1981). The finding is that Identity clause-initial PPs decline steeply from early ME onwards, which means the decline pre-dates the loss of V2. A likely trigger is the loss of the OE paradigm of demonstrative, which functioned as standalone demonstrative pronouns as well as demonstrative determiners, and the loss of gender marking more generally. From EModE onwards, main-clause-initial PPs that still link to the preceding discourse do so much more indirectly, by an Inferred link.

In memoriam Manfred Hermann Schmid (1947–2021), Mozartian extraordinaire

The cadenzas to the Piano concerto in D minor, K466 that Clara Schumann published for the Mozart centenary year raise intriguing questions about authorship: Upon correcting the proofs, she identified an uncanny overlap with a cadenza by Brahms. Following an ambivalent response from the latter, she went on publishing the work under her name regardless, and even left a note on her papers claiming that Brahms had made use of a cadenza by her.

Rather than answering the author attribution either way, the article unpicks the conflicting evidence of the sources in light of the broader contexts within which they are situated. It demonstrates that conventional tools of music philology alone are inadequate for solving this issue (as they had been for Schumann in 1891). Notated sources are but one manifestation of a rich and complex creative process that operate within a multi-sensory, multi-modal and co-creative framework. As such, a close reading of the cadenzas to K466 by Schumann and Brahms interrogate false ontologies of the ‘work concept’ that may have mired our understanding of nineteenth-century music in general.

State-society relations in authoritarian settings are a recurrent topic in the respective literature. Phenomena ranging from loyalty and apathy to dissent, open protest, and resistance have been widely researched. The different patterns of regime response or the way authorities mobilize forces themselves have been discussed to a much lesser extent. This contribution analyzes the gradual deterioration of the state-society relationship in Belarus. These fragile relations have been brought to the brink of collapse by the authorities’ mishandling of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, which became a catalyst for the eruption of mass protests in the country. As a consequence, Belarus has developed into a state obsessed with security concerns. The pretense of legitimacy and the promise of a social welfare state have been replaced by an unvarnished clientelist dictatorship, relying on an inflated security apparatus. The article identifies indicators for an increased “securitization” of state politics in recent years and corresponding measures that guided authorities in their endeavor to counteract societal resistance. The aim is to shed light on how securitized interactions have become emblematic of dysfunctional state-society relations in Belarus.

When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began operations in 1958, one of its first routine tasks was to create and circulate a brief non-technical periodical. This article analyses the creation of the IAEA Bulletin and its circulation during its first years. It finds that diplomatic imperatives both in IAEA leadership circles and in the networks outside them shaped the form and appearance of the bulletin. In the hands of the IAEA's Division of Public Information, the bulletin became an instrument of science diplomacy, its imagery conveying the motivations for member states to strengthen ties with the IAEA, while simultaneously persuading them to accept the hierarchies and geopolitical logics implicit in those relations, as well as to endorse the central position of the IAEA as a clearing house and authority of globally circulating nuclear objects and information.

When do smaller states defer to and when do they defy stronger powers? How and why? This article traces and explains the changing patterns of deference and defiance in Malaysia's China policy. There are three findings. First, deference and defiance are essential elements in all inter-state relations, especially asymmetric ones. The greater the power asymmetry, the greater the inclination to defer and defy. Second, states often pursue defiance and deference concurrently and selectively, with approaches adapted in accordance with changing external and internal conditions. The concurrent adoption of the two behaviors often manifest in hedging, an insurance-seeking policy aimed at offsetting multiple risks by counteracting the effects of the other behavior: deference without defiance risks subservience and dependency; defiance without deference invites hostility and confrontation. Third, the specific patterns and proportions of the deference–defiance mix are attributable more to domestic than external determinants, i.e., the needs to balance security, prosperity, and autonomy, as necessitated by the prevailing pathways of elite legitimation. This explains why Malaysia's open deference vis-à-vis China has been accompanied by an indirect and quiet defiance especially in recent years, as best evidenced by the second Mahathir administration's dualistic approaches toward the Belt and Road, South China Sea, and Xinjiang.

The leading models of disability struggle to fully encompass all aspects of “disability.” This difficulty arises, the author argues, because the models fundamentally misunderstand the nature of disability. Current theoretical approaches to disability can be understood as “nounal,” in that they understand disability as a thing that is caused or embodied. In contrast, this paper presents an adverbial perspective on disability, which shows that disability is experienced as a personally irremediable impediment to daily-living tasks or goals-like-ours. The picture theory of disability technically constitutes a species of relational approach because its analysis references the interplay between an individual and their environment; it differs from other relational accounts, however, by interpreting disability as a certain kind of negative experience—rather than a function of that relationship. This purely descriptive theory makes no normative claims about disability and operates as both a mechanism for the evaluation of the experience of disability and a heuristic device for the proper interpretation of disability. When disability is reframed in this way, the theory offers a particularist perspective which shows if, when, where, and how disability is experienced.