We offer a new explanation for the difference between cases where an auxiliary verb can and cannot contract, such as Kim is coming versus Kim is. Rather than a banning constraint, we argue that there is a positive syntactic licensing constraint. We consider, and reject, both the familiar Gap Restriction and a range of phonological explanations. Our analysis rests on the category of grammatical relations, valent, which includes all non-adjuncts (i.e. all subjects and complements); the analysis consists of a single claim, the Following Valent Constraint: that a contracted auxiliary has an overt following valent. We show how this analysis explains the full range of data that has been discussed in the literature and how a minor variant of the constraint captures the data of the Scots locative discovery expressions. We also propose a sociolinguistic explanation for the inability of auxiliaries to contract in certain environments, such as after a preposed negative. Finally, we suggest a functional explanation for the proposed constraint: It allows the hearer to predict the presence of a following valent and thereby to manage the burden of processing.

For two decades, real wage comparisons have been centre stage in global socio-economic history studies of comparative development, offering a tractable – if oversimplified – gauge of living standards. But critics argue that these studies have leaned too heavily on the earnings of male, urban, unskilled, daily wage labourers, overlooking wage disparities between social groups and the mechanics of how wages were paid. This Special Issue attempts to shift the focus to overlooked groups and “wage systems” – the methods behind pay determination – and their role in deepening or mitigating inequality. This introduction attempts a global overview of the long-term developments in real wage studies, highlighting methodological innovations and challenges over recent decades. It also explains how the various articles in this Special Issue, spanning topics from medieval Europe to colonial India, contribute to this field. We argue that wage systems – and the inequalities they breed – played out in ways as varied as history itself, so comparing material living standards across time and space remains a complex calculation. We plead for a two-pronged approach: the continued study of all types of income of all working people, alongside a new focus on the social norms, institutions, and systems that determine the opportunities for individuals to acquire an income. A consolidated bibliography of all references in this Special Issue may help future research.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, notably ChatGPT, have emerged in legal practice, facilitating the completion of tasks, ranging from electronic communications to the drafting of documents. The generative capabilities of these systems underscore the duty of lawyers to competently represent their clients by keeping abreast of technological developments that can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their work. At the same time, the processing of clients’ information through generative AI systems threatens to compromise their confidentiality if disclosed to third parties, including the systems’ providers. The present paper aims to determine the impact of the use of generative AI systems by lawyers on the duties of competence and confidentiality. The findings derive from the application of doctrinal and empirical research on the legal practice and its digitalisation in Luxembourg. The paper finally reflects on the integration of generative AI systems in legal practice to raise the quality of legal services for clients.

In September 1857, extracts from letters written in Gwalior and Agra, India, by an elite British “lady,” Wilhelmina “Minnie” Murray (1834–1912), were published as part of the “correspondence” sections of The Times's coverage of the 1857–58 Indian Rebellion. Through the letters she documented her escape from Gwalior to Agra. She described encounters with the maharajah and “fanatic” “ghazis,” and her experience navigating inversions of racial and class hierarchies at the Agra and Gwalior forts, as a displaced fugitive. Someone (unknown) designated these letters as “publishable,” and they became part of early interpretations of the “mutiny” in the imperial news sphere. Comparing the original copies with their various printed copies, and with texts written by the rest of her Gwalior-Agra cohort, indicates how knowledge of the uprisings was disseminated through the ways in which letters were circulated, repurposed, edited, and sometimes censored. As this article maps, the letters shaped British understandings and public imagination of India, the East India Company's response to the “imperial crisis,” and the events of the Rebellion itself. It contends that reconstructing deeper genealogies of intertextual narratives about empire in this way renders personal correspondents, and often, imperializing women, formative to the early discursive terrain and meaning/memory-making surrounding mid-century colonial conflict.

In this article I begin by presenting some examples from Early-Modern French of how, using a large multi-genre database (Frantext), it is possible to track the spread of change and how it embeds across different genres (the genres in Frantext ranging from correspondence and first-person travel narratives to essays and poetry). These case studies allow us to explore a number of questions, including which changes seem to diffuse “from above” and which rather come “from below”; and which textual sources best reflect “authentic” usage or indeed are closest to reflecting spoken usage. They also raise questions as to whether it is possible to create a continuum of genres with those that are more “progressive” or are early adopters of change at one end, and those which are more resistant to change at the other. I then discuss some of the challenges surrounding this work, including the theorization (or lack of theorization) of text types and genres in various corpora and the privileging of other factors when they are elaborated. Consequently, there is currently a lack of comparability between different corpora in the way they categorize and calibrate different text types and genres.

The four Piano Sonatas by W. A. Mozart with freely composed additional accompaniment for a Second Piano by Edvard Grieg (EG 113) were first published in 1879–80 but were not heard by English concertgoers until 5 March 1890, when both Agathe Backer-Grøndahl and Anton Hartvigson opened separate recitals in London with Grieg's version of the Fantasy in C minor K475, the latter following it with the Sonata in F major K533/494. This coincidence is noteworthy not only because Grieg's additions appeared to flaunt the prevailing expectation of fidelity to classical works, but also because Mozart's solo keyboard music was rarely included in professional recitals. Focusing on Backer-Grøndahl and Hartvigson's concerts, this article considers Grieg's additions not merely as ‘arrangements’ but also as a performance practice subject to a range of interpretations by recitalists and different sections of the audience. The article begins by placing the transformation of the additions from teaching aids into concert repertoire in the context of similar supplements to classic works and concurrent attitudes to Mozart's piano music. The next section examines the mixed reception of Backer-Grøndahl and Hartvigson's recitals, situating this within contemporary debates about the role of fidelity in modern performances of historic works and its relationship with dominant conceptions of musical taste. While critics condemned the use of Grieg's additions, several disdainfully noted that they were well received by the rest of the audience. The final section attempts to account for this discrepancy by considering the widespread perception of Grieg's additions as Norwegian ‘national music’, a popular genre of exoticist parlour music that critics disparagingly associated with a mass audience of young, female players and considered inferior to ‘international’ classics. The article concludes by reflecting on how these factors might have informed Backer-Grøndahl's decision to perform Mozart's music with Grieg's additions.

Edible goods are not usually considered suitable for archiving. This short article introduces an unconventional archive of images relating to design, book, costume, and performance history. Each image in this archive depicts an intricately decorated biscuit (cookie) set inspired by historical artifacts or styles. I began making these biscuits during the pandemic as a way of engaging with material culture while traditional archives and museums were closed, and I now perform this work as a form of close reading. I also collaborate with heritage organizations to make biscuit sets that share collection items with online audiences. This work has contributed to my own research process while celebrating the collections of a broad range of British archives.

Built in Gif-sur-Yvette in the 1950s, the phytotron of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique provided plant physiologists with a set of enclosed growth rooms in which several climatic constituents of the environment could be simultaneously and separately controlled. This article examines the polyvalence of the French phytotron to explore the economic and political entanglements of experimental reasoning in mid-twentieth-century plant physiology. As Gif scientists embraced phytotrons as a means for developing an ‘experimental bioclimatology’, not only did they introduce into the laboratory an understanding of climate as a complex of agents likely to affect plant life, but also they sought to map scientific findings on productive pursuits during a period of intense agricultural modernization. The horticultural and agronomic applications envisaged were aimed at the timing of climate-sensitive biological events, but also at the expansion of productive areas within and outside metropolitan France, particularly in the context of late colonial and international dry-land development agendas. This case study of phytotronists’ agricultural imagination highlights a techno-scientific conception of climate steeped in biology, tied to the limits and potential of plant life in time and space, and regarded as either a deficiency to be corrected or a resource to be harnessed.