This study investigates fragments of the type last I heard/checked based on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which shows a steep increase in frequency for this construction in recent decades. Syntactically, ‘last I fragments’ are disjuncts that are positionally mobile with respect to their host clause and their ‘elliptical’ form can be linked to different ‘full’ forms, viz. specificational sentences and temporal adjuncts. Functionally, their underlying evidential meaning gives rise to different, more specific discourse functions depending on contextual use: viz. downtoner, booster and ironic use. A comparison with unreduced (full) forms shows that these fragments are more likely to have evidential meaning, with reduced form thus acting as an important functional signal. Finally, it is argued that their grammatical status is best captured by a constructional account, which identifies them as constructionalizing units, rather than a simple ellipsis account.

We suggest a novel theoretical analysis of what is known as the reactive what-x construction. This construction, which has recently been noticed and described in Põldvere & Paradis (2019, 2020), has primarily clarificational properties and requires the presence of an antecedent in the preceding context. We begin by summarizing its syntactic properties and main functions, based on data drawn from the London–Lund Corpora of spoken British English, and then address a pattern that has escaped notice thus far, i.e. that the majority of the instances of this construction feature a type of ellipsis known as fragments. Departing from the analysis articulated in Põldvere & Paradis (2020), we present one that captures the elliptical properties of the reactive what-x construction by assimilating it to two classes of fragments: those serving as reprise utterances and those serving as direct utterances. Our analysis relies on Ginzburg & Sag's (2000) detailed analysis of reprise and direct fragments couched within a non-sententialist approach to ellipsis. This allows us to analyze the reactive what-x construction as a type of an in-situ interrogative clause whose elliptical properties are licensed by a version of the constraint Ginzburg & Sag (2000) use to license fragments.

Historians have written copiously about the shift to ‘germ theories’ of disease around the turn of the twentieth century, but in these accounts an entire continent has been left out: Antarctica. This article begins to rebalance our historiography by bringing cold climates back into the story of environmental medicine and germ theory. It suggests three periods of Antarctic (human) microbial research – heroic sampling, systematic studies, and viral space analogue – and examines underlying ideas about ‘purity’ and infection, the realities of fieldwork, and the use of models in biomedicine. It reveals Antarctica not as an isolated space but as a deeply complex, international, well-networked node in global science ranging from the first international consensus on pandemic-naming through to space flight.

Successful language-based interaction depends on the reciprocal interplay of two or more speakers. The production of structural fragments rather than ‘full’ clausal units plays a crucial role for this interplay. This article provides an outline of a descriptive framework labeled ‘dual-mind syntax’, which is designed for describing the social signature in spoken syntax. Fragments are not analyzed as deficient and ‘incomplete’ syntactic units, but as a communicative practice used to design structures in a responsive-contingent fashion in social interaction. Based on empirical data coming from recorded natural interactions, it will be shown how speakers use syntactic fragments for coordinating actions and collaborative structure-building and for contributing to the emergence of a structurally integrated, coherent whole.

Conscious but incapacitated patients need protection from both undertreatment and overtreatment, for they are exceptionally vulnerable, and dependent on others to act in their interests. In the United States, the law prioritizes autonomy over best interests in decision making. Yet U.S. courts, using both substituted judgment and best interests decision making standards, frequently prohibit the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from conscious but incapacitated patients, such as those in the minimally conscious state, even when ostensibly seeking to determine what patients would have wanted. In the United Kingdom, under the Mental Capacity Act of 2005, courts decide on the best interests of incapacitated patients by, in part, taking into account the past wishes and values of the patient. This paper examines and compares those ethicolegal approaches to decision making on behalf of conscious but incapacitated patients. We argue for a limited interpretation of best interests such that the standard is properly used only when the preferences of a conscious, but incapacitated patient are unknown and unknowable. When patient preferences and values are known or can be reasonably inferred, using a holistic, all-things-considered substituted judgment standard respects patient autonomy.

This article investigates whether environmental planning law can demonstrate ethical responsibility for its role in settler colonialism. Planning law contributes to settler colonialism by diminishing, excluding, and eliminating alternative views of land that are fundamental to First Nations culture, philosophy, and law/lore. The article adopts a transnational legal frame that recognizes and promotes First Nations as sovereign. The investigation is focused primarily on the planning law system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, while being guided by interpretations and applications of the rights of First Nations peoples by courts in Canada. It is argued that state planning law in NSW fails to give effect to ethical responsibility because its operation continues to dominate and marginalize Aboriginal legal culture by eroding the necessary ontological and epistemic relationships with land. However, there is potential for change. Opportunities to disrupt settler colonialism have emerged through bottom-up litigation, which has promoted interpretations, applications, and implementation of law that can be performed in ways that resonate with Canadian case law. While the absence of treaty or constitution-based rights protection in NSW and Australia means that the transplant is not seamless, the article argues that laws should not be interpreted and applied in ways that perpetuate settler colonialism where alternative interpretations can lead to a different outcome.

Which implications follow for the value of freedom on a hybrid account of wellbeing that appeals to endorsement? On the basis of Olsaretti’s empirical claim that one is unlikely to endorse wellbeing when one is forced to achieve it, I show that standardly on the hybrid account there is a reason to protect people’s freedom to dysfunction, and hence that the freedoms to dysfunction are valuable. I also discuss whether freedom is non-specifically valuable on grounds of endorsement. I advance an epistemic version of freedom’s non-specific value that is especially relevant for a theory of justice that appeals to publicity.

This paper examines the development of the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies (IAS), arguing that the landscape of decolonial epistemology is more complex than is often assumed. Drawing on new archival documents it maps out the different landscape of ideas regarding its decolonial origins — phase one (1948–50), phase two (1954–61), and phase three (1960–63) — not only to elucidate problems of defining what decolonial work should entail but also as a historical study of how people associated with the IAS contributed to defining and activating a decolonial project. It shows Nkrumah’s specific instrumentality to its emergence through an African-centred or “Afroepistemic” approach to African Studies. It also highlights how the decolonial imperative was shaped by different historical moments.

This paper investigates Korean nominal coordination, a distant conjunct of which is semantically incompatible with the subcategorizing verb in a sentence. This type of nominal coordination is supported by both corpus-based and experimental data. Such coordinations pose a challenge to previous approaches to coordination in the literature. Specifically, any theory directly linking the subcategorizing verb to such a distant conjunct encounters the issue of semantic incompatibility. To address this issue, based on Lee (2020), I propose associating the distant conjunct with a direct hypernym of the verb. While the primary focus is on conjunctive nominal coordinations, the hypothesis also extends to disjunctive nominal coordinations. This semantic taxonomy-based account is then formally implemented in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag 1994; Sag et al. 2003), adapting the generalized conjunction from Partee & Rooth (1983). Furthermore, I argue that this analysis can serve as a basis for explaining other related constructions in Korean.

We explore the surprising lexical be construction in English (e.g. Why don’t you be quiet?). After an overview of previous discussions, an investigation of the use of lexical be in the COCA and SOAP corpora is provided. It is shown that its distribution is highly skewed and that it is completely felicitous only under a very limited set of conditions. An account of lexical be is then provided showing that the conditions that license it are inherited from more general constructions, most importantly the negative imperative construction and the ‘Why don’t you’ construction. In this light, it is suggested that the lexical be construction, with its special properties, provides strong evidence for a constructional approach to linguistic competence along the lines of Goldberg (1995), Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), Sag (2012).

Financial redress for victims of occupational diseases can be offered through no-fault compensation schemes. No-fault compensation schemes have an explicit mission in promoting perceived fairness and justice. The objective is to offer a quick, fair and just procedure and outcome, while preventing civil court procedures and restoring trust. However, the question is whether applicants of these no-fault schemes indeed experience perceived fairness and justice. This paper discusses the result of an in-depth interview study with fifty-eight victims involved in no-fault schemes for occupational diseases in the Netherlands. We focus on the role of perceived procedural justice, outcome concerns and trust in the (former) employer.

Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Mazeppa (1854) recreates a narrative that portrays Cossack commander Ivan Mazeppa's torturous Ride – bound naked to an unbroken horse – to miraculous survival and triumph. To evoke this legend, Liszt incorporated familiar musical tropes: persistent galloping triplets, fanfares, apotheosis and a march-like finale. These tropes illustrate a consistent story, but they risk sounding merely clichéd and mimetic. To appreciate how Liszt uses these tropes to create depth and compositional creativity in Mazeppa requires consideration of the myth's intertextuality. This article considers the broader sources that informed Liszt's Mazeppa and offers an interpretation that includes the programme's preface and an array of Mazeppa ‘texts’ that have appeared since the mid-eighteenth century. These texts include a quasi-historical narrative, poetry and visual art along with Liszt's original commentary for Mazeppa and his defence of programme music in his Berlioz and His ‘Harold’ Symphony essay. Taking all of this together, my approach in this article is to analyse Mazeppa as if listening for the protagonist and letting the character of his musical subject inform my interpretation. Hearing the musical subject in this work requires attention to voice, expressivity, motives, gestures, themes and extramusical intertexts to construct, layer by layer, an interpretation of Mazeppa's symbolic significance. I argue that connecting these threads of cultural history illuminates the piece's theme of suffering and death as inescapable companions in the life of the creative genius.