I argue that semi-lexical have is a transitive verb in the sense that it has the same selectional properties as lexical transitives but is lexically underspecified. I propose a system of argument linking that assigns verbs a set of ‘D-selectors’ (selectors for determiner phrases) that are distinguished by a ‘thematic feature’ ±θ; selectors are licensed by linking rules that associate them with a position in a conceptual structure on the basis of their ±θ-specification. I argue that have is underspecified both syntactically (its initial D-selector can be +θ or –θ) and semantically (it lacks a lexical conceptual structure, which must thus be provided in syntax). I show that this enables the major interpretations of have (causative, affected experiencer, possessive, locative, affectee) to be derived straightforwardly. A particular contribution of the paper is its description and analysis of ‘affectee have’, which, as I show, poses particular problems for recent analyses such as Kim (2012) and Myler (2016).

This special issue aims to unravel the deeply intertwined dialectics between property and sharing. We do so by examining the paradoxes thrown up as legal forms of property interact with the emergent economic activity of sharing, and investigating how these may be resolved by designing institutional frameworks to better align their values. These paradoxes are sometimes productive, driving property and sharing forward to produce new configurations of use and privilege; sometimes disruptive, as sharing throws new light on how property orders economic and social relations by pushing against the boundaries of established property forms. But they are always revealing.

This article analyses shifts in consumers’ preferred forms of use following the rise of the access economy and evaluates the subversive potential of access as a non-hierarchical, open form of use. Access consists of an aggregation of multiple licenses that amounts to a consistent form of use and has social, cultural and legal implications. My definition of ‘access’ focusses on material practices of property rather than on formal legal categories, and I compare access to both formal and informal forms of long-term use. I explore themes of power and vulnerability and individualism and communities and consider whether access merely adds to the property landscape or provokes contested forms of use. The article reveals the complex relationships between ownership (and other forms of long-term possession) and access, as access both challenges ownership and reinforces its power. Ultimately, I conclude that access fails to achieve its subversive potential.

In this paper, I propose an analysis for tonal alternations at the prefix–stem boundary in Tenyidie (Angami), where Mid tones in prefixes and stems dissimilate. I argue that this alternation is driven by the OCP (Obligatory Contour Principle) (Leben 1970) of Mid tones. However, sequences of Mid tones are seen elsewhere. I claim that this asymmetry can be solved with recourse to prosodic phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986/2007). By assuming that stem and suffix form a prosodic word, excluding prefix, I argue that Mid tones fuse within the prosodic constituent to avoid OCP-Mid. The same constraint also triggers dissimilation across the prefix–stem environment, because of prohibition of fusion across prosodic boundaries. This is an example of phonological conspiracy where multiple processes work together to repair or avoid a single marked structure (Kisseberth 2011).

What would the ‘sharing economy’ look like if platform providers optimised for racial and other forms of diversity? This article considers that question. Following the Introduction, Part 2 of this article reviews the widespread nature of race and other forms of discrimination in platform technologies. Part 3 uses core strands of property theory to analyse the ways in which racial privilege translates into property entitlements. Part 4 discusses a range of reforms within property law that can contribute to eliminating the value – and ultimately the fact – of whiteness as a property entitlement in the platform economy.

Geoffrey Pullum has produced countless contributions to linguistic theory over his 50-year career in the field. Given this exceptional scientific achievement, his philosophical work often goes underappreciated. In this article, I discuss and critique three themes from Pullum’s philosophy of linguistics, namely, cardinality neutrality, model-theoretic syntax and normativity in language. I conclude by showing how these seemingly disparate elements might indeed be connected in terms of a normative constructivist approach to linguistics.

The article was inspired by Justice Alito's selective and often misleading use of the medieval history of abortion law to justify the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Hoping to offer a corrective view of the larger conversation about abortion during the premodern era, this article hopes to drive home a number of points. First, modern authorities need to acknowledge that the word “abortion” (aborsus) meant something different then than it does now. Second, at its origins, abortion was conceived as a crime against husbands, and thus it falls into a larger body of misogynous law designed to protect men and their heirs from women who exploited their reproductive potential to trick men out of their rightful inheritance. And third, medieval laws against those who provided abortions labeled them as witches or poisoners. Medieval laws about abortion are thus intertwined with fears of the devil and of the woman's body as poison.

The modern history of Tianjin, a northern port city in China, offers an intriguing urban case for scholars interested in comparative colonial practices. From the 1860s to the 1940s, Tianjin was home to up to nine foreign concessions and a sequence of different Chinese municipalities. While much scholarship on colonial history has focused on the interactive dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized, Tianjin’s colonial past draws attention to the multiplicity, multilateralism and multilayered trajectories at the heart of the colonial experiences of both imperialist powers and the Chinese. At the heart of this short survey are some reflections on the multi-imperial dimensions of the city of Tianjin. It also explains how the multi-imperial dimensions operated in Tianjin in its treaty-port incarnation and offers some considerations of how the Tianjin case contributes to broader historiographical conversations germane to the imperial–global–urban complex.

The relation between perception and production in social meaning is often taken to be transparent, with social meaning associations learned from observations of language use. However, recent work has suggested that this relation is often more complex than previously thought. Here, we present new data comparing the social meaning of realized variable liaison in spoken French, couched within the framework of the pragmatic sociology of critique. We recall data from a recent matched guise experiment showing that listeners associate the realization of liaison with meanings like “professionalism”, specifically in social situations where efficacy and expertise are at issue. Basing ourselves on this finding, we use a production task, presenting these same social situations to amateur and professional actors. We find that our participants do not exploit the social meaning potential of variable liaison, producing liaison at lexically-determined rates on a par with previous corpus studies. We discuss this discrepancy between perception and production, which suggests that the link between the two is dependent on the linguistic variable under investigation.

This article explores the history of Japan’s municipal electricity regulation. We find that in the early phase of Japanese electrification, rights-of-way and municipal franchises remained undefined compared with these concepts in Western societies. Consequently, Japanese cities started electrification without municipal regulations. Although municipal franchises were introduced to Japan as a regulatory framework in the 1900s, they were tailored to Japan’s political and ideological context. Moreover, the Road Law of 1919 weakened the legal basis for municipal regulation. With the revision of the Electric Utility Law in 1932 and World War II, the decline of municipal regulation became inevitable.

This introduction to the ‘Survey and Speculation’ special issue ‘Empire and Cities’ outlines how this collection came about, summarizes the six contributions and draws general conclusions.