In the past, the international system cycled through regular phases of global power concentration, deconcentration, and reconcentration. These phases correspond with varying levels of international order – from high-order maintenance during times of world leadership to complete disorder during global wars. Hegemonic war is one of four phases (along with the Dissent, Crisis, and World Power phases) that comprise the long cycle. It is the one phase that the world can no longer enter. This is good news for peace but bad news for global order. Hegemonic wars serve vital functions that provide international order. They clarify the actual power distribution (who has it and who does not) and establish who rules the global core, the distribution of territory, the nature of the world economy, and the order’s social purpose. How does world politics function when the long cycle stalls in place? The short answer is, not very well if the goal is order.

This chapter discusses the concepts of polarity and montages including the implications of polarity, the types of montages, and how to use different montages during analysis. Polarity depends on the relative difference between two potentials with the pointer always deflecting toward the relatively smaller potential. Cerebral potentials thus generate electrographic waveforms on the screen. Montages are specific arrangements of channels (pair of recording electrodes), each allowing appreciation of the waveform from a specific point of view. Bipolar montages consist of channels with adjacent electrode pairs and referential montages consist of channels with nonadjacent pairs. Bipolar montages are less prone to artifact and useful to analyze focal potentials. Referential montages are somewhat more prone to artifact contamination and more useful to analyze broader potentials. In this chapter, readers will learn to use both types of montages for analysis. [137 words/830 characters]

This chapter gives an overview of phenomena connected to polarity, especially negation, in Slavic languages. The formation of negation in Slavic is rather uniform across languages and historically relatively stable. Further, the chapter discusses the distribution of linguistic expressions connected to different environments involving polarity. The latter includes negative concord and polarity items with a major focus on different series of indefinites. These environments for indefinites are discussed: (i) specific (known to the speaker), (ii) specific (unknown to the speaker), (iii) non-specific (irrealis), (iv) polar question, (v) conditional protasis, (vi) indirect negations, (vii) direct negation, (viii) standard of comparison, and (ix) free choice. Additional negative polarity items are presented, such as scalar particles. Lastly, the chapter treats case alternations in the scope of sentential negation (genitive of negation), which is a feature inherited from Common Slavic, but not present in all modern Slavic languages. The genitive of negation exhibits differing properties in those languages which preserved it.

This chapter introduces the basic concepts of electroencephalography (EEG) and creates a foundation for further concepts. EEGs are graphical representations of continuous synaptic activity occurring in the pyramidal neurons within the superficial cortical surfaces. The EEG shows an arrangement of channels, each consisting of two electrodes, that record electrical potentials from the underlying cortex and display it in the form of waveforms. The appearance of each waveform is governed by three simple rules of polarity. Electrodes are small circular metallic discs that can be affixed to the scalp with glue or collodion and connected to the EEG machine. They are placed using the standardized international 10-20 system. Pairs of electrodes (channels) are displayed in different arrangements called montages which can be used to localize a waveform on the cortical surface. Display parameters such as sensitivity and filter settings may also modify the appearance of the waveforms. Waveforms may be described based on their frequency and rhythm. Features of the normal adult EEG as well as strengths and limitations of electroencephalography are also discussed in this chapter.

Waltz claimed that although functional differentiation is inherently a feature of the structure of political systems, the units of anarchic systems are functionally undifferentiated. But states clearly perform differentiation functions than nonstate actors. And, as Waltz emphasized, great powers perform managerial functions in international systems that lesser powers do not. Furthermore, his focus on the similarity of great powers ignores this functional differentiation in the system in favor of attention to particular attributes of one type of parts. Turning to the distribution of capabilities, Waltz’s focus on system polarity (the number of great powers) looks not at how capabilities are actually distributed but only where they are concentrated. This is especially unfortunate because the relativity of power means that the places where capabilities are not concentrated is of great structural importance. And Waltz perversely excludes inequalities of power and relations between the strong and the weak from his account of international political structures.

One of Waltz’s major contributions was the idea that political structures can be specified, in a rough first approximation, by ordering principle, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities – an understanding that remains largely taken-for-granted in contemporary IR. This chapter shows, however, that this tripartite conception can neither accurately nor fruitfully depict the structure of three simple anarchic systems: the Hobbesian state of nature, immediate-return forager societies, and great power states systems. In fact, Waltz’s depiction of great power states systems, his implicit model of a generic international system, is wildly inaccurate on all three of his dimensions of structure. Great power states systems, rather than lack hierarchy, are structured by the hierarchical superiority of states and great powers. Great powers, states, and nonstate actors perform different political functions. And the standard Waltzian account of the distribution of capabilities as a matter of the number of great powers (“polarity”) is about as useful as depicting the distribution of wealth in a society by the number of billionaires.

Chapter 3 explores verbal group system and structure. In doing so for English and Spanish, it concentrates on what in SFL is referred to as univariate structure. Univariate structures are structures involving a single variable, which is repeated over and over again; they thus function as the realisation of recursive systems. The unit complexes introduced above (clause complexes, group complexes, word complexes and morpheme complexes) are structures of this kind. And some languages develop more delicate clause and group systems organised along these lines. The recursive tense systems in English and Spanish which we describe in this chapter are good examples. Chinese verbal groups on the other hand do not involve recursive systems realised by iterating structures and so have to be approached from a multivariate perspective.

This chapter focuses on grammatical resources for enacting social relations – mood. A basic distinction is drawn between the systems of formal mood and addressee deference on the one hand and the systems of informal mood, stance and politeness on the other. Subsequently the systems of polarity, modality, participant deference, highlight, comment and expletion are outlined. For each system the relevant choices for meaning are consolidated in system networks and their realisation in structure at clause, group/phrase and word ranks is specified.

Chapter 21 provides a unified analysis of the phenomena known as expletive negation (EN), focusing on Korean data. Contrary to the traditional term “expletive negation”, the chapter proposes that the particular type of negation in a variety of contexts has semantic content that can be analyzed on two dimensions: (i) in terms of licensing, there is a crucial semantic dependency on nonveridicality, involving, e.g., polarity items; (ii) in terms of semantico-pragmatic factors, the crucial and evaluative sense of undesirability or unlikelihood, comparable to uses of subjunctive mood in some languages. The chapter shows that expletive negation in Korean (and Japanese) occurs in typical subjunctive contexts such as polite requests, emphatic sentences, dubitatives, and also shows how the nonveridical semantics of the predicates that select EN can be represented. It proposes that these evaluative contents of EN, modifying the whole utterance, can be captured by the conventional implicature (CI) logic in the sense of Potts (2005). This has the important implication that various subspecies of EN in language are indeed part of grammar.

Speech act constructions bear a close functional relationship to modality and polarity, and also to the information packaging of clauses (Chapters 10–11). Declaratives are associated with the modal category of polarity: declaratives assert or deny the truth of a proposition. Interrogatives (questions, and also responses) are associated with identificational packaging: the information asked about is the focus. They are also associated with epistemic modality: they involve degrees of (un)certainty about an event. Imperative--hortative speech acts are associated with deontic modality: both express a future event that is being at least considered by an agent. Exclamations are associated with the mirative (expression of surprise), which in turn is associated with thetic information packaging. These functional relations between speech act, modality, and clausal information packaging are manifested in the sharing of morphosyntactic strategies between the related categories.

Negation is marked by individual words (such as ‘not’, ‘no’, ‘never’) in a variety of functions (including adjunct, determiner, and head of VP) or by affixes within a word (the suffix ‘·n’t’ or prefixes like ‘un·’ or ‘non·’). Very often there is an effect on the whole clause, and negation is usefully divided into clausal and subclausal negation. There are a number of syntactic tests for clausal negation, including the ‘not even’ test and confirmation tags. Within clausal negation a further distinction exists between verb and non-verb negation.

The grammatical system in which positive and negative contrast is called polarity, and it can be absolute (e.g., ‘no’ & ‘never’) – or approximate (e.g., ‘few’ & ‘rarely’). A number of words or larger expressions have the property of being polarity-sensitive, in the sense that they occur readily in clauses of one polarity but not of the other. Some of these occur equally well in negative and interrogative clauses. We call these non-affirmative items.

The scope of negation is the part of the sentence that the negative applies to semantically.

The polarity (direction and amplitude of deflection) depends on the relative difference between the two electrode potentials. The pointer always deflects to the electrode with the relatively smaller potential (more negative/less positive). Upward deflection is surface negative, and downward deflection is surface positive.

This chapter adds to the growing literature on the interpersonal metafunction by describing and analysing British Sign Language (BSL) from a systemic functional perspective. Whereas other chapters in this volume use the spoken and written modalities to communicate meaning, BSL operates principally in the visual-spatial modality. Nonetheless, various parallels can be drawn with other languages that have been described and analysed in SFL terms. This chapter provides a brief overview of the basics of BSL expression, focusing on the hands, upper body and space in front of a signer to give non-signing readers an insight into the basics of signed communication. Through discussions on the distinction between the planes of expression and content in BSL – and the associated difficulties when attempting to identify the distribution of semiotic labour between these planes – the interpersonal systems of MOOD, POLARITY and MODALITY are exemplified via lexicogrammatical analyses of two dialogic BSL interactions, including argumentation for a Predicator function in BSL. A full interpersonal analysis of the interactions is also presented, alongside proposals of future studies within the interpersonal metafunction and broader, more applied concerns.

We start with an odd mutation in flies that causes their legs to be double-jointed, but what is even stranger is that the extra joints are upside-down. This leads to a discussion of cell polarity not only in flies but also in the inner ear of humans. Two intercellular signaling pathways are involved:PCP and Notch.