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The present article explores perceptions and cultural constructions of the terms capitalism or capitalistic West among ex-Soviet, highly qualified Jewish migrants from Russia and Ukraine after their emigration to Germany between 1990 and 1996. It seems that migration offers a unique opportunity to migrants to realise knowledge that is normally taken for granted, behaviour schemes and values, and to reflect on them. How do they acquire such presumed capitalist knowledge of the new society and new social world, how do they create it, and with what concrete contents do they connect the illusion about monolithic cultural, economic and political capital, the illusion which contributes to group formation and which serves as action orientation? As my research shows, immigrants try to disparage much of what appeared to them in the Soviet Union as normative, right and appropriate; now they often act by way of categories, which were defined in the previous context as "capitalist" and were interpreted as immoral. Without exact ideas or knowledge about behaviour codes, unspoken norms and silent values from the new society, many immigrants orient themselves towards the opposite of what was counted as morally proper in the origin society. Simultaneously they revive old system through the establishing and development of a Russian language enclave. Nevertheless this enclave is not located in a vacuum of "dusty" memories from the past, but build transnational cross-border space connected and corresponding to the processes of to-day's CIS and with the life of those relatives and friends who still live there, und with whom the emigrants share intensive social networks.
Modifiability by almost has been used as a test for the quantificational force of a DP without stating the meaning of almost explicitly. The aim of this paper is to give a semantics for almost applying across categories and to evaluate the validity of the almost test as a diagnosis for universal quantifiers. It is argued that almost is similar to other cross-categorial modifiers such as at least or exactly in referring to alternatives ordered on a scale. I propose that almost evaluates alternatives in which the modified expression is replaced by a value close by on the corresponding Horn scale. It is shown that a semantics for almost that refers to scalar alternatives derives the correct truth conditions for almost and explains selectional restrictions. At the same time, taking the semantics of almost seriously invalidates the almost test as a simple diagnosis for the nature of quantifiers.
Prostaglandin (PG) E2 (PGE2) plays a predominant role in promoting colorectal carcinogenesis. The biosynthesis of PGE2 is accomplished by conversion of the cyclooxygenase (COX) product PGH2 by several terminal prostaglandin E synthases (PGES). Among the known PGES isoforms, microsomal PGES type 1 (mPGES-1) and type 2 (mPGES-2) were found to be overexpressed in colorectal cancer (CRC); however, the role and regulation of these enzymes in this malignancy are not yet fully understood. Here, we report that the cyclopentenone prostaglandins (CyPGs) 15-deoxy-Δ12,14-PGJ2 and PGA2 downregulate mPGES-2 expression in the colorectal carcinoma cell lines Caco-2 and HCT 116 without affecting the expression of any other PGES or COX. Inhibition of mPGES-2 was subsequently followed by decreased microsomal PGES activity. These effects were mediated via modulation of the cellular thiol-disulfide redox status but did not involve activation of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ or PGD2 receptors. CyPGs had antiproliferative properties in vitro; however, this biological activity could not be directly attributed to decreased PGES activity because it could not be reversed by adding PGE2. Our data suggest that there is a feedback mechanism between PGE2 and CyPGs that implicates mPGES-2 as a new potential target for pharmacological intervention in CRC.
In the paper by Bolte [Acta Cryst. (2006), E62, m1609-m1610], the chemical name in the title and the chemical diagram are incorrect. The correct title is {5-[4'-(2,2,5,5-Tetramethyl-3-pyrroline-1-oxyl-3-carbonyloxy)biphenyl-4-ylethynyl]-2,3,7,8,12,13,17,18-octaethylporphyrinato}copper(II) benzene solvate' and the correct diagram is given below.
... This year's Scientific Symposium of the University Library is already number six in the row. It was again prepared and organised like some of the previous conferences together with our North American partners. This means that a continuous specialists’ discussion and a professional partnership have been already installed. All librarians and information managers are invited to learn more about the results of this cooperation every year when it's time for the next Symposium during Frankfurt Book Fair. ...
Douglas G. Morris's excellent book poses a broad question: what happened to the rule of law in Germany after 1919? How severe was the collapse of judicial impartiality and competence? Can one doubt whether the Weimar Republic ever qualified as a republic, "if a necessary part of a republic is a judiciary committed to democratic ideals and impartial justice" (p. 1)? That there was a collapse in judicial impartiality is hardly in doubt. As early as 1922, Emil Julius Gumbel provided statistical proof: between late 1918 and summer 1922, a total of 354 political murders committed by perpetrators affiliated with the political right had been punished with one life sentence plus 90 years and 2 months imprisonment; in 326 cases, there had been no punishment at all. By contrast, the 22 murders committed by left-wing sympathizers in the same period had been punished with 10 death sentences, 3 life sentences and 248 years and 9 months imprisonment; only 4 perpetrators escaped (p. 1). To be sure, this statistic may indicate more about the political leanings of police officials and prosecutors investigating cases than of judges who rule on the evidence put before them, but the divergence in sentencing remains remarkable. Morris reformulates this insight to ask how Germany's judges, trained to apply the law in an impartial and technically correct manner, could become raving political partisans willing to twist the law in favor of a particular political position. He does not seek to provide a comprehensive answer, but focuses on cases which involved Max Hirschberg, a Jewish attorney who practiced in Munich from 1911 to 1934, when he escaped to Italy. Hirschberg moved on to the United States in 1939, where he died in 1964. Hirschberg was not only involved in the major political trials of the day in 1920s and early 1930s Munich, but also developed a systematic interest in judicial error, which culminated in a major work on Das Fehlurteil im Strafprozeß, published in 1960. Morris is interested primarily in how trials were conducted. This in-depth analysis is divided into three blocks: political trials in 1922 and 1925, when Germany's war guilt and the causes of defeat were treated in libel suits and criminal prosecutions; non-political cases in which Hirschberg succeeded in having judicial errors reversed; finally, political cases linked with the rise of the Nazi party from 1926. In each case, Morris offers a clear exposition of the facts and substantial as well as legal issues in the case, a step-by-step analysis of trials and appeals processes, and an evaluation of the outcome. The main lines of argument which emerge from these analyses are, first, that some problems were peculiar to Bavaria. The main issue was the existence of people's courts, introduced during Bavaria's brief socialist phase to provide swift justice. The people's courts did not just increase judges' freedom of action by abolishing procedural safeguards, but also protected judges from professional scrutiny and criticism because there were to be no appeals. One of Hirschberg's major victories in the cases of the early 1920s was successful lobbying for their reintroduction. Second, Munich's judges may have been particularly traumatized by the brief revolutionary episode (and by the political preferences of Bavaria's ministries, which were systematically anti-Republican); moreover, they were called upon to decide a stream of political trials, some of which--notably libel trials--effectively sought the impossible, namely a definitive judicial ruling on the validity of a certain interpretation of history or a personal political position. Third, in spite of significant personal variations in style and substance, even after the reintroduction of appeals judges tended to use their freedom of maneuver in an anti-left-wing (which implicitly meant pro-National Socialist) sense. However, until 1933, this state of affairs did not challenge the ties which bound the profession. The Bavarian ministry of justice failed in its attempts to have Hirschberg disbarred in the early 1920s. Even when Hirschberg was released from so-called protective custody in 1934, most of his colleagues rallied round the decorated war veteran, allowing him to retain an access to the court building that was denied most Jewish attorneys. Finally, the problems of the justice system affected non-political cases as well, which may have deepened distrust of Republican institutions. The meticulously researched book benefits immensely from its author's experience as a practicing attorney familiar with courtroom drama and legal technicalities, which are vividly recreated and succinctly explained. The focus on Hirschberg illustrates both the immense obstacles a defense attorney faced and the victories an exceptionally gifted attorney could still win. Even though the courtroom perspective disregards some of the motivations which have their roots outside court--be it the social structure of and career perspectives in Munich's legal profession or political pressures on judges--these are not the main focus of Morris's research. Finally, one could argue about the optimist portrayal of pre-1918 German justice in politically sensitive cases. The clear focus on Weimar trials ensures that the book is no biography. Although Morris includes brief chapters on Hirschberg's youth and his years in exile, not much information is offered on Hirschberg's private life, the economics of his legal practice or his time in exile. But this decision does not diminish Morris's achievement in providing a fascinating insight into the workings of Weimar justice.
The volume consists of eight essays with a precise focus: the study of the "dynamics of social exclusion" as reflected in data available for 1994 to 1996, when a detailed survey of a sample of households in EU countries, the "European Community Households Panel," was conducted. On the basis of these data, the authors document the extent and prevalence of poverty generally and specifically in regard to particular risk groups defined in terms of age, health and personal circumstances (young adults, lone parents, people with sickness or disability and retirees).[1] The analysis was carried out for five countries: Austria, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the United Kingdom, which were taken to be representative of the extremes of EU membership: north and south; wealthy and poor; large and small. The essays discuss income poverty (measured as incomes at 40, 50 or 60 percent of median incomes) as well as housing problems, access to basic necessities like food and utilities, access to consumer durables and social interactions. The essays document not only that the extent of poverty varies between countries--a well-known fact--but also that its causes and effects continue to differ even in an increasingly united western Europe. Austria had the lowest proportion of the population in poor households (17 percent--compared to 18 percent in Germany, 21 percent in the United Kingdom and Greece, and 24 percent in Portugal). While sickness and disability were likely to impoverish individuals in all the countries studied, this was particularly true of Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom (that is, northern Europe); retirement was more likely to result in income poverty in the south. The north-south divide was less relevant for parents; single income households with children were particularly likely to suffer from income poverty in the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal. Poverty was more likely to be persistent than merely a brief phase in the life cycle. Persistence rates of income poverty were around 80 percent in Greece and Britain, above 70 percent in Portugal and above 60 percent in Germany and Austria. But the effects were rather different. In the United Kingdom, high persistence rates of income poverty coincided with low persistence rates (34 percent) of amenities deprivation, whereas the persistence of necessities deprivation was relatively low in Greece at 39 percent. The volume was conceived as a contribution to policy decision-making in the aftermath of the 2000 Lisbon Declaration, which focused (among other things) on poverty and encouraged member states to set more concrete targets for dealing with social exclusion. Some member states did so; Britain, for example--a country where income poverty was particularly likely to result in deprivation of basic necessities--vowed to abolish "poverty" by 2020. The volume is a treasure-trove of data and empirical analysis; it makes essential, though at times rather trying, reading for anyone interested in the extent of social exclusion, and the likelihood of falling into or escaping from it. It also provides ample proof--if any were needed--that governments seeking to combat social exclusion have to set different priorities, because they are not attacking the same phenomenon. Unfortunately, the empirical as well as the more conceptual contributions reveal some of the approach's and the book's shortcomings.[2] The book's very advantage--providing a precise research agenda--is also a drawback. With its focus on three years, and on the life-cycle rather than more stable factors such as ethnicity, occupation or regional origin, the volume presents a particular image of the risk (and duration) of deprivation, which may be more or less comprehensive for different countries. The narrow temporal focus makes one wonder whether measuring poverty's "persistence" of poverty makes much sense for such a relatively short time. Such doubt is enhanced when considering some of the oddities in the results: how did households that remained poor in the United Kingdom manage to get their hands on consumer durables? (The same question could be asked for the sudden increase in access to necessities in Greek households.) Illustrating the empirical findings with more concrete examples would have been helpful, particularly when they are counterintuitive, for instance the statement that patterns of poverty in eastern and western Germany were converging in spite of the continuing divergence in unemployment patterns. Another question--admittedly suggested by events of the last several years--is whether ethnicity, regional origins or occupations are not more important in determining the extent and duration of social exclusion than life cycle. These factors were not, and partly could not be, measured on the basis of the data used, but have moved to the center of policy debates today. This matter relates to another issue the book does not address: who is to blame for poverty, and what roles have governments and the European Union assumed in determining poverty patterns and trends? Have past policy choices--for instance, cutting benefits; increasing "flexibility" in labor markets; encouraging the emigration of jobs (such things the European Union is frequently accused of doing)--made a difference? Is combating poverty a serious policy agenda, or merely window-dressing to make the "reforms" that were key to the Lisbon agenda for modernizing the EU more palatable? Europe seems to be facing an internal contradiction between the agenda of competition and privatization (which results in higher access costs to essential services for "low value" customers) and the agenda of abolishing poverty. This contradiction is partly sustained by U.K. data. Which element is and should be more important to the European Union or national governments is hotly debated, but of course serious contributions to the debate require a comprehensive review of the present state of affairs through the type of careful studies of which this volume is an excellent example.
The articles in this volume represent anthropological approaches to the study of external and internal boundaries in Europe. The authors raise fascinating methodological and empirical questions by approaching European societies from the perspective of a discipline usually working on the basis of greater cultural distance between scholars and the objects of their research. Moreover, the volume tackles a subject usually understood as a political project and a political problem, E.U. Europe, in an original non-political-science perspective. The volume's case studies are all based on bottom-up views of Europe, with fieldwork the methodology of choice. The first articles focus on institutions. Cris Shore and Daniela Baratieri's article focuses on the ambivalent results of attempts by European schools, which cater mainly to Eurocrats in Brussels and Luxemburg, to replace nationalism with a sense of European identity or nationhood, while Gregory Feldman discusses Estonian programs for the integration of Russian-speakers and Davide Però addresses the position of Italy's left-wing parties and public to the "new immigration." While these essays argue that "Europe" may not be as destructive to national (institutional) boundaries or the nation state as is often supposed, the next block of articles tackles migration across boundaries in a more conventional perspective, focusing on particular immigrant groups. Helen Kopnina discusses Russians in London and Amsterdam, while Christina Moutsou focuses upon immigrants in Brussels and Jacqueline Waldren examines Bosnians in Mallorca. To me, the case study of Turkish migrants in West Berlin by Sabine Mannitz is particularly intriguing, because it uses the peculiar experience of a lesson on Jews' fate in the Holocaust in which the teacher cast immigrants as permanent outsiders in Germany to explore pupils' sense of boundaries, and the East-German West-German divide appeared to loom much larger for immigrants than that between foreigners and Germans. The last section focuses on concrete and contested boundaries in European states and towns: William F. Kelleher, Jr. discusses Northern Ireland, Greek towns are the focus of Venetia Evergeti and Eleftheria Deltsou's article and South Tyrol is examined by Jaro Stacul. The volume makes for diverse and diversifying reading, and can only be highly recommended to anyone interested in innovative perspectives on the fate of the European project.
Mark Kopytman - Voices of Memories: Essays and Dialogues, ed. Yulia Kreinin, Israel Music Institute, Tel Aviv, 2004, 288 p. A Doctor of Medicine who is also a composer is a rarity. A composer who is also a Doctor of Medicine is even rarer. Dr. Med. Mark Kopytman, however, is above all a composer, and one of Israel´s foremost contemporary composers at that. "Mark Kopytman - Voices of Memories" is a Festschrift - a volume of collected essays edited by Yulia Kreinin, to celebrate his 70th birthday. It is a formidable literary monument to honour this outstanding personality.
Several studies have associated the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis with anuran population declines worldwide. To date, the fungus has been found in Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Europe. However, it has never been reported to occur in the Atlantic forest or Brazil. Based on morphological, histological, and molecular data, we encountered evidence of B. dendrobatidis infection in a high-altitude stream-dwelling Brazilian anuran species, Hylodes magalhaesi (Leptodactylidae). One population (Municipality of Camanducaia, State of Minas Gerais) was surveyed from 2001 to 2005. Tadpoles lacking teeth were observed and collected in 2004. Histological and molecular analyses identified infection by B. dendrobatidis. Although infected tadpoles seem nowadays to co-exist with the disease, our results are alarming due to the highly endangered situation of the Brazilian Atlantic forest and its fauna. Effects of the chytrid infection on the studied population are still unknown. Further investigations are needed to provide information on its distribution in relation to other populations of H. magalhaesi.
Im Dezember 2005, gewannen Evo Morales und seine Partei, die Bewegung zum Sozialismus (MAS), mit über 50 Prozent der Stimmen die Wahlen in Bolivien. Dieses war das stärkste Wahlergebnis einer Partei seit Einführung der Demokratie 1982. Morales wurde im Januar 2006 als der zweite indigene Präsident Lateinamerikas eingeweiht. Die Einweihungszeremonie war gleichzeitig ein Triumph der anti-neoliberalen Bewegung Boliviens, welche im Wasserkrieg im Jahr 2000 und im Steuer- und Gaskrieg im Jahr 2003 ihren Höhepunkt erreichte. Morales und MAS unterstützten die sogenannten Neoliberalen Kriege. Der Sieg der MAS und von Morales in den Wahlen regt Spekulationen an, dass der Neoliberale Konsens in der Elite, der Bolivien zwei Jahrzehnte lang regierte, gebrochen ist. Die Frage nach einem Konsenswechsel ergibt sich nicht nur von Morales’ und MAS Partizipation in den Neoliberalen Kriegen, sondern auch weil die MAS viele Forderungen der Proteste 2000 und 2003 in ihr Parteiprogramm aufgenommen haben. Während sich Morales’ anti-neoliberale Denkweisen offensichtlich in der bolivianischen Bevölkerung großer Beliebtheit erfreuen, ist es nicht erwiesen, dass sich diese Popularität auf die Elite des Landes erstreckt. Der potentielle Konsensbruch bezüglich des Neoliberalismus in der Elite entstand jedoch nicht von ungefähr. Im Gegenteil: er baute sich über die gesamte Geschichte Boliviens hinweg auf und wurde von den Rahmenbedingungen im Land begünstigt. Mit Hilfe der kritischen Theorie von Antonio Gramsci und Robert W. Cox, welche in Kapitel 2 vorgestellt wird, erforscht diese Magisterarbeit ob der Neoliberale Konsens in der Bolivianischen Elite gebrochen ist. Mit Unterstützung des Konzeptes, dass Geschichte und Produktionsbeziehungen Gesellschaften und die Gegebenheiten in ihnen den hegemonialen Diskurs formen, stellt diese Arbeit in den Kapiteln 3 Boliviens Geschichte bis dato dar und bespricht in Kapitel 4 wichtige Themen der aktuellen Bolivianischen Politik und Wirtschaft. Die Umsetzung der neoliberalen Ideologie und Richtlinien in Bolivien wurde von den USA, den hegemonialen Institutionen (der Internationalen Währungsfond und der Weltbank) sowie der sich in der Regierung abwechselnden Elite propagiert und implementiert. Die neoliberalen Programme der 1980er und 1990er wurden trotz bitteren Protesten seitens der Bevölkerung beibehalten, die sich gegen die negativen Konsequenzen der Programme wehrten. Da die kritischen Theorie Konflikte als Mechanismen sieht, die Machtverhältnisse verändern und einen Hegemon/ein hegemoniales System stürzen können, werden auch die Neoliberalen Kriege Boliviens besprochen. Insbesondere im Steuer und Gaskrieg 2003 baute sich ein anti-hegemonialer Diskurs auf. Dieser Konflikt, in dem die MAS mitagierte, wird besonders begutachtet weil er den Präsidenten Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (der neoliberale Kopf Boliviens) stürzte. Auf diesen Erkenntnissen basierend, wird in Kapitel 5 die Zeitungsanalyse vorgestellt. Diese wurde in zwei Zeiträumen vorgenommen: 2. bis 19. Oktober 2003 und 22. Januar bis 19. Februar 2006 (erster Monat der MAS-Regierung). Es wurden drei Zeitungen analysiert, welche je eine politische Strömung in der Bolivianischen Elite repräsentieren (La Prensa, konservative Tageszeitung; La Epoca, moderate Wochenzeitung, El Juguete Rabioso, ein alle zwei Wochen erscheinende linke Zeitung). Die Befunde der Zeitungsanalyse zeigten, dass die Bolivianische Elite sich sowohl gegen die anti-neoliberale Politik der MAS wendet, aber auch den Neoliberalismus und die Internationalen Finanzinstitutionen den Rücken gekehrt hat. Sie bewies auch, dass die Elite im Jahr 2003 erneut die Massen zu ihrem eigenen Vorteil missbrauchten, in dem sie ihre Wut, die gegen die Privatisierung der Gas Reserven gerichtet war, auf den regierenden Präsidenten (Sanchez de Lozada) umlenkten. Insofern zeigte die Zeitungsanalyse auch, dass ohne die Zustimmung der Elite in Bolivien ein friedlicher Systemwechsel unwahrscheinlich ist. Wie im Endfazit (Kapitel 6) beschrieben wird, hofft die bolivianische Elite, dass sich die MAS und Morales in inner- bzw. zwischen-parteilichen Scharmützeln verfängt, damit sich in der Zwischenzeit eine Alternative zwischen anti-hegemonialen und hegemonialem Diskurs findet, welche den Reichtum und die Macht der Elite erhält. Dies dürfte sich als schwierig erweisen, weil die politische Mitte Boliviens leer steht.
We present a higher-order call-by-need lambda calculus enriched with constructors, case-expressions, recursive letrec-expressions, a seq-operator for sequential evaluation and a non-deterministic operator amb that is locally bottom-avoiding. We use a small-step operational semantics in form of a single-step rewriting system that defines a (nondeterministic) normal order reduction. This strategy can be made fair by adding resources for bookkeeping. As equational theory we use contextual equivalence, i.e. terms are equal if plugged into any program context their termination behaviour is the same, where we use a combination of may- as well as must-convergence, which is appropriate for non-deterministic computations. We show that we can drop the fairness condition for equational reasoning, since the valid equations w.r.t. normal order reduction are the same as for fair normal order reduction. We evolve different proof tools for proving correctness of program transformations, in particular, a context lemma for may- as well as mustconvergence is proved, which restricts the number of contexts that need to be examined for proving contextual equivalence. In combination with so-called complete sets of commuting and forking diagrams we show that all the deterministic reduction rules and also some additional transformations preserve contextual equivalence.We also prove a standardisation theorem for fair normal order reduction. The structure of the ordering <=c a is also analysed: Ω is not a least element, and <=c already implies contextual equivalence w.r.t. may-convergence.
We present a higher-order call-by-need lambda calculus enriched with constructors, case-expressions, recursive letrec-expressions, a seq-operator for sequential evaluation and a non-deterministic operator amb, which is locally bottom-avoiding. We use a small-step operational semantics in form of a normal order reduction. As equational theory we use contextual equivalence, i.e. terms are equal if plugged into an arbitrary program context their termination behaviour is the same. We use a combination of may- as well as must-convergence, which is appropriate for non-deterministic computations. We evolve different proof tools for proving correctness of program transformations. We provide a context lemma for may- as well as must- convergence which restricts the number of contexts that need to be examined for proving contextual equivalence. In combination with so-called complete sets of commuting and forking diagrams we show that all the deterministic reduction rules and also some additional transformations keep contextual equivalence. In contrast to other approaches our syntax as well as semantics does not make use of a heap for sharing expressions. Instead we represent these expressions explicitely via letrec-bindings.
In this paper, we investigate the usefulness of a wide range of features for their usefulness in the resolution of nominal coreference, both as hard constraints (i.e. completely removing elements from the list of possible candidates) as well as soft constraints (where a cumulation of violations of soft constraints will make it less likely that a candidate is chosen as the antecedent). We present a state of the art system based on such constraints and weights estimated with a maximum entropy model, using lexical information to resolve cases of coreferent bridging.
The paper presents a novel approach to explaining word order variation in the early Germanic languages. Initial observations about verb placement as a device marking types of rhetorical relations made on data from Old High German (cf. Hinterhölzl & Petrova 2005) are now reconsidered on a larger scale and compared with evidence from other early Germanic languages. The paper claims that the identification of information-structural domains in a sentence is best achieved by taking into account the interaction between the pragmatic features of discourse referents and properties of discourse organization.
Setswana distinguishes between conjunctive and disjunctive verb forms in the present positive tense. Creissels (1996) shows that this is also true of a number of other tenses (present negative, future positive and perfect positive). This work is used as a starting point to investigate the conjunctive/disjunctive distinction in my own Setswana data. Further to those presented in Creissels, there is data on the past and past progressive tenses, and environments such as relatives and subordinates. Creissels' analysis is supported by different examples, including those that do not utilise a frame intended to limit boundary effects. There are also examples not within this frame that raise questions about how flexible the conjunctive/disjunctive system can be. This paper is a work in progress.
Madeira is bryologically insofar very interesting, as it harbours (like the other Macaronesian Islands) relics of the bryoflora of the Tertiary of continental Europe. Originated in the Tertiary at various times, these volcanic islands were mainly colonized from Europe. Whereas many species got extinct in Europe during the glaciations of the Quaternary, these elements were able to survive in these islands. So we are faced there with an ancient bryoflora, especially in the laurel forests, amongst other phytogeographic elements, mainly mediterranean species.
We consider an imperfectly competitive loan market in which a local relationship lender has an information advantage vis-à-vis distant transaction lenders. Competitive pressure from the transaction lenders prevents the local lender from extracting the full surplus from projects, so that she inefficiently rejects marginally profitable projects. Collateral mitigates the inefficiency by increasing the local lender’s payoff from precisely those marginal projects that she inefficiently rejects. The model predicts that, controlling for observable borrower risk, collateralized loans are more likely to default ex post, which is consistent with the empirical evidence. The model also predicts that borrowers for whom local lenders have a relatively smaller information advantage face higher collateral requirements, and that technological innovations that narrow the information advantage of local lenders, such as small business credit scoring, lead to a greater use of collateral in lending relationships. JEL classification: D82; G21 Keywords: Collateral; Soft infomation; Loan market competition; Relationship lending