The paper analyses the peculiarities of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy towards the so-called post-soviet countries. It focuses on Russia’s policies towards Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and the South Caucasus, with specific attention onhow a complexityof foreign policy players, diverse available tools, and geopolitical as well asideational, economic, and cultural interestsare combined into a coherent strategy. The paper argues that despite common strategic goals –geopolitical security and Great Power identity –the interests of powerful domestic players hinder the creation of a consistent and long-term plan forhow to achieve strategic goals. The domestic institutional logic of Russia as a Limited Access Order (LAO) creates significant obstacles for long-term planning and makes Russian policy in the post-soviet space tactical rather than strategic. The existing patterns of asymmetricaleconomic, political, and cultural interdependence of neighbouringcountries with Russia allows Moscow to achieve short-term victories. These victoriesare, however,mainly determined by the rigid use of hard power tools, which in the long run reduces Russia’s attractivenessand forces neighbouringcountries to look for alternatives

The paper focuses on the strategies and approaches of the main international financial institutions (IFIs) –the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank –towards reforms in the Eastern Partnership(EaP)countries, namely, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. It assesses the main principles, goals, policy instruments, conditionalities and the target groups of these IFIs in their interaction with the authorities of the threecountries and the implementation of country support programs. The two core questions that guide the analysis are, first, the role of IFIs in supporting economic and institutional reforms, which aim at transforminglimited access orders into open access orders, and, second, these IFIs’interaction with other external actors,such as the European Union,that are present in the EaP countries. In addition to the traditional advice on fiscal consolidation and structural reforms, the IFIs have been focused on banking and energy reforms,asrent-seeking and corruptionwere especially wide-spread in thesesectors. Increasing focus on policies aimed at reducing corruption, in particular in the case of Ukraine, isamong the most notable features of theIFIs’operation in those countries. However, such measures often risked being implemented only ‘on paper’, especially after the financial pressure on the ruling elitein recipient countries decreased. The attempts to broaden the political and societal support for agreed policy reforms have become another exceptional element of the support strategy practiced by the IFIs in the EaP countries, in particular in Ukraine. In the latter case, the negotiated arrangements were discussed not only with key figures from the ruling eliteand responsible institutions but also with the opposition, societal activists and other important stakeholders. Despite attempts at broadening reform ownership and coordination with other external donors, the actual effects of the IFIs’strategies on transition reforms have been limited, as evidenced by a history of half-implemented and sometimes reversed policy measures.

The European Union (EU) and the countries in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) framework have developed ambitious and comprehensive programmes for scientific cooperation that provide a major source of funding for science institutes and crucial support for science policies in the region. However, science policies and scientific cooperation areembedded in broader political and governance institutional structures. This paper exploresthe idea that in limited access orders(LAOs), institutions and powerful actors can constrain the design and implementation of scientific cooperation projects in a way that limits their broader transformative potential and societal effects. Empirically, the paper is focused on three EaP countries –Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine –that differ in the forms and intensity of their scientific cooperation with the EU, but also in the types of regimes they have.The paper developstheoretically the possible and likely effects of LAOs on science policies and scientific cooperationandseeksevidence for such effects using sets of interviews with policy experts and scientists. Our empirical analysis shows that the results of scientific cooperation projects rarely spillover to broader society. It is unclear, however, to what extent this is a result of the generally limited capacity of EaP governments for strategic policy making and policy implementation, and to what extent it stems from features characteristic of LAOs. Overall, we find that,in line with our theoretical reasoning, the less open the regime, the more stringent the constraints on science and scientific cooperation it imposes.

Bislang ist nicht systematisch erforscht, welche konkreten Unterstützungsbedarfe und -potentiale in Bezug auf hilfs- und pflegebedürftige Menschen in Krisensituationen vorhanden sind. Damit fehlt es an Grundlagenwissen, um die Verletzlichkeit (im Folgenden Vulnerabilität) dieser wach-senden Bevölkerungsgruppe adäquat bewerten und Maßnahmen zur Vulnerabilitätsreduktion ergreifen zu können. Dieses Desiderat adressiert das BMBF-geförderte Forschungsprojekt KOPHIS »Kontexte von Pflege- und Hilfsbedürftigen stärken«. Ziel des Vorhabens ist es, die Vulnerabilität von hilfs- und pflegebedürftigen Menschen aus einer praxissoziologisch geprägten Untersuchungsperspektive, konkretisiert am Beispiel eines Wintersturmszenarios, differenziert zu bewer-ten. Dazu führte die Katastrophenforschungsstelle (KFS) unter anderem eine deutschlandweite Befragung (N = 2.018) durch. Folgend werden die Ergebnisse dieser Befragung deskriptiv dargestellt.

This book presents an in-depth description of information structure in Isthmus Zapotec, an Otomanguean language spoken by around 50,000 people in southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico, and represents the first book-length treatment of information structure in a Mesoamerican language. Three main observations motivate the study: 1. Strong documentation and a relatively large and active speaker community create a unique opportunity to document information structure in Isthmus Zapotec and to study the language as it is used by speakers in everyday life; 2. As a tonal and verb-initial language, the examination of Isthmus Zapotec represents a chance to explore the possible combinations of tone, intonation, morphology and verb-initial syntax that may occur in the coding of information structure; and 3. The close analysis of spontaneous speech in an endangered language contributes to our theoretical understanding of information structure and informs our knowledge of language documentation practices and revitalization efforts. Overall, the analysis presented here demonstrates the value and need for information structure studies to document and analyze naturally-occurring data.

Seit der Gründung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland haben verschiedene Megatrends die Entwicklungen auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt maßgeblich beeinflusst. Insbesondere die voranschreitende Globalisierung hat zur weiteren Öffnung der deutschen Volkwirtschaft geführt und den sektoralen Strukturwandel, das heißt den Wandel von der Industrie- zur Dienstleistungsgesellschaft beschleunigt. Gleichzeitig hat das durchschnittliche Wirtschaftswachstum seit den 1950er-Jahren bedeutend nachgelassen. Auf dem Arbeitsmarkt wurden zudem schon Jahrzehnte vor der Einführung der Hartz-Reformen Flexibilisierungsmaßnahmen durchgesetzt, um einem Anstieg der Arbeitslosigkeit entgegenzuwirken. Insgesamt unterlag der Arbeitsmarkt in den vergangenen 60 Jahren einem starken Wandel. Wir identifizieren Gewinner und Verlierer dieser Entwicklung in einer multidimensionalen Betrachtung der Entwicklung in den Bereichen Bildung, Arbeitsmarkbeteiligung, Qualifikationsniveau der Beschäftigung und Einkommensentwicklung. Die Analyse wird mit harmonisierten Mikrodaten (Mikrozensus 1962-2013) auf Individualebene und auf dem Haushaltslevel durchgeführt.

The comparative research project LoGoSO Germany China focuses on the integration measures for migrants in four different cities. Berlin and Cologne in Germany and Guangzhou and Hangzhou in China are characterized by particular large numbers of migrants and a well-established philanthropic sector. This report outlines the policy traditions and integration measures of the four cities and compares the challenges for the municipalities as well as the role of social organizations (SOs) in the service provi-sion for migrants. While all cities have their own peculiarities and distinct features, the report finds that the main challenges for the local governments are similar. SOs are an important factor for developing new ideas and structures and all city administrations heavily depend on their assistance. In China, the main way to involve SOs are gov-ernment procurement of services while in Germany, SOs are important partners for the governments but mostly work independently and implement their ideas in their own way.

Companies and organisations are increasingly using machine translation to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and then edit the machine translated output to create a fluent text that adheres to given text conventions. This procedure is known as post-editing.

Translation and post-editing can often be categorised as problem-solving activities. When the translation of a source text unit is not immediately obvious to the translator, or in other words, if there is a hurdle between the source item and the target item, the translation process can be considered problematic. Conversely, if there is no hurdle between the source and target texts, the translation process can be considered a task-solving activity and not a problem-solving activity.

This study investigates whether machine translated output influences problem-solving effort in internet research, syntax, and other problem indicators and whether the effort can be linked to expertise. A total of 24 translators (twelve professionals and twelve semi-professionals) produced translations from scratch from English into German, and (monolingually) post-edited machine translation output for this study. The study is part of the CRITT TPR-DB database. The translation and (monolingual) post-editing sessions were recorded with an eye-tracker and a keylogging program. The participants were all given the same six texts (two texts per task).

Different approaches were used to identify problematic translation units. First, internet research behaviour was considered as research is a distinct indicator of problematic translation units. Then, the focus was placed on syntactical structures in the MT output that do not adhere to the rules of the target language, as I assumed that they would cause problems in the (monolingual) post-editing tasks that would not occur in the translation from scratch task. Finally, problem indicators were identified via different parameters like Munit, which indicates how often the participants created and modified one translation unit, or the inefficiency (InEff) value of translation units, i.e. the number of produced and deleted tokens divided by the final length of the translation. Finally, the study highlights how these parameters can be used to identify problems in the translation process data using mere keylogging data.

This book is an introductory course on formal semantics written in Portuguese. It presents the basics of a compositional interpretive system, using tools taken from logic and mathematics. No previous knowledge about formal approaches to meaning is presupposed. The book can be used as a one-semester course for upper-level undergraduate or by beginning graduate students. It will be of interest not only to linguists and linguistics students, but also to researchers and students from related areas, such as philosophy, cognitive sciences, and artificial intelligence. All chapters end with suggested readings and exercises, making it also suitable for self-learners. The book is divided into 7 chapters. Starting with an introductory chapter on the basics of truth-conditional semantics and formal approaches to meaning (Chapter 1), the core of the book covers semantic phenomena related to predicate saturation (Chapter 2), coordination and negation (Chapter 3), reference (Chapter 4), modification (Chapter 5), quantification (Chapter 6), and binding (Chapter 7).

This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect.

Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered.

As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.

International adjudication is currently under assault, encouraging a number of States to withdraw, or to consider withdrawing, from treaties providing for international dispute settlement. This Working Paper argues that the act of treaty withdrawal is not merely as the unilateral executive exercise of the individual sovereign prerogative of a State. International law places checks upon the exercise of withdrawal, recognising that it is an act that of its nature affects the interests of other States parties, which have a collective interest in constraining withdrawal. National courts have a complementary function in restraining unilateral withdrawal in order to support the domestic constitution. The arguments advanced against international adjudication in the name of popular democracy at the national level can serve as a cloak for the exercise of executive power unrestrained by law. The submission by States of their disputes to peaceful settlement through international adjudication is central, not incidental, to the successful operation of the international legal system.

This volume provides an up-to-date discussion of a foundational issue that has recently taken centre stage in linguistic typology and which is relevant to the language sciences more generally: To what extent can cross-linguistic generalizations, i.e. statistical universals of linguistic structure, be explained by the diachronic sources of these structures? Everyone agrees that typological distributions are the result of complex histories, as “languages evolve into the variation states to which synchronic universals pertain” (Hawkins 1988). However, an increasingly popular line of argumentation holds that many, perhaps most, typological regularities are long-term reflections of their diachronic sources, rather than being ‘target-driven’ by overarching functional-adaptive motivations. On this view, recurrent pathways of reanalysis and grammaticalization can lead to uniform synchronic results, obviating the need to postulate global forces like ambiguity avoidance, processing efficiency or iconicity, especially if there is no evidence for such motivations in the genesis of the respective constructions. On the other hand, the recent typological literature is equally ripe with talk of "complex adaptive systems", "attractor states" and "cross-linguistic convergence". One may wonder, therefore, how much room is left for traditional functional-adaptive forces and how exactly they influence the diachronic trajectories that shape universal distributions. The papers in the present volume are intended to provide an accessible introduction to this debate. Covering theoretical, methodological and empirical facets of the issue at hand, they represent current ways of thinking about the role of diachronic sources in explaining grammatical universals, articulated by seasoned and budding linguists alike.

This volume contains the complete collection of published and unpublished work on German grammar by Tilman N. Höhle. It consists of two parts. The first part is Topologische Felder, a book-length manuscript that was written in 1983 but was never finished nor published. It is a careful examination of the topological properties of German sentences, including a discussion of typological assumptions. The second part assembles all other published and unpublished papers by Höhle on German grammar.

All of these papers were highly influential in German linguistics, in theoretical linguistics in general, and in a specific variant of theoretical linguistics, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Topics covered are clause structure, constituent order, coordination, (verum) focus, word structure, the relationship between relative pronouns and verbs in V2, extraction, and the foundations of a theory of phonology in constraint-based grammar.

Many descriptive grammars report the use of a linguistic pattern at the interface between discourse and syntax which is known generally as tail-head linkage. This volume takes an unprecedented look at this type of linkage across languages and shows that there exist three distinct variants, all subsumed under the hypernym bridging constructions. The chapters highlight the defining features of these constructions in the grammar and their functional properties in discourse. The volume reveals that: - Bridging constructions consist of two clauses: a reference clause and a bridging clause. Across languages, bridging clauses can be subordinated clauses, reduced main clauses, or main clauses with continuation prosody. - Bridging constructions have three variants: recapitulative linkage, summary linkage and mixed linkage. They differ in the formal makeup of the bridging clause. - In discourse, the functions that bridging constructions fulfil depend on the text genres in which they appear and their position in the text. - If a language uses more than one type of bridging construction, then each type has a distinct discourse function. - Bridging constructions can be optional and purely stylistic or mandatory and serve a grammatical purpose. - Although the difference between bridging constructions and clause repetition can be subtle, they maintain their own distinctive characteristics.

Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of 19th century Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with West African relatives like Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin English, as well as with the English-lexifier creoles of the insular and continental Caribbean. This comprehensive description presents a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Pichi. It also includes a collection of texts and wordlists. Pichi features a nominative-accusative alignment, SVO word order, adjective-noun order, prenominal determiners, and prepositions. The language has a seven-vowel system and twenty-two consonant phonemes. Pichi has a two-tone system with tonal minimal pairs, morphological tone, and tonal processes. The morphological structure is largely isolating. Pichi has a rich system of tense-aspect-mood marking, an indicative-subjunctive opposition, and a complex copular system with several suppletive forms. Many features align Pichi with the Atlantic-Congo languages spoken in the West African littoral zone. At the same time, characteristics like the prenominal position of adjectives and determiners show a typological overlap with its lexifier English, while extensive contact with Spanish has left an imprint on the lexicon and grammar as well.

Whether couples pool their resources and behave like a unit or spend their income individually is crucial for social and tax policy. In this paper, I provide a test of the income pooling hypothesis using administrative cross-sectional survey data on expenditures and individual incomes of couple households in Germany. The test is performed within the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) framework, which allows for an endogenous expenditure budget and endogenous individual income contribution shares in an instrumental variables approach. Although the hypothesis is broadly rejected, there are significant differences regarding the marital status, the presence of at least one child in the household and whether the household is located in a former West or East German federal state. Married couples and couples with children are closer to the acceptance of the hypothesis than unmarried couples without children.

The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math and language test scores for adults in Germany, the identification of the long-term causal effects exploits state and year variation in school entry regulations. The results show that there are no effects of school starting age (SSA) on competencies in math and