The seemingly idiosyncratic behavior of numerals in Russian and other Slavic languages has long puzzled linguists. This entry describes the core phenomena, taking Russian as a point of departure. Significant differences in other Slavic languages are also identified, since a central problem of analysis is how variation across Slavic might be accommodated. The core data issues concern case and agreement, the former with respect to the phrase containing the numeral, the latter both internal to the numeral phrase as well as between it and the predicate. Related phenomena exhibited by other quantity expressions are also presented. In the course of the presentation, several conceptual approaches are briefly identified, and the reader is directed to relevant research.

The present chapter discusses agreement in Slavic languages. Slavic languages are interesting because of their canonical subject-verb agreement, which offers a direct insight into this core syntactic relation (syntactic agreement). Additionally, Slavic languages feature well-documented agreement alternations, which suggest involvement of other language components in agreement (semantic and discourse agreement). Finally, strictly local agreement, often devoid of alternations, operating inside the nominal phrase commands theoretical interest.

In what sense is language social? I suggest we distinguish two questions here: First, what degree of social interaction is essential to constituting someone as a language-user? Second, what degree of agreement in meanings must language involve? Each of these questions may be given individualist, interpersonalist, or communitarian answers – not necessarily the same to both. For instance, Davidson is an interpersonalist concerning the first question and an individualist concerning the second. Kripke’s “skeptical solution” is commonly taken to imply a communitarian answer to both of these questions, but in the present chapter I argue that, despite its differences with Davidson’s view of language, it is compatible with constitutive interpersonalism and meaning-individualism. While it may seem as though a genuinely communitarian answer to the first question would imply communitarianism about the second as well, I close the chapter by suggesting that this is not as obvious as it seems.

Kripke’s writings can be understood as suggesting that Wittgenstein, though a non-reductionist, was not a quietist about meaning, that is, did not maintain that nothing philosophically constructive could be said about it. It is Kripke and the quietist who can in fact be seen to have much in common. For, though they both conceive of the skeptical challenge as a meta-semantical challenge, calling for a foundational account of meaning, they both end up with purely semantic, descriptive remarks about meaning. Failing to share his diagnosis of the paradox with Wittgenstein, Kripke does not recognize that, once the skeptical problem is dissolved, as Wittgenstein recommends, a new meta-semantical challenge arises, which is connected to the essential link Wittgenstein emphasizes between meaning and use. Consequently, Kripke does not see that the positive remarks Wittgenstein makes after dismissing the skeptical paradox, especially those concerning agreement, are meant to do some constructive, not just descriptive, work, in response to the problem newly arisen.

Of particular concern in the literature on business is the importance of trust and the disabling consequences of broken trust on business partnerships. Chapter 3 draws on extensive interviews in exploring the issue of trust, and reports novel findings which lead to new theoretical formulations. It has been central in sociological understanding that embeddedness in social and business exchanges generates and maintains interpersonal trust. Should opportunistic behaviour or violation of trust occur it is routinely assumed that such breaches would be exposed or punished, including reputation loss and exclusion from future exchange opportunities. What is less explored is that breaches of trust in many instances may not lead to disclosure of such a behaviour or termination of exchange relationships. Chapter 3 expands our understanding of broken trust. It identifies and explores mechanisms which operate in avoidance of confrontation, exposure and retaliation in instances of breaches of trust and also strategies employed by entrepreneurs in continuation of exchange relationships with violators of trust. The chapter examines underexplored aspects of the complexity and dynamics of business exchange relations and points to a rethinking of trust and social exchange.

This chapter looks at the mechanics of Agreement, and the role that Agreement plays in Case-marking and A-Movement. It starts (Module 3.1) by characterising Agreement, Case-marking and A-Movement as involving a probe-goal relation, and outlines how agreement and case features are valued in the course of a derivation. Module 3.2 goes on to look at how agreement works in expletive it clauses, and contrasts this with multiple agreement in expletive there clause: it also examines conditions on the use of expletives. Module 3.3 then turns to explore the potential role of abstract agreement in Passive, Raising, Exceptional Case-marking, and Control infinitives. Next Module 3.4 investigates non-standard structures involving agreement across a finite clause boundary (e.g. He seems is very active), and at Copy Raising structures (e.g. He looks like he’s winning). The chapter concludes with a Summary (Module 3.5), Bibliography (Module 3.6), and Workbook (Module 3.7), with some Workbook exercise examples designed for self-study, and others for assignments/seminar discussion.

This chapter analyses in detail the major part of Socrates’ long and complex discussion with Critias about the nature of temperance. Central to the discussion is Critias’ proposal that temperance is knowing oneself. It is argued that this discussion brings out several important ways in which Socrates and Critias differ from one another. One is in their respective attitudes towards interpretation: while Socrates is negligent of interpreting the words of others, Critias shows a keen interest in the interpretation of texts. A second difference is in the pair’s conception of self-knowledge. It is argued that Critias’ conception is based on what I call a social authority model, while Socrates’ is based on what I call a reflective model. It is shown that, despite the heavily aporetic nature of the discussion, a substantive conception of temperance can be gleaned from critical engagement with that discussion.

This chapter provides a grammatical sketch of Yimas, a morphologically highly complex polysynthetic language spoken in the Sepik basin region of the northern swampy lowlands of Papua New Guinea. The chapter discusses the extensively elaborated word structure of Yimas and the non-configurational property of its clauses, which lack the familiar syntactic category of phrases. Particular emphasis is placed on the system of agreement on the two principal word classes of the language, nouns and verbs, transitivity and macrorole assignment, alignment, clause linkage and nominalizations.

More and more research is being done that attempts to explain the characteristics, dynamics and consequences of ceasefires. However, in general, ceasefires still remain primarily seen as a way to stop or reduce the overt use of violence and as a preliminary and provisional step in a teleology from war towards peace. Based on the text of ceasefire agreements and the military and political power disparity between signatories at the time an agreement is signed, this chapter presents a broader way of defining and categorising ceasefires. In doing this, the assumption is the mirror image of Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is politics by other means. Actors in civil wars do not only use violence as a way to annihilate their opponents but also use ceasefires to influence a range of other contested areas where actors (armed and other) hope to assert their authority i.e. “peace” or ceasefires are perhaps war by other means too.

The introduction presents a general discussion of syntactic theories, contrasting transformational approaches with those that adopt feature-structural representations to show how they provide differing cognitive models of the human language faculty. The three key components of the OLG framework – Linking Theory (LT), Optimality Theory (OT) and Competing Grammars (CG) – are briefly laid out. These are motivated by phenomena that necessitate multiple levels of case, linking between levels that permits mismatches in some grammars, a means of restricting the linking apparatus while still capturing the data, and a cogent account of morphosyntactic variation. One such phenomenon is introduced: case-marking facts in Insular Scandinavian. The dative–nominative Icelandic predicates are contrasted with the Faroese dative–accusative pattern, along with plural number agreement with the object in Icelandic versus non-agreement in Faroese. Next, an overview is presented of the motivation for each theoretical component of OLG, in turn outlining the advantages of LT, OT and the CG hypothesis. The introduction concludes with an outline of the specific empirical findings from surveys conducted on the Faroe Islands and Iceland, including quirky case predicates and passives, followed by an overview of the book’s structure.

Chapter 4 zooms in on dative-subject predicates in Faroese and presents new survey data from the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The preceding literature on Faroese non-nominative subjects is reviewed before the Faroese and Icelandic surveys on quirky case monotransitives are described in detail. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to case-assignment, agreement and word order, and the author’s proposed analysis is presented along with a factorial typology. Two Faroese surveys and one Icelandic survey testing possible object positions in quirky case sentences are discussed. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the structural object position of nominative arguments in Icelandic, and that of accusatives in Faroese, is the same regular object position of nominative–accusative case frames. On the other hand, the results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the object position is different between the two languages (and hence that such a difference is responsible for the difference in case-marking). These conclusions are discussed in detail in the OLG analysis section, which attributes the difference to constraint interaction, particularly a different ranking of a pair of constraints enforcing structural object case (accusative) and agreement with a nominative argument, respectively.

Cebes’ challenge leads to what is typically called Socrates’ four “immortality arguments,” which structure the core of the dialogue. Despite this common label, Cebes’ challenge does not ask Socrates to show that the soul is immortal, and Socrates’ first three arguments do not claim to show immortality. Instead, Cebes challenges Socrates to address people’s fear that the soul disperses and so is destroyed when someone dies; not being destroyed upon death is, I argue, different from being immortal. After discussing Cebes’ challenge, the chapter turns to the cyclical argument, providing a new account of its basic structure. It is based on an agreement that does not require Socrates to say anything here about the nature of the soul. Nonetheless, the argument is important for aiming to show that a Pythagorean view is correct – reincarnation – by understanding death and rebirth as part of a much larger phenomenon: the coming to be and passing away of opposite things.

Chapter 12 considers the syntactic structure of Kaqchikel sentences in more detail. There are multiple syntactic routes to the VOS order. Different VOS languages may have different syntactic structures. There are two major proposals regarding how Mayan VOS word order is grammatically obtained. We propose in this chapter that Kaqchikel, and possibly Chol as well, derive the VOS order through a right-specifier route, rather than a predicate fronting route.