Academic literature on the topic 'Past references'

This study employs the methods of comparative and variationist linguistics in a new data source, letters by semiliterate 19th-century Liberian immigrants, to confirm and extend the findings of earlier studies on the past temporal reference system of Early African American English (AAE). In the first half of the study, the strongest linguistic constraints on the choice of bare verb forms match precisely those described for large-scale studies of spoken (diaspora) Early AAE: the bare form results from consonant cluster simplification in weak verbs, and from lexical preferences attested through the history of English in the case of strong verbs. Conditioning factors proposed to result from earlier creole influence on Early AAE (anteriority, remoteness, or clause type) did not play a significant role. The second half of the study concerns multiple verb forms, especially the present perfect, described by previous studies as marginal or non-existent in AAE. In contrast, present perfect forms in this corpus are frequent and favoured by all the English-derived conditioning factors tested in this study: ambiguity of temporal orientation and relation, recent or continuing events, negation, extended time adverbials, and since clauses, as well as by non-statives. This conditioning, especially taken in concert with the variability of bare verb forms, suggests that the present perfect has long been part of AAE, with its rarity in other corpora due to genre-based differences in the frequency of contexts requiring its use. The study provides new evidence in the history of the development of African American varieties of English, as well as demonstrating the utility of variationist analysis in resolving problems of linguistic system membership. Combining variationist and comparative analytical methods, it places AAE within the context of the development of the English language.

Different forms convey future temporal reference in Portuguese. The recognition of these forms is a starting point towards examining their actual usage in the language. Of four acknowledged future forms, only two, i.e. the periphrastic ir + infinitive and the present variants, are productively used in contemporary spoken Brazilian Portuguese. There was therefore a need for reconstructing the future temporal reference system of early Portuguese, in order to shed light on the development of these forms in the future sector. This study employs the methods of comparative and variationist linguistics in diachronic and synchronic data to analyse this development. These methods made it possible to identify the conditioning factors contributing to the selection of the variants in future contexts throughout the centuries and establish the direction of the linguistic evolution. The first analyses concern the use of the future variants in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. They reveal that three variants were productively used to express the future: the synthetic future, haver + infinitive and the present. The synthetic future, which is acknowledged as the default form by prescriptive literature, had the highest overall probability of occurrence at that time, and was mainly favoured by contingent events, stative verbs and affirmative statements. The second analyses concern the use of the variants in the nineteenth century: the synthetic future, haver + infinitive, the present and ir + infinitive. In that century, the synthetic future lost two of its favoured contexts, contingent events and affirmative utterances, to the present variant and ir + infinitive, respectively. That century witnessed the emergence of an adverbial specification pattern in Brazilian Portuguese that has also been observed in French. The last analyses are related to the use of the future variants in the twentieth century. The results for the written data reveal that (i) haver + infinitive moved away from the future sector; (ii) the synthetic future declined; and (iii) the use of ir + infinitive highly increased. In the spoken data, only contingency and adverbial specification retained the present variant in the language. Ir + infinitive has almost completed its process of grammaticalization. This research reveals that the future variants have been in variation for centuries in Portuguese, and have been involved in a complex process of incursion and withdrawal from the future context, which ultimately changed the representation of future temporal reference in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese. The variationist methodology makes it possible to ascertain that the difference in frequency of variant usage in the different centuries is correlated to their displacement of or expansion into specific linguistic contexts.

Community-university projects have been a common practice in most western countries since the 1960s. However, such projects are very rare in Israel. This thesis explores the possible methods by which architecture and urban planning schools and low-income communities can cooperate and examines the ways these methods can be implemented in Israel.<br>The research investigates several community-university projects practiced in North America between the 1960s and 1990s. A set of interviews conducted with directors of schools of architecture and urban planning as well as with different actors in community-based organizations in Israel enlarges, hopefully, the understanding of the eventual possibility for such projects to exist in Israel.<br>This research reveals that although involvement of Israeli architecture and urban planning students in community issues has been so far rather limited, there are both demand and will among schools of architecture and community-based organizations to cooperate in the future. In conclusions, basic guidelines for a community-university project are given, tailor made for the Israeli context.

The thesis explores ways in which public presentations of history and archaeology might be enjoyed by a wider audience than they are at present. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding cultural barriers that deter certain groups who are otherwise interested in the past. In order to do this it is necessary to understand the role of the past and of institutions such as museums in contemporary culture. A survey representative of all adults shows that, rather than being a commodity as some claim, the past is used in many different ways as a discourse about the present. In addition, claims that presentations of the past act as agents of the dominant ideology are unfounded because 'the dominated' tend not to go to them. As they have not been socialized into the 'code' of museum-visiting, they find the museum's image intimidating and exclude themselves. Archaeology itself suffers from an outdated and unclear image. Archaeological societies, like museums, are participated in predominantly by the better-educated and the affluent. Fieldwork is carried out by a wider range of people, but is perceived by the public to be in the same category as treasure-hunting. This is partly due to archaeology's image, and partly to the exclusion of amateurs from excavations. A study is then made of ways in which people who tend not to go to museums or participate in archaeology do gain their sense of the past, in order to discover ways in which these deterrents might be removed. It is found that most past-related activities are done by active heritage visitors. Those who tend not to participate in them gain their sense of the past in less tangible ways, through memories, family history and attachment to place. In conclusion, two different ways of experiencing the past are isolated, personal, and non-personal or 'heritage'. Participation in the latter is dominated by the better-educated and the affluent, who adopt it as part of a cultured lifestyle appropriate to their social position. Museum-visiting and membership of archaeological societies is emblematic of affiliation to this group. It will therefore not be possible for museums or societies to attract a totally representative audience. Museums are relatively 'open' institutions, however, so it will be possible to widen participation even further, and ways of achieving this are suggested.