Purpose Clauses Research Articles

Making death (in)different: discursive legitimation in death trials

ABSTRACT Adopting Van Leeuwen’s model of legitimation, this study critically scrutinizes the ways in which the State validates a death sentence and uncovers patterns of legitimizing strategies, along with their lexico-grammatical manifestations in the penalty phase of capital trials, including moralization, rationalization and authorization. The findings reveal that moralization plays a part in constructing “us-them” boundaries through negative evaluative lexis, agency-oriented transitivity patterns, as well as oppositional reference terms. The use of rationalization, observed in reason and purpose clauses as well as legal lexis and future predicates, emphasizes the legal ideology of facticity, impartiality, and objectivity at the expense of humanistic consideration of the person on trial. Authorization bestows power by incorporating various authoritative voices as well as the jurors’ verdicts in the guilt phase of the trial. It is argued that in their legitimating practice, the State denies capital defendants the full consideration that the law requires and fails to differentiate and justify the necessity of the lethal choice over life imprisonment. This, in turn, potentially leads to the creation of death-inclined jurors.

Argument and Adjunct Purpose Constructions in Hill Mari

In this study the author suggests a new systemic model of purpose constructions in Hill Mari - a Finno-Ugric language, spoken by approximately 30 000 people living mostly in Mari El Republic, located in Volga river basin. (Here and thereafter (if the opposite is not stated overtly) the term “purpose clause” or “purpose construction” is used in its traditional wide sense and should not be confused with “Purpose clauses” opposed to “Rationale clauses” in R. A. Faraci’s terms (1974).) There are two core strategies of marking the embedded predicate which can be used in contexts denoting purpose in Hill Mari. Firstly, an imperative form can be used. This option is reserved for different-subjects contexts. Secondly, an embedded predicate can be marked as infinitive. Notably, such a clause allows for its subject to be expressed overtly, in which case it is marked by Dative. Typically, though, the subject of an infinitival purposive clause is omitted and obligatorily controlled by a certain argument of a matrix clause. Finally, there are two peripheral constructions - those of perfect tense and non-past tense. Both are quite marginal and not universally accepted. This study also discusses the interaction between aforementioned strategies and purpose complementizers (conjunctions) š (borrowed from Russian) and. However, what constitutes the main theoretical concern of this study are certain peculiar traits of the subordinate null subject’s behavior. The paper adopts a standard generative approach (within Chomsky’s minimalist program) and argues that Hill Mari purpose constructions can be divided into two groups, namely, argument ones, occupying the position of VP complement, and adjunct ones, which are attached as VP adjuncts. This structural distinction can account for the indirect object control, which is possible in all cases, and direct object control, which is only allowed in case of certain matrix predicates. Such an analysis links Hill Mari purpose construction’s distinction to the Purpose/Rationale clauses distinction proposed for English in R. A. Faraci (1974). Finally, Hill Mari infinitival purpose clauses’ specific traits can potentially provide certain insights for the general theory of ditransitive constructions. Thus, among the main current approaches only that developed by L. Pylkkänen (2008) can account for the facts observed in Hill Mari. L. Pylkkänen argues that in some languages double objects constructions can be derived via “high” applicative head, taking VP as its complement and indirect object as its specifier. Our study argues that this is also likely to be the case in Hill Mari.

Corporate Purpose: A Management Concept and its Implications for Company Law

Abstract Many companies have recently been following the so-called corporate purpose concept that is recommended by leading management scholars. To this end, they identify a raison d’être for their enterprise that goes beyond mere profit making and they anchor it in the entire value chain. This paper puts the corporate purpose concept into perspective by linking it to the larger debate on corporate social responsibility and by outlining its theoretical foundations and practical application. It then goes on by explaining how this management concept fits into the company law framework, looking to France and the UK as well as to the US and Germany. Finally, this paper assesses various policy proposals made by leading purpose proponents, ranging from mandatory purpose clauses in the articles of association to say-on-purpose shareholder voting and dual-purpose business organisations.

Morphological Split Ergative Alignment and Syntactic Nominative-Accusative Alignment in Pesh

Pesh (Chibchan, Honduras) has until now been described as having a morphological nominative-accusative alignment. This paper argues that Pesh displays a bilevel split ergative pattern for morphological alignment. On the first level of the system, Pesh features a split alignment that is conditioned by the way the arguments are expressed. It has a nominative-accusative alignment for the obligatory indexing of arguments on the verb and three systems of alignment for flagging case. The distribution of these three systems shapes the second level, where ergative-absolutive, tripartite, and nominative-accusative are seen depending on the types of clause and the varieties spoken. On the other hand, Pesh shows a syntactic nominative-accusative alignment. Cross-clausal behaviors in two constructions show a subject/agent pivot. This is seen in the possibility of deletion of the intransitive subject or the transitive subject in the second conjoined clause and the control of coreference with core arguments in a purpose clause.

Corporate Purpose: A Management Concept and its Implications for Company Law

Many companies have recently been following the so-called corporate purpose concept that is recommended by leading management scholars. To this end, they identify a raison d’etre for their enterprise that goes beyond mere profit making and they anchor it in the entire value chain. This paper puts the corporate purpose concept into perspective by linking it to the larger debate on corporate social responsibility and by outlining its theoretical foundations and practical application. It then goes on by explaining how this management concept fits into the company law framework, looking to France and the UK as well as to the US and Germany. Finally, this paper assesses various policy proposals made by leading purpose proponents, ranging from mandatory purpose clauses in the articles of association to say-on-purpose shareholder voting and dual-purpose business organisations.

As propriedades temporais das orações infinitivas completivas e finais com para em Português Europeu

In this paper we investigate three different types of infinitive constructions involving para in European Portuguese, viz. purpose clauses, complement clauses in which para behaves as a true complementizer and complement clauses in which para behaves as a preposition pertaining to the main sentence. We begin with a brief characterization of the Portuguese simple infinitive, arguing that, in appropriate conditions, it exhibits defective temporal properties that are, nonetheless, non-specified whenever another component in the sentence ascribes temporal information to the infinitive clause. Then we compare the three constructions under analysis: although there are clear divergences in their semantic behaviour, we observe that in all cases the situation represented by the infinitive clause is systematically located in an interval that follows its Temporal Perspective Point provided by the main clause. In order to account for this regularity, we propose that, in these contexts, (i) the infinitive is non-specified regarding its temporal features and (ii) the lexical properties of para are responsible for the posteriority reading stated above.

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

This paper presents a study of the Subjunctive in the Bantu languages of Giryama in Kenya (E72a) and Nyanja in Tanzania (N201), and explores its distribution in the two languages. As in other Bantu languages, the Subjunctive is a morphological feature characterized by a verbal suffix -e, an obligatory subject marker, and the absence of tense. Syntactically, the Subjunctive appears in independent clauses, as well as dependent clauses with a certain class of predicates and adverbial subordinators. Independent clauses that may carry the Subjunctive are those that express exhortations or suggestions, and sentences marked with the future tense. Dependent clauses with Subjunctive verbs include: (a) complement clauses containing directive, volitional, and causative verbs, and (b) adverbial clauses such as clauses of purpose. Studies of the subjunctive have often associated its semantic distribution with irrealis, in contrast with the Indicative, which is associated with realis or assertion. We present evidence showing that the irrealis reading may sometimes appear to be absent. We argue that irrealis may not be a necessary and sufficient condition for the Subjunctive. However, the onstructions that give irrealis readings provide the best exemplars of Subjunctives in these two languages. Independent clause Subjunctives are shown to be clearly non-factive. Matrix verbs that take subjunctive complements are described as presupposition triggers of events that are non-factive relative to the matrix event.

OPINIÕES EM CONFRONTO

Este artigo investiga a impossibilidade de se empreender uma análise linguística que dissocie os níveis sintático, semântico e pragmático. Sob a perspectiva teórica do Funcionalismo associada a conceitos da Análise do Discurso e da Semântica Argumentativa, analisaremos aspectos discursivos das cláusulas hipotáticas de finalidade na construção da argumentação. Especificamente, discutiremos como essas cláusulas se articulam, no português brasileiro em uso, baseando-nos em um dos aspectos que contribuem para a organização argumentativa do discurso, a hipotaxe circunstancial. Partindo da hipótese de que as estruturas hipotáticas revelam um matiz argumentativo, constituíram como corpus de análise desta pesquisa quarenta e oito (48) artigos de opinião publicados pelo jornal Folha de São Paulo, na coluna Tendências e Debates, nos anos de 2014 e de 2020, dos quais provêm cento e trinta (130) cláusulas hipotáticas de finalidade, que se mostraram mais produtivas em textos que advogam contra a doxa social instaurada.

Negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs

Abstract Complement clauses of verbs of fear often contain expletive negation, which is negative marking without negative meaning. Expletive negation in fear-complements regularly co-occurs with non-indicative moods, such as subjunctive, conjunctive, or conditional. The aim of this paper is to provide a diachronic explanation for the phenomenon of expletive negation in complement clauses of fear-verbs. Based on data from various languages, I will show that cases of expletive negation after verbs of fear can be divided into several groups, each with a different origin. Fear complement clauses can derive from embedded polar questions, paratactic constructions expressing a wish, or from negative purpose clauses. Complement clauses with polar questions usually contain an indicative verb form, while clauses based on the expression of a wish often have non-indicative verb forms. The paper also discusses cases in which expletive negation is lost.

Uso del presente de subjuntivo en niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje

Background and objectiveSyntactic markers in Spanish to identify children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have been described in several studies. Complex verbal morphology, such as the subjunctive, has been a sensitive area for these children. This study shows frequencies of subjunctive use in children with and without SLI. The study distinguishes six contexts in which the use of the subjunctive is required: when the verb in the main sentence expresses desire, indirect command, doubt, when it is an evaluative sentence with a copula and with time and purpose clauses. Materials and methodsWe studied 15children with SLI and 15children with typical development aged between 5;0 and 6;11 from central Mexico. The subjunctive was produced through an instrument created for the study in which the children completed sentences with verbal forms of the subjunctive and indicative from different types of sentences from a series of images. ResultsThe results showed a significant difference in subjunctive use between the children with impairment and the typically developed children. In addition, not all the structures that required the use of the subjunctive resulted in its being used with the same frequency: use with predicates of doubt and indirect commands was less frequent than adverbial and volitive use.

CAUSAL RELATIONS IN ENGLISH NEWS MAGAZINE DISCOURSE: JOURNALISTS’ AGE PERSPECTIVE

This paper reveals how journalists’ age influences the linguistic representation of causal relations in English news magazine articles. Treating cause in a broad sense covering adverbials and clauses of reason, concession, purpose and result, the study finds that causal relations are scarce in the texts of young reporters. Unlike them, middle-aged authors’ articles demonstrate a 17-per-cent-higher frequency of adverbials and clauses of reason, and older journalists’ texts show a 12-per-cent rise in concessive clauses with the temporal concessive, comparative concessive, alternative concessive, conditional concessive and generalizing concessive relations. To account for these findings, I apply Talmy’s (1985) force dynamics theory viewing cause as an interaction of entities concerning force and energy where one causes another. Given this theory, middle-aged journalists verbalise causal relations grounded in what I call energy transfer model with one moving entity causing another to move, and energy loss model where inactivity of one entity is due to blocking of the other entity. In older authors’ articles, causal relations are represented by concessive clauses introduced by a range of conjunctions specifying concessive meaning: temporal concessive, comparative concessive, alternative concessive, conditional concessive and generalizing concessive.

Semantics and syntax in Old English mood selection

AbstractA principled model of mood selection in Old English (OE) has long proved elusive. We analyse the distribution of the indicative and subjunctive in the OE Bede in light of the Latin original, the syntactic construction, and a semantic model of modality which classifies clauses according to whether the situation is represented as holding in the actual world or in a possible world. The choice of mood in the Latin and OE Bede differs enough to rule out slavish imitation. In certain clauses, such as result and purpose clauses, the construction type, modality, and grammatical mood all match; however, in other clauses, such as concessives, the OE subjunctive is systematically used whether the situation is represented as actual or possible. Where the grammatical mood of OE forms is ambiguous, modal verbs are often seemingly used as a substitute for the subjunctive. Our results show that while the choice of mood in the OE Bede largely correlates with the syntactic construction, the subjunctive is close to being semantically redundant. This growing redundancy may have been one of the factors in the diminishing role of inflectional mood in the later history of English.

Corporate and Securities Law Impact on Social Responsibility and Corporate Purpose

The role of social responsibility in corporate governance has been the subject of debate for nearly ninety years. That debate has been reframed over the decades. Several recent events have resulted in increased focus on corporate social responsibility, especially with respect to publicly held corporations. This article explores the law’s two different paths for impacting social responsibility --, one state and one federal, The current iteration of the corporate responsibility movement has implications for both state law chartering of corporations and federal securities regulation. The article analyzes the ways in which corporate purposes clauses may be useful in addressing social responsibility and other corporate mission issues. This includes a brief discussion of benefit corporation statutes, followed by a discussion of how better use of stated purpose clauses in the articles of incorporation may be a meaningful proxy for opting into benefits corporation statutes This article also traces developments in the securities laws’ approach to corporate social responsibility, including recommending the adoption of a safe harbor rule to encourage corporations to make disclosures relating to social responsibility.

The origin of purpose clause markers in Proto-Omagua-Kukama

AbstractThis article explores the diachrony of three purpose clause markers in Proto-Omagua-Kukama (Tupí-Guaraní; Amazonia): *-taɾa, *-maiɾa, and *=tsenuni. I explain an absolutive pattern of control in these clauses via an account in which the markers originate in a combination of nominalizers, a purpose suffix, and a postposition. I show that a similar system is attested in at least one other related language, Kamaiurá.

A Corpus-driven Study on the Turkish Focus Particle Sırf

This is a corpus-driven study based on the TNCv3.0 to determine the co-occurrence patterns of the focus particle sırf (only/just) in its scopes. The study revealed that sırf’s syntactic associates are largely phrases or clauses of purpose or reason. Over half of the 430 concordance lines analysed had various purpose or reason expressions as sırf’s focused constitutes. The most frequent colligates in the exclusive operator’s scopes are reason and purpose markers diye or için, ranking the first two in its collocation list. This very strong lexical priming suggests a pragmatic motivation. By choosing sırf rather than any other particles like sadece or yalnızca, the speaker not only marks the single reason or purpose for which something is done but also often reflects a negative attitude to reasons or purposes as being unjustifiable. The most unfavourable prosody was detected in the collostruction sırf +noun+ olsun diye, in which almost all the nouns in the ‘noun’ slot are abstract, most of which have negative connotations.

Corporate Directors as Purpose Fiduciaries: Reclaiming the Corporate Law We Need

Much of the debate over corporate governance centers on whether directors have fiduciary duties to stockholders alone, or to stakeholders more broadly. I argue instead that, certainly historically and arguably still today, directors have a fiduciary duty not to specific persons, but to the corporate entity and its authorized purposes. Drawing on the distinction advanced by Miller and Gold between “service fiduciaries” (i.e. personal fiduciaries) and “governance fiduciaries” (i.e. purpose fiduciaries), the first section makes a series of analytical arguments in defense of the position that corporate directors are purpose fiduciaries, based on the legal structure of corporations. The second section backs this up with historical argumentation. The corporate bodies of the medieval Catholic Church were clear purpose fiduciaries, and monasteries in particular were the laboratory for charters with purpose clauses. These practices passed over to civil corporations, including merchant guilds. Drawing on the previously unutilized evidence offered by corporate oaths of office, I show that the corporate boards of merchant guilds also began as clear purpose fiduciaries. However, circumstances surrounding the emergence of the business corporation in England, from out of the merchant guild, resulted in this new type of corporation being described in the vocabulary of the joint stock company (a variety of partnership), or alternatively, in the vocabulary of the English trust. Each suggested that stockholders were the “owners” and legal beneficiaries of the corporation, and that the board’s fiduciary duty was to them rather than to purposes. Transformations in corporate enterprise at the end of the 19th century finally made these legal conceits untenable, and recognition of the underlying purpose fiduciarity of directors began to emerge in progressive era legal thought. However, beginning in the 1970s, Chicago neoliberals successfully reasserted the partnership conceit with its implication of “shareholder primacy.” This has caused much intellectual confusion and policy mischief, as it has shaped the norms and laws under which business corporations are governed, with the consequence that corporate managers have turned their firms away from corporate mission and long-term growth and towards the short-term stockholder’s interest in high dividends and stock price, with all of the dysfunctions this entails. But the core of corporate law continues to reveal directors to be purpose fiduciaries, and the courts, while significantly swayed by Chicago conceits, have not fully abandoned a purpose interpretation, although they have narrowed and misconstrued it. The paper concludes with recommendations for strengthening the purpose fiduciarity of directors, with the potential to significantly improve the performance of corporate firms.

Say on purpose: lessons from Chinese corporate charters

ABSTRACTWhat is the purpose of the corporation? The debate has continued for a long time without a clear answer partly because corporate law is often silent or ambiguous on the purpose of the corporation. The debate is largely academic and has limited dialogues with corporations that manage business in the real world. If corporations themselves articulate the purpose in their constitutive documents, it might be helpful to resolve the corporate purpose controversy. China offers a valuable empirical setting to examine how corporations formally state the purpose in their corporate charters. The empirical findings in this article show that the purpose clause in the articles of incorporation is not static but evolving with institutional and organisational demands. However, the purpose clause serves only a signalling or marketing function because of external and intrinsic constraints.

Bringing Purported Black Sheep into the Fold: Galician Inflected Infinitives and Puerto Rican Spanish Pre-Verbal Infinitival Subject Pronouns

This work reports the results of quantitative, variationist analyses of two typologically unusual constructions in order to explore the grammatical conditioning of subject expression in non-finite clauses. Both constructions, Galician inflected infinitives and (Puerto Rican) Spanish preposed, nominative infinitival subjects, have not been widely studied. As a result, variable expression/omission of subject marking in these constructions is not yet fully understood. Using corpora of oral data, we extract 732 examples of infinitives in purpose clauses (headed by para) and employ a logistic mixed effect model to explore the linguistic conditioning of the overt/null variants. We find the appearance of overt subject marking to be conditioned nearly identically across the two distinct languages as well as across finite/non-finite clauses. We utilize this lack of difference to propose that the two construction types may be manifestations of one grammaticalization process. As such, we propose the Puerto Rican Spanish variation may provide a new synchronic source of data with which to explore the diachronic source of (Galician) inflected infinitives.

The Balanced Approach [Revisited

AbstractThe authors of the original Balanced Approach, Dennis Maloney, Dennis Romig, and Troy Armstrong, outlined a philosophy of balanced attention to the principles of community protection/public safety, youth accountability, and competency development through individualized assessment and treatment and holding the system accountable to the community and the youth served. A majority of states’ juvenile code purpose clauses reflect this approach, later known as Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ). Presented here are excerpts from the 1988 Juvenile & Family Court Journal issue 39 (3) that first presented the Balanced Approach and a brief overview of key features of juvenile justice at the time to lay a foundation for the other articles in this special issue.

Syntactic structures of Mandarin purposives

AbstractThis paper investigates three constructions in Mandarin, all of which convey a purposive/teleological meaning, including thelaipurposive, thehaopurposive, and the bare purposive. Despite the fact that each type of purposive clause in Mandarin occurs at the right edge of a sentence, it is argued that none of the purposive clause is a genuine right adjunct in the underlying syntactic structure. On the other hand, our analysis shows that thelaipurposive employs complementation of a secondary predicate, thehaopurposive involves conjunction of two clauses, and the bare purposive should be analyzed as left adjunction that is stranded in the right edge after verb movement. The evidence for our analysis is drawn from subject and object gaps, theba-construction in Mandarin, agentivity, and linear ordering of multiple purposive clauses. This work thus demonstrates representative cases where a structure that appears to involve right adjunction may in fact employ no right adjunction at all. The conclusion is thus consistent with the prediction of Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA).