Lexical Entries Research Articles

The lexical representation of coda /t/ by 14-month-olds

We evaluated 14-month-olds’ lexical representation of coda /t/. Pronunciation variation of /t/, one of the most frequent segments in English, is well documented. Crucially, in American English infant-directed speech, /t/s are most often produced as glottal stops. This is particularly the case in word-final position, where words like cat and night are produced as [kæʔ] and [naiʔ] around 42% of the time, but produced with word-final canonical stop consonants (e.g., [kæt] or [nait]) only 25% of the time. In Experiment 1, we found that infants preferred to listen to familiar monosyllabic words ending in glottal stops (like [kæʔ]) when compared to nonce words ([kɪp]). This suggests that infants encode the most frequently occurring variant in their lexical entries. We are now testing whether the preference for familiar words produced with a glottal stop in Experiment 1 is the result of coda underspecification or encoding of glottal stop. If codas are underspecified in infant’s lexical representations, we expect no preference between lists of familiar words with glottal stops ([kæʔ]), compared to minimal pairs with coda mispronunciations ([kæk]). We will discuss implications of these findings for infants’ developing lexical representations and knowledge of allophony, focusing on the contribution of input frequency.

Словарь речений из богослужебных книг прот. А. И. Невоструева (плинѳа — повѣдатель)

The “Dictionary of Locutions from Liturgical Books” by Protopriest A. Nevostruev, completed in the middle of the 19th century and never published, can be regarded both as a significant achievement of Church Slavonic studies and as a valuable lexicographic source. The manuscript is kept in the Russian State Library. The decrepit state of the manuscript has determined the necessity of its urgent study and edition. The significance of this project is primarily due to the fact that the text of the dictionary is being made accessible to linguists for the first time. The orthography and grammar of the dictionary reflect the linguistic views of the time of its creation and can be of interest for those who study the history of Russian linguistics. This paper contains the second part of dictionary entries beginning in letter P. The characteristic features of the publication of this Dictionary, the lists of sources, abbreviations and symbols were described in detail in the previous issues of St. Tikhon’s University Review. All previously published parts of the Dictionary together with the critical apparatus can be found at the website of St. Tikhon’s University for the Humanities

The Translation of Yemeni –Arabic legal documents into English: Problems and Suggestions

This research shed light on the translating Yemeni legal documents from Arabic to English. It has a two-fold goal: 1) to identify the problems which Yemeni professional translators encounter in translating legal documents, and; 2) to suggest some remedial procedures to help Yemeni translators overcome their weaknesses. This research was designed to study the legal translation problems in Yemeni documents, analyzing them comprehensively and qualitatively, and therefore quantitively data and statistics were not used in the research process. Several methodological procedures are followed; firstly, ten different Yemeni-Arabic legal documents selected. Secondly, a random sample consisting of ten licensed Yemeni translators selected. Thirdly; a thorough analysis of the returned English translations carried out and assessed against suggested translations, based on three main sources: 1) typical translations of the same done by renowned authors or translators; 2) entries in Arabic-English legal dictionaries; and 3) the researcher's expertise in this field; Fourthly; the results of the study discussed. The findings indicated that the translation of Yemeni-Arabic legal documents is highly problematic. The study concluded with some suggestions and recommendations.

Disyllabic hypocoristics in Chilean Spanish: a stratal OT analysis

Abstract Hypocoristics have received considerable interest from phonologists in recent decades, particularly within the Optimality-theoretic literature. While most of these analyses have been situated in parallelist OT, I claim that this architectural choice entails hidden complexities. It is cross-linguistically common for multiple hypocoristics to be formed from a single proper noun, e.g., Matthew → Matt/Matty. In this case, parallelist OT must resort to co-phonologies to avoid ranking paradoxes, which results in significant analytical complexity. By contrast, I argue in this paper that a stratal analysis is crucial for capturing multiple patterns of Hypocoristic Formation (HF) within a single architecture. I present here data of disyllabic hypocoristics from Standard Chilean Spanish. These hypocoristics are derived from the proper nouns by means of two separate anchoring sites: to the left edge of the full name, or to prominence in the full name, i.e., the tonic syllable. In addition, hypocoristics may be prosodically- or morphologically-driven: they may solely be formed by truncating the material of the proper noun, or, in the latter case, there may also be additional suffixal material provided. These data, therefore, lend themselves to a four-way categorisation. I show that this categorisation can be fully accounted for within a stratal architecture, and without the need for additional co-phonologies. Within the analysis, I locate each of the anchoring sites within the lexical phonology: edge-anchoring occurs at the stem level, along with syllabification and stress assignment, while prominence-anchoring occurs at the word level. In this way, the input to edge-anchoring at the stem level comprises a string of segments, while the input to prominence-anchoring at the word-level contains prosodic units up to the foot, which permits word-level HF to anchor to prominence. I further posit that prosodic- and morphologically-driven HF are caused through the passing of hypocoristic morphemes from the morpho-syntax to the phonology. Purely prosodic HF is triggered through a null or covert morpheme, while morphological HF triggered by an overt one. The hypocoristic morphemes themselves are stored as diacritics in the proper nouns’ lexical entries. Furthermore, the constraints that select the hypocoristic forms as optimal are sensitive to the presence of this hypocoristic morpheme, which is reflected in tableaux through indexing. When a hypocoristic morpheme is present in the input of a proper noun to a particular stratum, these highly-ranked indexed constraints select a corresponding hypocoristic form as optimal. If the hypocoristic morpheme is absent, these constraints do not assign violations, and the proper noun is instead (vacuously) found optimal. This analysis thus unifies two distinct patterns of HF in one phonological grammar through the inclusion of indexed-constraints and the serial derivation in a constraint-based architecture.

GERMAN IN LUXEMBOURG: LEXICOGRAPHIC CODIFICATION OF NATIONAL STANDARD

The article is an analytical review of some problems of dictionary codification of Luxembourg German Standard. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the Luxembourg variety of German Standard, which differs in a number of distinctive features from other national varieties of the German language, is still poorly studied. Some aspects of the study of the German language in Luxembourg, the criteria of the standard in general and the features of the Luxembourg standard of the German language in particular are briefly described. The main part of the study is the analysis of current lexicographic sources that codify the specific features of the pronunciation, grammar, lexical and semantic norms of the Luxembourg Standard. The results of the analysis of lexicographic sources, which are descriptive codifiers of the German Standard in Luxembourg, are presented: a pronunciation dictionary of the Standard High German language, the project “Regional Variation in the Grammar of Standard German”, dictionaries of varieties of the German language. The structure and content of the dictionary of the Luxembourg standard for the German language [Sieburg, 2022] are considered in detail. This includes general information about the mega-, macro- and microstructure of the dictionary, the subject and variable characteristics of the codified vocabulary, the features of the structure and content of dictionary entries. As a result of the analysis, a conclusion is made about the development of the normalizing activity of the Luxembourg German Standard and about the recognizing of this standard, which has specific features at different levels of the language system.

Real-time 4D MRI using MR signature matching (MRSIGMA) on a 1.5T MR-Linac system.

Objective. To develop real-time 4D MRI using MR signature matching (MRSIGMA) for volumetric motion imaging in patients with pancreatic cancer on a 1.5T MR-Linac system.Approach. Two consecutive MRI scans with 3D golden-angle radial stack-of-stars acquisitions were performed on ten patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. The complete first scan (905 angles) was used to compute a 4D motion dictionary including ten pairs of 3D motion images and signatures. The second scan was used for real-time imaging, where each angle (275 ms) was processed separately to match it to one of the dictionary entries. The complete second scan was also used to compute a 4D reference to assess motion tracking performance.Dicecoefficients of the gross tumor volume (GTV) and two organs-at-risk (duodenum-stomach and small bowel) were calculated between signature matching and reference. In addition, volume changes, displacements, center of mass shifts, andDicescores over time were calculated to characterize motion.Main results. Total imaging latency of MRSIGMA (acquisition + matching) was less than 300 ms. TheDicecoefficients were 0.87 ± 0.06 (GTV), 0.86 ± 0.05 (duodenum-stomach), and 0.85 ± 0.05 (small bowel), which indicate high accuracy (high mean value) and low uncertainty (low standard deviation) of MRSIGMA for real-time motion tracking. The center of mass shift was 3.1 ± 2.0 mm (GTV), 5.3 ± 3.0 mm (duodenum-stomach), and 3.4 ± 1.5 mm (small bowel). TheDicescores over time (0.97 ± [0.01-0.03]) were similarly high for MRSIGMA and reference scans in all the three contours.Significance. This work demonstrates the feasibility of real-time 4D MRI using MRSIGMA for volumetric motion tracking on a 1.5T MR-Linac system. The high accuracy and low uncertainty of real-time MRSIGMA is an essential step towards continuous treatment adaptation of tumors affected by real-time respiratory motion and could ultimately improve treatment safety by optimizing ablative dose delivery near gastrointestinal organs.

The de-construction in Wenzhounese: how it differs from the bǎ-construction in Mandarin

The canonical word order in Mandarin is SVO, but it becomes “S bǎ O V” in the bǎ-construction, where bǎ vaguely expresses the affectedness of the object. How to analyze the bǎ-construction is one of the most controversial topics in Chinese grammar. This paper approaches the issue from a fresh perspective by presenting new data from Wenzhounese, where the de-construction is parallel to the bǎ-construction. Although these constructions share a considerable degree of similarity, they differ in the following key respects. First, they differ in the strategies used to topicalize the post-de/bǎ noun phrase (NP). Second, the quantifier taking scope over the post-de/bǎ NP has distinct distributions. Third, Wenzhounese has a double-de construction unattested in Mandarin. Based on these observations, I offer a formal analysis of the de-construction within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar. This encompasses the lexical entries, constituent-structure, and functional-structure for de, which will capture the differences between de and bǎ and shed new light on the bǎ-construction in Mandarin.

Язык и культура в системе межкультурной коммуникации

The article deals with the actual problem of the functioning of language and culture in the process of intercultural communication in the context of bilingualism and multilingualism. In the course of conducting scientific research, the analysis and description of the material of linguistic, sociological and linguodidactic scientific literature of a lexicographic nature was carried out in order to identify the degree of reflection of the participation of language as a toolkit (tool) of culture in the process of intercultural communication and its definition in the corresponding dictionary entries characterized by similarities and differences. The main differences lie in the explicit or implicit expression of the participation of language in the process of intercultural communication, or in not providing for the role of language in this global interethnic communication. The basis of intercultural communication is language as a means of transmitting information, and bilingualism as a linguistic and speech property of representatives of different nationalities, which ensures the implementation of intercultural communication. In the definitions of intercultural communication presented in four linguographic works, in understanding and defining it, language often goes by the wayside. 12 understandings and definitions of intercultural communication are analyzed. Of these, in 7 the participation of the language is presented explicitly, in 4 — implicitly, in one it is not presented. Intercultural communication cannot be carried out without interlingual communication: language, as a mirror of culture, reflects its inner and outer world, which forms foreign language and foreign cultural knowledge, abilities, skills, which together form and develop the interlinguistic and cultural competence of the individual and society. Intercultural communication is both a universal (universal) phenomenon and a national-specific phenomenon. The second is formed and functions in local conditions. The totality (class) of linguocultural communications in local conditions forms its world (universal) system and dynamics. Language and culture, as components of the act of functioning of intercultural communication, are a dual unity of social functions that ensure interethnic communication in various conditions of the individual and society. Language is a transmitter of culture, so we should talk about inter-linguocultural communication. In the process of conducting scientific research, inductive, deductive methods, comparative and linguostatistical methods were used, which gave scientific results of theoretical and practical significance.

Особенности лексикографического описания прагматем в двуязычных словарях-разговорниках

The article focuses on the analysis of lexicographic description of pragmatemes (pragmatically constrained phrasemes). 609 pragmatemes were selected employing a continuous sampling method from four English-Russian and Russian-English electronic phrasebooks. The results of the quantitative analysis show that on average pragmatemes comprise no more than 20% of the total number of the units listed in the phrasebooks; they are most commonly found in sections with basic expressions (e.g. greetings, goodbyes, and apologies). It has been revealed that the structure of a dictionary entry, which contains a pragmateme is characterized by uniformity, since in most cases it includes three components: a lemma, translation and practical transcription (or audio recording). Additional information about the lemma is sparse and disordered. It is concluded that the Russian-English and English-Russian phrasebooks available on the Internet do not provide information necessary for the adequate use and correct understanding of pragmatemes. This finding indicates the need to create a high-quality English-Russian and/or Russian-English dictionary of pragmatemes. The parameters of the potential dictionary of pragmatemes are suggested taking into account speech specifics of these units. The results of the research and speech material may be useful for linguists, lexicographers, translators and teachers of foreign languages interested in mono- or interdisciplinary studies of pragmatemes.

Сбор языкового материала как один из этапов исследования арготического компонента художественного текста (на материале современной французской криминальной прозы)

Language material is the foundation of any linguistic study; therefore, great importance is traditionally attached to its collection and in some cases, its description may be a priority. The aim of the research, carried out during the approbation of the intermediate results obtained when analysing the argotic component of the modern French crime novel, is to determine the key elements peculiar to the stage of formation of the language data corpus. The scientific novelty of this micro-research lies in the proposed approach to the formation and systematisation of an argotographic source by extracting argotic elements from a modern literary text. The research findings amount to a glossary of 930 argotisms presented in the form of an alphabetical list and provided with primary information: the explication of lexical meaning, the source of borrowing with the indication of pages and the number of word occurrences. The collection of unconventional vocabulary units was based on the texts of modern French criminal prose. The frequency of argotisms and their concentration in the text served as an important indicator in the choice of literary works. The phenomenon of the crime novel is also considered and the criteria according to which the works can be attributed to the specified literary subgenre are indicated. Verification of the linguistic data obtained was carried out involving authoritative argotographic sources without the use of field methods. Special attention is paid to the review of lexicographic sources followed by the representation of selected dictionary entries, each of which explicates the meaning of argotic lexemes.

Examining the Differences between Neologisms and Spelling Errors on Social Media

Neologisms and spelling errors are common features of social media and have contributed immensely to easing information dissemination in today?s world. The advent of the internet has enabled linguistic advancement, linguistic oddities, and communication. As an evolving phenomenon, language grants its users the liberty to use it as it suits them to convey their varied messages. The global language monitor in Austin calculated that a neologism is created every 98 minutes, while a spelling error occurs in every five posts on social media. This paper aims to examine the differences between neologisms and spelling errors. This work's theoretical framework is anchored on-Mediated Communication, Geoffrey Leech?s theory of linguistic deviations, morphological processes of word formation, and Pitt Coder?s theory of Error Analysis. The paper retrieved its data from status updates and comments on various social media platforms. The findings indicate that neologisms are formed by morphological processes such as blending, clipping, shortening, semantic extension, and acronyms and abbreviations, while spelling errors are formed by erroneous patterns of addition, selection, and omission . The paper concludes that neologisms and spelling errors are distinctive linguistic entities. While some neologisms may have been accepted as dictionary entries, spelling errors are outright blunders and linguistic oddities. As such, they can never be accepted as standard forms of communication.

Особенности англоязычных арготизмов в речи современной французской молодежи (на материале «Словаря верланизмов французского рэпа» В. М. Дебова)

The aim of the work is to obtain empirical material based on English-language borrowings for further description of the argotic vocabulary of modern French youth. The research has been carried out on the basis of the “Glossary of French Rap Verlan” by V. M. Debov. The author considers the structure of the argotographic publication, which presents dictionary entries provided with a sociolinguistic commentary and numerous examples of verlanized lexemes in a contextual environment, indicating the frequency of their use. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of an algorithm for selecting argotisms formed with the help of verlanization of English-language borrowings. The coding mechanisms of verlan-formation are described. The paper also deals with the assimilating variants of Anglicisms in the French language. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the development of an algorithm for selecting non-conventional lexemes incorporated in the works by rap artists. An analysis of the “Glossary of French Rap Verlan” by V. M. Debov in order to obtain verlanized argotisms based on English-language borrowings has not been previously carried out. The work is the first attempt to classify the convergent models of verlanized Anglicisms recorded in the publication and to describe the dominant semantic field with the examples of its constituent lexemes. As a result, the extracted lexical units are included in a specialized glossary that can serve as the basis for a comprehensive study of English-language borrowings in the speech of modern French youth.

Culture-Oriented Idioms in English and Albanian Language-Analyses of the Semantic and Syntactic Structure of Life and Death Idioms: A Comparative Study

Idiomatic expressions are a crucial part of language reflecting the mindset of a nation’s culture and shaping the characteristics of language usage. This paper elaborates on the rich content of the variety of idiomatic expressions in English and Albanian of idioms related to life and death. Each language possesses its characteristics making the languages similar and different from one another, thus leading to different expressions of the same things. Writing and speaking a language cannot be understood without using idioms, especially when describing one’s emotional or mental conditions. This article aims at analyzing the semantic and syntactic structure of idioms denoting life and death connotations in both languages. Language is an independent system and as a result, different ethnic groups show their psychological characteristics through different concepts. Such differences and similarities are reflected in figurative expressions of each nation which incorporates the focus of this study. An analysis of the constituent parts of idioms, features of non-compositionality, syntactic functions in sentences, and other characteristics of set expressions are the focus of this research paper through componential and comparative analyses. The research is based on the database of 480 English idioms 291praseoloical units with the element “life”, 189 phraseological units with the element “death”, and more than 320 idioms in Albanian. Data were driven from two phraseological dictionaries Albanian Phraseological Dictionary and English–Albanian Phraseological Dictionary. A detailed and in-depth insight was made into the corpus of the dictionary entries to find out idioms that express life and death in both languages. The methods used are based on comparative and componential analyses. The study displayed characteristics in idiomatic expressions reflected in two cultures showing different semantic and syntactic features in both languages.

Meaning definitions through lexical (macro) functions: Old English quantity, size and rank

The aim of this article is to complete and systematize affixal meaning definitions by examining the Old English derived nominal and adjectival lexicon from a structural-functional framework. The main dictionaries of reference in this language have proven to contribute limited affixal information; besides, one and the same dictionary organizes its affixal entries quite dissimilarly both formally and content-wise. Given this background, the present work offers an insight into the derived lexicon and suggests more accurate definitions based on an approach that explains form and meaning associations in terms of lexical functions and macrofunctions. The data of analysis have been retrieved from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus, which has supplied the inventory of affixes and of affixed nouns and adjectives performing a lexical function belonging to the semantic categories quantity, size or rank, which apply whenever an entity or a property experience an increase or a decrease in quantity, quality or status respectively. Each affix is defined conforming to the different meanings it conveys, the source and target categories involved in the derivation process and the predicates that fit the rule in each case. An approach based on form and meaning associations in the definition of affixal meaning has demonstrated to have major implications not only in the field of lexicology but also of lexicography inasmuch as it permits to revise, complete and enhance dictionary entries and gain systematicity in the manner the information is rendered.

Dictionary Representation of the Semantics of Adjectives Signifying Emotions

Abstract Naming emotions may pose a serious problem for foreign language learners as emotion words constitute a complex semantic field. Here is where monolingual learners’ dictionaries turn out to be useful. The paper reports on a comparative analysis of dictionary representation of the semantics of adjectives signifying emotions. To investigate the treatment of this semantic field, twenty-four adjectives are looked up in the five British pedagogical dictionaries published by Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, Macmillan and Collins. The qualitative analysis concentrates on definitions as primary carriers of meaning. Yet, examples, grammatical information and additional sources of information within a dictionary entry are also given attention. The study demonstrates that some inconsistencies in defining emotion words in individual dictionaries can be spotted. The value of examples is limited: some focus merely on presenting a word’s syntactic properties. Thus, the combination of the definition and the examples both clarifying meaning and illustrating the typical use of the words is judged to best represent meaning. The paper suggests model definitions of adjectives signifying emotions and offers recommendations aiming at improving the representation of their meaning in dictionaries.

SPARCQ: A new approach for fat fraction mapping using asymmetries in the phase-cycled balanced SSFP signal profile.

To develop SPARCQ (Signal Profile Asymmetries for Rapid Compartment Quantification), a novel approach to quantify fat fraction (FF) using asymmetries in the phase-cycled balanced SSFP (bSSFP) profile. SPARCQ uses phase-cycling to obtain bSSFP frequency profiles, which display asymmetries in the presence of fat and water at certain TRs. For each voxel, the measured signal profile is decomposed into a weighted sum of simulated profiles via multi-compartment dictionary matching. Each dictionary entry represents a single-compartment bSSFP profile with a specific off-resonance frequency and relaxation time ratio. Using the results of dictionary matching, the fractions of the different off-resonance components are extracted for each voxel, generating quantitative maps of water and FF and banding-artifact-free images for the entire image volume. SPARCQ was validated using simulations, experiments in a water-fat phantom and in knees of healthy volunteers. Experimental results were compared with reference proton density FFs obtained with 1 H-MRS (phantoms) and with multiecho gradient-echo MRI (phantoms and volunteers). SPARCQ repeatability was evaluated in six scan-rescan experiments. Simulations showed that FF quantification is accurate and robust for SNRs greater than 20. Phantom experiments demonstrated good agreement between SPARCQ and gold standard FFs. In volunteers, banding-artifact-free quantitative maps and water-fat-separated images obtained with SPARCQ and ME-GRE demonstrated the expected contrast between fatty and non-fatty tissues. The coefficient of repeatability of SPARCQ FF was 0.0512. SPARCQ demonstrates potential for fat quantification using asymmetries in bSSFP profiles and may be a promising alternative to conventional FF quantification techniques.

To Be or Not To Be?

This squib accounts for the inconsistencies in the occurrence of genitive of negation with the Russian verb byt’ ‘to be’ and other genitive verbs by distinguishing two independent lexical entries for byt’ with a specified location that have differing syntactic and semantic characteristics. One is predicative/argument-taking, while the other is the copula in a copular construction with a locational prepositional predicate. Sentential negation invariably assigns genitive of negation to the grammatical subject of the copular construction, whereas the subject of predicative byt’ is in the wrong syntactic configuration to receive genitive of negation and therefore receives nominative case via agreement with the finite Infl.

Is it correct to ubrać płaszcz?

This article discusses the change in the normative qualification of the verb ubrać/ubierać (‘to dress’) in the sense ‘to wear’. This meaning, and hence collocations such as ubrać płaszcz, ubrać sukienkę, ubrać kapelusz have been consistently evaluated as linguistic errors, which is evidenced by both dictionary entries and prescriptive advice. Looking into the scope of usage of this type of expressions – their commonness in speech and writing among Poles of various social classes from southern and western Poland – enforces a consideration of whether this meaning of the verb ubrać/ubierać should not be included into the group of regionalisms accepted as a norm of regional usage. As a sidenote, the emerging question is whether there actually are any normatively unaccepted regionalisms or the unacceptance should be ascribed only to dialecticisms in general language. Keywords: regionalism – linguistic correctness – linguistic advice – normativity.

Terminological Thesaurus of the Gospel Text by Dostoevsky: Сorpus Analysis and Interpretation Results

The article presents the integrated results of the corpus analysis and interpretation of the terminological dictionary from 700 articles published in the “Problems of Historical Poetics” journal from 1990 to 2021 Based on this data and taking into account the rich lexicographic tradition that reflects the author’s original or thematic terminology — from Antony Khrapovitsky’s “Dictionary to the works of Dostoevsky” (1921) to recent thesaurus-type dictionaries, a thesaurus of the gospel text by F. M. Dostoevsky is compiled. It is a conceptual apparatus that representatively reflects the current state of the study of the writer’s gospel text using terms and concepts that belong to the spheres of general historical poetics and ethnopoetics, theology and philosophy. Dictionary entries devoted to such key concepts of Russian literary criticism of the 21st century as “historical poetics,” “ethnopoetics,” “gospel text,” etc. are given as illustrative examples. The article concludes that this dictionary has promising applied value for solving educational and scientific problems.

Review of the book: Maradan, Mélanie. 2021. Uncertainty in Deliberate Lexical Interventions. Exploring Esperanto Speakers’ Opinions through Corpora. Berlin: Frank & Timme.

This book is about neology, with a focus not on the products of lexical creation (neologisms, word coinages etc.), but rather on the opinions expressed by language users about potential new word forms / meanings. The key innovation of the study is that it analyses a representative corpus of written contributions from five different discussion forums in Esperanto (including opinions on competing technical terms, problematic dictionary entries, etc.). As stated by the author - Mélanie Maradan - the purpose of the study is to facilitate the work of 'language managers', that is to say those (often self-appointed) language experts who have taken upon themselves the task of maintaining the norms and standards of Esperanto. Throughout the book Maradan prefers this term to 'language planner'. It strikes this reviewer that this is an attempt to appropriate the theory and practices ofbmarketing studies, since the analogy of commercial business and ‘human resource management’ are a leitmotif that permeates many other sections of this work.