Main Clause Research Articles

Birds of a feather flocking together on Instagram: How racially similar followers and followings on Instagram are linked to young women’s body image

In light of recent studies demonstrating the detrimental effects of social media use on young women’s body image, we examined the racial composition of young women’s Instagram followers, as well as the racial composition of the individuals in young women’s followed Instagram accounts, in relation to their appearance ideals and body image. Based on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), we tested two main propositions. First, women who have racially similar followers and followed accounts will be more likely to internalize body ideal preferences that are relevant to their in-group (i.e., thinness for Asian-American and White women; curviness for Black and Latina women). Second, following and being followed by people of one’s racial identity in-group will have ameliorative effects on young women’s body image (i.e., more body appreciation; less body dissatisfaction). Our sample included 533 U.S. women who identified as Asian-American (n = 97), Black (n = 101), Latina (n = 98), or White (n = 237). The results provided more support for the notion that racially similar followers and accounts followed are related to better body image outcomes rather than to the internalization of body ideals. Specifically, following a higher percentage of racially similar accounts was positively associated with body appreciation among Asian-American and White participants and negatively associated with body dissatisfaction among Asian-American participants. Likewise, being followed by a higher percentage of racially similar others was positively associated with body appreciation among Asian-American, Black, and White participants, and negatively associated with body dissatisfaction among Latina participants. The findings are discussed in light of social identity theory.

Now is the Time: The Impact of Linguistic Time Reference on Corporate Default Risk

Synopsis The research problem This paper assesses whether and how people’s perceptions of time — strong future time reference (FTR) versus weak FTR — affect corporate default risk. Motivation or theoretical reasoning Studies have shown that default risk varies across firms, regions, and countries, highlighting the need for a comprehensive understanding of the contributing factors. Traditional studies focus on how firm-level, industry-level, national and international economic and financial variables shape corporate default risk, but they fail to explain cross-country and cross-regional differences in corporate default risk from the perspective of informal institutions, particularly, language. This study takes the first step to examine whether and how future-oriented language shapes corporate default risk. The test hypotheses We first tested whether strong-FTR language decreases corporate default risk. We further tested whether the effect of strong-FTR language on default risk depends on firms’ level of information transparency. In addition, we tested whether the effect of strong-FTR language on default risk depends on a country’s disclosure requirements. Lastly, we tested whether the effect of strong-FTR language on default risk depends on a country’s control of corruption. Target population We find that corporate default risk is significantly higher in regions dominated by speakers of weak-FTR languages, using a comprehensive sample of firms in 36 countries with 180,013 observations spanning from 1988 to 2017. Adopted methodology Ordinary least square regressions were used in this study. Analyses Corporate default risk is measured by two proxies of firm probability of default, following Merton [(1974) Journal of Finance, 29(2), 449–470] and Lee and Lin [(2012) Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions, and Money, 22(4), 973–989]. Our independent variable is Strong FTR, which equals 1 if a language belongs to the strong-FTR language family, as defined by the European Science Foundation’s Typology of Languages in Europe (EUROTYP) project. If a language does not require “obligatory [FTR] use in (main clause) prediction-based contexts” [Dahl (2000)Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, O. Dahl (Ed.), pp. 309–328], then we put this language into the weak-FTR group. On the other hand, if a language does have the above-mentioned requirement, then it belongs to the strong-FTR group. Findings We found that corporate default risk is significantly higher in regions dominated by speakers of weak-FTR languages. Furthermore, the FTR effect on default risk is weakened in countries with stronger formal institutions (e.g., high disclosure quality, greater transparency, and less corruption). Our results introduce a new explanation for heterogeneity in corporate default risk, provide insights about whether language is an economic institution, and adds to research on the effects of languages on economic and financial outcomes.

Italian proportions and (non-)conservativity

This paper describes the morpho-syntax and the interpretation of Italian proportional measure phrases (proportions), namely fractions and percentages. Ahn (2012) and Sauerland (2014) first observed that the restrictor and the predicate of these structures can be switched by minimal morpho-syntactic modifications (MIT hired sixty percent {of / of the} women) and identified quantifier floating for Korean and case for German as the morpho-syntactic markers of this reversal. Italian shows five novel morpho-syntactic markers: definiteness of the inner nominal, definiteness of the outer determiner, position with respect to the verb in main clauses, but not in subordinate clauses, and verb agreement. Also three interpretive factors are at play: the accessibility of the complement set, the type of predicate, and new information focus, whereas contrastive focus, playing a pivotal role in previous analyses, interacts with the restrictor/predicate reversal but is orthogonal to it. The discovered generalisations are only partially explained by current proposals and call for a new account.

Localization Construction of Directors'Liability Insurance System

As an insurance to reduce the company's business risks caused by directors' misconduct, the directors' liability insurance system has not fully demonstrated its function and shows signs of acclimatization. From the perspective of comparative law, the author examines the institutional background and functional evolution of directors' liability insurance in the United States, the former doubts and adaptations in the British law, and the continuation and evolution in the German law, which provides enlightenment for exploring the dilemma of directors' liability insurance system in China and the way to improve it. Directors' liability insurance is not an isolated insurance law adjustment content, and China lacks systematic substantive rules and procedural implementation mechanisms for directors' obligations. The Company law has laid a legal foundation for directors' liability insurance to play its function, supplemented by lower level norms such as regulations at the regulatory level, and gradually expanded the scope of applicable subjects of directors' liability insurance to all types of company directors and executives. Then from the level of insurance law system, the localization of directors' liability insurance clauses is realized, and the unification of the main clauses of the contracts of various insurance companies is promoted, which provides a feasible way to perfect the directors' liability insurance system in our country.

Acquisition of English relative clauses by native speakers of Kurdish Sorani

AbstractThe present study investigates several linguistic factors that might be determinants of differences in the ease of acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) in L2 contexts, using the acquisition of English relative clauses by Kurdish Sorani native speakers. The analysis of 1440 subject and object RCs formed by Kurdish Sorani-speaking learners of English in a sentence combination task and a sentence translation task indicates that the syntactic functions of the noun phrase (NP) relativized in the RC, the position of the RC in the matrix clause (whether centre- or right-embedded), and the properties of RCs in L1 affect the acquisition and the formation of RCs in L2. The study also provides evidence that the syntactic functions of the relativized NP in the matrix clause, and the consistency/inconsistency of word orders in L1 and L2 do not influence the acquisition of RCs in L2.

Linguistic Expressions of Conditions of Chinese Legislative Provisions: A Register Grammar Perspective

There is difference in the distribution of grammar phenomena in different registers. This paper has carried out a comprehensive study of the linguistic expressions of Conditions in Chinese legislative provisions. In legislative provisions, the Conditions are usually used to indicate the preconditions or circumstances for the legal norm, which are referred to as hypothetical conditions in this paper. In contrast, the clauses introduced by the words dan ‘but’ or danshi ‘but/however’ are called danshus ‘provisos’. Danshus are always positioned after the main clauses, so they are called post-conditions. Legal norms can be categorized into authorization norms, obligatory norms, and compound norms. As special legal norms, danshus can also be categorized into authorization, obligatory and exclusionary danshus respectively. Through a corpus-based analysis of conditions of Chinese legislative provisions, this study has concluded that: i) hypothetical conditions are always expressed by de-constructions; ii) post-conditions are always expressed by danshus, including exclusionary danshus, obligatory danshus and authorization danshus respectively; iii) the use of danshus in Chinese legislative provisions are less than 7% of the total clause numbers; and iv) the co-occurrence of hypothetical conditions and post-conditions are less than 3% of the total clause numbers. Suggestions for future legislation and amendments: First, more danshus should be used; Second, the use of de-constructions should be more standardized; and Third, the co-occurrence of de-constructions and danshus should be increased.

Parsing the late-closure ambiguity: While Schrödinger measured the cat escaped from the box.

An experiment investigated the "good-enough" processing account regarding how people parse sentences with late-closure ambiguity, such as While Anna dressed the baby who was cute and cuddly spit up on the bed. One possible result of an initial misparse of the sentence (thinking that Anna dressed the baby) is that the correct parse then cannot be created. The alternative is that, although the misparse may linger in the comprehender's mind, the correct parse is eventually established and coexists with the misparse. This study approached this issue through an analogy to quantum physics. When photons are directed toward two small slits, it appears as if each photon passes through both slits ("bothness"). If particles not subject to quantum effects are directed at the slits, they pass through one or the other ("oneness"). Participants read sentences containing the late-closure ambiguity and afterward answered two questions about each sentence. These could query the potential misparse (Did Anna dress the baby?), correct-parse (Did Anna dress herself?), or the main clause (Did the baby spit up on the bed?), and the order of the question types was varied to test for quantum measurement context effects. The results supported "oneness," that is, the correct-parse and misparse of the subordinate clause do not coexist. Participants rarely said "yes" to both the misparse and correct-parse questions, and the "yes" response proportions for these two questions invariably added up to around 1.0. Furthermore, no quantum-like measurement-order effect between misparse and correct-parse questions was found.

가정폭력피해자의 개인정보보호를 위한 법제 개선에 대한 연구

According to the Inconsistency with the Constitution on the part relating to “request of the issuance of a family relation certificate and an identification certificate by lineal blood relatives among certificates prescribed in Article 15” in the main clause of Article 14 (1) of the Act on Registration of Family Relations, the Act on Registration of Family Relations was amended to limit the issuance of certificates and disclosure of information to be entered to persons designated by domestic violence victims and has been in effect since January 1, 2022. This amendment is important in that victims of domestic violence were given control of personal information under the Act on Registration of Family Relations.
 However, limitations may point out in that the 2022 revised Family Relations Registration Act is not easy to understand due to its complexity and lacks protection of the interests of those subject to disclosure restrictions, not domestic violence offenders. Furthermore, further improvement is required considering the need to protect personal information in our current society, the increased risk of leakage due to strengthening access to personal information, and changes in public perception of families. Accordingly, in the short-term improvement direction, it was proposed to add immediate notification and periodic verification procedures, and to apply the system to protect personal information of crime victims other than domestic violence. A plan to reduce the scope of claimants for issuance of certificates was proposed as a mid- to long-term improvement direction.
 Based on the improvement direction proposed, the 2022 revised Family Relations Registration Act will play a role as an effective system for actively guaranteeing personal information of domestic violence victims, suppress the misuse, abuse, and leakage of personal information and aim for the legitimate use of personal information. under the Act on Registration of Family Relations.

Demography and the composition of taxes: a political economy theory

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the impact of population aging on the composition of taxes in an overlapping generations model. Taxes are levied on both income and expenditure, with the median voter being pivotal in the political-economy theoretical framework in question. As in Razin, Sadka, and Swagel (2002. “The Aging Population and the Size of the Welfare State.” Journal of Political Economy 110 (4): 900–918. doi:10.1086/340780), an increased fraction of retirees in the population leads to lower income taxes. Conversely, the results for expenditure taxes are ambiguous. The main proposition is that the composition of taxes–defined as the extent to which taxes are levied on income relative to expenditure–falls unambiguously with the share of retirees increasing as the tax burden is rebalanced toward the retired population.

A hypothetico‐deductive theory of science and learning

AbstractThis article presents a simple, cognitive theory of science and learning. The first section of the paper develops the theory's two main propositions: (i) A wide range of scientific activities rely heavily on one type of reasoning, hypothetical thinking, and (ii) This type of reasoning is also useful to students for learning science content. The second section of the paper presents a taxonomy of multiple‐choice questions that use hypothetical thinking and the third section of the paper tests the theory using data from a college biology course. As expected by the theory, student responses to 24 scientific reasoning questions were consistent with a one‐dimensional psychometric construct. Student responses to the scientific reasoning questions explained 36% of the variance in exam grades. Several directions for additional research are identified, including studying the psychometric structure of scientific thinking in more detail, performing randomized, controlled experiments to demonstrate a causal relationship between scientific thinking and learning, and identifying the relative contribution of other factors to success in college.

Word order evolves at similar rates in main and subordinate clauses

Abstract In syntactic change, it remains an open issue whether word orders are more conservative or innovative in subordinate clauses compared with main clauses. Using 47 dependency-annotated corpora and Bayesian phylogenetic inference, we explore the evolution of S/V, V/O, and S/O orders across main and subordinate clauses in Indo-European. Our results reveal similar rates of change across clause types, with no evidence for any inherent conservatism of subordinate or main clauses. Our models also support evolutionary biases towards SV, VO, and SO orders, consistent with theories of dependency length minimization that favor verb-medial orders and with theories of a subject preference that favor SO orders. Finally, our results show that while the word order in the proto-language cannot be estimated with any reasonable degree of certainty, the early history of the family was dominated by a moderate preference for SVO orders, with substantial uncertainty between VO and OV orders in both main and subordinate clauses.

"Ho sabíeu, això?" La dislocació a la dreta en català

The goal of this paper is to describe right-dislocation in Catalan from a quantitative and qualitative corpus. Right-dislocation is the non-canonical construction in which a pronoun in the main clause is coreferential with a final noun phrase. Although right-dislocation is very frequent in Catalan, especially in oral language, it has been little studied. The corpus consists of 93 right-dislocations, coded according to three parameters. The main focus of analysis is the type of information found in right-dislocation and the motivations for this construction. The analysis compares right-dislocation with other rhetorical alternatives that the speaker might have used to convey the same information: a sentence with a pronoun and without a displaced constituent or a sentence with a canonical order. I argue that right-dislocation in Catalan is a means to structure information and to create the necessary pragmatic and semantic effects needed in the context.
 Keywords: Catalan, pragmatics, right dislocation, information packaging, information structure.

The Production of Subject Anaphoric Expressions in Italian and Mexican Spanish: A Forced-Choice Experimental Study.

We compare the production of anaphoric expressions in Spanish and Italian. In two sentence completion tasks, Spanish and Italian-speaking participants complete sentence fragments where we manipulate the location of the antecedents (in a main or subordinate clause), the gender of the antecedents (similar or different) and the referent of the anaphoric expression (subject or object antecedent). Our results show a weaker subject bias for null pronouns and a weaker object bias for overt pronouns in Spanish compared to Italian. In addition, a thetic interpretation of the initial (subordinate) clause decreases the accessibility of the subject antecedent, leading to an increased use of noun phrases when there is gender-similarity between antecedents. By including gender dissimilar antecedents, we further observe an increase in speakers' production of overt pronouns when reference to an object antecedent is expected.

Types of autonomous V-final clauses

Abstract In German (and Dutch), main clauses and dependent clauses differ clearly with respect to form. Main clauses are always V2 and autonomous (with speech act status) while dependent ones are verb-final/VL (V-last) and nonautonomous (without speech act status). This paper is about autonomous clauses with the form of dependent clauses (i.e. VL-form, also captured in the literature under the term insubordinate subordination, coined by Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Insubordination and its uses. In Irina Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and empirical foundations, 366–431. Oxford: Oxford University Press). In the recent literature, it has been argued that in order to explain the occurrence of autonomous dependent clauses in the historical development of German, the introducing main clause fell elliptically leaving behind a dependent form with autonomous status. The present paper argues that this account is false. Dependent forms can exist independently. Since speech act autonomy of dependent forms exists with certain (albeit not all) complementizers, a special account is provided. It is argued that this development typical of modern German, matches with the tendency toward an illocutionary semantics in its own right. Parallels for the latter path of grammaticalization are drawn from several languages other than German. The importance of the concerns for modern generative grammar is a twofold one: first, it provides insights into how independent (autonomous), but formally dependent sentences divide into several kinds of modality that are expressed in the left sentential periphery; and, second, it shows in which ways speaker-perspective is grammaticalized.

Mismatch between syntax and prosody and complex sentence structure in Hittite

Abstract Hittite attests a set of complex sentences in which (mostly) relative clauses (other subordinate clauses are also attested) appear in linear syntax to be within another subordinate (usually conditional, rarely temporal) clause or main clause. The relative clause can be preceded by a very limited array of constituents from the matrix clause, e.g., mān ‘if’ or the quotative particle ⸗wa(r). There are also examples which attest the conditional subordinator and the irrealis particle in two positions simultaneously, at the left edge of the whole sentence and in the conditional clause (= main clause for the relative clause). I provide a fine-grained descriptive and structural analysis of the structure and show that the type cannot be explained as bare indefinites, embedded relative clauses or parenthetic clauses. It is shown that, structurally, the sentences containing subordinate (mostly relative) clauses within other clauses are heterogenous and of three types. The difference lies in the elements that precede the relative clause and in the structure of the sentences, whereby a standard Hittite relative clause adjoins at different heights. All three types display the same mismatch between prosodic domains and syntax/semantics—the constituent that is part of the main clause from the semantic and syntactic perspective is prosodically part of the relative clause. Since there is a clause boundary delimiting the end of the subordinate clause within the main clause, it makes sense to treat the surface structure as a distinct taxonomic unit, which is correspondingly labelled a mismatch sentence. The new evidence allows us to obtain a fuller understanding of the Hittite left periphery than was previously possible. It thus offers an important window into hitherto unrecognized aspects of the underlying structure of the complex sentence in Hittite.

Language of Vietnamese School Science Textbooks

This paper explores textual meanings realised in the theme resources of a Vietnamese lower secondary school science textbook – Sinh h?c 8 (Biology 8). The theoretical framework employed for analysis is Systemic Functional Linguistics. The data for analysis is ten texts selected randomly from the textbook. The units of analysis are major independent clause simplexes and hypotactic clause complexes which have a subordinate clause in initial position. The research has brought to light a number of significant findings of which eight stand out. First, all five types of general Themes: simple Theme, multiple Theme, clausal Theme, unmarked Theme, and marked Theme are employed in the texts. Second, of the four mood function Themes: Subject Theme, Predicator Theme, Complement Theme, and Adjunct Theme, Subject Theme takes up the largest proportion. Third, of the three mood function simple Themes: simple Subject Theme, simple Predicator Theme and simple Adjunct Theme, simple Subject Theme has the highest number. Fourth, between textual + topical Theme and interpersonal + topical Theme, textual + topical Theme predominates. Fifth, of the three mood type simple Subject Theme: simple Subject Theme in declarative clause, simple Subject Theme in imperative clause and simple Subject Theme in interrogative clause, simple Subject Theme in declarative clause accounts for the highest number. Sixth, between simple Predicator Theme and multiple Predicator Theme, simple Predicator Theme has a much higher proportion. Seventh, of the nine types of simple Adjunct Theme examined, six are found in the texts, among which spatial location Adjunct Theme takes the highest number. And Eighth, Complement Theme, multiple Adjunct Theme, textual + interpersonal + topical Theme, interpersonal + topical/Subject Theme, matter Adjunct Theme, role Adjunct Theme, and stance Adjunct Theme are not found in the texts. It is concluded that Vietnamese textbook writers have employed quite a variety of theme resources to construct textual meanings and to create coherence and continuity of their texts.

The function of extra negation

AbstractThis paper provides insight into the phenomenon of extra negation, also known as non-compositional, expletive, or pleonastic negation. It provides a corpus-based analysis of the Dutch negative privative construction, which consists ofzonder‘without’ andniet‘not’, in which one negation does not cancel the other. Two basic factors that trigger an extra negation are discussed, and an explanation of why these factors facilitate the use of an extra negation is offered. It is argued that the extra negation has a semantic-pragmatic function that is reminiscent of similar instances of extra negation in Dutch and other languages, specifically sentences consisting of a main clause and a subordinate clause containing a word which expresses implicit negation. It is shown that in complex hypotactic constructions, the extra negation is used to make explicit in the subordinate clause that the presupposition of non-occurrence is rejected.

Cultural theory in post-apartheid South Africa: ecotones as theory for cultural enquiry in Mad Buddies (Gray Hofmeyr, 2012)

This article discusses ecotones as a theory and method for cultural enquiry in post-apartheid South Africa. It applies semiotics to critique cultural configurations in Gray Hofmeyr’s Mad Buddies, arguing that, first, the film’s figuration of ecotone through the imagery of debris enables theorization of the shift toward post-racial cultural thought; and, two, that visual of ruins affords us a chance to intercept the new racial configurations. The main proposition is that application of ecotones theory in post-apartheid cultural criticism allows us to grasp the incompletion of the racial and cultural transition by anticipating nondescript cultural norms: neither rigidly segregated nor fully integrated.

Disentangling Two Fundamental Paradigms in Human-Machine Communication Research: Media Equation and Media Evocation

In this theoretical paper, we delineate two fundamental paradigms in how scholars conceptualize the nature of machines in human-machine communication (HMC). In addition to the well-known Media Equation paradigm, we distinguish the Media Evocation paradigm. The Media Equation paradigm entails that people respond to machines as if they are humans, whereas the Media Evocation paradigm conceptualizes machines as objects that can evoke reflections about ontological categories. For each paradigm, we present the main propositions, research methodologies, and current challenges. We conclude with theoretical implications on how to integrate the two paradigms, and with a call for mixedmethod research that includes innovative data analyses and that takes ontological classifications into account when explaining social responses to machines.

A Corpus-Based Study of Korean EFL Learners’ Use of Subordinate Conjunctions in Argumentative Writing: With Focus on if, when, and because

The use of subordinating conjunctions in L2 writing has been widely studied with regard to frequency of occurrence, grammatical accuracy, and relative ordering of subordinate and main clauses. However, relatively few studies investigated the diverse aspects of the L2 use of subordinating conjunctions within a single study. The present study analyzed three representative subordinating conjunctions, if, when, and because as used in a proficiency-stratified Korean EFL written corpus in terms of their frequency of occurrence, grammatical accuracy, and linear ordering relative to the main clause. The results revealed that the proficiency effect on frequency and grammatical accuracy varied among the three subordinating conjunctions, whereas that on linear ordering of subordinate clauses was uniform across conjunctions. The findings provide implications for a better understanding of L2 adverbial subordinate clauses and its application to teaching practice.