Temporal Immediacy Research Articles

The extension of the progressive aspect in Black South African English

Abstract: The extension of the progressive aspect to stative verbs has been identified as a characteristic feature of New Varieties of English across the world, including the English of black South Africans (BSAfE). This paper examines the use of the progressive aspect in BSAfE, by doing a comparative analysis of three corpora of argumentative student writing representing BSAfE (an outer circle variety), inner circle English and German Learner English as an example of expanding circle English. A comprehensive discussion of the meaning of the progressive aspect in English leads to the definition of a prototype, alongside various extensions and elaborations of the meaning of the construction. Nine attributes of the progressive are identified, which are used to analyse the data. On the basis of the co‐occurrence of the attributes, 17 uses of the progressive construction are identified, most of which are consistent with grammatical descriptions of standardised inner circle varieties, but some not. When the three corpora are compared, the BSAfE data show very different ways of using the progressive construction that are not related to the core senses of the progressive aspect, but instead display a kind of continuous aspect without temporal immediacy. It is suggested that the progressive construction is used in a way consistent with the persistitive aspect of the Bantu languages, a type of imperfective that emphasises mainly the long duration and incompleteness of a stative or durative verb. The expanding circle data, on the other hand, appear very similar to the inner circle data, except for a tendency to put the progressive construction to a slightly more limited range of uses.

The Metaphysical Roots of Cartesian Physics: The Law of Rectilinear Motion

This paper presents a detailed account of Descartes' derivation of his second law of nature—the law of rectilinear motion—from a priori metaphysical principles. Unlike the other laws the proof of the second depends essentially on a metaphysical assumption about the temporal immediacy of God's operation. Recent commentators (e.g., Des Chene and Garber) have not adequately explained the precise role of this assumption in the proof and Descartes' reasoning has continued to seem somewhat arbitrary as a result. My account better reveals the dependence of the second law on fundamental principles about time and causality.

The Self-Deceiving Muse: Fiction and the Rationalistic Dictates of the Present

One The present-ness of character in fictional narrative figures an inherently conflicted temporality. No one would dispute that plot conflict epitomizes tensions between moments in time as much as conflicts between persons. But our way of construing the thematic sense of narrative fictions, by putting an emphasis on the conflict of personalities, privileges the already formed dispositions of character. It transcends the disruptiveness of temporal immediacy, of being present in the present. A focus upon plot conflict inclines us to ignore the relative inchoateness of character in time. It inveigles us to lose sight of the possibility that character is too easily taken for granted as a repository of experience rather than a threshold of experience. Particularly from the vantage point of the novel of the present -since 1945 - character is an increasingly vexed proposition. The present moment prompts us to consider how the novel has long harbored a notion of character that resists characterization insofar as it is responsive to the circumstance of present-ness.

Understanding consumer ethical decision making with respect to purchase of pirated software

This paper examines the influence of consumers’ moral intensity, perceived risks and moral judgment on their purchase intention of pirated software. The aspects of moral intensity include magnitude of consequence, social consensus, probability of effect and temporal immediacy. The perceived risks of consumers are related to financial, performance, prosecution and social risks. Moral judgment is based on cognitive moral development and reasoning. Ten hypotheses were developed and tested with data collected using a scenario‐based questionnaire. A hierarchical regression analysis is used to control for variations that are attributed to factors such as gender, age, educational attainment, income, price levels and past software experience of consumers. Results revealed that consumer purchase intention is influenced by certain aspects of their perceived moral intensity, magnitude of consequence, temporal immediacy and social consensus; perceived risks, financial, prosecution and social; and moral judgment, cognitive moral development and moral reasoning. Applicability and implication of the findings as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.

The effects of issue characteristics on the recognition of moral issues

The construct of moral intensity, proposed by Jones (1991), was used to predict the extent to which individuals were able to recognize moral issues. We tested for the effects of the six dimensions of moral intensity: social consensus, proximity, concentration of effect, probability of effect, temporal immediacy and magnitude of consequences. A scenario-based study, conducted among business individuals in Singapore, revealed that social consensus and magnitude of consequences influenced the recognition of moral issues. The study provided evidence for the effects of temporal immediacy. There was marginal support for the impact of proximity and probability of effect but no evidence that concentration of effect influenced recognition of moral issues. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for researchers and organisational practitioners.

Marion's Merry Resistance: Implications of Theatralization in Adam de la Halle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion

In Le Jeu de Robin et Marion , Adam de la Halle transforms the lyric pastourelle into theater. As a result of the material and temporal immediacy of theater, the primary feminine character gains a new type of power with respect to her fellow protagonists, the spectator, and the writer himself.

Moral Intensity and Ethical Decision Making of Marketing Professionals-A Comparision of American and Taiwanese Marketers

This study examined the differences of moral intensity as well as the influence of the moral intensity on ethical decision- making (EDM) between American and Taiwanese marketers. The instrument was adopted from Singhapakdi's [21]. As expected, American marketers got higher mean scores on all the components of moral intensity regarding the perceived potential harm. The components were magnitude of consequence, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, and concentration of effect. Cultural factors developed by difference between two societies. The relationships between the moral intensity to Hofstede [9] were used to explain the ethical perceptions and to ethical intentions were supported both by Singhapakdi [21] and by this research. That implied cultural factors affect people's ethical perception through the effect on their perceived moral intensity.

Rethinking Models of Literary Change: The Case of James Merrill

No one has accused James Merrill of being postmodern. If anything, his accomplished formalism and his reliance on traditional forms and conventions have made his poetry seem slightly anachronistic. If we are not to dismiss Merrill as a reactionary but to try to define his place in American poetry, we need to rethink models of literary history and change with which we have read American poetry since World War II, for his work challenges ways we have configured aftermath of modernism. In poetry, slippery term postmodern is used to refer primarily to poets working in various experimental traditions, in free or even prose. For example, Donald Allen's retitling his influential 1960 anthology, The American Poetry, as The Postmoderns in 1982 claims this designation for poets whose preference for formal freedom or openness as opposed to academic, formalistic, strictly rhymed and metered verse places them among most truly authentic, indigenous American writers (9). Similarly, while declining to use term postmoder, James E. B. Breslin envisions history of poetry after modernism as an opposition between formalist verse, which represents orthodoxy of a rigidified modernism, and an antiformalist revolt, with which American poetry in 1960s once again became moder, 'of present' (xiv, xv). For him, Merrill is part of New Rear Guard, one of New Formalists (xiv, 25) who are countered by open-form poets out to capture temporal immediacy (xv) and revive early spirit of modernism. Marjorie Perloff, who follows open forms to 1980s, uses to designate LANGUAGE poets, in whose postlyric work the Romantic and Modernist cult of personality has given way to what new poets call 'the dispersal of speaking subject,' denial of unitary, authoritative ego (x); for her, the pivotal figure in transformation of Romantic (and Modernistic) lyric into what we now think of as postmoder poetry is surely Ezra Pound

Hormonal Control of Sexual Behavior in the Female Rat: Molecular, Cellular and Neurochemical Studies1

The present era of molecular research on steroid hormone action originates from the demonstration that there are intracellular protein receptors that bind steroid hormones and carry them to sites in cell nuclei where they regulate gene expression (Jensen and Jacobson, 1962; Toft and Gorski, 1966; Jensen et al., 1968; O’Malley and Means, 1974). Researchers of steroid hormone action in brain tissue have taken advantage of this revolution in biochemistry and cell biology and have found a way to understand the actions of gonada! and adrenal steroids on neural cells in cellular and molecular terms. However, the road has not been an easy one. The difficulties stem from the extreme complexity and anatomical heterogeneity of the brain, and the precise and highly localized neural networks involved in governing behavior. There also have been conceptual problems caused by a common tendency to regard the hormone as a stimulus and the behavior it regulates as a response, a relationship that implies temporal immediacy. However, because a hallmark of steroid hormone-regulated behaviors is their long latency and duration in relation to hormone priming, it has been necessary to look at the role of hormones in a different light. More than 40 years ago, the preeminent pioneer in elucidating hormones’ effects on behavior, Frank Beach, anticipated the current view of steroid hormone action by writing: