Journal articles on the topic 'Second grammatical treatise'

Medieval Icelandic grammar and poetics based their analysis, to a great extent, on traditional Nordic scholarship. In poetics, Snorra Edda was central, but insights from Classical learning were used to supplement it in the Third and the Fourth Grammatical Treatises. A comparison between Snorri’s description of metrical form in Háttatal and Latin metrics reveals fundamental differences. In the Nordic system, the emphasis is on alliteration and rhyme, but in the Latin one rhythm is central. Furthermore, there are significant differences in the kind of phonological terminology and analysis presented in the grammatical treatises respectively, the First providing the sharpest insights, but the Second perhaps being the most original, seeking inspiration from music. The Third Treatise shows input from runic learning as well as Latin doctrine in its grammatical part, and a healthy mixture of native and Classical learning in its poetics.

The paper analyzes grammatical and lexical ways of expressing medical instructions in Celsus’ treatise De medicina. The author examines and compares all occurrences of medical prescriptions in the text and comes to the following conclusions. Celsus uses various linguistic ways to express treatment recommendations, among which gerundive is the most frequent one. Adjectives and adverbs are used not only to introduce medical prescriptions, but also to characterize treatment methods. As for the verbs in the treatise, Celsus mostly uses the third person form, while the second person forms are not used at all.

The article examines species of variance in the graphic, phonetic-phonological and grammatical systems, which should be taken into account in the preparation of the historical grammar dictionary, grammar annotation of historical texts. The author defines the dynamic processes which make it dependent on the example of theoretical guide treatise by I. Galyatovskyi “Order or method of compiling a sermon” (second half of 17th century). The author points to the various graphical representations of phonemes, formation of new paradigms and interference processes. Phonetic variability correlated to loss of reduced phonemes and formation of a new phoneme /i/. Grammatical variation appears due to the influence Old Church Slavonic language or borrowing new terms from Latin. Coexistence grammatical forms old and new types of inflection manifested primarily in conjugation. She also gives an example of a variative paradigm of the noun.

AbstractThis paper argues that the rise and the transmission of the runes is largely determined by sociolinguistic factors. First, the older fuþark is identified as a unique Germanic design, adapted from Latin or Greek sources by one or more well-born Germani to mark group identity and status. Hence it is rather unlikely that the search for an exact source alphabet of the older fuþark will make a major breakthrough in future research. Second, the present author argues that the extension of the fuþark in the Anglo-Frisian setting is due to high-scale contact with the Christian Church, including Latin manuscript culture and Classical grammatical schooling, whereas these factors were almost entirely absent in pre-Viking-Age Scandinavia. The clerical influence is shown not least by “Christian inscriptions” in Anglo-Saxon England such as the Ruthwell Cross. Learned Christians recycled the obsolete runes to reestablish the phonological type of perfect fit – a situation which is diametrically opposed to the Scandinavian scenario. Typologically, therefore, the First Grammatical Treatise in Iceland is directly in line with the Anglo-Frisian extension of the runic alphabet, whereas the Viking-Age fuþark represents a counter-development with no clear influence of the Christian Church until the early 900s.

The given study is the second part of the article, which scrutinizes the idea of Severus of Antioch concerning which way, in the event of Christ’s incarnation, the meanings of the concepts of essence, nature, hypostasis, and person, which are the most important for representation of the theological sense of this event, are mystically transformed. Along with that, the polemics between the Chalcedonites and Severian Monophysites deployed on this idea, which is immediately represented in the third chapter of Leontius’ of Byzantium treatise “Refutation of syllogisms of Severus”, is taken into consideration. By its content, this chapter is split into two parts, each consisting of an argument of a Severian adversary of the Chalcedonite confession and a detailed refutation of this argument proposed by Leontius. While the content of the first half of the text is focused on the philosophical analysis of the problem of methodological adequacy of the very formulation of Severus’ idea both from the viewpoint of external philosophical wisdom and of theology, the second half is dedicated to the problem of the grammatical and philosophical status of the exegesis of ambiguous expressions of the Fathers. In this section of the study, a detailed interpretation is proposed of the first part of the third chapter of Leontius’ treatise, and, on the grounds of addressing the models of philosophical and theological argumentation authentic for the first half of the 6th century, an analysis is performed of the logico-philosophical and theological sense of the polemical arguments applied by the opponents.

The given study is the third part of the article, which scrutinizes the idea of Severus of Antioch concerning which way, in the event of Christ’s incarnation, the meanings of the concepts of essence, nature, hypostasis, and person, which are the most important for representation of the theological sense of this event, are mystically transformed. Along with that, the polemics between the Chalcedonites and Severian Monophysites deployed on this idea, which is immediately represented in the third chapter of Leontius’ of Byzantium treatise “Refutation of syllogisms of Severus”, is taken into consideration. By its content, this chapter is split into two parts, each consisting of an argument of a Severian adversary of the Chalcedonite confession and a detailed refutation of this argument proposed by Leontius. While the content of the first half of the text is focused on the philosophical analysis of the problem of methodological adequacy of the very formulation of Severus’ idea both from the viewpoint of external philosophical wisdom and of theology. In the final, third part of the study, a detailed interpretation of the second part of the third chapter of Leontius’ treatise is proposed, where the argumentation of the Severians and Chalcedonites intended to solve the problem of the grammatical, philosophical and theological status of exegesis of Saint Fathers’ ambiguous expressions is represented together with the formulation of the method which would allow to exclude the homonymy present in these expressions.

Modern knowledge of the grammarian Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis, a work valuable for the study of the Latin language, dates back to a relatively recent past: it was only in 1817 that its editio princeps was published by Ph.C. Buttmann, just a few years after the legal scholar A.W. Cramer came across a mention of the then unknown treatise in a ninth-century MS in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich, numbered Clm 14666. Based on this solitary manuscript, H. Keil published the short treatise in the fifth volume of his Grammatici Latini. With no little enthusiasm did W.M. Lindsay announce his unearthing of what, in his own words, had ‘long been a “desideratum”, a second authority’ for this text, in the MS F 15 III d at the Universitätsbibliothek Basel; this was followed by E.O. Winstedt's complete collation and M. Niedermann's critical edition. After about a century now there comes to light a third authority, surprisingly enough in a codex which has enjoyed such fame in the past decades that one might wonder how Consentius could have gone unnoticed in it for so long: this is the eleventh-century MS of Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Lat. Z. 497 (= 1811), in which the De barbarismis et metaplasmis is contained on fols. 84vb 39 - 90va 39; moreover, a so-far-unnoticed quotation from it (32.9-14), together with one from Consentius’ De nomine et uerbo (Consent. gramm. V 353.6-7), is found on fol. 41vb 16–21 of the same manuscript in a famous grammatical florilegium. The codex, written in Romanesque minuscule and probably originating in Rome, is regarded as a handbook of liberal arts designed by Lawrence Archbishop of Amalfi, formerly a monk at Montecassino, thereafter a teacher in Florence and Rome, where he died in about 1049. Based on palaeographical evidence, F.L. Newton rightfully assumed as an exemplar for this codex a MS in Beneventan script, as some features can be detected that betray the scribal imitation of that typical South Italian script, namely the use of the distinctive abbreviation for eius as ‘ei in ligature with stroke through the descender of the i’, the Beneventan ti ligature for the assibilated sound, and the 2-shaped Beneventan interrogation sign, to which I would add the typical abbreviation for in as a long i cut by a horizontal stroke and the confusion of a and t. Interestingly enough, none of these features is found on fols. 66–95, those containing the new Consentius: from a codicological point of view, this is an autonomous section, written by a different scribe from the rest of the MS and preserving some grammatical texts generally attributed to insular authors, such as Smaragdus’ Liber in partibus Donati (fols. 66–81vb) and part of the compilation entitled Pauca de barbarismo (fols. 81vb - 84vb), which precedes the De barbarismis et metaplasmis; not surprisingly, the new text of Consentius displays numerous features of the Insular script, such as the symbols for enim, autem, eius, est, nihil and et. On this basis it is most likely that this whole section was never included in the Beneventan exemplar, but was added at the time and place of copying of our MS in order to enrich the grammatical content.

Summary The Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo by Priscian enjoyed, unlike the Institutiones grammaticae of which it is a summary, vast popularity in the early Middle Ages, because it provided the basic elements of Latin morphology and swiftly taught students how to decline and conjugate. In the eighth and ninth centuries we find 24 manuscripts in which the text is contaminated to such an extent that it prevents the charting of any stemma codicum, although it is possible to identify the influence of particular codices on one another. The text was well known in France, but there are copies also in Bavaria, in the Abruzzi and in Spain. Only four of these manuscripts contain the Institutiones grammaticae as well: the two works were destined for two very different kinds of public. Their coexistence in Paris, BN, lat. 7498 comes as a response to the need to have the complete corpus of Priscian in Saint-Amand; in Paris, BN, lat. 7503 the position occupied by the treatise suggests that it was felt as a summary of the first section of the Institutiones which deals with the noun, and as a preparation to the second section which concerns verbs; in Reims 1094 didactic considerations appear to predominate; in Wolfenbüttel 64, a witness to the presence of grammatical texts in Lyon, the fragment of the Institutio gives the impression of being a scholastic exercise. It has to be noted, however, that in three manuscripts out of four, the text is inserted into the first seven books of the Institutiones. The authors whose works most frequently occur together with Institutio are Isidore, Bede, Donatus, Servius’s De finalibus, Sergius’s De littera, Phocas, Sedulius, St. Jerome, Eutyches, Agroecius, Consentius, the Liber de finalibus metrorum, Maximus Victorinus’s De ratione metrorum and Servius’s Commentum in Artem Donati. The richest manuscripts in terms of texts are the great scholastic manuals Bologna 797, Orléans 295 and St. Gall 878 by Walahfrid Strabo.

Abstract Heuristic is the first step to provide a good critical text edition. It allows to collect all the manuscripts of a work, as well as to order them according to their content. This preliminary work phase is also important in order to obtain essential information about the genre and type of a work, thus providing useful new starting points for a comprehensive study. The paper provides the first results of this work phase within the project that involves editing, translating and providing a commentary on Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ ‘Epistula ad Ammaeum II’. All the manuscripts of the ‘Epistula’ can be divided into two groups, which are almost always characterised by two specific and different compositions: the first one allows us to consider the ‘Epistula’ as a rhetorical treatise providing rhetorical and grammatical remarks about the style of Thucydides; the second clarifies the importance of the ‘Epistula’ as necessary support to the comprehension of the ‘Historiae’ of Thucydides. Within these two groups of manuscripts there are some witnesses which present an unusual composition, such as the Parisinus gr. 2755. This case study sheds light on interesting and sometimes neglected aspects of the ‘Epistula’ and provides a complete analysis of its genre and use.

This article touches upon the idea of inchoativity in the works of Roman grammarians. It aims to observe the development of the usage of the term inchoativus in the Roman grammatical tradition. The study is based on Latin grammatical treatises dating back to the 3rd-7th centuries A.D., the most part of which was published by Heinrich Keil in the second half of the 19th century. Besides Keil's edition, the article refers to recent editions of grammatical treatises. The study was conducted using three digital textual databases including Corpora Corporum, Digital Library of Latin Texts, and PHI Latin Texts. The Latin adjective inchoativus (or inco-hativus, а less common spelling), which literally means ‘inceptive, initial', is attested in three meanings and is used in collocations concerning verbal tense, verbal inflection, and conjunctions respectively. The first two usages were widespread and refer to verbal categories, while the last one is attested only once. The article is divided into two parts. The first one discusses collocations with types of verbal tense such as gradus ‘grade, degree', distantia ‘distance', differentia ‘difference', discertio ‘difference', species ‘aspect' and tempus ‘tense' itself. The second part deals with Roman grammatical categories including forma ‘form', qualitas ‘quality', species ‘aspect', genus ‘voice', figura ‘figure'. The study draws a conclusion that the adjective inchoativus/incohativus is used with categories of tense and aspect only in the works of early grammarians including Probus, Sacerdos, Diomedes, Charisius, and PseudoProbus. However, these grammarians also mention this term with regard to verb forms ending in -sco. Mostly, inchoativity is bound with the Roman verbal category of forma, which can be observed in the works by Dositheus, Phocas, Eutyches, Audax, Pseudo-Victorinus, Donatus and his commentators Sergius, Servius, Pompeius, Cledonius, and Julian of Toledo, and species (Macrobius, Priscian), which is not to be confused with the species of tense mentioned above. Pseudo-Asper is the only Roman grammarian who exceptionally puts inchoativity into the category of figura and spells inchoativus as incohativus. If the category of forma is absent, inchoativity is reckoned to be a verbal quality (Diomedes). Inchoativity is included into the category of voice in case voice is regarded as a subcategory of quality (Sacerdos, Pseudo-Probus, and Cledonius). In respect to forms ending in -sco, inchoativity is a manifestation of the so-called grammatical category of quality.

The more we learn about the quantity and diversity of the copies, commentaries, and adaptations of Ciceronian rhetoric that have survived from the medieval period, the more we are led to ask why these materials were preserved and how they were used. The question of practical utility has especially concerned those students of medieval commentaries on the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium who are faced with the task of explaining why these treatises continued to be copied and studied long after the demise of both the Roman law courts and the Roman schools. While the use to which the ars dictaminis was put is considerably more evident, there is still much to be learned about the circumstances in which it was taught. Since twelfth-century teachers of dictamen generally saw themselves as the heirs of Cicero, study of their works and the curricula in which they found their place often casts light on the status of rhetoric instruction as a whole. Nowhere is this complementarity so manifest as in central France, by the mid-twelfth century widely regarded as the foremost center for study of the auctores. During the second half of the twelfth century, even as the concise, functional artes dictandi from Italy were rapidly establishing themselves alongside the more traditional commentaries on the classical rhetorics, the French grammar masters were busy refining the synthesis of ars grammatica and ars rhetorica, of Horace and Cicero, preserved in Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (ca. 1175).

Abstract This essay aims at giving an account of some pedagogical and syntactical aspects of Francesco da buti’s (1324–1406) Regule grammaticales, a Latin grammar written in Central Italy in the second half of the 14th century. It occupies an important place in the history of positive grammar, providing an excellent example of Latin teaching in late medieval Italy. In fact, da Buti treatise deals not only with grammar, but also with rhetoric and Ars dictaminis, as was customary in the Italian tradition in the final centuries of the Middle Ages. This article analyzes the sections devoted to nouns and verbs, while also pointing out some pedagogical features, such as the exercises of the thèmata and the use of the vernacular as a tool for learning Latin composition.

Abstract In this paper the author presents the hitherto undescribed Western Karaim -a-d- ~ -a-dy- ~ -a-dyr- verbal forms. The description of these forms is based on philological data collected from 18th- and 19th-century manuscripts and the final conclusion is that it was primarily used to express continuative present. The author also argues in favour of treating the first half of the 19th century as the terminus ante quem for its final disappearance in colloquial Karaim. This paper is the second in a series of articles introducing previously undocumented Karaim grammatical categories.

In this volume are included two flattering reviews, first of Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship: a guide to finding, reading and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period (New York 2007) and the second of René Nünlist, The ancient critic at work. Terms and concepts of literary criticism in Greek scholia (New York 2009). Both reviewed works focuses on Greek scholarship and are very helpful for modern scholars with understanding ancient literary criticism and reading scholia. Scientists rarely use Greek commentaries, because of their technical and philological difficulties, especially because of particular writing and vocabulary, used by scholiasts. There are very few works concerning this theme, so any new published results of researches this kind is priceless. Moreover both reviewed works are of highest scientific level.

In this volume are included two flattering reviews, first of Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship: a guide to finding, reading and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period (New York 2007) and the second of René Nünlist, The ancient critic at work. Terms and concepts of literary criticism in Greek scholia (New York 2009). Both reviewed works focuses on Greek scholarship and are very helpful for modern scholars with understanding ancient literary criticism and reading scholia. Scientists rarely use Greek commentaries, because of their technical and philological difficulties, especially because of particular writing and vocabulary, used by scholiasts. There are very few works concerning this theme, so any new published results of researches this kind is priceless. Moreover both reviewed works are of highest scientific level.

Phraseological comparative constructions (PCC) such as más feo que Picio or beber como un cosaco have been included in all the classifications of idioms that have been posed since the second half of the 20th century, the moment when phraseology was established as a scientific discipline within Linguistics. However, these idioms present a considerable theoretical vagueness, as a consequence of the complex historical codification of a concept in which very different areas are involved (rhetoric, literature, folklore, or grammar). In this work, the main historical milestones in the treatment of this phenomenon are described: from the consideration of the simile within ecclesiastical rhetoric to the modern postulates of the 20th century, also including its grammatization in the grammatical treatises for foreigners of the 16th and 17th centuries, or the great compilations of the international movement of Folklore since the second half of the 19th century. A double objective is pursued: a) to contribute to a better knowledge of the so-called Spanish phraseography; and b) to use the historiographical argument as a basis to achieve a greater characterization of comparative phraseological constructions nowadays.

In late eighth-century France, Alcuin of York was largely responsible for the program of education and reform which Charlemagne was attempting to implement. In addition to helping to draft Charlemagne’s documents of reform, Alcuin contributed a diverse body of written work—including riddling dialogues, grammatical treatises, theological tracts and exegesis—and undertook to teach as many as he possibly could. In fact, for Alcuin, teaching was the penultimate goal in learning (second only, of course, to a better understanding of God). As Alcuin put it, “Devotion to learning is worth little without the desire to teach, as Solomon said: ‘Unseen treasure and hidden wisdom, what use is there in either?’ So the whole concern of the intelligent man must be in teaching, or his labour in learning will be in vain. As we read in the prophet: ‘They who teach many shine as the firmament with everlasting light.”’

Gorgias’ On Not-Being survives only in two divergent summaries. Diels–Kranz's classic edition prints the better-preserved version that appears in Sextus’ Aduersus Mathematicos. Yet, in recent years there has been rising interest in a second summary that survives as part of the anonymous De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia (= MXG). The text of MXG is more difficult; it contains substantial lacunae that often make it much harder to make grammatical let alone philosophical sense of. As Alexander Mourelatos reports, one manuscript has a scribal note that reads: ‘The original contains many errors; no one should blame me; I just copy what I see.’2 The treatise's state of preservation has aptly prompted Michael Gagarin to liken it to a black hole: ‘something we cannot see directly but know must exist because of certain effects it has on other objects.’3

Truscott and Sharwood Smith (henceforth T&SS) propose a novel theory of language acquisition, ACQUISITION BY PROCESSING THEORY (APT), designed to account for both first and second language acquisition, monolingual and bilingual speech perception and parsing, and speech production. This is a tall order. Like any theoretically ambitious enterprise, the APT shares certain properties with much that has gone before. Like the Competition Model (CM; MacWhinney, 1987, 1997; MacWhinney and Bates, 1989, inter alia) and other associative network connectionist learning models, the APT eschews a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) by treating acquisition as the strengthening of levels of representation activation. A parser can produce multiple representations of a parse string in parallel, which then ‘compete’ as analyses for an input string. Unlike the CM, however, the APT is not motivated by a solid program of empirical studies in language acquisition or cross-language processing. Nor does it strike me as theoretically coherent, for the APT, unlike the CM, assumes that knowledge of language involves knowledge of grammatical structure and that the parser makes deterministic use of Universal Grammar in the form of a Minimalist grammar. The determinism is important here; the claim to eliminate LAD hinges on it.

This paper aims to investigate the types of conventional/idiomatic expressions preferred by Korean college students when using movies as learning materials. Five high-intermediate college students were recruited for the study, and the materials used included the animation <i>Sing 2</i> (Jennings & Lourdelet, 2021) and expressions from YouTube. The participants underwent two tests, starting with instruction on the animation, before being followed with a test containing 30 items from it. In another test, they were presented with the same 30 items from YouTube videos. The results revealed that the YouTube items were significantly easier to memorize and recall compared to those from the animation. The participants provided comments regarding their relatively higher scores from the expressions on YouTube. These comments highlighted three factors: first, the shorter length of expressions in YouTube; second, the simpler syntactical structure of YouTube’s content; and third, the practicality and usefulness of YouTube expressions from a pragmatic (pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic) perspective. These findings have important pedagogical implications for the EFL classroom. It is recommended to consider the participants’ feedback: 1) prioritize shorter utterances, 2) incorporate grammatical knowledge even when teaching conventional or idiomatic expressions, 3) emphasize treating utterances as cohesive units. The study contributes valuable insights into incorporating movies in language learning.

The article is devoted to the functional and semantic analysis of the form dico in the 16 th-century Italian language, the main aim being to show how it gradually begins to function as a discourse marker. The study is performed on the basis of texts belonging to different genres (mainly comedies and treatises in the dialogue form) where certain peculiarities of spoken language are imitated. We come to the conclusion that the invariant pragmatic meaning of this unit is "second attempt to establish successful communication". We also claim that the promotion of dico to the role of a discourse marker is the result of the secondary metaphorization of dire. We point out to the parallelism between the metaphoric uses of dire, namely, the epistemic one ("to say" = "to claim, to consider") and the volitional one ("to say" = "to order, to command"), on the one hand, and the use of dico in its two main functions, on the other hand. The functions in question are a) adducing a comment to the previous statement, and b) urging the addressee to act in a certain way. In both cases one can speak of a partial desemantization of dico and its metaphorization that allows it to function as a pragmatic signal rather than a regular verbal form. On the formal level it is manifested by the absence of complements, syntactic freedom of dico and its tendency to occupy a certain position within a sentence depending exclusively on its pragmatic (and not grammatical-syntactic) function.

<p>在对外汉语教学和国际汉语教学50 多年<br />的发展历程中，由于受到现代汉语传统语法研<br />究的影响，语法教学（即句法规则的教学）与<br />词汇教学一直相互脱节，真实语言中大量介于<br />词和句子之间的语言单位受到忽略，而这些语<br />言单位在对外汉语词汇教学和语法教学中都起<br />着重要的作用，是各类教学法都不可忽视的一<br />个环节。本文尝试以“构式-语块”理论为依据，<br />从搭配的视角对现代汉语中的补语进行分析和<br />阐释，以此探讨“构式-语块”理论对国际汉语<br />教学和研究的意义</p><p>In the past fifty years, under the influence<br />of traditional grammatical study of modern<br />Chinese, people working in the field of teaching<br />Chinese as a second language and International<br />Chinese Teaching have been treating grammar<br />teaching (i.e. teaching of sentence patterns)<br />and vocabulary teaching as two independent<br />parts. As a result, many language units between<br />lexical words and sentences in real life<br />communication have been neglected although<br />these units play an important role in both<br />vocabulary teaching and sentence pattern<br />teaching in International Chinese Teaching and<br />deserve due attention within any teaching<br />approach. Based on the “Construction-Chunk”<br />Theory, and guided by the concept of<br />“collocation”, the article analyses complements of Mandarin Chinese in order to discuss the<br />function of the “Construction-Chunk” Theory on<br />International Chinese Teaching and research</p>

Interactional competence (IC) is a concept gaining growing currency in language learning, teaching and assessment. First proposed by Kramsch (1986), IC focuses on developing second language (L2) speakers’ abilities to use language for functional purposes, ranging from “survival as a tourist or a student to negotiating treaties” (p. 366). The conceptualization of language competence as an ability for use differentiates IC from traditional understanding of proficiency, which consists of componential, de-contextualized ability indicators such as lexical range, grammatical soundness, and pronunciation. The ethos of IC emphasizes that language teaching education needs to focus on cultivating L2 speakers’ abilities to use their linguistic resources (e.g., vocabulary and grammar) to achieve meaningful social actions in real-world interactional contexts. This special issue comprises three research articles and three book reviews, each of which exemplifies the ways in which IC can be applied to face-to-face and online learning opportunities for L2 speakers.

The word ‘uniform’ can be a noun, adjective, or verb. As a noun it relates to prescribed dress, often in occupational settings. As an adjective it relates the sameness between objects and thoughts. As a verb it means to make the same. Underlying each grammatical usage is the concept sameness, to align thoughts, ideas, and physicality. In society where heightened individualism is a key characteristic, the persistence of ‘uniform-ness’ is an intriguing area of research. This issue of M/C Journal embraces the range of meanings that word uniform encompasses, and examines how they present in our culture(s) and how they are represented in the media. In the opening to their book Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern World, Jane Tynan and Lisa Godson argue that “as state, society, and nation converged towards the end of the nineteenth century uniform became part of a modern culture increasingly concerned with regulating time, space, and bodies” (Tynan and Godson 6). The modern state demanded uniformity of ideas and thought, underpinned by the rationalism that dominated the enlightenment. To dress in a uniform was to transform the body into that rational, uniform being. At the same time uniformity “suppresses individuality”, controlling social interaction (Joseph and Alex 723-24), and centralising the organisation or state in our social lives. As an item of dress, uniforms are distinctive. Yet they only become distinctive when they become different from everyday dress, such as spurs on Cavalry officers who have no horses or wigs on lawyers when everyone else has dispensed with them (Hobsbawm 4). Dress in general is governed by unwritten social rules, perhaps none so pervasive as being required to dress to your gender. The history of uniform reveals that occupational dress often demarked the appropriate gender for the job. Early military uniforms were masculine, nanny uniforms feminine. Uniform explicates status of both the wearer and the non-wearer, who then becomes the ‘other’, the outsider or the non-conformer. The dichotomy between wearer and non-wearer is not so clear, however, as the power of the uniform also provides the means through which the non-conformer can subvert its meanings through incorrect wearing of the uniform. Similarly, too, we see others subverting uniform social norms to make their political points or for political gain. As Jennifer Craik states, “there is a constant play between the intended symbolisms of uniforms … and the informal codes of wearing and denoting uniforms” (Craik 7). As one of “modernity’s practices; [uniforms represent] resistance to tradition and the embrace of rationality” (Tynan and Godson 1-2). Yet, as the twentieth century progressed, we can see uniforms and uniformity of thought being co-opted to create ‘tradition’ and ‘ritual’ particularly around the state (see Cannadine; Hobsbawn). Concurrently, formal occupational dress for many workers entered a decline near the beginning of the twentieth century (Williams-Mitchell 101), yet other forms of uniform arose. A tendency arose towards what Jennifer Craik calls the ‘quasi-uniform’, those “modes of dress that are consensually imposed as appropriate” (17), for example the business suit, a wedding dress or gym wear. This mode of uniform shifts the dynamic from a top-down directive (such as that in an institution or by government) to a more democratic one, where the general populace seemingly consents to, and socially police. With the advent of film, television, and later the Internet, the access to information has led to what some argue as the homogenisation of culture, albeit one that is dominated by particular western cultures. This too can be seen in international diplomacy. First the League of Nations, and then the United Nations, standardised international dialogue between countries. Uniform processes were put in place, with institutions such as the International Court playing a pivotal role. The English language came to dominate, with over 67 countries counting it as an official language, and many others having it in common use. This was arguably as a result of its primacy in both media and diplomatic communications, creating a uniform language which paradoxically retains its localised character. Although this too may be dissipating as this primacy is being challenged through the reinvigoration of languages from former colonies, from Irish to the Indigenous Australian languages, and the growing populations speaking Spanish and Chinese. Diversity too is being demanded in our media and politics, through more balanced and nuanced representations of people. Uniforms are often products of their time, and in their physical form can appear as from another era, staying static while fashion swiftly moves on. The butler or the chauffeur can look like a relic from a previous age. So too can uniform ways of thinking. The recent changing of state school uniform polices in Australia from gendered to gender-neutral clothing reflects how uniforms can be slow to catch up to social norms of women wearing trousers and shorts for sport, leisure, and work. This reflects not only the clothing, but the institutional beliefs that underpinned uniform policy. In reflection of the ways that uniform has changed, for this edition we have chosen to present the feature article followed by the articles in chronological order. The feature article addresses much of the shift in uniforms. This is followed by ten articles which explore several different types of uniform, both physical and metaphysical, revealing how uniforms have changed in society in the last 125 years. This issue’s feature article takes up the theme of how a dress code has developed into an imposed uniform in parliaments, and how female politicians have challenged the gender norms embedded in these codes. Taking a longitudinal view, “Parliamentary Dress: Gendered Contestation of the Political Uniform” by Jo Coghlan and Lisa J. Hackett first situates the development of parliamentary dress in its historical context that assumes masculine attire. It then highlights how female politicians have used these codes to both signal their adherence to norms and their rejection of the same norms. It further examines the ways that prominent female politicians have subverted the parliamentary uniform to make political statements. Our first article, “The Inculcative Power of Australian Cadet Corps Uniforms in the 1900s and 1910s” by Nathan Wise and Lisa J. Hackett, takes us to the start of the twentieth century and examines how military uniforms entered the classroom in the years leading up to, and during, the First World War. It notes how cadet programmes were part of a wider social movement that sought to instil middle-class values throughout society. By donning uniforms, it was believed, boys would also ‘wear’ the ideology prescribed within them. It also served as a signifier to wider society of the status of these boys and the future possibility of service to their country. The experience of the First World War and the mass-uniforming of the population provided a blue-print for the organisation of labour during wartime. Trends that were established during the First World War developed further, perhaps driven by the social and political upheavals of the inter-war years; the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism. Among this was the continuation of the idea that schoolboys undertake Army cadet programmes as part of their education. Some schools had continued this after the First World War, whilst others would introduce it at the start of the war. Liam Barnsdale’s article “Trooping the (School) Colour: Australian School Cadet Uniforms and Masculine Identities during the Second World War” examines how the cadet programmes within schools increased in popularity during the war period. Central to this was the debate over uniforming boys in appropriate uniforms. As Barnsdale points out, Australia had no official uniform for use by cadets. Instead, individual schools designed their own uniforms, which often revealed the ideology of the school rather than the armed forces. The result was that in Australia cadet uniforms were diverse in their offerings. Founded in the dying days of the Second World War, uniformity of political ideals was encapsulated in the fledging United Nations. Replacing the League of Nations which was founded to maintain world peace, the United Nations has proven to be more effective and long-lasting than its predecessor. The central mission of peacekeeping brought about a new form of military uniform, the distinctive blue berets worn by the United Nations Peace Keepers. Simone Strungaru’s article “The Blue Beret: Representations and Symbolism of UN Peacekeeper’s Uniforms” examines the history of the distinctive uniform. Here Strungaru reveals the rich symbolism that the blue beret leverages in forging a distinctive identity for the men and women who wear it. The centrality of military uniforms in historical state events, such as wars, have meant that their iconography has often been linked to the grand ceremonies of state. David Cannadine argued in 1983 that ceremonies surrounding the British royal family have become “so well stage managed” that the British (and arguably Australians) believe they are good at tradition and ritual (Cannadine 160). The next article in our volume examines the careful management of a royal visit to an Australian beach. Donna Lee Brien’s article “Planning Queen Elizabeth II’s Visit to Bondi Beach in 1954: An Object-Inspired History” examines the material remnants of uniform and how it provides a gateway to historical knowledge. Brien’s examination starts with a commemorative medal handed out to school children as part of the royal visit to Bondi Beach. This medal deliberately ties the school uniform to royalty through the use of a signifier usually worn as a military achievement. This tangible connection allows the organisers to assign royalist identities to the school uniform. Brien’s article further extrapolates how other uniforms, such as those worn by Surf Life Savers, Nurses, and a Pipe Band were used in a carefully orchestrated display of royal pageantry at the beach. A pageantry that was uniquely Imperial and Australian all at once. Xiang Gao’s article “A ‘Uniform’ for all States? International Norm Diffusion and Localisation” takes up how norms within different countries have evolved, arguing that such norms become a type of ‘national uniform’. While states adhere to international norms such as those enshrined in the United Nations, they also have to negotiate with domestic actors and the ideals held by them. Thus, norms have to adapt to local sensibilities. The ability of a state to define its own norms on the international stage is affected by its relative positioning in international relations and diplomacy. Gao argues that more powerful states have increased capacity to define and challenge normative behaviour than smaller powers. The results of this can be seen through international treaties: for example, climate change negotiations. Uniformness and uniforms are not just the apparatus of the state, they also exist to identify members of groups that hold themselves apart from society. From subcultural uniforms to religious cults denoting their affiliation to a power beyond the mortal realm, uniforms have been utilised to exclude both the wearer from society and outsiders from the group. In their article “The Clothes Maketh the Cult: The Myth of the Cult and Pop Culture”, Huw Nolan, Jenny Wise, and Lesley McLean examine how the cult ‘uniform’ is used in popular culture as a device to denote cults as ‘the other’. Pope Francis uses his uniform as a way of challenging international norms when it comes to environmental issues, as argued in Aidan Moir’s article: “The Pope’s New Clothes: The Brand Politics of the Papal Uniform in Popular Culture”. Pope Francis, Moir argues, has deliberately chosen modest religious vestments to signify his environmental ethics and his emulation of his namesake, St Francis of Assisi. This uniform also marks a shift away from the more ornate vestments preferred by his predecessor, Pope Benedict. Moir also notes how each pope has personalised their uniform through the use of accessories, noting both John Paul II and Benedict conspicuously wearing accessories from established brand names such as Prada or Rolex. Pope Francis’s aesthetic rejects these items of conspicuous consumption, creating a humbler appearance, reducing the distance between the Catholic leader and his flock. Uniformity does not necessarily mean homogeneity, but rather, as Fredericks and Bradfield argue, a collective whole that can work together. Their article, “‘Uniting Hearts’: The Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Need for a Uniformed Front for a Constitutionally Enshrined First Nations’ Voice to Parliament” also introduces to our discussion how digital icons, a unique feature of contemporary life, become virtual uniforms, signalling the ideological position of the communicator. The ‘Uluru heart’ icon can be both worn physically and shared online to denote support for the Uluru Statement. The simple use of a recognisable symbol communicates identity and allows for widespread dissemination of support for the Uluru Statement. Nicholas Hookway continues the discussion on the use of uniform to denote support for social causes in his article “‘I decked myself out in pink’: Examining the Role of the Pink Uniform in a Virtual Sports Charity Event”. This article also demonstrates the mutability of the uniform: by adhering to the colour pink, individuals have a wide scope of clothing choices, accessories, makeup, and hair colour, etc., to choose from. Examining the pink uniform through the concept of embodied philanthropy, Hookway demonstrates how sports participants are able to create their own uniform, creating a community among themselves. This article also shows how a uniform can be created that allows for high levels of individualisation, a significant change to the reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This lack of ‘uniformity’ within the uniform appears to have had little negative effect on the wearer’s sense of purpose or unity. The article also shows how, despite pink’s association with femininity, men were prepared to wear the uniform colour to show their support of the cause. The association of the colour with cancer replaces other sociological meanings in this context. The final article in this issue offers a look at how attempts to create a social uniform can be foiled through the lack of a distinctive character, despite the availability of distinct iconography. In “Ayo, Bisexual Check: Bi Bobs, Cuffed Jeans, and Prototypes for a Bisexual Uniform on TikTok”, Collin Knopp-Schwyn examines the difficulties of establishing a uniform when the intended audience struggles to understands its meaning. Despite this, the author locates where the online bisexual community have developed a distinct style that promises the become a prototype for a recognisable bisexual uniform. The articles in this issue provide a comprehensive investigation into various facets of what uniform means both historically and contemporarily. A discernible shift away from highly regimented styles to distinct looks has occurred as society integrates the twin desires of inclusivity and individuality with the long held social need to be part of a recognisable group. References Cannadine, David. "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition', c. 1820–1977." The Invention of Tradition. Eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Canto ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. 101-64. Craik, Jennifer. Uniforms Exposed. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Hobsbawm, Eric. "Introduction: Inventing Traditions." The Invention of Tradition. Eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Canto ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. 1-14. Joseph, Nathan, and Nicholas Alex. "The Uniform: A Sociological Perspective." The American Journal of Sociology 77.4 (1972): 719-30. Tynan, Jane, and Lisa Godson. "Understanding Uniform: An Introduction." Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern World. Eds. Jane Tynan and Lisa Godson. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Williams-Mitchell, Christobel. Dressed for the Job: The Story of Occupational Costume. Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press, 1982.

<p><strong>1. Introduction. </strong>There exists an interesting paradox: English-speaking learners of Mandarin tend to significantly underuse the Resultative Verb Compounds in speech production tasks (Wen 1995 and 1997, Christensen 1997, Duff &amp; Li 2002) but at the same time demonstrate understanding of the compositional nature – and therefore, the meaning – of RVCs in sentence acceptability judgment tasks (Qiao 2008, Yuan &amp; Zhao 2011). In addition, learners significantly overuse the perfective aspect marker<em> –le.</em> The main goal of this study is to investigate this discrepancy and effect of <em>–le </em>on understanding of change-of-state events. Theoretical evidence suggests that speakers of two languages construe change of state in general and result specifically differently. I adapt the cognitive linguistics framework and specifically Talmy’s (1991, 2000) conceptual approach: namely, event conflation and crosslinguistic analysis of verbal patterns of how change-of-state is conceived and habitually expressed in English and Mandarin. </p><p> Following Talmy, I view both languages as belonging to a satellite-framed group of languages. However, there are several points in which English and Mandarin differ significantly with respect to understanding and thus linguistically expressing change of state. English speakers mainly use resultative verbs (<em>break</em>) and the resultative construction (<em>wipe the table dry</em>). And thus, in English, both the Resultative Construction and monomorphemic resultative verbs are habitually used to express change of state. With respect to Mandarin, it is commonly asserted that in order to convey change of state an RVC must be used. However, Mandarin also has a list of single-root verbs carrying resultative meaning. The perfective aspect marker <em>-le</em> is affixed to these verbs. For example, <em>zou-le </em>(leave-PFV) means ‘leave’ and <em>guan-le </em>(close-PFV) means ‘turn off’. Even thoughMandarin has a very limited number of monomorphemic resultatives, the most common way of expressing change-of-state situation is to use an RVC. One of the typical examples of RVCs is <em>ku-shi </em>(cry-wet):</p><p>(1) Ta <strong>ku- shi</strong> le shoujuan<em>. </em> <br /> He cry-wet PFV handkerchief<br /> ‘He cried the handkerchief wet.’</p><p> Lexically, RVCs are a combination of two or more morphemes (verbs or adjectives) forming a single verb (among many others, Chao 1968, Thompson 1973, Li &amp; Thompson 1981). The components of the RVC can be either transitive or intransitive with V₁ expressing a cause and V₂ expressing result. Syntactically, RVCs involve two or sometimes three verbs forming a construction that schematically looks like V₁+V₂. RVC acts like a single verb meaning that (1) nothing can be inserted between its constituents, (2) the aspect marker, which often accompanies RVCs, follows the compound treating it as one unit, and (3) arguments follow the entire RVC rather than being inserted between the action and result predicates (Chao 1968, Li &amp; Thompson 1981, Chen 2008). </p><p> Leonard Talmy’s (1991 and 2000) classification of English and Mandarin Resultatives shows that speakers of these two languages construe change-of-state events differently. It also provides the key-explanation of why there should be a problem with English speakers using Mandarin RVCs. First of all, English speakers view many change-of-state events as consisting of a single vent, where two subevents are conflated in such a way that speakers do not necessarily view this event as consisting of two subevents (take <em>kick</em>, for example). As a result, in addition to having a wide array of resultative constructions, English is rich in monomorphemic resultatives. Chinese speakers, on the other hand, for the vast majority of cases view resultative events as clearly consisting of two subevents. In order to say that Actor kicked Patient, an RVC <em>ti-zhao </em>(propel.the.foot.as.to.kick-come.into.contact.with) has to be used. An important factor that plays a role here is that Mandarin is rich in verbs with what Koenig and Chief (2008) call an <em>incompleteness effect</em> which is based on Talmy’s idea of <em>strength of implicature</em>. Secondly, if we look at classification of resultatives based on how speakers understand change of state events, we will find how exactly they differ. Talmy identified four patterns: (1) attainment fulfillment (<em>kick </em>something<em> flat</em>); (2) moot fulfillment (<em>hunt </em>somebody <em>down</em>); (3) implied fulfillment (<em>wash </em>something <em>clean</em>); (4) intrinsic fulfillment (<em>drown </em>as opposed to *<em>drown </em>somebody <em>dead</em>). English is rich in the first and fourth patterns when it comes to expressing change of state. It only has a few instances of the third pattern. Mandarin, however, has an extensively developed third pattern when if V₁is taken in isolation, it only implies that an action that took place with certain intention of a result and the implicature that the intention was realized. A V₂has to be used in order for an RVC to actually express realized change of state. In addition to this, in Mandarin a number of subtypes has developed where V₂ in addition to fulfillment and confirmation, also has ‘underfulfilment’, ‘overfulfilment’, ‘antifulfilment’, and ‘other event’ types of results. </p><p> What also has great influence on ability to use RVCs by English speakers is the perfective aspect marker <em>–le</em>, L2 acquisition of which is a widely acknowledged problem of its own. Both RVC and <em>–le </em>contribute to the aspectual properties of a sentence (Xiao &amp; McEnery 2004, Christensen 1997, Smith 1991). RVCs exemplify a lexical aspect and <em>–le </em>– a grammatical aspect. The fact that verb-final <em>–le </em>is used to perfectivise situations is a well-known and accepted phenomenon; however, RVCs function to perfectivise situations as well. The evidence yielded in the experiment discussed further suggests that there is a transfer of association from past tense marker <em>–ed </em>in English to the perfective aspect marker <em>–le </em>in Mandarin: possibly because English speakers correlate it with a past tense marker, or possibly because of the fact that simple past in English is the most common indicator of perfectivity. Thus, because of this strong L1 transfer, English speakers are strongly predisposed to use the verb-final <em>–le </em>with resultatives, whether it be RVCs or monomorphemic verbs which are treated as resultative in learners’ interlanguage.</p><p><strong>2. Experiment description and findings.</strong> In response, I conducted an experiment, which included 16 target video clips ranging from 5 to 25 seconds long. Video clips depicted an actor or actors performing certain actions. These 16 clips consisted of 8 pairs of clips where one clip showed an action where a result took place and another clip showed the same action but with no result achieved. No subject (48 L1 English speakers) watched both members of a pair. Each subject watched 8 target video clips (4 depicting change-of-state and 4 depicting no-change-of-state events) and performed 2 tasks: (1) a description task (where each participant described the clips in English) and (2) an acceptability judgment task with 2 sentences for each clip. Both sentences in each pair were the same except the first sentence contained an RVC plus <em>-le</em> and in the second sentence contained V₁ of an RVC plus <em>-le</em>. The acceptability judgment task was performed using a continuum scale where answers ranged in the following fashion: ‘completely unacceptable’, ‘probably unacceptable’, ‘I don’t know’, ‘probably acceptable’, and ‘completely acceptable.’ In the analysis the following scores were assigned to each value: ‘-2’, ‘-1’, ‘0’, ‘+1’, and ‘+2.’ Statistical analysis (ANOVA) was applied in evaluating outcomes of the experiment. Subjects’ description of the video clips in English showed that they treated change-of-state events and no-change-of-state as such and that with change-of-state events used in the experiment they would not use monomorphemic resultatives with two subevents conflated. </p><p> I used 8 RVCs which were divided into four groups depending on how V₁<em>-le </em>was related to V₁ of an RVC in meaning: (1) RVCs where V₁<em>-le </em>has the same meaning as V₁ of an RVC<em>-le</em>; (2) RVCs where V₁<em>-le </em>does not have the same meaning as V₁ of an RVC<em>-le</em> and at the same time may have some resultative meaning but different from the meaning expressed by the RVC<em>-le</em>; (3) RVCs where V₁<em>-le </em>has the same meaning as RVC<em>-le</em>; and (4) RVCs where V₁<em>-le </em>has ambiguous meaning as it may or may not be interpreted as having the same meaning as RVC<em>-le</em>. The overall goal of this experiment was to see whether English speakers would favor Mandarin single-root verbs along with <em>–le </em>in describing change-of-state events. Specific questions addressed were: (1) whether English-speaking learners of Mandarin understand that a two-constituent RVC must be used to express a change-of-state event and (2) whether they equate the V₁<em>-le </em>combination with RVC thus taking the perfective aspect marker <em>–le </em>as having resultative connotation.</p><p> The outcomes show that both advanced and intermediate groups of learners understand that RVCs have to be used to describe change-of-state events. I conclude this based on the data that show that learners assigned high scores to RVCs in those situations where change of state took place and low scores in those situations where no change of state occurred. This happened with all RVC types except RVC Type (4), but the RVC belonging to this type have an ambiguous meaning and is not treated as decisive for this conclusion. </p><p> The data show that learners do not treat the aspect marker <em>–le </em>as carrying resultative meaning in those situations where in their L1 they would not use monomorphemic resultatives. If they were to treat the verb-final –<em>le </em>as such, we would see that non-native speakers assigned high scores to V₁<em>-le </em>in change-of-state situations and low scores in no-change-of-state situations. In other words, they would treat these V₁<em>-le </em>combinations as RVCs. This was not the case. With the RVC Type (1) advanced learners behaved like native speakers. Intermediate learners behaved in a similar fashion as well with the exception of two situations both occurring with no-change-of-state events. In one situation the data barely showed significant difference (p&lt;0.05) between V₁V₂<em>-le </em>and V₁<em>-le </em>and in another situation there was no significant difference at all even though there should be <ins cite="mailto:Katinka" datetime="2014-05-06T08:53">a </ins>clear gap and, therefore, significant difference. With the RVC Type (2), learners’ reaction is not as clear as with the RVC Type (1) because of the individual meanings of the V₁<em>-le </em>combinations. RVC’s V₁<em>-le </em>counterparts proved to be more challenging for learners. Learners did not behave differently from native speakers in treating RVCs, but in most cases both groups of learners showed misunderstanding of the V₁<em>-le </em>combinations. However, no matter how both groups of learners interpreted these structures, they reacted to them differently than to RVCs thus indicating that they do not equate V₁<em>-le </em>with RVC<em>-le</em>. RVC Type (3) shows that advanced learners reacted in the same way as native speakers did. Namely, they treated the V₁<em>-le </em>combination the same as V₁V₂<em>-le</em>. This is the only case when this kind of reaction is expected. Intermediate learners, on the other hand, did not produce such a response because they treated these two structures differently in the no-change-of-state situation. With the RVC Type (4) both V₁<em>-le </em>combination and RVC<em>-le </em>have ambiguous meaning as the data indicate that each was understood as expressing a result and action. In short, in this experiment there was some inconsistency in learners’ reaction to the target sentences, especially by intermediate learners. Their reaction was similar to that of native speakers in situations when V₁<em>-le </em>did not have the same meaning as V₁of RVC<ins cite="mailto:Katinka" datetime="2014-05-06T08:55">,</ins> but they produced inconsistent results when V₁<em>-le </em>was equal to V₁V₂<em>-le </em>or had some other resultative meaning. However, no matter how they interpreted V₁<em>-le </em>combinations, in no-change-of-state situations, learners had a gap between V₁<em>-le </em>and RVC<em>-le</em>. This fact supports the conclusion that learners do not take <em>–le </em>as having resultative meaning.</p><p> In this study, I conducted an experiment containing Mandarin RVCs that do not correspond to English monomorphemic resultative verbs in which two subevetns are conflated. And the outcomes clearly indicate that English speakers do not treat the V₁<em>-le </em>combination as consistently carrying resultative meaning. This is to be expected since the video clips depicted such situations where English speakers would not use monomorphemic resultatives. The next step is to see if they would take the V₁<em>-le </em>combination as resultative in those situations where in their L1 a monomorphemic resultativ verb would be used. Given the evidence briefly presented here, English speakers should not decline the V₁<em>-le </em>combination in change-of-state events as opposed to only accepting RVC. This is only one of the first steps in proving experimentally that English speakers and Chinese speakers construe the change-of-state events differently. </p>

“Language is inseparable from the world that provokes it”-- Don DeLillo, “In the Ruins of the Future”The attacks of 9/11 generated a public discourse of suspicion, with Osama bin Laden occupying the role of the quintessential “most wanted” for nearly a decade, before being captured and killed in May 2011. In the novel, Falling Man (DeLillo), set shortly after the attacks of September 11, Justin, the protagonist’s son, and his friends, the two Siblings, spend much of their time at the window of the Siblings’ New York apartment, “searching the skies for Bill Lawton” (74). Mishearing bin Laden’s name on the news, Robert, the younger of the Siblings, has “never adjusted his original sense of what he was hearing” (73), and so the “myth of Bill Lawton” (74) is created. In this paper, I draw on postclassical, cognitive narratology to “defamiliarise” processes undertaken by both narrator and reader (Palmer 28) in order to explore how narrative elements impact on readers’ and characters’ perceptions of the terrorist. My focus on select episodes within the novel “pursue[s] the author’s means of controlling his reader” (Booth i), and I refer to a generic reader to identify a certain intuitive reaction to the text. Assuming that “the written text imposes certain limits on its unwritten implications” (Iser 281), I trace a path from the uttered or printed word, through the reading act, to the process of meaning-making. I demonstrate how renaming the terrorist, and other language games, challenge the notion that terror can be synonymous with a locatable, destructible source by activating a suspicion towards the text in particular, and towards language in general.Falling Man tells the story of Keith who, after surviving the attacks on the World Trade Centre, shows up injured and disoriented at the apartment of his estranged wife, Lianne, and their son, Justin. The narrative, set at different periods between the day of the attacks and three years later, focuses on Keith’s and Lianne’s lives as they attempt to deal, in their own ways, with the trauma of the attacks and with the unexpected reunion of their small family. Keith disappears into games of poker and has a brief relationship with another survivor, while Lianne searches for answers in the writings of Alzheimer sufferers, in places of worship, and in conversations with her mother, Nina, and her mother’s partner, Martin, a German art-dealer with a questionable past. Each of the novel’s three parts also contains a short narrative from the perspective of Hammad, a fictional terrorist, starting with his early days in a European cell under the leadership of the real terrorist, Mohamed Atta, through the group’s activities in Florida, to his final moments aboard the plane that crashes into the World Trade Centre. DeLillo’s work is noted for treating language as central to society and culture (Weinstein). In this personalised narrative of post-9/11, DeLillo’s choices reflect his “refusal to reproduce the mass media’s representations of 9/11 the reader is used to” (Grossinger 85). This refusal is manifest not so much in an absence of well-known, mediated images or concepts, but in the reshaping and re-presenting of these images so that they appear unexpected, new, and personal (Apitzch). A notable example of such re-presentation is the Falling Man of the title, who is introduced, surprisingly, not as the man depicted in the famous photograph by Richard Drew (Leps), but a performance artist who uses the name Falling Man when staging his falls from various New York buildings. Not until the final two sentences of the novel does DeLillo fully admit the image into the narrative, and even then only as Keith’s private vision from the Tower: “Then he saw a shirt come down out of the sky. He walked and saw it fall, arms waving like nothing in this life” (246). The bin Laden/Bill Lawton substitution shows a similar rejection of recycled concepts and enables a renewed perspective towards the idea of bin Laden. Bill Lawton is first introduced as an anonymous “man” (17), later to be named Bill Lawton (73), and later still to be revealed as bin Laden mispronounced (73). The reader first learns of Bill Lawton in a conversation between Lianne and the Siblings’ mother, Isabel, who is worried about the children’s preoccupation at the window:“It has something to do with this man.”“What man?”“This name. You’ve heard it.”“This name,” Lianne said.“Isn’t this the name they sort of mumble back and forth? My kids totally don’t want to discuss the matter. Katie enforces the thing. She basically inspires fear in her brother. I thought maybe you would know something.”“I don’t think so.”“Like Justin says nothing about any of this?”“No. What man?”“What man? Exactly,” Isabel said. (17)If “the piling up of data [...] fulfils a function in the construction of an image” (Bal 85), a delayed unravelling of the bin Laden identity distorts this data-piling so that by the time the reader learns of the Bill Lawton/bin Laden link, an image of a man is already established as separate from, and potentially exclusive of, his historical identity. The segment beginning immediately after Isabel’s comment, “What man? Exactly” (17), refers to another, unidentified man with the pronoun “he” (18), as if to further sway the reader’s attention from the subject of that man’s identity. Fludernik notes that “language games” are a key feature of the postmodern text (Towards 221), adding that “techniques of linguistic emasculation serve implicitly to question a simple and naive view of the representational potential of language” (225). I propose that, in Falling Man, bin Laden is emasculated by the Bill Lawton misnomer, and is thereby conceptualised as two entities, one historical and one fictional. The name-switch activates what psychologists refer to as a “dual-process,” conscious and unconscious, that forms the reader’s experience of the narrative (Gerrig 37), creating a cognitive dissonance between the two. Much like Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit drawing, bin Laden and Bill Lawton exist as two separate entities, occupying the same space of the idea of bin Laden, but demanding to be viewed singularly for the process of recognition to take place. Such distortion of a well-known figure conveys the sense that, in this novel, “all identities are either confused [...] or double [...] or merging [...] or failing” (Kauffman 371), or, occasionally, doing all these things simultaneously.A similar cognitive process is triggered by the introduction of aliases for all three characters that head each of the novel’s three parts. Ernst Hechinger is revealed as Martin Ridnour’s former, ‘terrorist’ identity (DeLillo, Falling 86), and performance artist David Janiak (180) as the Falling Man’s everyday name. But the bin Laden/Bill Lawton switch offers an overt juxtaposition of the historical with the fictional or, as Žižek would have it, “the Raw real” with the “virtual” (387), and allows the mutated bin Laden/Bill Lawton figure to shift, in the mind of the reader, between the two worlds, as well as form a new, blended entity.At this point, it is important to notice that two, interconnected, forms of suspicion exist in the novel. The first is invoked in the story-level towards various terrorist-characters such as Bill Lawton, Hammad, and Martin. The second form is activated when various elements within the narrative prompt the reader to treat the text itself as suspicious, triggering in the reader a cognitive reaction that mirrors that of the narrated character. One example is the “halting process” (Leps) that is forced on the reader when attempting to manoeuvre through the narrative’s anachronical arrangement that mirrors Keith’s mental perception of time and memory. Another such narrative device is the use of “unheralded pronouns” (Gerrig 50), when ‘he’ or ‘she’ is used ambiguously, often at the beginning of a chapter or segment. The use of pronouns in narrative must adhere to strict grammatical rules (Fludernik, Introduction) and when these rules are ignored, the reading pattern is affected. First, the reader of Falling Man is immersed within an element in the story, then becomes puzzled about the identity of a character, and finally re-reads the passage to gain clarity. The reader, after a while, distances somewhat from the text, scanning for alternative possibilities and approaching interpretation with a tentative sense of doubt.The conversation between the two mothers, the Bill Lawton/bin Laden split, and the use of unheralded pronouns also destabilises the relationship between person and name, and appears to create a world in which “personality has disintegrated into a mere semiotic mark” (Versluys 21). Keith’s obsession with correcting the spelling of his surname, Neudecker, “because it wasn’t him, with the name misspelled” (DeLillo, Falling 31), Lianne’s fondness of the philosopher Kierkegaard, “right down to the spelling of his name. The hard Scandian k’s and lovely doubled a” (118), her consideration of “Marko [...] with a k, whatever that might signify” (119), and Rumsey, who is told that “everything in his life would be different [...] if one letter in his name was different” (149), are a few examples of the text’s semiotic emphasis. But, while Versluys sees this tendency as emblematic of the novel’s portrayal of a decline in humanity, I suggest that the text’s preoccupation with the shape and constitution of words may work to “de-automatise” (Margolin 66) the relationship between sign and perception, rather than to denigrate the signified human. With the renamed terrorist, the reader comes to doubt not only the printed text, but also his or her automatic response to “bin Laden” as a “brand, a sort of logo which identifies and personalises the evil” (Chomsky, September 36). Bill Lawton, according to Justin, speaks in monosyllables (102), a language Justin chooses, for a time, for his own speech (66), and this also contributes to the de-automatisation of the text. The language game, in which a speaker must only use words with one syllable, began as a classroom activity “designed to teach the children something about the structure of words and the discipline required to frame clear thoughts” (66). The game also gives players, and readers, an embodied understanding of what Genette calls the gap between “being and saying” (93) that is inevitable in the production of language and narrative. Justin, who continues to play the game outside the classroom, because “it helps [him] go slow when [he] thinks” (66), finds comfort in the silent pauses that are afforded by widening the gap between thought and utterance. History in Falling Man is a collection of the private narratives of survivors, families, terrorists, artists, and the host of people that are affected by the attacks of 9/11. Justin’s character, with the linguistic and psychic code of a child, represents the way in which all participants, to some extent, choose their own antagonist, language, plot, and sequence to personalise this mega-public event. He insists that the towers did not collapse (72), but that they will, “this time coming” (102); Bill Lawton, for Justin, “has a long beard [...] speaks thirteen languages but not English except to his wives [and] has the power to poison what we eat” (74). Despite being confronted with the factual inaccuracies of his narrative, Justin resists editing his version precisely because these inaccuracies form his own, non-mediated, authentic account. They are, in a sense, a work of fiction and, paradoxically, more ‘real’ because of that. “We want to pass beyond the limits of safe understandings”, thinks Lianne, “and what better way to do it than through make-believe” (63). I have so far shown how narrative elements create a suspicion in the way characters operate within their surrounding universe, in the reader’s attitude towards the text, and, more implicitly, in the power of language to accurately represent a personal reality. Within the context of the novel’s historical setting—the period following the 9/11 attacks—the narration of the terrorist figure, as represented in Bill Lawton, Hammad, Martin, and others, may function as a response to the “binarism” of Bush’s proposal (Butler 2), epitomised in his “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (Silberstein 14) approach. Within the novel’s universe, its narration of terrorist-characters works to free discourse from superficial categorisations and to provide “a counterdiscourse to the prevailing nationalistic interpretations” (Versluys 23) of the events of 9/11 by de-automatising a response to “us” and “them.” In his essay published shortly after the attacks, DeLillo notes that “the sense of disarticulation we hear in the term ‘Us and Them’ has never been so striking, at either end” (“Ruins”), and while he draws distinctions, in the same essay, with technology on ‘our’ side and religious fanaticism on ‘their’ side, I believe that the novel is less settled on the subject. The Anglicisation of bin Laden’s name, for example, suggests that Bush’s either-or-ism is, at least partially, an arbitrary linguistic construct. At a time when some social commentators have highlighted the similarity in the definitions of “terror” and “counter terror” (Chomsky, “Commentary” 610), the Bill Lawton ‘error’ works to illustrate how easily language can destabilise our perception of what is familiar/strange, us/them, terror/counter-terror, victim/perpetrator. In the renaming of the notorious terrorist, “the familiar name is transposed on the mass murderer, but in return the attributes of the mass murderer are transposed on one very like us” (Conte 570), and this reciprocal relationship forms an imagined evil that is no longer so easily locatable within the prevailing political discourse. As the novel contextualises 9/11 within a greater historical narrative (Leps), in which characters like Martin represent “our” form of militant activism (Duvall), we are invited to perceive a possibility that the terrorist could be, like Martin, “one of ours […] godless, Western, white” (DeLillo, Falling 195).Further, the idea that the suspect exists, almost literally, within ‘us’, the victims, is reflected in the structure of the narrative itself. This suggests a more fluid relationship between terrorist and victim than is offered by common categorisations that, for some, “mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality” (Said 12). Hammad is visited in three short separate sections; “on Marienstrasse” (77-83), “in Nokomis” (171-178), and “the Hudson corridor” (237-239), at the end of each of the novel’s three parts. Hammad’s narrative is segmented within Keith’s and Lianne’s tale like an invisible yet pervasive reminder that the terrorist is inseparable from the lives of the victims, habituating the same terrains, and crafted by the same omniscient powers that compose the victims’ narrative. The penetration of the terrorist into ‘our’ narrative is also perceptible in the physical osmosis between terrorist and victim, as the body of the injured victim hosts fragments of the dead terrorist’s flesh. The portrayal of the body, in some post 9/11 novels, as “a vulnerable site of trauma” (Bird, 561), is evident in the following passage, where a physician explains to Keith the post-bombing condition termed “organic shrapnel”:The bomber is blown to bits, literally bits and pieces, and fragments of flesh and bone come flying outwards with such force and velocity that they get wedged, they get trapped in the body of anyone who’s in striking range...A student is sitting in a cafe. She survives the attack. Then, months later, they find these little, like, pellets of flesh, human flesh that got driven into the skin. (16)For Keith, the dead terrorist’s flesh, lodged under living human skin, confirms the malignancy of his emotional and physical injury, and suggests a “consciousness occupied by terror” (Apitzch 95), not unlike Justin’s consciousness, occupied from within by the “secret” (DeLillo, Falling 101) of Bill Lawton.The macabre bond between terrorist and victim is fully realised in the novel’s final pages, when Hammad’s death intersects, temporally, with the beginning of Keith’s story, and the two bodies almost literally collide as Hammad’s jet crashes into Keith’s office building. Unlike Hammad’s earlier and clearly framed narratives, his final interruption dissolves into Keith’s story with such cinematic seamlessness as to make the two narratives almost indistinguishable from one another. Hammad’s perspective concludes on board the jet, as “something fell off the counter in the galley. He fastened his seatbelt” (239), followed immediately by “a bottle fell off the counter in the galley, on the other side of the aisle, and he watched it roll this way and that” (239). The ambiguous use of the pronoun “he,” once again, and the twin bottles in the galleys create a moment of confusion and force a re-reading to establish that, in fact, there are two different bottles, in two galleys; one on board the plane and the other inside the World Trade Centre. Victim and terrorist, then, share a common fate as acting agents in a single governing narrative that implicates both lives.Finally, Žižek warns that “whenever we encounter such a purely evil on the Outside, [...] we should recognise the distilled version of our own self” (387). DeLillo assimilates this proposition into the fabric of Falling Man by crafting a language that renegotiates the division between ‘out’ and ‘in,’ creating a fictional antagonist in Bill Lawton that continues to lurk outside the symbolic window long after the demise of his historical double. Some have read this novel as offering a more relative perspective on terrorism (Duvall). However, like Leps, I find that DeLillo here tries to “provoke thoughtful stillness rather than secure truths” (185), and this stillness is conveyed in a language that meditates, with the reader, on its own role in constructing precarious concepts such as ‘us’ and ‘them.’ When proposing that terror, in Falling Man, can be found within ‘us,’ linguistically, historically, and even physically, I must also add that DeLillo’s ‘us’ is an imagined sphere that stands in opposition to a ‘them’ world in which “things [are] clearly defined” (DeLillo, Falling 83). Within this sphere, where “total silence” is seen as a form of spiritual progress (101), one is reminded to approach narrative and, by implication, life, with a sense of mindful attention; “to hear”, like Keith, “what is always there” (225), and to look, as Nina does, for “something deeper than things or shapes of things” (111).ReferencesApitzch, Julia. "The Art of Terror – the Terror of Art: Delillo's Still Life of 9/11, Giorgio Morandi, Gerhard Richter, and Performance Art." Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo. Eds. Peter Schneck and Philipp Schweighauser. London: Continuum [EBL access record], 2010. 93–110.Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narratology. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1985.Bird, Benjamin. "History, Emotion, and the Body: Mourning in Post-9/11 Fiction." Literature Compass 4.3 (2007): 561–75.Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Butler, Judith. 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