Syncretisms involving clusivity
The inclusive and exclusive are commonly considered to be kinds of the first person plural. In this chapter, I will investigate whether they deserve this name by looking at syncretisms between clusivity and other person markers. Such syncretisms are rare, but a thorough investigation has resulted in a large enough sample to allow for some conclusions. The result is that the exclusive is often syncretic with the first person singular, and can thus indeed be considered a kind of first person plural. In contrast, the inclusive cannot. Further, the often claimed link between inclusive and second person in spurious. This claim probably only arose because of selected attention for those syncretisms arguing for such a connection, but disregarding all other syncretisms that argue against it. In this survey, all possible syncretisms are considered resulting in the observation that the inclusive/second person syncretism does not occur more often than others.
Person-gender-number marking from Proto-Khoe-Kwadi to its descendents : a rejoinder with particular reference to language contact
In Guldemann (2004) I have argued that the Khoe family (alias Central Khoisan) and Kwadi display a number of form-meaning correspondences in the grammatical marking of person, gender, and number. These allow one to reconstruct a common proto-system of personal pronouns and to outline approximate scenarios of how the different marking systems in the modern languages emerged from it. This and strong lexical affinities (cf. Elderkin and Guldemann forthcoming) represent major evidence for the hypothesis that the two units originate in a common ancestor language called for convenience ProtoKhoe-Kwadi.
An Essay on the Nature and Significance of the Normative Nature of Economics
It is conventional in economics to distinguish between the normative and the positive. The normative has to do with goodness and badness, and with what ought and ought not to be done;1 and the positive has to do with objective description and/or explanation, with what is and with what is necessary given some normative end. The normative has to do with desirability; the positive has to do with truth (in the sense of either descriptive accuracy or serviceability of a means to a given end).2