The present study aims at analysing the role of infinitival clauses (INFCs) in German child-adult dialogue. In German subject-less INFCs are a grammatical sentence pattern. Extensive corpora of spontaneous speech between 6 children aged 1;5 to 2;10 and adults were analysed applying structural and contextual analyses. We extended Freudenthal, Pine and Gobet’s (2010) model of lexically specific learning to include INFCs in adult input. Results show that frequencies of adult INFC and MOD+INF clauses are related to child INFCs. We interpret these results as reflecting shared verb vocabulary and, regarding INFCs, as an adaptation of adult CDS to child grammatical structure. While most child INFCs have modal meaning, some occur in non-modal contexts. The majority of child INFCs are subject-less clauses with final infinitives and therefore grammatical. Results are discussed in terms of the pragmatic function of child and adult INFCs and the role of adult INFCs in German CDS.

This article provides a contextual analysis of an enigmatic object—dubbed the “Confucius Dressing Mirror” (Kongzi yijing 孔子衣鏡)—recently unearthed from the tomb of Liu He 劉賀 (Marquis of Haihun 海昏侯, d. 59 BCE) in 2015. I raise questions about the prevailing identification of this object as a “dressing mirror” and a “lived object,” used by Liu He for moral self-cultivation or political self-preservation in his volatile life as the deposed ninth emperor of Han. Instead, I treat the object as an assemblage and analyze its complete material composition and physical placement in Liu He's tomb in the broader context of funerary material culture and burial practice in early imperial China. I propose that the entombed object can be considered as a composite talisman to protect the deceased against baleful and harmful influences in the tomb and in his afterlife. Methodologically, this article stresses the importance of contextual analysis in shedding light on the traditional conceptual categories such as “lived object” (shengqi 生器) and “funerary objects” (mingqi 明器) in actual funerary ritual processes.

The “new institutionalist revolution” in social sciences has led to a repositioning of social norms to the forefront of the pre-analytic vision in institutional theory and to the consolidation of the contextual analysis approach. That has significant epistemological, methodological, and political philosophy implications. This essay follows the logic of these developments showing: (a) why they inherently lead to the feasibility problem, the key of applied theory, toward which both contemporary philosophy and institutional analysis converge from different venues; (b) how feasibility is a nexus of empirical, counterfactual, normative, and contextual elements, that is, something more complex than a mere matching between empirical reality and institutional design; (c) what are the governance implications of all of the above, with an emphasis on an alternative approach (distinctive enough to circumvent both the conservative averseness to intervene and progressive drastic interventionism) and in which the public choice process is seen mainly as endogenized, socialized, and institutionalized, as opposed to formalized, intellectualized, and externalized.

Despite there being numerous studies on sociometric status, research that analyzes this variable from a contextualized viewpoint taking into account the different school settings in which a pupil establishes relationships is rare. The aim of this study is to analyze the stability of sociometric status in different school settings. For this purpose, 522 students filled in a sociometric questionnaire that investigated two different settings: the academic setting, which refers to the formal classroom setting; and the leisure setting, which investigates a more informal and playful setting like the playground. The main results indicate that identification percentages are almost the same in both settings. Nonetheless, all sociometric types are contextually dependent, and some are more dependent than others. Thus, rejection is observed as being the most independent of context, whereas the most dependent is that of controversial pupils. Differential analyses show that sex modifies the results obtained. It is shown that, excluding a few exceptions, combinations of sociometric types in both settings investigated can be made. These results are discussed in connection with the methodology used to identify sociometric types and their practical implication for better school adjustment.

The meanings of several target neuropsychological variables, including measures of executive functioning, were examined using contextual analysis across a sample of English-speakers and a sample of Spanish-speakers. Results of the contextual analysis, which examined the contributions of the latent constructs of memory, psychomotor speed, visual spatial ability, and knowledge and comprehension, to the target neuropsychological variables indicate that each of the target variables likely reflects the unique contribution of several reference abilities. These findings provide evidence that the neuropsychological variables are multi-dimensional. The patterns of relations were similar across the samples of English and Spanish speakers. (JINS, 2012, 18, 223–233)