Grammatical morphemes are used to modulate word meanings and to link words in constructions. They consist of inflections, usually suffixes, added to words, and free-standing function words (prepositions and articles). Different language-types make different uses of these, including cases added to each noun, tense and aspect markers added to each verb, and agreement markers linking nouns, adjectives, and determiners. Children have to identify each inflection, its meaning, and where it is used on each word class. They start to add modulations to their words as soon as they start to combine words (and may understand some of them before this). They use regular forms as their starting point and over-regularize irregular forms. They show some consistency in the order of acquisition for different modulations, depending on the semantic complexity of each grammatical morpheme. Semantic complexity, formal complexity, and frequency all play a role here. Children may initially rely on filler-syllables, and only later produce the relevant form. Word class plays a role here, since the choice of grammatical morphemes depends on this. Initial use of grammatical morphemes may be limited to specific words and only later extended. The same holds for agreement in gender and number.

The seemingly idiosyncratic behavior of numerals in Russian and other Slavic languages has long puzzled linguists. This entry describes the core phenomena, taking Russian as a point of departure. Significant differences in other Slavic languages are also identified, since a central problem of analysis is how variation across Slavic might be accommodated. The core data issues concern case and agreement, the former with respect to the phrase containing the numeral, the latter both internal to the numeral phrase as well as between it and the predicate. Related phenomena exhibited by other quantity expressions are also presented. In the course of the presentation, several conceptual approaches are briefly identified, and the reader is directed to relevant research.

The present chapter discusses agreement in Slavic languages. Slavic languages are interesting because of their canonical subject-verb agreement, which offers a direct insight into this core syntactic relation (syntactic agreement). Additionally, Slavic languages feature well-documented agreement alternations, which suggest involvement of other language components in agreement (semantic and discourse agreement). Finally, strictly local agreement, often devoid of alternations, operating inside the nominal phrase commands theoretical interest.

In ‘Early Learning in Plato’s Republic 7’, James Warren provides an analysis of Socrates’ account of the sort of early learning needed to produce philosopher-rulers in Republic 7 (521c–525a), namely a passage describing a very early encounter with questions that provoke thoughts about intelligible objects and stir up concepts in the soul. Warren explains how concepts of number, more specifically the concepts ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘a pair’, and so on, play an essential role in these very early stages of the ascent towards knowledge, and he stresses the continuity between the initial and very basic arithmetical concepts and the concepts involved in more demanding subjects taught in later stages of the educational curriculum. On this account, Socrates is prepared to ascribe to more or less everyone an acquaintance with some, albeit elementary, intelligible objects. This, in turn, can shed some light on broader debates in Platonic epistemology about the extent to which all people – not just those whom Socrates calls philosophers – have some conceptual grasp of intelligibles.

This chapter discusses the place of inflectional and derivational morphology in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). After describing how inflection is encoded in the layered structure of the word, the chapter offers an explanatory account of the factors that motivate inflectional marking. The functional orientation of RRG presupposes a view of morphology distributed throughout the different components of the grammatical model. Additionally, the typological commitment of RRG requires paying close attention to the role of inflectional processes not only in dependent-marking languages but also in head-marking languages, since the interface between inflectional morphology and syntax is much tighter in the latter type of language. The chapter then reflects on word formation as a lexicological process which involves the interaction of lexical semantics and morphology. The approach to derivational morphology can be said to be markedly motivated by semantics.

[13.1] This chapter looks at the structure of Acts and their various components. An Act begins life as a Bill and its components flow through into the Act when passed. Certain components of a Bill are mandated by legislation1 or parliamentary standing orders.2 Others reflect the choices made by a jurisdiction about Act structure.

In this chapter, we consider children's early language acquisition as it develops alongside three other core cognitive competencies: children's understanding of objects, children's understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others (i.e. their theory of mind), and children's knowledge of numbers and mathematical principles. We argue that while early language acquisition is initially supported by these three other competencies, the acquisition of words transforms them by providing a method for children to communicate and organise the information obtained through them. We do this by describing the key milestones occurring within each of the competencies and the genetic and environmental factors which place them at risk, with findings derived from a systematic review of cohort studies in English-speaking countries. A key message is that genetic and environmental circumstances are inextricably linked in predicting early cognitive development, and that some factors are reliably stronger in predicting poor outcomes than others. Additionally, there is clear evidence that income-related disparities are reliably measurable from the age of 3 and then steadily increase throughout the remainder of childhood.

Inherited discussions of ‘science and religion’ too much assume an interaction between two historically constant phenomena in terms of stories of ‘progress’ and ‘conflict’. Instead, it is better to recognise long-term and varying modes of tension between three different approaches to nature, pivoted about attitudes to ‘enchantment’ and to transcendence versus immanence. Within such a perspective, it appears that the dominant model of science as ‘disenchanted transcendence’ is a Newtonian one that historically quickly proved inadequate. Alternative and earlier traditions of ‘natural magic’ later returned under new guises and are closer to the essence of the ‘ergetic’ or experimental attitude that lies at the real core of ‘science’. The Newtonian model also implausibly suppressed the realities of motion, time, change, substantial form and secondary qualities. But contemporary physics points towards their restoration and to nature as a vital habit and form-shaping process, as well as to the ‘magical’ character of powers and causes. Magic, rightly understood, is a necessary mediator between religion as theory and science as practice and is a crucial aspect of an ergetic understanding of ‘enchanted transcendence’ which is the most promising perspective for today.

Chapter 4 analyzes gender and number agreement processes within the Determiner Phrase (DP) of Yungueño Spanish, Chota Valley Spanish and Chincha Spanish. The data presented here show a variety of reduced agreement configurations, which are rooted in L2 processing constraints applying at the morphology–semantics interface. A unified account of these phenomena is provided by adopting current formal proposals on the nature of feature valuation and checking (Frampton & Gutmann 2000; Pesetsky & Torrego 2007). In so doing, this chapter enhances a stronger dialogue between syntactic theory and variationist analysis, which is fundamental to account for the nature and evolution of the agreement domain across the DP of these Afro-Hispanic dialects.

The previous chapters established the centrality and importance of Kant’s theory of magnitudes. Before investigating Kant’s views more deeply, Chapter 6 provides critical background concerning the theory of magnitude, which is rooted in Euclid’s Elements. It describes the organization and deductive structure of the Elements to explain tensions between Euclid’s account of number and continuous spatial magnitude that persisted into the eighteenth century. It then explains the theory of proportions, in particular, the crucial definition of sameness of ratio. It also describes the mathematical nature of the continuous spatial magnitudes implicitly defined by that theory, including their homogeneity. Euclid also covers number and arithmetic and he regards numbers as collections of units. Much of the theory of proportions covers numbers as well as continuous spatial magnitudes, although Euclid gives numbers a separate treatment. This commonality inspired the search for a universal mathematics that covered continuous magnitudes more generally as well as number. The chapter traces the history and development of these themes in the Euclidean mathematical tradition, and describes its influence on three of Kant’s immediate predecessors: Wolff, Kästner, and Euler. It explains why these philosophers and mathematicians regarded mathematics as a science of magnitudes and their measurement.

In this chapter students are exposed to various kinds of inflectional processes in the languages of the world. We start with a review of the distinction between inflection and derivation. We then look at the inflectional categories of number, person, gender and noun class, case, tense and aspect, voice, mood and modality, evidentiality and mirativity. We look at the sorts of inflection we find in English and consider why English has so little inflection. We then turn to the concepts of the paradigm and of inflectional classes, and look at the sorts of relations that are found in paradigms (syncretism, suppletion, defectiveness, overabundance). Students learn the distinction between inherent and contextual inflection. The chapter ends with a brief ‘how-to’ on the analysis of inflection.