Indeterminacy,complex features and underspecification

At its simplest, morphosyntactic agreement may be viewed as involving linguistic objects which have the same values for a given feature. In contemporary constraint-based formalisms the relationship is usually modelled by structure sharing in the syntax; for predicate-argument agreement, most often it is assumed that the target and the controller provide compatible (complete or partial) specifications of features of the controller. This approach has much to recommend it, being based on the straightforward mechanism of combining information monotonically in the syntax. Additionally, it is often (but not invariably) assumed that (a subset of) these same morphosyntactic features are simply passed down to the morphology for spell out (Bresnan, In: Baltin and Collins (eds.) Handbook of contemporary syntactic theory, 2000; Lexical functional syntax, 2001) (but see e.g. Ackerman and Webelhuth (In: Butt and King (eds.) Online proceedings of the LFG96 conference, 1996); Sadler and Spencer (Yearbook of morphology 2002:71–97, 2001); Sells (In: Sadler and Spencer (eds.) Projecting morphology, 2004; In: Nikolaeva (ed.) Finiteness: theoretical and empirical foundations, 2007); Sadler and Nordlinger (In: Sadler and Spencer (eds.) Projecting morphology, 2004); Hinrichs and Nakazawa (Proceedings of HPSG2001, 2002) for approaches in lfg and other constraint-based formalisms which allow some further separation between these components). We discuss a range of cases of morphosyntactic agreement which are challenging in one way or another to this lean approach and explore how they may be modelled without adding any extra machinery, by using underspecified feature representations in the syntax, within one such framework, that of Lexical Functional Grammar lfg.     

Cultural Politics and China's Minorities

China's Minority Cultures. Colin Mackerras. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 252 pp.
Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers. Stevan Harrell. ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. 379 pp.     

Commentary on Coram et al. (2021) on the use of Facebook to understand marine mammal stranding issues in Southeast Asia

We reviewed Coram et al. (Biodivers Conserv 30:2341–2359, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02196-6), a paper that highlights the use of social media data to understand marine litter and marine mammals in Southeast Asia. While we commend its intent, we find that the methodology used and conclusions drawn portray an incomplete and inaccurate perception of how strandings, stranding response, and analysis of stranding data have been conducted in the region. By focusing on investigative results revealed by a very limited search of one social media platform (Facebook), using only English keywords, and insufficient ground-truthing, Coram et al. (2021) have, unintentionally, given the perception that Southeast Asian scientists have not conducted even the bare minimum of investigation required to better understand the issue of marine litter and its impact on marine mammals. In this commentary we provide a more accurate account of strandings research in Asia and include recommendations to improve future studies using social media to assess conservation issues.