Open Library of Humanities

Clitics in Wolof: syntax all the way up This article explores the properties and placement of Wackernagel-like clitics in the Niger–Congo language Wolof. I affirm the proposal initially put forth by Melynda Dunigan that Wolof clitics move in the syntax to the highest head in the extended projection of the verb, contra subsequent analyses that have argued for the need for a prosodic component in Wolof clitic placement. The main argument for the absence of a post-syntactic readjustment of clitic position comes from the behavior of the subject clitic, which is initial in the extended projection of the verb if there is no higher functional head that could attract it but which patterns with other clitics when such a head is present. I show that this is straightforwardly accounted for if the subject clitic can undergo EPP-triggered A-movement to the specifier of the highest head in the extended projection of the verb, placing it outside the c-command domain of that head. I formalize clitic movement as triggered by an edge feature on the highest head in the extended projection of the verb, so that the goal feature on the clitics becomes activated in the c-command domain of the edge feature and stays inactive otherwise. Finally, I discuss clitic climbing, which reveals another property of Wolof clitics: their need to be located in the inflectional layer of the clause. Wolof clitics confirm an important property of Wackernagel-like clitics: that their movement is primarily syntactic, even if in some languages it involves a prosodic component. Clitic movement of this type looks similar to other types of movement to the edges of domains. To the extent that such movements are syntactically motivated, so is the movement of Wolof type clitics.

New in Syntactic Theory and Research: "Clitics in Wolof: syntax all the way up" by Martina Martinović:

Excited to announce that our new issue has opened! c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1422/i...

'The Century at 25' was guested edited by Alice Bennett, Arin Keeble, Melissa Schuh, and Denise Wong

Call for book review essays - book list C21 is inviting scholars and researchers to contribute book review essays for upcoming issues. We currently have a selection of titles published in 2025 available for review, spanning film and …

An updated list of books is now available on our blog. Check it out below and pitch a review essay to our editors! (info in post)

A crowd of delegates, arranged in a rough semi circle, looking up at the camera, some cheering

Two delegates talking to each other during a coffee break, both smiling, other delegates in the background

Caroline Ball speaking, holding a lapel mic, with Fatimah Abduldayan, Martina Benz, and Sarah Thompson sitting alongside, with Martina looking up and back at a screen off camera

View from the back of a tiered lecture theatre, showing around 100 delegates seated in rows looking at a screen at the front, showing a remote delegate speaking, with four other speakers sitting below and to the left

1/ We did it.. the first ever Copim community conference ... done! Approx 250 people joining on and offline, over two days, with delegates representing every continent and 49 countries. Inevitably our discussions centred on the futures of #OAbooks...

Psycholinguistic evidence for the optional movement of unaccusative subjects in Japanese One of the controversial issues surrounding unaccusativity in Japanese is the surface position of unaccusative subjects. While compelling evidence has been found that the theme subject of an unaccusat...

New publication in Syntactic Theory and Research / @starlinguistics.bsky.social: "Psycholinguistic evidence for the optional movement of unaccusative subjects in Japanese" by Daiki Asami and Satoshi Tomioka: doi.org/10.16995/sta...

Exploring the social meaning of the ‘leader-lagger’ vowels in New Zealand English Clusters of New Zealand English (NZE) monophthongs systematically covary across speakers (Brand et al., 2021; Hurring et al., 2025), meaning information about how a speaker realises one vowel also giv...

Latest from Laboratory Phonology / @labphon.bsky.social: “Exploring the social meaning of the ‘leader-lagger’ vowels in New Zealand English,” by Elena Sheard et al.: doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Exploring the social meaning of the ‘leader-lagger’ vowels in New Zealand English Clusters of New Zealand English (NZE) monophthongs systematically covary across speakers (Brand et al., 2021; Hurring et al., 2025), meaning information about how a speaker realises one vowel also giv...

Pronunciation of New Zealand English monophthongs varies across speakers, distinguishing ‘leaders’ from ‘laggers’ of ongoing sound changes. But do listeners make social judgements based on these vowels? Yes! doi.org/10.16995/lab... @jbhay.bsky.social @joshwilsonblack.bsky.social #LabPhon #openaccess

We’ve identified a phishing attempt affecting Glossa. So far, it appears confined to that journal. As a precaution, we urge all editors to verify email addresses carefully and avoid engaging with suspicious messages requesting personal information or funds. If in doubt, contact us directly.

You can read the entire collection here: olh.openlibhums.org/issue/1205/i...

Poetry off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance The introduction to Poetry off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance collection.

Read the introduction to the #OLHJournal special collection “Poetry off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance”, guest edited by Helen Thomas, Andrea Brady and Peter Howarth: doi.org/10.16995/olh...

@poetryoffthepage.bsky.social

Lean Out! On the Morality of Engaging in Positional Competitions The orthodox position in the literature on positional goods posits that although positional competitions are socially undesirable, inefficient, and unfair, individuals are reasonable and justified to engage in them. Contrary to that position, this paper argues that individuals almost always have a prima facie moral duty to “lean out,” namely, to avoid engaging in positional competitions. The paper puts forward three arguments in support of this duty: that positional competitions involve winning for the wrong reasons; that competing in positional competitions involves showing disregard to other people’s projects, thereby failing to act in solidarity with them; and that engaging in positional competitions involves behaving coercively towards other competitors. After presenting the three arguments, the paper delineates the proper scope of the duty to lean out, ensuring that it is not overdemanding. 

Latest from Political Philosophy (@polphiljournal.bsky.social): Lean Out! On the Morality of Engaging in Positional Competitions by Tammy Harel Ben Shahar:

... closer connections between #openinfrastructures to enable uptake of good #OAbooks #metadata practice across platforms, based on the use case of ISU Digital Press.

Collaboration in action at #CopimConference ❤ Getting together with Harrison Inefuku (Iowa State U Digital Press), Steel Wagstaff ( @pressbooks.bsky.social ), Joe Muller ( @janewayolh.bsky.social ), and Javier Arias (Thoth Open Metadata) to establish ...

For Your Own Good? Authority, Categorical Reasons, and Paternalism Instrumentalist accounts of authority seek to justify relations of authority—that is, relations in which one person has the ability to give binding directives to another—on the basis of some good, benefit or service that such relations provide for those subject to them. These accounts of authority are often criticized for justifying too much authority, and in particular, for justifying forms of authority which appear blatantly paternalistic. Some authority relations do not seem justified even though they are, or would be, clearly beneficial to those subject to them. In this article, I defend instrumentalist accounts of authority against this objection. I focus, in particular, on Joseph Raz’s well-known and influential formulation of instrumentalism about authority, as articulated in his service conception of authority, and on a version of the objection formulated by Stephen Darwall. I begin by arguing that, contrary to the suggestions made by several philosophers, instrumentalist justifications of authority would not be more plausible if restricted in scope to cases involving pre-existing obligations, or some particularly weighty subset of moral or categorical concerns. I suggest, instead, that worries about paternalism can be accommodated by instrumentalist accounts of authority in other ways.

New publication in Free & Equal: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs (@freeandequal.bsky.social): “For Your Own Good? Authority, Categorical Reasons, and Paternalism” by Filippa Ronquist

Hello from the Janeway & OLH team at the COPIM conference! 👋
Great to catch up with colleagues across the diamond OA community.

So many important conversations: librarians supporting diamond OA, collective funding for OA books, accessibility, Thoth open metadata & more!

#CopimConference

What a great conference so far! So glad to see the OLH logo featured alongside all the other OIPA members at the #CopimConference!

If you’re at #CopimConference, don’t forget to pick up one of our new stickers! 💎💎💎

🎉🎉👋🏼

All About Eva: Buhrich House Transcripts This article focusses on one of the two houses that Eva Maria Buhrich (1913–1976) co-designed, Buhrich House II (1971–1973), arguing that she greatly contributed to Australian and modern architecture. Born in Germany and educated in Switzerland, she arrived in Sydney in 1939, where she worked between fields and practiced in collaboration with her architect husband, Hugh August Buhrich (1911–2004). Eva Buhrich designed buildings, interiors, furniture and exhibitions; worked as a ‘town planner’ and as an architectural and urban critic; engaged in political advocacy; and wrote a book for a wide audience on landscape design, Patios and Outdoor Living Areas, published in 1976. Drawing on archival research, including scrapbooks of her published articles, a collection of her private letters and a ‘thick description’ of key artefacts within Eva’s collective output, the article explores her professional contributions to help situate her unusual practice within modern architecture in Australia.    

New in #ArchitecturalHistories: “All About Eva: Buhrich House Transcripts” by Catherine Lassen

The Video Essay About The Show A multipart video essay both examining and imitating The Show About The Show, a long-running cult webseries created by independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi.

2) “The Video Essay About The Show” by Jason Mittell (@jmittell.bsky.social)

A multipart video essay both examining and imitating The Show About The Show, a long-running cult web series created by independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi:
doi.org/10.16995/OS....

Selling Cabiria in transnational markets When pirates put the infant Cabiria on sale in the Carthaginian market early in the second episode of the Italian epic Cabiria (1914), she is swiftly bought by the High Priest of Moloch. But selling t...

Two new publications in Open Screens:

1) “Selling Cabiria in transnational markets” by Maria Wyke
doi.org/10.16995/OS....

The Video Essay About The Show A multipart video essay both examining and imitating The Show About The Show, a long-running cult webseries created by independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi.

After many months of work, my project "The Video Essay About The Show" has finally been published in the journal Open Screens! Check it out if you want to see me (and my dog) probe the limits of what counts as "scholarship" these days...

Screenshot of the BST Body, Space & Technology journal’s Volume 25 (2026) issue, featuring a dark background with a white, abstract human-like figure formed from fine glowing lines and threads

New issue of Body, Space & Technology (BST), Vol. 25 is out now.

Read the full issue: www.bstjournal.com/issue/1773/i...

Honesty and Bad Faith An appealing account of dishonesty subsumes it under the paradigm of lying. However, the account faces clear trouble from a wide range of cases, including cases of bullshit and brazen dishonesty. Such...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Honesty and Bad Faith" by
Nathan Robert Howard (Toronto) and N. G. Laskowski (Maryland). Available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Lean Out! On the Morality of Engaging in Positional Competitions The orthodox position in the literature on positional goods posits that although positional competitions are socially undesirable, inefficient, and unfair, individuals are reasonable and justified to ...

New article in Political Philosophy: "Lean Out! On the Morality of Engaging in Positional Competitions" by
Tammy Harel Ben Shahar (Haifa). Available open-access at politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Did you know we have a Bluesky starter pack where you can follow all of OJC's publisher members in just one click?

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Creative meditations on Svalbard! What’s not to love about this? Another fantastic issue just dropped from the award-winning @openlibhums.org journal Regeneration @regenerationeac.bsky.social 🙌🏼 #OpenAccess #AcaSky

Material Girls "Material Girls" explores cinema’s representation of girlhoods through girls’ tactile and bodily interactions with fabrics in the mise-en-scène, and invites us to think about fabrics, folds, sheets, a...

Remembering film and French studies scholar Isabelle McNeill (1979–2025).

We’re honoured to share Material Girls, her final @intransition.bsky.social work, which includes a tribute and reflects her lasting influence on videographic criticism:
doi.org/10.16995/int...

Guimarães, João Paulo, Hg. Fear of Aging: Old Age in Horror Fiction and Film. Transcript, 2024. Review of Fear of Aging: Old Age in Horror Fiction and Film, edited by João Paulo Guimarães.

New (in German) in #ZFF / Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung > Susanne Schwertfeger reviews "Fear of Aging: Old Age in Horror Fiction and Film", edited by João Paulo Guimarães:

Honesty and Bad Faith An appealing account of dishonesty subsumes it under the paradigm of lying. However, the account faces clear trouble from a wide range of cases, including cases of bullshit and brazen dishonesty. Such cases show not only that lying is inessential to dishonesty but also that honesty requires more than the absence of dishonesty. We propose an alternative account grounded in norms associated with games. On our account, dishonesty is better understood in terms of cheating or of breaking the rules of a game; being honest requires upholding those rules.     

New publication in Political Philosophy / @polphiljournal.bsky.social: "Honesty and Bad Faith" by Nathan Robert Howard and N. G. Laskowski.