When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works.Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communication wit...

The title "Hot Corn" refers to the street vendors who sold hot corn, a common and inexpensive snack, particularly among the city's poorer residents. The book's full title, "Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated," suggests that it includes illustrations that complement the text, helping to bring to life the scenes and characters Robinson describes.Robinson's work is notable for its focus on the often harsh realities of urban life, including poverty, crime, and social injustice. Thro...

In "Guano: A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers," Solon Robinson deftly explores the transformative potential of guano as a fertilizer in the agricultural landscape of the 19th century. Written in an accessible yet authoritative style, the treatise combines empirical research with practical advice, positioning guano as a revolutionary product that could enhance crop yields and soil fertility. Contextually situated amid burgeoning agricultural practices and the rise of scientific...

Today, the Caldecott Tunnel connects Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The original two bores of this tunnel opened in 1937, the same year as the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, and changed Contra Costa County from an area of small rural communities into one of growing suburbs. But this was not the first tunnel to connect these counties. The Kennedy Tunnel, opened in 1903, was accessed by steep and winding roads and located several hundred feet abo...

One of the Seven Sages of Greece, Solon was a seventh-century BC statesman, lawmaker and poet. He is credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy, with efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline. Solon was also Athens’ first poet, composing verses that challenged and counselled the people, urging them to action. He wrote poetry for pleasure, as patriotic propaganda and in defence of his constitutional reform. His verses have come down to us in...

Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was arrested with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister was sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same bodies. In August 1943, there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the ...

This book provides practical tools, models, and frameworks for thinking about how a story is structured, all in order to help us think about conflict. Using examples from literature and films for developing narrative competence in everyday life, the book illustrates a new model of four basic plot types that can push a reader/viewer either toward political struggle (a justice or vindication story) or toward a journey of self-realization (a peace or reconciliation story). The examples used i...

These poems are about love, war, and life that I experienced. All of the poems that are written in this book were written when I was in my twenties. I have not yet experienced true love, but I wrote about how I imagined love to be. As for war, I experienced it firsthand and witnessed the devastation. Several of my poems were just my random thoughts while I was away at war.

It's the 22'nd century and most of Earth's population has moved into orbiting habitats in the Trojan points, in order to escape pollution, wars and global warming. The majority of the population of the State of Israel now lives in the habitat "Weitzmann" in the forward Trojan point.Unfortunately, the animosities of the Middle East have followed them there.This is the story of the beginning of the new Diaspora, how the Jewish people undertook to end their problems once and f...

An introduction to the intellectual foundations and practical utility of the recent work on fairness and machine learning.Fairness and Machine Learning introduces advanced undergraduate and graduate students to the intellectual foundations of this recently emergent field, drawing on a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives to identify the opportunities and hazards of automated decision-making. It surveys the risks in many applications of machine learning and pr...

At age 14, Wendy Gossard was drawn by the tranquil blue eyes and personal magnetism of a man known as Yahowah, leader of a spiritual group called the Source Family. Fleeing her own family and becoming a fugitive from justice in the state of California, Wendy followed the 1970s cult group across settlements in California and Hawaii on a quest for spiritual direction, communal harmony, and basic survival. Growing up, the teenager, called Mushroom by Yahowah, had questions about her pregnancy...

This volume offers an introduction to the field of second language acquisition with a particular focus on second language Spanish. It connects key issues in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language to theoretical and empirical issues in the field of second language acquisition more generally by exemplifying central concepts in second language acquisition through the exploration of the most widely researched structures and most recent developments in the field of second language Span...