Brevity in Pānini

Conclusion In the preceding we have argued that brevity in the form of Generalizing Brevity is an important theoretical principle underlying Panini's grammar. It applies blindly at the metalevel, when the grammar is being chosen. Generalization is a concern at one remove: A device for the metalanguage is only chosen such that its use in accord with the maximum brevity leads to some generalization. Many potential brevity increasing devices are not chosen for this reason. But at the metalanguage level brevity is paramount. To prove this we have shown that Panini maximizes brevity in many cases at the cost of other possible theoretical principles. We have also shown that many features of the grammar flow from the brevity criterion. We have concluded that logical organization, generality, and other aspects of explanation largely follow from brevity and that this can be regarded as a substantial aspect of the explanatory power of the theory behind the grammar. Generalization should follow on the heels of maximum brevity. And, considering Panini's domain of data this is a perfectly reasonable expectation.I would like to thank Paul Kiparsky for his many valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The author is of course responsible for remaining errors.     

The radical change: From a socialist perspective to militarism (Rejoinder to Ben-Eliezer and Shamir)

Ben-Eliezer and Shamir's reply appeared in Vol. 4, No. 3 Carmi and Rosenfeld's article appeared in Vol. 3, No. 1.     

Guerrilla economics and the wild economy

This paper assesses the latest contributions, by Harding and Jenkins and by Portes, Castells and Benton, to the literature on the informal or hidden economy. It places these works in the context of the now significant body of theoretical and empirical research that has developed over the past 17 years. It traces the emergence of the concept from its roots in economic anthropology, developmental studies, criminology, poverty studies, industrial and urban sociology, and Soviet studies, to its current demand for an interdisciplinary economics. It shows how, what was originally a fragmented polemical critique of the classical model of economic man, dismissed by many as peripheral, even trivial, has emerged as a new approach to the analysis of economic life. This guerrilla interdisciplinary irreverence is forcing a new dialectical vision in which economic life is reveled to be anything but the predictable, rational activity of market forces. Instead we see a wild economy, of formal and informal, market and non-market, as interrelated dimensions of the same whole, a whole permeated by social networks and clusters of workers. Failure to take this development seriously is to be blind to the realities of modern economic life and itself constitutive of the myth that is the formal economy. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** AW502012 00002