Economic Stability

Economic Stability The article "The Selfishness of the Unselfish"  offers a concise observation from the liberal economists' perspective that those individuals and groups who lobby and advocate for policies and government regulation of run-away capitalism in the name of unselfishness are actually just as, if not more, "greedy"  and "selfish"  than the policies and institutions they claim to be fighting. The author, Boudreaux, describes a brief encounter he had with a woman, several years ago, who was actively involved in the city of Atlanta's historical-preservation movement and who vocally rebuked "greedy developers"  for destroying or renovating older homes and destroying these homes' "historical integrity."  The problem with this woman's argument, the author claims, is that, while she believes herself to be selfless, with the interest of preserving history and its dignity, she is actually being greedy by forcing her beliefs and opinions upon other people in the city, who may not be ab le to afford living in renovated, "historically accurate"  housing.Berry College logoThe author then goes on to describe a few instances where groups of individuals who claim to be watching over the good of society are actually advocating policies that benefit only some people at the expense of others. For example, environmentalists often vocally and passionately oppose what the author refers to as "capitalist greed."  However, while the environmental policies might benefit the environmentalists, they do so at the expense of other consumers who might benefit from the greater supply of goods and services that would be available if there weren't any of these output-reducing policies. At the end of the article, the author warns against those who protest for greater government involvement in the economy who are unable to support their protests and demands with sound, logical, well-researched evidence and reason. Most of those people who are quickest to rile and...

Postposition Definition and Examples

Postposition Definition and Examples Postposition is a word that shows the relation of a noun or pronoun to some other word in a sentence. A postposition is similar in function to a preposition, but it follows rather than precedes the object. Its generally accepted that the only common postposition in English is the word ago. Together, prepositions and postpositions are called adpositions. Examples and Observations Here are some examples of postposition from various writers: I decided many years ago to invent myself. I had obviously been invented by someone elseby a whole societyand I didnt like their invention.(Maya Angelou)Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.(Will Durant) Ago and Its Complement Ago in English must follow its complement. (87a) John received a very generous offer a few minutes ago.(87b) *John received a very generous offer ago a few minutes. In contrast with notwithstanding, ago must piedpipe, and cannot strand. (88a) How long ago did John receive the offer?(88b) *How long did John receive the offer ago? (Peter W. Culicover, Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999) Hence Although ago is . . . usually said to be the only independent postposition of English, the formal use of hence with the meaning from now (as in three weeks hence) seems to be used identically. Traces of postpositional constructions are found in expressions like the whole week through and all the year round.(D.J. Allerton, Over the Hills and Far Away or Far Away Over the Hills: English Place Adverb Phrases and Place Prepositional Phrases in Tandem. Adpositions: Pragmatic, Semantic and Syntactic Perspectives, ed. by Dennis Kurzon and Silvia Adler. John Benjamins, 2008) Clitic Though not usually so treated, the clitic -s could be seen as a postposition in e.g. my friends daughter, my friend in Washingtons daughter.(P.H. Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007) Postpositions In Other Languages Many languages, such as English, express thematic roles by means of prepositions. Some languages, however, use postpositions (i.e., morphemes that express the same thematic roles but come after head nouns). Languages that use postpositions in this way include Korean and Japanese...For those students who have prepositions or postpositions in their native language, English prepositions are still a source of difficulty, and they remain so even as students levels of proficiency increase. One reason for this is the problem of polysemy. In learning a second language, students attempt to draw correspondences between their L1 [native language] prepositions and prepositions in the L2 [second language]. Perfect one-to-one correspondences would facilitate learning, but, given polysemy, finding these is virtually impossible.(Ron Cowan, The Teachers Grammar of English: A Course Book and Reference Guide. Cambridge University Press, 2008)