This dissertation explores the underlying structural properties of spatial expressions, and the acquisition of these structures by children. In the first part of the dissertation I focus on directional axial expressions in Russian, and argue that their distributional and semantic properties are tightly related to their underlying syntactic structure. I present an original analysis of these items, ...

During the nineteenth century new practices for the representation of otherness were established. A significant manifestation was the living exhibitions of Sami and other native peoples at “urban stages” in Europe and America. These exhibitions have usually been perceived as the western world’s staging of primitivity and race within hegemonic discourses based on exploitation and repression. In ...

Scientific texts relating to Spitsbergen (Svalbard) published between 1895 and 1920, during the final quarter-century before Norway obtained sovereignty of this Arctic archipelago, relate their authors’ scientific findings, but in many instances their very existence, their language of publication, their author’s nationality and their country of publication also serve to illustrate their historical ...

The general aim of the three essays that make up the substance of the dissertation is to contribute to the assessment of Husserl’s epistemology, which has received relatively little attention in the Husserlian renaissance of recent years. Their upshot is a critical one, in that I find reason to question important aspects of both Husserl’s metaepistemology and his substantive epistemology. Husserl’s ...

<p>The objective of the thesis is to examine, from a critical realist perspective and by using Margaret Archer’s conceptual framework, possible effects that the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test has on the Norwegian education system and on school personnel. The intention has been to reconceptualise the notion of ‘PISA effects’ both at the systemic (macro) and individual ...

Målet med denne avhandlinga er å betre forståinga av koplinga mellom planlegging og politikk i norske kommunar. Dette vil eg oppnå gjennom å studere forholdet mellom kommunal planstrategi og lokale folkevalde i praksis. I tillegg håper eg at arbeidet kan bidra til å styrke statusen til samfunnsplanlegging i både norsk lokalpolitikk og i planfeltet. Gjennom plan- og bygningslova (pbl., 2008) har ...

At det offentlige byråkratiet har stor makt, er det få som stiller spørsmålstegn ved i dag. Men hvordan bruker byråkratiet – eller administrasjonen - sin makt? Brukes makten til å hjelpe politikere til å utforme og iverksette sin politikk? Eller brukes makten til å motarbeide politikere for å fremme sin egen agenda? Dette er spørsmål som Dag Ingvar Jacobsen tar opp i sin avhandling – ”Politikk ...

It can be observed that the relative order of modifier PPs in Japanese is free. Given that the word order in Japanese can be rearranged by scrambling, two questions arise with regard to the word order of modifiers. Is the word order of these modifiers constrained underlyingly? And how are the modifier PPs introduced into a clause structure? A possible answer is a traditional approach under which the ...

Abstract The aim of this doctoral thesis is to illuminate the principle of the best interest of the child and to assess its impact on pedagogical work in the kindergarten. The question that guided the research were; how is the Principle of the Best Interests of the Child formulated and concretized in policy documents and what implication the principle has for pedagogical work in kindergartens? The ...