Children add more information to their utterances by packing more material into a single clause. They can specify roles, modify nouns with adjectives and verbs with added locatives and adverbs. They can add demonstratives (those) and quantifiers (many) to nouns, and make clearer what they are referring to. Young children’s early constructions tend to mirror parental usage, just as their lexical choices do. They follow preferred argument structure and place given information in the Agent slot of transitive verbs, and keep the Object slot of transitives and the Subject slot of intransitives for new information. They may omit given information at this stage and only later add the relevant pronoun subjects. In both questions and negations, they take time to master the use of auxiliary verbs and rely on fixed “frames” for some time as they learn the meaning of each wh- question word. Children also take time in learning how different perspectives can be marked within the clause, with choices of causative, location, or voice alternations. Here children must learn the options verb by verb.

This chapter examines the relationship between the prohibition of the use of force in article 2(4) of the UN Charter and customary international law: if they are identical, the role the customary rule plays in the interpretation of article 2(4) and which one to interpret or apply to determine the meaning of a prohibited ‘use of force’. In doing so it examines the following concepts: the use of pre-existing or subsequently developing custom to fill gaps in the treaty, the use of subsequently developing custom to informally modify the interpretation of the treaty, an evolutive interpretation of the UN Charter and informal treaty modification through subsequent practice. It argues that since article 2(4) is the origin of the customary prohibition, it is not appropriate to use pre-existing or subsequently developing customary international law to fill gaps in interpretation of article 2(4) nor to use subsequently developing custom to modify article 2(4). It concludes that due to the present relationship between the customary and Charter prohibitions, the preferable approach to determine the meaning of prohibited force under international law is to focus on interpreting the UN Charter.

Informal borrowings can be classified according to several criteria. As for the typology by borrowed material, one can distinguish loanwords, which are the most frequent in the database, followed by other types, including loanblends and loan translations. As for typology by part of speech, the majority are nouns, followed by adjectives and verbs, which is consistent with the part-of-speech distribution patterns found in noninformal borrowings; however, there are a few surprises. As for assimilation, one can distinguish partially assimilated borrowings, which are most frequent, followed by fully assimilated and unassimilated expressions. As for modification, unmodified borrowings are the most frequent, followed by partly modified and highly modified ones. There are many more criteria proposed in the text.

Borrowings in informal American English exhibit various modifications. Phonological changes involve the modification of their pronunciation to conform to the phonological rules of American English. Orthographical changes feature the change in spelling of borrowed expressions, with various stages of respelling or other modifications. Morphological changes include addition or removal of lexical material via standard wordbuilding processes such as lengthening or shortening. Semantic changes involve figuration and accompanying semantic shifting. Grammatical changes involve conversion in the part of speech. Finally, stylistic changes involve modification in the original register of informal borrowings which may shift their stylistic status in American English; while most borrowings exhibit no such change and retain their informal status, there are several exceptions.

This chapter looks at agreements relating to divorce. Among the topics are why states do not allow parties to achieve divorce through private agreement, and the way in which courts look favorable on separation agreements entered to facilitate divorce. The chapter also considers provisions in separation agreements dealing with the religious upbringing of children and provisions affecting post-divorce modifications.

The classification criteria in Chapter 2 are now applied to the final three evaluative of-binominals. The evaluative binominal noun phrase (an egg of a head) is an of-binominal construction in which the first noun ascribes a property to the second. The second noun is head, and the construction exhibits a number of noncanonical syntactic features, e.g. the first determiner has scope over the whole construction, a restricted second determiner, and irregular premodification patterns. The evaluative modifier (a whale of a time) is a new of-binominal that I propose. In the evaluative modifier, the first noun has completely decategorizated and functions as a part of the [N1 of a] chunk that denotes speaker evaluation of the referent denoted by the second noun. Furthermore, I argue that this construction needs to be distinguished from the EBNP. Finally, in the binominal intensifier (a beast of a good read), [N1 of a] functions as an intensifier or booster, modifying the gradable adjectives that follow. This study demonstrates that this final construction is much more prolific than previous research has shown.

This chapter examines reference in planned, deliberated language production. Using evidence from examples of institutional writing (writing text in academic, professional, and social settings), the effects of the written mode of production on referential choice, including evidence from keystroke logging methods which give us insight into revisions during the writing process. In comparison with spontaneous discourse, we demonstrate how the relatively low frequency of pronominal reference that is typical of spontaneous discourse is replaced with more complex referential expressions. We also consider whether referential choice is a feature of genre as we examine the referential profiles of different text types. The chapter concludes that referring expressions in prepared discourse tend to be more frequently information rich and consequently, the modification and qualification zones of the noun phrase are more active in this type of discourse.

This chapter introduces the two types of modification in a sentence: attributive and adverbial. Attributive modification generally assigns properties to nouns, and adverbial modification generally assigns properties to predicates. Special attention is paid to the uses of the marker 的 de for attributive modifications and the marker 地 de for adverbial modifications.

The skeletal structure of a sentence is defined by the propositional acts of reference, predication, and modification. Reference is carried out by a referring phrase. The prototypical head of a referring phrase denotes an object; this is a noun. Modifiers are dependents of a noun that form attributive phrases. The prototypical head of an attributive phrase denotes a property; this is an adjective. A clause predicates something of a referent or referents. The prototypical head of a clause denotes an action; this is a verb. Reference, modification, and predication of nonprototypical concepts is possible, and often expressed by distinct constructions. Three principles govern how combinations of information packaging and semantic content are expressed: any concept can be packaged in any way; some ways are more ‘natural’ than others; and how they are packaged is constrained by conventions of the speech community. Nonprototypical constructions often share properties of ‘neighboring’ prototypical constructions. They often differ by having additional forms coding the nonprototypical function, and/or by a lesser potential for expressing associated grammatical categories (e.g., inflections).

Contractual obligations are excused when unaddressed post-contracting events occur, but the excuse depends on how the parties divided the risk of post-contracting events.

What "goes without saying," what’s expected (statistically or normatively), is often unmarked linguistically. What is special, distinctive, in some way seen as unusual, gets marked. For social kinds, this often involves adding modifiers or affixes to names of distinctive subkinds within an overarching social category – hyphenated Americans, for example. This can lead to the erasure of those distinctive subkinds in talk of the overarching category. So, for example, ‘hyphenated’ Americans can be ignored in some talk of Americans. It can also lead to erasure of distinctiveness among those not included in the marked subkinds so that, e.g., whiteness or maleness can be elided with being American or being human. Dominant social groups often have no distinctive labels since they become ‘normal’ exemplars of the larger social group. Subordinated groups can push back by labeling the larger default category and trying to get its members to label themselves, to acknowledge, e.g., that being cisgender brings with it a range of experiences and privileges not all share.

Chapter 5 on amendment, modification, and revision is organically linked with the former chapter on interpretation. It deals with the possibility of a temporal motion of a treaty through amendment, modification or revision. This may lead to either increase (auxesis), diminution (meiosis), or even alteration (alloiosis) of a treaty. The chapter goes through the development of the rules of amendment and modification in the VCLT, and also examines the contemporary development of the law of treaties through conferences of parties established by multilateral environmental agreements. This practice has led to new approaches to treaty modification, which did not exist in classical international law. It may be said that such modifications are effected through secondary legislation, which in turn may lead to the questions of legitimacy. This chapter concludes with an examination of the patterns of amendment and modification that emerge from the multilateral treaties that have been registered in the League of Nations and United Nations Treaty Series.