Thoth SWORD collection

Buildings on Standby

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Buildings on Standby Alpermann, Hendrikje | https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7673-5339

Buildings on Standby describes the vacant high-rise buildings A–E in Halle-Neustadt as places of uncertain future, where the possibilities/impossibilities of urban planning after socialism are being negotiated. For more than 20 years, four of the five tower blocks have been vacant and remain on standby – in a state of future-oriented availability and a contested space between shutdown and reactivation. At the interface of actor-network theory and ethnographic urban research, the study examines this state in its temporal, material and political dimensions. It shows that buildings on standby cost a lot of energy, harbour risks and become a bargaining chip for trust and responsibility. The book opens up new perspectives on shrinking cities, interstitial spaces and urban transformation – in and beyond the post-socialist space.

The text is accompanied by numerous architectural illustrations and a photo essay by Eiko Grimberg.

Passivisation in Semitic, Iranian, Armenian, and Beyond

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Passivisation in Semitic, Iranian, Armenian, and Beyond Noorlander, Paul M. | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9407-1453; Asadpour, Hiwa | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7074-2435

This volume brings together research on passive voice constructions in low-resource languages of Western Asia, a region marked by extraordinary linguistic diversity as well as a long history of cultural suppression and marginalisation. The contributions showcase the passive voice in Semitic, Iranian, Armenian, Greek, and Turkic languages, many of which are endangered, understudied, or confined to diaspora communities and disappearing language islands. Education and cultural expression in these languages remained heavily restricted across parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, underscoring the urgent need for documentation and revitalisation.

The chapters explore the rich typological variation of passive voice constructions, examining their typological traits, synchronic microvariation and diachronic developments. Drawing on Siewierska’s definition, the studies investigate processes of agent demotion and patient promotion, reductions in transitivity, and the fuzzy boundaries between passive and other detransitivisation strategies such as middles, anticausatives, statives and light verbs as well as impersonal subjects and agent omission. They also shed light on the impact of text genre, verbal aspect, and language contact on passivisation.

By integrating theoretical, typological, historical, and areal perspectives, the volume discusses the internal stability of detransitivisation strategies, their evolution from earlier source constructions, and their position in voice systems more broadly. It raises fundamental questions about whether cross-linguistic tendencies in passives reflect universal patterns or area-specific historical contingencies.

This collection thus provides an essential resource for scholars of all theoretical persuasions that are interested in voice and valency and/or in Western Asia’s linguistic diversity, while foregrounding the pressing need to support communities whose linguistic heritage is at risk.

Buildings on Standby

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Buildings on Standby Alpermann, Hendrikje | 0009-0006-7673-5339

The text is accompanied by numerous architectural illustrations and a photo essay by Eiko Grimberg.

Voix de Glace / Voice of Ice

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Voix de Glace / Voice of Ice Ifland, Alta Voix de Glace/Voice of Ice is a series of prose poems about the estranged self living outside of one’s native land and away from one’s native tongue. Romanian poet Alta Ifland writes first in French, then translates her work into English, before returning to the original French for further revisions, a process of linguistic reconciliation as much as translation. Published in a bilingual, French–English edition, Ifland repeatedly turns to remembered images of her unnamed homeland to animate her unfamiliar home, creating, what poet Gary Young calls “a brilliant collection of prose poems document[ing] the quest for a coherent self, an authentic identity born out of the chaos of language and history." He continues, "Ifland's poems trace a radical process of de-creation—dismemberment of the body, dissolution of the ego, abandonment of the self—and the reinvention of a new identity, purified by the acid of tears. This new creation—tentative and rarified, “a child’s body of light”—earns a tenuous existence, but it proves to be enough to withstand the omnipresent threat of oblivion." Voix de Glace/Voice of Ice won the 2008 Prix Louis Guillaume du Poème en Prose/Louis Guillaume Prize for Prose Poetry. This title is a second revised and expanded edition, released as part of punctum’s Special Collections project.