Reasoning about actions has been a focus of in terest in Al f rom the beginning and continues to receive a t tent ion. Rut the range of s i tuat ions considered has been rather narrow and falls well short of what is needed for understanding natura l language. Language understanding requires sophisticated reasoning about actions and events and the world 's languages employ a variety of g rammat ...

Some recent publications have raised the question of placing Ireland in a comparative perspective. Three such comparative frameworks are investigated in this paper: advanced capitalist countries, (West)European countries, and finally semi-peripheral European societies. Although not an advanced capitalist economy, Ireland displays the central institutional features of such societies. But on clos...