scholarly journals Epistemic sentence adverbs, epistemic complement-taking predicates and epistemic pragmatic markers

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pietrandrea

This study presents a formal and functional data-driven characterization of sentence adverbs. We define epistemic sentence adverbs as semantic predicates that validate the truth value of their scopes and are macrosyntactically dependent on them. We distinguish epistemic sentence adverbs on the one hand from epistemic complement-taking predicates – i. e., semantic predicates that validate the truth value of their scopes and govern them microsyntactically – and on the other hand from epistemic pragmatic markers – i. e., semantic predicates that validate the truth value of their scopes and that are syntactically independent of them. We also hypothesize that epistemic sentence adverbs have a specific functional role. Unlike (most) epistemic complement taking predicates, they express a non-addressable epistemic evaluation of the scope; unlike pragmatic markers they serve to qualify, rather than negotiate, the epistemic evaluation of the scope. We show that such a distinction is not necessarily inscribed at the lexical level: even though some words invariably behave as sentence adverbs, other words can be classified as epistemic sentence adverbs in some syntactic contexts, and as other epistemic markers in other syntactic contexts.

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-85
Author(s):  
Matteo Greco

Function words are commonly considered to be a small and closed class of words in which each element is associated with a specific and fixed logical meaning. Unfortunately, this is not always true as witnessed by negation: on the one hand, negation does reverse the truth-value conditions of a proposition, and the other hand, it does not, realizing what is called Expletive Negation. This chapter aims to investigate whether a word that is established on the basis of its function can be ambiguous by discussing the role of the syntactic derivation in some instances of so-called Expletive Negation clauses, a case in which negation seems to lose its capacity to deny the proposition associated with its sentence. Both a theoretical and an experimental approach has been adopted.


1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-490
Author(s):  
Gerd Rodé

AbstractThis paper gives a new characterization of the dimension of a normal Hausdorff space, which joins together the Eilenberg-Otto characterization and the characterization by finite coverings. The link is furnished by the notion of a system of faces of a certain type (N1,..., NK), where N1,..., NK, K are natural numbers. It is shown that a space X contains a system of faces of type (N1,..., NK) if and only if dim(X) ≥ N1 + … + NK. The two limit cases of the theorem, namely Nk = 1 for 1 ≤ k ≤ K on the one hand, and K = 1 on the other hand, give the two known results mentioned above.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 260-264
Author(s):  
Wei Cui

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) recently emerged as the site of unprecedented, multilateral, and seemingly high-stakes negotiations about the future of international business income taxation. Judging by the political resources deployed in these negotiations, international tax has entered unchartered territory. Ruth Mason offers a timely and balanced portrayal of the OECD process so far. But explanations of this process remain eminently contestable. On the one hand, international institutions that address externalities from uncoordinated actions and produce mutual benefits for participating nations can be highly stable. On the other hand, the OECD has struggled, whether in its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) and post-BEPS initiatives or during the pre-BEPS era, to articulate the goals for which international coordination in taxation is needed. By many accounts, recent discussions at the OECD are motivated mainly by the desire to stop foreign imposition of taxes on U.S. companies, or, as the other side of the same coin, to avert the wrath of the single hegemonic power in international tax. What is the best characterization of this conflict? I believe that understanding the underlying subject matter for international coordination, as opposed to merely the institutions that might facilitate such coordination, is required for identifying the coming transformation of international tax.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1084
Author(s):  
Stefano Garlaschi ◽  
Anna Fochesato ◽  
Anna Tovo

Recent technological and computational advances have enabled the collection of data at an unprecedented rate. On the one hand, the large amount of data suddenly available has opened up new opportunities for new data-driven research but, on the other hand, it has brought into light new obstacles and challenges related to storage and analysis limits. Here, we strengthen an upscaling approach borrowed from theoretical ecology that allows us to infer with small errors relevant patterns of a dataset in its entirety, although only a limited fraction of it has been analysed. In particular we show that, after reducing the input amount of information on the system under study, by applying our framework it is still possible to recover two statistical patterns of interest of the entire dataset. Tested against big ecological, human activity and genomics data, our framework was successful in the reconstruction of global statistics related to both the number of types and their abundances while starting from limited presence/absence information on small random samples of the datasets. These results pave the way for future applications of our procedure in different life science contexts, from social activities to natural ecosystems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 15-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgit Ludwig ◽  
Daniel König ◽  
Nestor D. Kapusta ◽  
Victor Blüml ◽  
Georg Dorffner ◽  
...  

Abstract Methods of suicide have received considerable attention in suicide research. The common approach to differentiate methods of suicide is the classification into “violent” versus “non-violent” method. Interestingly, since the proposition of this dichotomous differentiation, no further efforts have been made to question the validity of such a classification of suicides. This study aimed to challenge the traditional separation into “violent” and “non-violent” suicides by generating a cluster analysis with a data-driven, machine learning approach. In a retrospective analysis, data on all officially confirmed suicides (N = 77,894) in Austria between 1970 and 2016 were assessed. Based on a defined distance metric between distributions of suicides over age group and month of the year, a standard hierarchical clustering method was performed with the five most frequent suicide methods. In cluster analysis, poisoning emerged as distinct from all other methods – both in the entire sample as well as in the male subsample. Violent suicides could be further divided into sub-clusters: hanging, shooting, and drowning on the one hand and jumping on the other hand. In the female sample, two different clusters were revealed – hanging and drowning on the one hand and jumping, poisoning, and shooting on the other. Our data-driven results in this large epidemiological study confirmed the traditional dichotomization of suicide methods into “violent” and “non-violent” methods, but on closer inspection “violent methods” can be further divided into sub-clusters and a different cluster pattern could be identified for women, requiring further research to support these refined suicide phenotypes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël Van Olmen

This article examines the English and Dutch imperatives of intentional visual and auditory perception and in particular their use as pragmatic markers. Look, listen, kijk ‘look’ and luister ‘listen’ are compared with respect to frequency, distribution and usage. The difference between look and kijk, on the one hand, and listen and luister, on the other, is argued to be indicative of a more general cross-linguistic tendency. This tendency is explained in terms of the imperatives’ effectiveness in and likely recruitment for what has traditionally been called attention-getting and in terms of the common view of the nature of visual and auditory perception.


2007 ◽  
Vol 09 (04) ◽  
pp. 473-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CHIRON

The purpose of this paper is to relate two notions of Sobolev and BV spaces into metric spaces, due to Korevaar and Schoen on the one hand, and Jost on the other hand. We prove that these two notions coincide and define the same p-energies. We review also other definitions, due to Ambrosio (for BV maps into metric spaces), Reshetnyak and finally to the notion of Newtonian–Sobolev spaces. These last approaches define the same Sobolev (or BV) spaces, but with a different energy, which does not extend the standard Dirichlet energy. We also prove a characterization of Sobolev spaces in the spirit of Bourgain, Brezis and Mironescu in terms of "limit" of the space Ws,p as s → 1, 0 < s < 1, and finally following the approach proposed by Nguyen. We also establish the [Formula: see text] regularity of traces of maps in Ws,p (0 < s ≤ 1 < sp).


1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. van der Veen ◽  
Philippe Van Parijs

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick contrasts entitlement theories of justice and “traditional” theories such as Rawls', utilitarianism or egalitarianism, and advocates the former against the latter. What exactly is an entitlement theory (or conception or principle) of justice? Nozick's book offers two distinct characterizations. On the one hand, he explicitly describes “the general outlines of the entitlement theory” as maintaining “that the holdings of a person are just if he is entitled to them by the principles of justice in acquisition and transfer, or by the principle of rectification of injustice (as specified by the first two principles of just acquisition and transfer)” (Nozick, 1974, p. 153). On the other hand, his famous “Wilt Chamberlain” argument against alternative theories is first said to apply to (all) “non-entitlement conceptions” (p. 160), and later to any “end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice” (p. 163) — which amounts to an implicit characterization of an entitlement conception (theory, principle) as a conception of justice which is neither end-state nor patterned.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agostino Cera ◽  

Abstract: While putting forward the proposal of a “philosophy of technology in the nominative case,” grounded on the concept of Neoenvironmentality, this paper intends to argue that the best definition of our current age is not “Anthropocene.” Rather, it is “Technocene,” since technology represents here and now the real “subject of history” and of (a de-natured) nature, i.e. the (neo)environment where man has to live.This proposal culminates in a new definition of man’s humanity and of technology. Switching from natura hominis to conditio humana, the peculiarity of man can be defined on the basis of an anthropic perimeter, the core of which consists of man’s worldhood: man is that being that has a world (Welt), while animal has a mere environment (Umwelt). Both man’s worldhood and animal’s environmentality are derived from a pathic premise, namely the fundamental moods (Grundstimmungen) that refer them to their respective findingness (Befindlichkeit).From this anthropological premise, technology emerges as the oikos of contemporary humanity. Technology becomes the current form of the world – and so gives birth to a Technocene – insofar as it introduces in any human context its ratio operandi and so assimilates man to an animal condition, i.e. an environmental one. Technocene corresponds on the one side to the emergence of technology as (Neo)environment and on the other to the feralization of man. The spirit of Technocene turns out to be the complete redefinition of the anthropic perimeter.While providing a non-ideological characterization of the current age, this paper proposes the strategy of an ‘anthropological conservatism,’ that is to say a pathic desertion understood as a possible (pre)condition for the beginning of an authentic Anthropocene, i.e. the age of an-at-last-entirely-human-man.


2001 ◽  
Vol 700 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Cremer ◽  
D. Neuschütz

AbstractIn this paper, the deposition and characterization of laterally graded materials libraries (composition spread) is presented. The films have been deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering, using two or three metallic targets at a low angle to the substrate surface as well as a system of apertures. To illustrate the advantages of combinatorial approaches for the development of advanced materials, the multicomponent metastable hard coatings (Ti,Al)N and (Ti,Al,Si)N were investigated with respect to the relations between structure and composition on the one hand and the oxidation resistance of these coatings on the other.


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