Reducing pronoun accessibility to presupposition satisfaction

There are two main approaches to the problem of donkey anaphora (e.g. If John owns a donkey, he beats it). Proponents of dynamic approaches take the pronoun to be a logical variable, but they revise the semantics of quantifiers so as to allow them to bind variables that are not within their syntactic scope. Older dynamic approaches took this measure to apply solely to existential quantifiers; recent dynamic approaches have extended it to all quantifiers. By contrast, proponents of E-type analyses take the pronoun to have the semantics of a definite description (with it ≈ the donkey, or the donkey that John owns). While competing accounts make very different claims about the patterns of coindexation that are found in the syntax, these are not morphologically realized in spoken languages. But they are in sign language, namely through locus assignment and pointing. We make two main claims on the basis of ASL and LSF data. First, sign language data favor dynamic over E-type theories: in those cases in which the two approaches make conflicting predictions about possible patterns of coindexation, dynamic analyses are at an advantage. Second, among dynamic theories, sign language data favor recent ones because the very same formal mechanism is used irrespective of the indefinite or non-indefinite nature of the antecedent. Going beyond this debate, we argue that dynamic theories should allow pronouns to be bound across negative expressions, as long as the pronoun is presupposed to have a non-empty denotation. Finally, an appendix displays and explains subtle differences between overt sign language pronouns and all other pronouns in examples involving ‘disjunctive antecedents’, and suggests that counterparts of sign language loci might be found in spoken language.

Changes in Employment Localization and Accessibility

A remark on nonlinear accessibility conditions and infinite prolongations

The Lie rank condition for strong nonlinear accessibility is interpreted via the differential geometry of jets and prolongations of infinite order. It yields to a new Lie algebraic criterion and to the consideration of first integrals, which apply to nonlinear systems in quite general form: the latter characterization in particular is valid without distinguishing between the system variables and is independent of time-scalings. Weak accessibility is also considered.

In this paper I present a theory of indefinites which captures two of their natural properties: indefinites license donkey anaphora (Geach 1962) and they exhibit ‘specific’ readings in which they appear to scope out of scope islands. In various flavours of dynamic semantics (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Dekker (2004)), these properties can be captured to the detriment of compositionally. Other theories have employed more involved technical machinery like choice functions (Kratzer 1998, von Heusinger 2002), Hamblin-semantics (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002) or independence friendly logics (Brasoveanu & Farkas 2011) to derive exceptional scope readings, but ignored donkey anaphora. Theories of E-type anaphora, on the other hand, generally do not consider exceptional scope readings (Heim 1990, Elbourne 2001). My own analysis combines insights from dynamic semantics with referential indexing in LF-semantics, resulting in a fully compositional, static system.

In this paper I present a theory of indefinites which captures two of their natural properties: indefinites license donkey anaphora (Geach 1962) and they exhibit ‘specific’ readings in which they appear to scope out of scope islands. In various flavours of dynamic semantics (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Dekker (2004)), these properties can be captured to the detriment of compositionally. Other theories have employed more involved technical machinery like choice functions (Kratzer 1998, von Heusinger 2002), Hamblin-semantics (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002) or independence friendly logics (Brasoveanu & Farkas 2011) to derive exceptional scope readings, but ignored donkey anaphora. Theories of E-type anaphora, on the other hand, generally do not consider exceptional scope readings (Heim 1990, Elbourne 2001). My own analysis combines insights from dynamic semantics with referential indexing in LF-semantics, resulting in a fully compositional, static system.

The paper presents the evaluation of the effectiveness of the structural organization of the system of multi-level secure access to external network resources. We conducted a comparative analysis and optimization of the pattern of access ‘Direct connection’, with its various forms of implementation during the organization of a secure connection of end-node internal network to the resources located in the external network. The study was conducted on the basis that each security element is included in the pattern of the secure access is able to detect and eliminate the threats of the other elements of the system of protection. Pattern of access ‘Direct connection’ in a general form has four variants of construction, differing from each other by mutual arrangement of the key elements: firewall with packet-filtering, firewall with adaptive detailed packet inspection and the router. It was a mathematical model to calculate the reliability of the ways of construction of the pattern of access. It is shown that the most reliable way of construction of pattern of access is one that includes a single group of routers for the entire system. Ways are not very different from each other reliability value that include two groups of routers on the overall system.

Chapter 1 of this text introduces the notion of dynamic semantics and discusses, in detail, the phenomena that have been used to motivate it, such as donkey sentences and adverbs of quantification. The second chapter explores in greater depth the interpretation of indefinites and issues related to presuppositions of uniqueness and the E-type strategy. In Chapter 3, Chierchia extends the dynamic approach to the domain of syntactic theory, considering a range of empirical problems that includes backwards anaphora, reconstruction effects and weak crossover. The final chapter develops the formal system of dynamic semantics to deal with central issues of definites and presupposition. Chierchia shows that an approach based on a principled enrichment of the mechanisms dealing with meaning is to be preferred, on empirical grounds, over approaches that depend on an enrichment of the syntactic apparatus.

Donkey sentences receive either existential or universal truth-conditions. This paper presents two new data points going against standard dynamic approaches to this ambiguity: first, I show that the ambiguity extends beyond quantified environments, to cross-clausal anaphora. Second, I show that donkey sentences can give rise to narrow pseudo-scope readings, where the pronoun's implicit quantification takes scope below some operator in the sentence. Neither of these facts is predicted by standard dynamic accounts. Together, they suggest a different analysis in which the ambiguity arises when the pronoun has multiple referents to pick from. Inspired by Champollion (2017), I propose that when such circumstances arise, the pronoun receives vague reference. Using standard rules of projection is then sufficient to derive the existential/universal ambiguity as well as the two problematic data points.

Purpose In recent years, the increasing complexity of the hyper-connected world demands new approaches for social network analysis. The main challenges are to find new computational methods that allow the representation, characterization and analysis of these social networks. Nowadays, formal concept analysis (FCA) is considered an alternative to identifying conceptual structures in a social network. In this FCA-based work, this paper aims to show the potential of building computational models based on implications to represent and analyze two-mode networks. Design/methodology/approach This study proposes an approach to find three important substructures in social networks such as conservative access patterns, minimum behavior patterns and canonical access patterns. The present study approach considered as a case study a database containing the access logs of a cable internet service provider. Findings The result allows us to uncover access patterns, conservative access patterns and minimum access behavior patterns. Furthermore, through the use of implications sets, the relationships between event-type elements (websites) in two-mode networks are analyzed. This paper discusses, in a generic form, the adopted procedures that can be extended to other social networks. Originality/value A new approach is proposed for the identification of conservative behavior in two-mode networks. The proper implications needed to handle minimum behavior pattern in two-mode networks is also proposed to be analyzed. The one-item conclusion implications are easy to understand and can be more relevant to anyone looking for one particular website access pattern. Finally, a method for a canonical behavior representation in two-mode networks using a canonical set of implications (steam base), which present a minimal set of implications without loss of information, is proposed.

The Bolsa Família Program (BFP) is one of the largest conditional cash transfer programs in the world, providing cash transfers and intersectoral actions. The aim of this study was to compare whether there is a difference in access to health services, intersectoral actions and social control, between families entitled or not, to the BFP. A cross-sectional study was carried out. A representative sample of a peripheral, socioeconomically vulnerable population from a large urban center in southeastern Brazil was calculated, totaling 380 families. Chi-square or Fisher's exact tests and multiple correspondence analysis were used to compare groups. Families entitled to the BFP had worse living conditions in general and greater access to health services, such as: medical care (p-value 0.009), community healthcare agent (p-value 0.001) and home visits (p-value 0.041). Being entitled or not affected the variability in the pattern of access to services by 31%; low access to intersectoral actions was identified in both groups; social control was incipient. There was an adequate focus on the program; greater access to health services was related to compliance with conditionalities; low access to intersectoral actions can restrict the interruption of the cycle of intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Reviewing the existing equity of accessibility approaches, particularly the transit models, revealed that these methods tend to consider the actual economic condition of individual or group living in various areas, real transport network and travelers traveling patterns (especially during peak traffic periods). Existing transit accessibility approaches have typically proposed simple time-based measurements to explain the transit network accessibility under hypothetical road conditions and accessibility to transit corridors (transit stops). These studies overlooked to estimate transit accessibility. As a result, these approaches failed to describe the actual impedance of the transit network. These simple methods tend to capture the objective of accessibility. The aim of this research is to analyses urban accessibility considering its two components the performance of the transport network and the attractiveness of the destinations using a more dynamic approach. This will allow us to obtain profiles that highlight the daily variations in accessibility in the study area, and identify the influence of congestion and the changes in location choice behavior. Accessibility conditions change throughout the day, as do the causes of these changes, namely congestion in the road network and the population distribution in the city. Each transport zone has its own accessibility profile, and thus its own specific problems, which require solutions that are more specific. The dynamic approach proposed in this paper involves calculating the accessibility of each transport zone. This will allow a dynamic approach to population distribution in the city.

There are two main approaches to the problem of donkey anaphora (e.g. If John owns a donkey, he beats it). Proponents of dynamic approaches take the pronoun to be a logical variable, but they revise the semantics of quantification so as to allow an indefinite to bind a variable that is not within its scope. Older dynamic approaches took this measure to apply solely to indefinites; recent dynamic approaches have extended it to all quantifiers. By contrast, proponents of E-type analyses take the pronoun to go proxy for a definite description (with it = the donkey, or the donkey that John owns); in order to satisfy its uniqueness presupposition, they combine this approach with an analysis of if-clauses as quantifiers over situations. While competing accounts make very different claims about the coindexing relations that should be found in the syntax, these relations are not morphologically realized in spoken languages. But they are arguably realized in sign languages, namely through pointing. We argue that data from French and American Sign Language favor recent dynamic approaches. First, in those cases in which E-type analyses and dynamic analyses make different predictions about the formal connection between a pronoun and its antecedent, dynamic analyses are at an advantage. Second, it appears that the same formal mechanism is used irrespective of the indefinite or non-indefinite nature of the antecedent, which argues for recent dynamic approaches over older ones.

In this chapter, a new temporal approach to the classical Leontief input–output analysis is elaborated that avoids the assumption of the constant direct input coefficients. The presentation builds on earlier work (Sonis & Hewings, 1989, 1991, 1992) that examined a variety of issues surrounding error and sensitivity analysis, decomposition and inverse important parameter estimation. These ideas are now brought into a general form as a basis for a more complete, general fields of influence approach that is the main vehicle for describing the overall changes in economic relationships between industries created by combinations of changes in technological coefficients caused by diffusion of technological, organizational and administrative innovations. The most important new concept based of the notion of the direct fields of influence is the multiplier product matrix and the corresponding artificial economic landscape which represents the classical key sector analysis and hierarchies of sectoral backward and forward linkages. The multi plier product matrix is the main part of the fundamental minimal information decomposition of Leontief inverse in the form of the difference between the global presentation of direct effects of the changes in inputs coefficients and the syner getic effects of the overall interaction of the changes. The new Temporal Leontief inverse is constructed such that it can serve as the basis for the temporal analysis of an evolving input–output system; the inverse depends on an evolutionary tail of changes in a highly non-linear manner. The detailed analytical structure of the Temporal Leontief inverse addresses the possibilities of tracing the impact of each change in the individual direct inputs in each time period through to the final state of the economy. This dynamic approach provides the basis for a new perturbation theory for matrix inversion.

The problem of finding and predicting muscle activations for free goal oriented or measured human motion is one of the basic problems in biomechanics. While currently inverse dynamics approaches are most commonly used for their computational efficiency, they can not handle the problem in its most general form. We here present computational methods that increase the computational efficiency of the forward dynamics approach by two orders of magnitude. Results are presented for a time optimal kicking motion and the analysis of a measured kicking motion. Current work includes investigation of a jumping motion and finding optimal walking motions for a robot that is driven by artificial muscles.