Conditional Sentences Research Articles

Disparities in Healthcare Affordability Among Childhood Cancer Survivors Persist Following the Affordable Care Act

Background and Purpose: Childhood cancer survivors (CCSs) face a number of long-term physical and psychosocial challenges into adulthood. Prior to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), cancer was deemed a "pre-existing condition" which often excluded CCSs from obtaining insurance or drastically increased the cost to do so. As a result, CCSs were more likely to report healthcare affordability issues which lead to many delaying or skipping needed healthcare. The ACA included a provision which prohibited discrimination based on pre-existing conditions which went into effect in January 2014. Following implementation, the rate of uninsured CCSs has decreased nearly 40%; however, it is unclear if healthcare affordability remains an issue among this group. Methods: Data from the National Heath Information Survey (NHIS) was used to compare the self-reported affordability of healthcare between CCS and non-cancer adults. The analysis was limited to those 21-65 at time of survey as older adults are eligible for Medicare and would have been less impacted by the provision. CCSs were matched 1:3 to non-cancer controls based on demographics. A difference-in-differences analysis was used to compare the pre- (2011-2013) and post-ACA (2015-2017) changes on healthcare affordability between CCS and non-cancer adults, adjusting for demographics. Results: There were 309 CCSs identified in the 2011-2013 cohort and 324 in the 2015-2017 cohort. The two cohorts were similar in demographic composition. The median age was 36 and 40, respectively, and both were predominantly white and female. These were matched to cohorts of 927 and 972 non-cancer controls, respectively. In the 2011-2013 cohort, 24% of CCS reported being uninsured; 45% had private coverage, 15% Medicaid, 11% Medicare, and 5% had other insurance or were unreported. 45% of CCSs reported difficulty paying for healthcare and 28% and 25%, respectively, reported delaying and skipping needed care due to costs. Compared to non-cancer controls, CCSs were 39% more likely to be uninsured after controlling for other factors (p = 0.046). CCSs were also 191% more likely to report difficulty paying for healthcare, 131% more likely to report delaying and 194% more likely to report skipping needed healthcare due to costs (all p < 0.001). In the 2015-2017 cohort, 13% of CCS reported being uninsured; 49% had private coverage, 23% Medicaid, 12% Medicare, and 3% had another insurance or insurance status was unknown. 36% of CCSs reported difficulty paying for healthcare and 21% and 14%, respectively, reported delaying and skipping needed care due to costs. CCSs were not more likely than the non-cancer controls to be uninsured after controlling for other factors (p = 0.313). However, CCSs were 130% more likely to report difficulty paying for healthcare (p < 0.001), 88% more likely to report delaying (p < 0.001) and 72% more likely to report skipping needed healthcare due to costs (p = 0.008). The difference-in-difference analysis suggested skipping needed care was the only indicator of disparity measured that improved statistically post-ACA. In respect to non-cancer controls, the disparity in skipping needed care was reduced by 63% (p = 0.040). Conclusions and Implications: Following implementation of the ACA, a smaller proportion of CCSs report being uninsured. Medicaid expansion, which also occurred as part of the ACA in many states, may have contributed more to the improving uninsured rates than elimination of the pre-existing condition clause. Despite the improvements, CCSs still face disparate challenges in paying for healthcare. CCSs are at greater risk for chronic health conditions, have higher out-of-pocket medical costs, and lower average incomes than their peers, all which likely contribute to the disparity. Disclosures Fiala: Incyte: Research Funding.

Torii: An aspect‐based sentiment analysis system that can mine conditions

SummaryAspect‐based sentiment analysis systems are a kind of text‐mining systems that specialize in summarizing the sentiment that a collection of reviews convey regarding some aspects of an item. There are many cases in which users write their reviews using conditional sentences; in such cases, mining the conditions so that they can be analyzed is very important not to misinterpret the corresponding sentiment summaries. Unfortunately, current commercial systems or research systems neglect conditions; current frameworks and toolkits do not provide any components to mine them; furthermore, the proposals in the literature are insufficient because they are based on handcrafted patterns that fall short regarding recall or machine learning procedures that are tightly bound with a specific language and require too much configuration. In this article, we present Torii, which is a system that loads a collection of reviews, discovers the aspects on which they report, and summarizes the sentiment that is conveyed on them taking into account the existing conditions, if any. We also describe its architecture, our approach to mine conditions, and our experimental analysis on a large multilingual data set with reviews from multiple categories. To the best of our knowledge, Torii is the first proposal that addresses aspect‐based sentiment analysis taking conditions into account.

The Role of Form–Focused Instruction on Foreign Language Learners

To determine the role of form-focused instruction on foreign language learners, this study demonstrates noticing necessary in foreign language learning. In other words, an instruction through input enhancement have an effect on foreign language learning. The participants in the study were 80 students who enrolled in Shamim Language Institute, but only 60 intermediate learners were selected by means of administering a placement test. Based on the results of the placement test, two matched groups, one as the experimental group and the other as the comparison group, were formed. So, the study utilized the experimental paradigm and tested the notion of focusing on form (FonF) as input enhancement for learning. The enhanced text, including conditional sentences as the treatment, time (pretest versus posttest), and task type (a multiple choice test and a cloze test) were used to conduct the study. The participants in control (FonM) group received the unenhanced text and discussed the topic in that session. And experimental group (FonF) concurrently received the same text enhanced and discussed it. To compare the means and the standard deviations of the pretest and the post-test tasks within the treatment, the researcher used T-Test. The results showed that type of instructional treatment led to differences in language learning in the short-term. The scores of the participants demonstrated that the experimental group outperformed the comparison group.

Linguistic Universals in Legal Texts (English, French, and Russian)

This article describes a study of legal texts (in English, French, and Russian) to confirm J. Greenberg’s linguistic universals № 11 and 14. The linguistic universal № 14 refers to the ordering of subject, object, and verb in a conditional clause. Anna Wierzbicka refers the predicate “if” (which forms the conditional) to the number of semantic primitives. The linguistic universal № 11 asserts in declarative sentences with nominal subject and object, the predominant dominant order has the subject followed by the object. This study revises some of the most important provisions set forth by J. Greenberg for the languages with SVO word order. Some languages use relatively restrictive word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others — often those that convey grammatical information through inflection — allow more flexibility, which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or focus. It is hypothesized that, due to genre-stylistic and historical-cultural specificity, the texts of laws in French and English do not have a dominant word order. Texts of laws in Russian for the same reasons also do not have a dominant SVO word order.

Obstacles in Constructing Geometrical Proofs of Mathematics-Teacher-Students Based on Boero’s Proving Model

This study aimed at identifying the obstacles of mathematics-teacher-students based on Boero’s proving model. This study was conducted using a mix method by applying sequential explanatory strategy. The stages of the research were carried out by taking the quantitative data and revealing the qualitative data using semi-structured interviews. In the result of this study, it was found that most of mathematics-teacher-students had difficulties in constructing geometrical proofs of each Boero’s proving model. Even in the phase of writing formal proof, there were only 6.67% of students could write fully in the cases of indirect proving. There were 13.33% of students in the cases of direct proving. This study concluded several obstacles which students faced in constructing the geometrical proofs formally in each phase of Boero’ proving model. The obstacles included: the difficulty in making a diagrammatic sketch of conjecture which was completely made with the correct geometrical notation; the difficulty in knowing of cause-effect of geometrical problems to be proved, if it involved some conditional sentences; inability to write a conjecture made in the form of geometrical symbols, formulas and axiomatic deduction; the difficulty in selecting a valid statement of the conjecture made and the difficulty in writing formal proof.

O conceito de perspectiva na rede conceptual das construções completivas epistêmicas: o caso das construções intersubjetivas disjuntivas

Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir a noção de (inter) subjetividade com base na Gramática Cognitiva de Langacker (1987, 1990, 2008), em especial no tocante à noção de perspectiva, e em outros autores que tratam do tema. Compreende-se o conceito de intersubjetividade como um mecanismo que estabelece um elo conceptual entre as construções completivas epistêmicas em inglês, em especial aquelas de moldura sintática do tipo [SN VEpist [that S]], que tendem a co-ocorrer com outras construções intersubjetivas complexas, como as construções pseudo-clivadas, as construções condicionais, as construções interrogativas e as construções negativas. A partir de dados reais de fala coletados por Almeida (2010) bem como retirados de corpora eletrônicos como o BNC e o COCA, postula-se que o conceito de intersubjetividade se verifica tanto no plano linguístico, em termos explícitos à estrutura linguística, demonstrando atenção à perspectiva oferecida pelo interlocutor (TRAUGOTT; DASHER, 2005); quanto em termos implícitos, na atitude do falante ao conceptualizar o evento de fala sob uma determinada perspectiva (LANGACKER, 1987, 1990, 2008; VERHAGEN, 2005; NUYTS, 2001), que não se encontra alinhada com as demais disponíveis no fluxo discursivo. Os dados analisados confirmam a hipótese de que as construções sintáticas em relevo exibem intersubjetividade tanto em termos conceptuais quanto estruturais, permitindo reivindicar o conceito como um elo conceptual que une essas construções em rede.

Knowledge embedded

How should we account for the contextual variability of knowledge claims? Many philosophers favour an invariantist account on which such contextual variability is due entirely to pragmatic factors, leaving no interesting context-sensitivity in the semantic meaning of ‘know that.’ I reject this invariantist division of labor by arguing that pragmatic invariantists have no principled account of embedded occurrences of ‘S knows/doesn’t know that p’: Occurrences embedded within larger linguistic constructions such as conditional sentences, attitude verbs, expressions of probability, comparatives, and many others, I argue, give rise to a threefold problem of embedded implicatures.

CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATION IN THE EXPRESSION OF PERSUASIVE POWER IN THE GENRE OF TECHNICAL MANUALS: THE CASE OF DIRECTIVES

The paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of selected linguistic realizations of persuasion in technical manuals as typical representatives of technical discourse. It aims to identify differences and similarities between the ways persuasive power is expressed in this type of specialized discourse in English and Czech L1 texts. The data comprises manuals to various technical devices and amounts to slightly more than 200,000 words. This specialized corpus (15 manuals in English and 15 in Czech) is assumed to enable the comparison of the ways in which technical communicators express persuasion. The investigation, which is conducted from the perspectives of corpus analysis and discourse analysis, focuses on the ways in which the interactive and dynamic process of persuasion is explicitly manifested: 1. directly (i.e. using directives expressed by imperatives of full verbs, modals of obligation, necessity, prohibition, and predicative adjectives expressing the writer’s judgement of the necessity to perform an action) and 2. indirectly (i.e. using other language means than directives, such as other modals than those related to obligation, necessity or prohibition, conditional clauses, rhetorical questions). The findings are expected to be relevant and applicable in the education domain to raise technical writers’ awareness of directives as useful persuasive strategies suitable for the production of effective well-written technical manuals since their quality including the appropriate degree of persuasiveness can influence prospective consumers to make a purchase of a particular technical device.

Adnominal conditionals in German

Abstract In this short paper I give a description of salient structural and semantic properties of adnominal conditional clauses in German, drawn from online corpora (cf. Lasersohn 1996 for the English counterpart). Facts from prosody tentatively indicate, and from Binding, DP-internal distribution and extraposition more distinctively suggest, the paper’s main conclusion: Syntactically, adnominal conditionals behave like restrictive relative clauses. I sketch a recent analysis by Frana (2017), which captures important semantic properties of the construction. A restrictor analysis of conditional clauses can be retained and indeed fits snugly with the fact that only intensional nouns co-occur with, e.g. can be modified by, adnominal conditionals.

Equal rights for all conditionals

AbstractIn recent years, a number of arguments have been put forward stating that regular conditional clauses preceding their matrix clause are derived by means of movement: They are base-generated low in the tree and then moved to the high clause-initial position. Using data from English and German, I show in this short paper that these arguments carry over straightforwardly to less canonical conditional constructions such as V1-conditionals and conditional conjunction constructions. That suggests that, if the original arguments hold, then V1-conditionals and conditional conjunction constructions should be derived by movement as well.

Mathematical Applications of Negating of Conditional Sentences in the Arabic language

This paper studies the negation of conditional sentences in Arabic language by using mathematical applications with three steps. The first step is to convert the conditional sentence to be negated from the Arabic to the mathematical statement. The second step is to negate the mathematical conditional statement obtained in the first step using the negatives in mathematical logic. The third step is to convert the mathematical conditional statement obtained in the second step to an Arabic sentence

Lola" in the Holy Quran Analytical Grammatical Study "Selected Models"

: Lula is one of the most important tools of the grammatical requirement in the Holy Quran. Because of its significant impact in the statement of the most important meanings of the verse in which it was received and its linguistic and grammatical significance. The study dealt with the most important opinions of the sculptors in a statement of the meaning of Lula types and aspects of the literature, and then take samples of the types of Lula in the Koran and studied analytical grammar based on the most important grammar books and interpretations. Therefore, the research included an introduction and a preface, in which the statement of the meaning of Lula and its composition and what its useful grammar and how to enter the types of sentences in Arabic. The research dealt with two topics: The first topic dealt with two requirements: First: the statement of the aspects of Lula Arabism and the difference in the grammar and its implications. The second requirement also included the non-incident in the answer to Lula and the separation of the word Lula and the act of if, or conditional sentence or what is the name turned away from the case if the name appeared after him. The second topic included two requirements: First: to study the significance of the models of Lula types in the Koran comprehensive analytical study and the second requirement: Include a schedule of the number of times in which the Lola types of the Koran.

СЕМАНТИЧНИЙ ПОДІЛ УМОВНОГО СКЛАДУ КЛАСИЧНОГО ТА СУЧАСНОГО РОМАНІВ В АСПЕКТІ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ

Problem Statement: In modern linguistics a certain experience has been accumulated in studying expressions with conditional relations. However, there is no consensus nowadays concerning identification of speech fragment where the condition is explicated. Therefore, the necessity exists to extend an understanding of the conditional sentence, consider its structure in the aspect of translation as well as conduct semantic division of conditional sentences of the novels “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen and “Me Before You” by Jojo Moyes.Purpose: To study semantic peculiarities of conditional sentences functioning in the English classical and modern novels, find out their common and different features as well as reveal the difficulties and specific features of English conditional sentences’ translation into Ukrainian.Methods: Analysis, synthesis, induction method, quantitative method, continuous sampling method, descriptive method, contextual analysis and pragmatic analysis method, comparative method.Discussion: In the mentioned novels in terms of grammar five types of conditional sentences were distinguished: conditional sentences of zero, first, second and third type, and mixed type conditional sentences. In total 271 units were considered in the classical novel and 145 units in the modern novel were taken into consideration. Having analysed semantic peculiarities of different types of conditional sentences in the novels, we have distinguished certain categories of conditional sentences with respect to connotation, in particular: conditional sentences with positive, neutral and negative connotation.Results: The division of conditional sentences with reference to connotation enabled us to conclude that the grammatical type of conditional sentences determines, to some extent, its semantic colouring, though it does not define the connotation of the sentence as a whole. Sentences with the structure I wish comprise a separate semantic group.The article proposes several tendencies in modern translation of English conditional sentences.The studying of conditional sentence communicative function rendering during translation conditional sentences from English into Ukrainian is supposed to be challenging in as much as the communicative function of something being informed is one of the most essential functions for the achievement of pragmatic impact on the reader.Key words: conditional sentence, connotation, classic novel, translation.

Does acquisition of hypothetical conditional sentences contribute to understanding the principles of scientific enquiry?

Principles of scientific investigation are often described using hypothetical “if” sentences. The current study explored whether the acquisition of such language is related to earlier understanding of scientific principles, specifically hypothesis testing and control of variables strategy. 98 children 8–9 years of age were tested individually on conditional sentence comprehension, repetition and scientific reasoning. Reasoning ability was tested with groups of children. Children who failed the scientific reasoning tests were re-administered the test/s they failed and grammar tests two years later (age 10–11). Good understanding of hypothetical conditional sentences at age 8–9 predicted showing understanding of hypothesis testing early (age 8–9) rather than late (age 10–11) and predicted passing control of variables strategy test by age 10–11, controlling for non-verbal and verbal reasoning ability. Comprehension of complex conditional sentences might be helping children with understanding the underlying principles of scientific investigation.

ABOUT CONDITIONAL SENTENCES İN TURKISH TURKIC AND AZERBAIJANI TURKIC LANGUAGES

<p class="ql-align-justify">Investigating the characteristic features of the modern Turkish dialects in a comparative way recently became the most widely interested field among the Turkish studies. The reason for this is not only the tendency for convergence of the Turkic nations that split up for some reasons for a long time but also the&nbsp;eagerness of the linguists to prove to the linguistics science communities that the Turkic language family originates from the same roots and they exist as a whole. Hence, the investigation of the similarities and differences of the Modern Turkic Dialects in a comparative way and revealing the complete characteristic features of each dialect is a kind of necessity and an up-to-date concern. We argue that a comparative analysis of the conditional complex sentences in the modern Turkish and Azerbaijani languages, both of which are of the Southwest Turkic Dialects, will prove very useful for Turkish studies, considering the significance of comparative studies on the modern Turkic dialects and accents in regard to syntactical structure. There is a kind of sentence which is called the main sentence and it is formed by the means of the suffixes -sa, -se and they denote condition. And as the conditional part of the sentence in the Azerbaijani Turkic Language is not only used by the means of above-mentioned (-sa, -se) suffixes, but also by the other means, it leads us to focus on a huge difference between those two languages. <p class="ql-align-justify">In this paper, we shed light upon the views on the conditional complex sentences in grammar books by various researchers and proposed a variety of analyses based upon the comments of linguists on the conditional complex sentences in both languages.

The Interpretation of Null Subjects in a Radical Pro-drop Language: Topic Chains and Discourse-semantic Requirements in Chinese

Abstract Based on original data collected through an online experiment, evidence is provided in this paper that the interpretation of null subjects in a radical pro-drop language like Chinese relies on the topic criterion proposed for consistent and partial pro-drop languages (Frascarelli 2007 and Frascarelli 2018), thereby supporting the theory that the null subject parameter implies an information-structural strategy for interpretation. Nevertheless, radical Chinese shows specificities that must be integrated in this theory for a comprehensive account. In particular, even though silent topic can start chains (consistent with the topic criterion), data show a significant preference for overt and local topics as antecedents. This locality requirement thus integrates phonological visibility in a general syntactic condition (minimal overt link condition), proposing an interesting parallel with the properties shown by partial pro-drop languages (Frascarelli and Jimenez-Fernandez in press). The present investigation also contributes to outline the structural differences existing between adverbial clauses in Chinese, supporting a distinction between central and peripheral adverbial clauses (Haegeman 2012). Specifically, while temporal and conditional clauses show the properties of nonrestrictive relative clauses, this is not the case for concessive clauses, which merged as subordinate clauses in either the C-domain or the high split-TP area. Differences between temporal and conditional clauses are attributed to the presence of an overt operator in the latter, and the pre-matrix position of adverbial clauses is explained in the light of their discourse role as frame-setters (Krifka 2007).

Felicity Conditions of the Speech Acts in Banyumasan Daily Conversation

A truth conditional sentence requires a sentence to fit into the world; however, it cannot be applied pragmatically in a daily conversation, consequently, non-truth conditional sentence is applied. In pragmatics filed, an utterance needs to be felicitous, thus it has to meet the felicity condition. Felicity condition underlies that in order to be felicitous an utterance must meet the felicity condition that includes preparatory condition, propositional content, sincerity condition, and essential condition. By using felicity condition, speakers can mean what they say and say what they mean. Searle has only postulated the felicity condition for directive and commisives, thus this article attempts to complete the felicity conditions of another three speech acts. The utterances are taken from Banyumas dialect or Banyumasan; it is a dialect of standard Javanese spoken along Serayu River. It has unique characteristic due to its phonological and lexical items compared to Standard Javanese spoken in Yogyakarta and Surakarta. This article describes the felicity condition of the speech acts found in Banyumasan daily conversation which is conducted by using descriptive analysis. The finding of this research shows that felicity conditions of Banyumasan are realized into representative, directives, commisives, expressive, and declarations.

Sobre o estatuto e estrutura sintática das condicionais de se factuais do Português de Moçambique

Este artigo discute o estatuto e a estrutura sintática das condicionais factuais de se do português de Moçambique. Os resultados da aplicação de testes sintáticos às factuais mostram que podem ser integradas ou periféricas. Deste modo, são distintas das factuais de outras línguas, como o inglês, que são consideradas apenas periféricas (HAEGEMAN, 2003; BHATT; PANCHEVA, 2006). Do ponto de vista estrutural, as integradas ocupam uma posição relativamente baixa que é a de adjunção a VP e as periféricas, pelo contrário, posições altas na frase, em adjunção a CP ou TP (HAEGEMAN, 2003; LOBO, 2003). Para darmos conta das integradas antepostas, com base em argumentos empíricos, defendemos que são geradas por Move do interior do TP da matriz, onde são geradas, para a posição de especificador de tópico, por topicalização da oração adverbial condicional, na linha de Duarte (1987, 1996) e Valmala (2009), contrariando a hipótese de que são geradas por Merge (LOBO, 2003; IATRIDOU, 1991).

Valuing the Death Penalty

This article addresses the problems of the death penalty, including a lack of oversight, extreme costs and rampant misuse, by arguing for a federal law capping the amount of money states spend on the death penalty. This proposal uses the conditional spending clause to encourage compliance by providing federal money for state law enforcement agencies. This proposal incentivizes state governments to find creative ways to stay beneath the cap without violating defendants’ rights and to take an active approach to imposing the death penalty instead of entrusting the power to localities. Part I examines the disparity in cost between the death penalty and life without parole, looking at state data from regions across the nation and the federal government. After exploring the larger picture, Part II specifies the death penalty procedures that make it more expensive than life imprisonment. Part III advances the proposal for capping death penalty spending in exchange for federal money to state law enforcement agencies. Additionally, this part examines the constitutionality of the proposal utilizing case law. Part IV explains the benefits of the restriction and redistribution of funds, including funding issues the people want, increasing funding for state law enforcement, scrutinizing capital punishment cases more closely, and furthering the exercise of federal power.

IMF conditionality and central bank independence

This paper studies the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in promoting central bank independence (CBI). While anecdotal evidence suggests that the IMF has been playing a vital role for CBI, the underlying mechanisms of this influence are not well understood. We argue that the IMF has ulterior motives when pressing countries for increased CBI. First, IMF loans are primarily transferred to local monetary authorities. Thus, enhancing CBI aims to insulate central banks from political interference to shield loan disbursements from government abuse. Second, several loan conditionality clauses imply a substantial transfer of political leverage over economic policy making to monetary authorities. As a result, the IMF through pushing for CBI seeks to establish a politically insulated veto player to promote its economic policy reform agenda. We argue that the IMF achieves these aims through targeted lending conditions. We hypothesize that the inclusion of these loan conditions leads to greater CBI. To test our hypothesis, we use a recently available dataset on IMF programs that includes detailed information on CBI reforms and IMF conditionality for up to 124 countries between 1980 and 2012. Our findings indicate that targeted loan conditionality plays a critical role in promoting CBI. These results are robust towards varying modeling assumptions and withstand a battery of robustness checks.