Definite Descriptions Research Articles

Embosi Definiteness: A Semantic Account

The contribution broaches the semantic analysis of definite description in Embosi, a Bantu language spoken in the Republic of Congo. The work is carried out through the meaning theories of reference and sense, and it also aims at providing promotion and documentation of this Bantu language. The analysis demonstrates that demonstratives are the primary means of expressing Embosi definite descriptions, aside from proper nouns and possessives. The study reveals that Embosi definiteness, semantically, encodes uniqueness with the existence of one and only one entity meeting the noun phrase description and inclusiveness with the totality of entities concerned with the depiction. The analysis also shows that the context-independent approach of the Embosi definite description does not provide a successful meaning for a felicitous communication; the context of use should be taken into account.

Recalling presupposed information

Abstract This article addresses, experimentally, the question of how presuppositions are cognitively processed and retrieved in discourse. In the proposed research, we have administered tweets produced by Italian politicians to native speakers so as to assess how easily they could retrieve the presupposed content of two presupposition triggers (definite descriptions and change of state verbs), as opposed to their explicit paraphrase, by answering verification questions. Results showed that content presupposed by change of state verbs was likely to receive more attention than content conveyed by definite descriptions; this could possibly be due to the greater effort involved in mentally representing the event taken for granted by the predicates. Definite descriptions, on the contrary, seem to instruct to a shallower processing modality, which means that their content is processed less attentively or in a ‘good-enough’ way.

An Interpretation of the Gray's Elegy Argument

In this essay, I first argue that the Gray’s Elegy Argument—the dense passage in Bertrand Russell’s ‘On Denoting’—can be interpreted as a single, coherent argument against the notion that a definite description corresponds to what I call a multifaceted object—an object having multiple facets or sides. I then look into some manuscripts Russell wrote in 1904 and in 1905. I show that he had envisaged the notion of a multifaceted object and used it for two different purposes before he discovered various objections to it, which he turned into the Gray’s Elegy Argument.

Definite descriptions and hybrid tense logic

We provide a version of first-order hybrid tense logic with predicate abstracts and definite descriptions as the only non-rigid terms. It is formalised by means of a tableau calculus working on sat-formulas. A particular theory of DD exploited here is essentially based on the approach of Russell, but with descriptions treated as genuine terms. However, the reductionist aspect of the Russellian approach is retained in several ways. Moreover, a special form of tense definite descriptions is formally developed. A constructive proof of the interpolation theorem for this calculus is given, which is an extension of the result provided by Blackburn and Marx.

“Kids or demons?”: Personal referring expressions applied to juvenile offenders in English and Chinese crime news

This study reports on a contrastive study of media representations of juvenile delinquency. Based on 87 news reports, we draw on Ariel (1991) and Xu (2000)'s accessibility hierarchy to compare the forms and functions of personal referring expressions applied to juvenile offenders in English and Chinese crime news. In addition, we extend our analysis by incorporating the discussions of the evaluative meaning of nominal descriptions under the social actor representation framework of Van Leeuwen (2008). It is found that both English and Chinese data exhibit a preference for nominal description foregrounding offenders' age in the first mentions. However, in the subsequent mentions, the key differences identified are that English news has more frequent use of definite descriptions, distal demonstratives, pronouns and functional terms, whereas Chinese news has a greater incidence of surnames, proximal demonstratives, zeros and identification terms. The discussion attempts to provide possible explanations for our findings from three aspects: linguistic features, socio-cultural conventions and social justice systems in different countries. Building upon these discussions, this study may shed empirical light on the issue of referring to juvenile offenders in mass media between two disparate languages, raising media's awareness of the mediatized language of crime.

An Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in “Turning Red”

This research analyzes the triggers of the presupposition that can be discovered in the movie "Turning Red." The purpose of this study is to identify the use of triggers of the presupposition that are employed in the movie "Turning Red." In the movie "Turning Red," there are several triggers of presupposition can be found. For this study, the researcher adopted Levinson's theory about the triggers of presupposition. A qualitative descriptive approach was adopted in this study. The data was gathered primarily through direct observation. Data were collected using a non-participatory approach, which meant the researcher was not present during data analysis. After doing the investigation, the researchers identified twenty items that function as the triggers of presupposition in the film Turning Red. The most prevalent triggers of presupposition in the film "Turning Red" are change-of-state verbs, iterative, and counterfactual conditionals. Each of them has three utterances. The second most common triggers of presupposition are implicative verbs, temporal clause, and cleft. Each of them has two utterances. There was only one utterance each sentence for definite description, factual verbs, comparisons and contrasts, nonrestrictive clauses, and wh-questions. There have been no discoveries about of judging verbs and implicit clefts with stressed constituents.

Water Self‐Dissociation is Insensitive to Nanoscale Environments

AbstractNanoconfinement effects on water dissociation and reactivity remain controversial, despite their importance to understand the aqueous chemistry at interfaces, pores, or aerosols. The pKw in confined environments has been assessed from experiments and simulations in a few specific cases, leading to dissimilar conclusions. Here, with the use of carefully designed ab initio simulations, we demonstrate that the energetics of bulk water dissociation is conserved intact to unexpectedly small length‐scales, down to aggregates of only a dozen molecules or pores of widths below 2 nm. The reason is that most of the free‐energy involved in water autoionization comes from breaking the O−H covalent bond, which has a comparable barrier in the bulk liquid, in a small droplet of nanometer size, or in a nanopore in the absence of strong interfacial interactions. Thus, dissociation free‐energy profiles in nanoscopic aggregates or in 2D slabs of 1 nm width reproduce the behavior corresponding to the bulk liquid, regardless of whether the corresponding nanophase is delimited by a solid or a gas interface. The present work provides a definite and fundamental description of the mechanism and thermodynamics of water dissociation at different scales with broader implications on reactivity and self‐ionization at the air‐liquid interface.

Water Self-Dissociation is Insensitive to Nanoscale Environments.

Nanoconfinement effects on water dissociation and reactivity remain controversial, despite their importance to understand the aqueous chemistry at interfaces, pores, or aerosols. The pKw in confined environments has been assessed from experiments and simulations in a few specific cases, leading to dissimilar conclusions. Here, with the use of carefully designed ab initio simulations, we demonstrate that the energetics of bulk water dissociation is conserved intact to unexpectedly small length-scales, down to aggregates of only a dozen molecules or pores of widths below 2 nm. The reason is that most of the free-energy involved in water autoionization comes from breaking the O-H covalent bond, which has a comparable barrier in the bulk liquid, in a small droplet of nanometer size, or in a nanopore in the absence of strong interfacial interactions. Thus, dissociation free-energy profiles in nanoscopic aggregates or in 2D slabs of 1 nm width reproduce the behavior corresponding to the bulk liquid, regardless of whether the corresponding nanophase is delimited by a solid or a gas interface. The present work provides a definite and fundamental description of the mechanism and thermodynamics of water dissociation at different scales with broader implications on reactivity and self-ionization at the air-liquid interface.

TechPat: Technical Phrase Extraction for Patent Mining

In recent years, due to the explosive growth of patent applications, patent mining has drawn extensive attention and interest. An important issue of patent mining is that of recognizing the technologies contained in patents, which serves as a fundamental preparation for deeper analysis. To this end, in this article, we make a focused study on constructing a technology portrait for each patent, i.e., to recognize technical phrases concerned in it, which can summarize and represent patents from a technical perspective. Along this line, a critical challenge is how to analyze the unique characteristics of technical phrases and illustrate them with definite descriptions. Therefore, we first generate the detailed descriptions about the technical phrases existing in extensive patents based on different criteria, including various previous works, practical experience, and statistical analyses. Then, considering the unique characteristics of technical phrases and the complex structure of patent documents, such as multi-aspect semantics and multi-level relevances, we further propose a novel unsupervised model, namely TechPat, which can not only automatically recognize technical phrases from massive patents but also avoid the need for expensive human labeling. After that, we evaluate the extraction results from various aspects. Specifically, we propose a novel evaluation metric called Information Retrieval Efficiency (IRE) to quantify the performance of extracted technical phrases from a new perspective. Extensive experiments on real-world patent data demonstrate that the TechPat model can effectively discriminate technical phrases in patents and greatly outperform existing methods. We further apply extracted technical phrases to two practical application tasks, namely patent search and patent classification, where the experimental results confirm the wide application prospects of technical phrases. Finally, we discuss the generalization ability of our proposed methods.

Vibronic collapse of ordered quadrupolar ice in the pyrochlore magnet Tb2+xTi2−xO7+y

While the spin-liquid state in the frustrated pyrochlore ${\mathrm{Tb}}_{2+x}{\mathrm{Ti}}_{2\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{O}}_{7+y}$ has been studied both experimentally and theoretically for more than two decades, a definite description of this unconventional state still needs to be achieved. Using synchrotron-based THz spectroscopy in combination with quantum numerical simulations, we highlight a significant link between two features: the existence of a quadrupolar order following an ice rule and the presence of strong magnetoelastic coupling in the form of hybridized ${\mathrm{Tb}}^{3+}$ crystal-field and phonon modes. The magnitude of this so-called vibronic process, which involves quadrupolar degrees of freedom, is significantly dependent on small off-stoichiometry $x$ and favors all-in--all-out-like correlations between quadrupoles. This mechanism competes with the long-range ordered quadrupolar ice, and for slightly different stoichiometry, is able to destabilize it.

The Value of Unity

The Value of Unity

FULL-Names

While the predicate view of proper names is popular among linguists, it is not unanimous. This paper contributes to the discussion by considering some linguistic data exemplified by phrases such as “Operation Valkyrie” and “Operation Desert Storm”. These examples bring some clues about the structure of the phrasesthat help us understand the procedure involved in naming individuals. One is the gap between the first constituent (“operation”) and the second constituent (“Valkyrie”),which is filled by an abstract functional structure, as will be argued in this paper. These clues also lead us into two consequences: a) the difference between a definite description and a proper name is not so clear; b) the naming procedure is enabled by a complex syntactic-semantic mechanism within this gap.Our analysis shows that the predicate view provides accurate results for the data under analysis.

Social cognition and Relevance: How stereotypes impact the processing of definite and indefinite descriptions

This paper focuses on the impact of social cognition on thes processing of linguistic information. More specifically, it brings some insights to Relevance theory's construal of MeaningNN, which seeks to account for non-propositional meanings. It shows, through two experiments, how gender and nationality-related stereotypes guide the processing of definite and indefinite descriptions. Experiment 1 consists of a self-paced reading task (with 59 French native speakers), introducing information confirming vs. violating gender stereotypes within a nominal phrase (NP). The NP (e.g., “chirurgien/chirurgienne”, “surgeonmale/female”) was itself introduced either by a definite article (presupposition) or an indefinite article (assertion). Results showed that information violating gender stereotypes was costlier to process than stereotype-congruent information. Moreover, when information violated gender stereotypes, definite descriptions became significantly costlier than indefinite ones, because they required the identification of a salient referent which contradicted stereotypical expectations. Experiment 2 tested the effects of definite vs. indefinite NP on processing nationality-related stereotypes in a self-paced reading task (with 49 French native speakers). Participants read definite vs. indefinite NPs referring to representatives of a country. The NP was subsequently paired with information that confirmed vs. contradicted nationality stereotypes. Results showed that information contradicting nationality stereotypes were significantly costlier to process than information confirming stereotypes. Furthermore, when information contradicted nationality stereotypes, indefinite descriptions (which promote a single occurrence reading) failed to facilitate information processing compared to definite descriptions (which promote a generalized representation of the social category). Overall, the present findings are consistent with research on stereotypes, in that they show that stereotype-incongruent information affect sentence processing. Importantly, while Experiment 1 revealed that stereotypes affected the processing of linguistic markers, Experiment 2 suggested that linguistic markers could not modulate the processing of stereotypes.

When iota meets lambda

Definite descriptions are widely discussed in linguistics and formal semantics, but their formal treatment in logic is surprisingly modest. In this article we present a sound, complete, and cut-free tableau calculus {textbf{TC}}_{R_{lambda }} for the logic {textbf{L}}_{R_{lambda }} being a formalisation of a Russell-style theory of definite descriptions with the iota-operator used to construct definite descriptions, the lambda-operator forming predicate-abstracts, and definite descriptions as genuine terms with a restricted right of residence. We show that in this setting we are able to overcome problems typical of Russell’s original theory, such as scoping difficulties or undesired inconsistencies. We prove the Craig interpolation property for the proposed theory, which, through the Beth definability property, allows us to check whether an individual constant from a signature has a definite description-counterpart under a given theory.

On Empty Names: Russell’s Theory and His Rivals

Talking about non-existent beings is a great and important constituting part in ordinary languages. However, it is not as easy to make a judgement about whether a statement involving non-existent terms is true or false. Many philosophers gave their own solutions on this issue and one of the most famous theories was brought up by Russell. This article discusses several of the most prominent theories of non-existent things, centered on Russell's theory of definite descriptions. Some of vital objections to Russell would also be demonstrated. The choice of solution is very significant since it could affect not only analysis of ordinary languages but also a variety of other issues.

The English past tense as a definite description

There are two major groups of analyses in the literature on the English past tense; existential semantics with domain restriction, and the pronominal (i.e. anaphoric) analysis. In this paper, I discuss a group of data difficult for both of these analyses: the obligatory use of the English past in some contexts without any salient antecedent, such as asking Who built this church when pointing at a church (Kratzer 1998). The pronominal analysis predicts that the past tense should be infelicitous, while the existential analysis with domain restriction cannot account for the distribution of these data. I argue that these observations follow from a lexical ambiguity of the English past tense between an anaphoric and a uniqueness reading, parallel to similar patterns in definites (Schwarz 2009: a.o.).

Каплан и Марти об определенных дескрипциях

Donnellan’s distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions gave rise to controversy between semantic and pragmatic accounts of referentially used descriptions. Kaplan adumbrated and Marti elaborated in detail a semantic account that assimilates referentially used definite descriptions with proper names in the sense of the theory of direct reference. I argue that the evidence Kaplan-Marti theory relies on is inappropriate, and conclude that KaplanMarti theory has no advantage over the pragmatic account of referential use in Donnellan’s sense.

εmbɔsì Definiteness: A Pragmatic Approach

This contribution examines the pragmatic approaches of definiteness in εmbɔsì language. The analysis reveals that εmbsì definiteness interacts with the pragmatic principles of familiarity as regards the second mention of the entity in the discourse, and identifiability with the hearer ability to uniquely identify the entity. In addition, the study shows that the contextual use of εmbɔsì definite description is subject of different functions. It refers to anaphora or situational reference, including the immediate and larger situations. εmbɔsì definiteness also plays the role function and, used with a post nominal demonstrative, it expresses the discourse prominence.

Wishing, Decision Theory, and Two-Dimensional Content

This paper is about two requirements on wish reports whose interaction motivates a novel semantics for these ascriptions. The first requirement concerns the ambiguities that arise when determiner phrases, such as definite descriptions, interact with ‘wish’. More specifically, several theorists have recently argued that attitude ascriptions featuring counterfactual attitude verbs license interpretations on which the determiner phrase is interpreted relative to the subject’s beliefs. The second requirement involves the fact that desire reports in general require decision-theoretic notions for their analysis. The current study is motivated by the fact that no existing account captures both of these aspects of wishing. I develop a semantics for wish reports that makes available belief-relative readings but also allows decision-theoretic notions to play a role in shaping the truth conditions of these ascriptions. The general idea is that we can analyze wishing in terms of a two-dimensional notion of expected utility.

Singularity and plurality of discourse reference to worlds

The referential analysis of conditionals has recently been put forth as an alternative of the Kratzer-style restrictor analysis (Schein 2001, Schlenker 2004, among others). Under this analysis, conditional antecedents are definite descriptions of worlds/situations. This paper explores a widely accepted assumption of the referential analysis, namely that conditional antecedents refer to plural objects. I show that the singularity/plurality of conditional antecedents can correlate with whether the conditional expresses modal or adverbial quantification. I use this correlation to motivate an analysis where conditional antecedents are number-neutral by default, but can be forced to denote singular referents. This idea is formally implemented within the dynamic framework by Brasoveanu (2010).