Exit Statements Research Articles

Speaking in structure and transitivity: politeness in “Abiku” by J.P. Clark

This study examines some pragma-linguistic features in Clark-Bekederemo’s “Abiku”. The examination is relative to their function as elements foregrounding politeness in interlocution. The analysis focuses mainly on the structure and partly on transitivity; and offers an interface between two referents the speaker (S) and the hearer (H). The poem is analysed to account for the significance of thematic structure and transitivity. While structure offers an in road into the syntagmatic presentation, transitivity examines the paradigmatic relation among certain words applied in the poem. The incident of the marked thematic structure becomes congruently productive in the transmission of a certain pragma-linguistic inclination on the part of the speaker. Central to the pragma-linguistic inclination, as observed in the analysis, is the depersonalization or de-emphasis on the beingness of the abiku. This is evinced in the preponderance of disproportionately marked forms of sentence constructions in situations where the abiku should function as a Subject. This marked form of expression construction is duly sustained and significantly applies to both the entry and exit statements in the poem. The markedness in the deliberate thematization of processes and circumstances rather than a participant in transitivity is an extension of communicative features in the poem.

Review: Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults, directed by Clay Tweel; Heaven’s Gate, hosted by Glenn Washington; The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate, a Diane Sawyer Special, produced by ABC 20/20

Review: <i>Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults</i>, directed by Clay Tweel; <i>Heaven’s Gate</i>, hosted by Glenn Washington; <i>The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate, a Diane Sawyer Special</i>, produced by ABC 20/20

An analysis of the writing of ‘suicide cult’ members

Abstract The infamous ‘Heaven’s Gate cult’ committed a mass suicide in 1995 believing members of the group would achieve salvation through bodily transformation and departure aboard UFOs. The group left a large volume of writing available as a book and a website which outlined their belief structure. This writing, largely by the group’s leaders Ti and Do, is supplemented by ‘exit statements’ written by the group members. We analysed these writings and demonstrated how the texts evolve from accessible texts for recruiting individuals into the group through more complex texts for cementing the belief structure and reinforcing the ingroup. We also identify differences in the ‘exit statements’ that demonstrate the ideas and concepts that gained traction with the group members.

Predictors of successful police academy recruits and rationalizations for attrition

Identifying police recruit qualities and effective strategies to promote their success in training academies is important to police executives. This study analyzed quantitative (n = 662) and qualitative data (n = 178) from one such academy to ascertain predictors of performance. Basic abilities, sex, sponsorship, and body mass index were related to graduation for the overall sample. For sponsored (law enforcement funded) recruits prior job termination and age curtailed graduation chances. For non-sponsored recruits, higher basic abilities test scores corresponded to increased graduation potential, while increased body mass index reduced likelihood of graduation. Analyses of non-graduates’ rationalizations revealed sponsored recruits often reported health reasons for withdrawals; assertions supported by satisfactory performances. Non-sponsored recruits’ statements contained more incongruences between rationalizations and performances. While the study was confined to one regional institution and the exit statement sample size was limited, review of relevant literature indicates the findings are widely applicable.

Metaphorical Re-Framing as “Equipment for Living”: Confronting Death with Exuberance in the Exit Interviews of Heaven’s Gate Followers

“Cults” offer an opportunity to study religiously-associated actors who understand death very differently than mainstream faith communities. Here, we consider Heaven’s Gate members’ “exit statements,” recorded before the mass suicide that they believed was the next step for spiritual advancement. We pair Terror Management Theory (TMT), which investigates factors affecting anxiety toward death, with Burkean analyses of metaphor and equipment for living. We suggest that these statements’ metaphorical frames (including mass suicide as graduation and bodies as mere vehicles to be transcended) serve as strategies to decrease anxiety and fear surrounding death generally, but particularly of death by mass suicide.

Symbolic method of verification of definite iterations over altered data structures

To extend the application domain of the symbolic verification method, definite iterations over altered data structures, which are found to reduce to standard finite iterations, are introduced. The suggested reduction is applicable to definite iterations over altered data structures that contain an exit statement by a condition depending on the variables modified by the loop body. The suggested generalization of the symbolic method makes it applicable to verifying programs over pointers. To illustrate the discussion, the verification of two programs designed for processing linear lists-searching for an element with reordering and elimination of zero elements--is described.

Verification of Finite Iterations over Tuples of Data Structures

In order to eliminate loop invariants in the process of program verification, a new language construct called finite iteration over tuples of data structures is introduced. Simulation of such iterations by means of iterations over hierarchical data structures is described. This enables one to apply the symbolic verification method, which was developed earlier, to such iterations. The simulation also applies to the case of iterations over tuples of data structures that include a loop exit statement. A technique for deriving and proving correctness conditions based on the induction principles is described. For finite iterations over files, a problem-oriented technique for proving correctness conditions is proposed. By way of example, the verification of two programs designed for file processing is described.

Axiomatic semantics for “escape” statements

This paper introduces a new approach for specifying the axiomatic semantics of escape statements, e.g., loop exit. The association of an escape statement with the appropriate enclosing block is specified entirely within the proof rules. Our approach also handles multiple-level exit statements.

Eliminating go to's while preserving program structure

Suppose we want to eliminate the local go to statements of a Pascal program by replacing them with multilevel loop exit statements. The standard ground rules for eliminating go to's require that we preserve the flow graph of the program, but they allow us to completely rewrite the control structures that glue together the program's atomic tests and actions. The go to's can be eliminated from a program under those ground rules if and only if the flow graph of that program has the graph-theoretic property named reducibility. This paper considers a stricter set of ground rules, introduced by Peterson, Kasami, and Tokura, which demand that we preserve the program's original control structures, as well as its flow graph, while we eliminate its go to's. In particular, we are allowed to delete the go to statements and the labels that they jump to and to insert various exit statements and labeled repeat-endloop pairs for them to jump out of. But we are forbidden to change the rest of the program text in any way. The critical issue that determines whether go to's can be eliminated under these stricter rules turns out to be the static order of the atomic tests and actions in the program text. This static order can be encoded in the program's flow graph by augmenting it with extra edges. It can then be shown that the reducibility of a program's augmented flow graph, augmenting edges and all, is a necessary and sufficient condition for the eliminability of go to's from that program under the stricter rules.

A compilation technique for software pipelining of loops with conditional jumps

We describe a compilation algorithm for efficient software pipelining of general inner loops, where the number of iterations and the time taken by each iteration may be unpredictable, due to arbitrary if-then-else statements and conditional exit statements within the loop. As our target machine, we assume a wide instruction word architecture that allows multi-way branching in the form of if-then-else trees, and that allows conditional register transfers depending on where the microinstruction branches to (a hardware implementation proposal for such a machine is briefly described in the paper). Our compilation algorithm, which we call the pipeline scheduling technique, produces a software-pipelined version of a given inner loop, which allows a new iteration of the loop to begin on every cycle whenever dependences and resources permit. The correctness and termination properties of the algorithm are studied in the paper.

Some ramifications of the EXIT statement in loop control

EXIT statements support a style of programming that distinguishes between the control operations and the actions in a loop. Readability suggests that multiple EXIT statements are preferable to a single EXIT statement in a loop with multiple invariants. This is particularly true if implementational considerations have confused the neatness of the loop termination condition.

Is an exit statement sufficient?

Is an exit statement sufficient?

Automatic Structuring of Programs

A method is described that allows the translation of a traditionally written (unstructured) program into a set of top-down structured, semantically founded, GOTO-free modules. The method reveals not only the logic of a given program in a most natural way, but it also reduces code duplication to a minimum. It is further shown how the obtained structured program can be mapped back into a GOTO program in such a way that all GOTOs are backwards branches and their number is minimal. The connection between recursively and iteratively structured programs is demonstrated using the WHILE, DO FOREVER, and multilevel EXIT statements. Extensions of the method show the structuring of source programs containing block structures and subroutines.

Analysis of structured programs

We compare the structural complexity of various classes of structured programs. To achieve this we concentrate on a notion called “reducibility”. Loosely speaking, given two classes of programs C1 and C2, we say that C1 is reducible to C2 (C1≤wC2) if and only if for every program P in C1, there is a program in C2 that computes the same function as P and uses the same primitive actions and predicates as P. If C1 is reducible to C2, but C2 is not reducible to C1, then we say that C1<wC2. We explore this notion of reducibility for several classes of programs. These include: D-charts and BJn-charts, which are programs based on the DO-WHILE construct, a familiar construct in the literature on structured programs; REn-charts, GREn-charts and DREn-charts, which are programs constructed using a continuously repeating block of code with exit statements, similar to the REPEAT-EXIT construct of BLISS; TDn-charts, which are programs based on control structures arising from top-down programming. Several results on these classes of programs are proved here. These results includeo(a)BJn-charts <w BJn+1-charts, and ∪n≥1 BJn-charts <w RE1-charts;(b)REn-charts <w REn+1-charts, GREn-charts <w GREn+1-charts, DREn-charts <w GREn+2-charts;(c)TDn-charts ≤w RE3n-charts. BJn-charts <w BJn+1-charts, and ∪n≥1 BJn-charts <w RE1-charts; REn-charts <w REn+1-charts, GREn-charts <w GREn+1-charts, DREn-charts <w GREn+2-charts; TDn-charts ≤w RE3n-charts. In addition, it is shown that an arbitrary program P is reducible to a D-chart if and only if P does not contain a loop with two distinct exits. The paper concludes by suggesting various open problems.

On the capabilities of while, repeat, and exit statements

A well-formed program is defined as a program in which loops and if statements are properly nested and can be entered only at their beginning. A corresponding definition is given for a well-formed flowchart. It is shown that a program is well formed if and only if it can be written with if, repeat, and multi-level exit statements for sequence control. It is also shown that if, while, and repeat statements with single-level exit do not suffice. It is also shown that any flowchart can be converted to a well-formed flowchart by node splitting. Practical implications are discussed.