Flat Hat Research Articles

The influence of informativeness on the prosody of sentence topics

In a production experiment on German we investigated the prosodic effects of informativeness (comprising information status and contrast) on sentence-initial referents, i.e. sentence topics. While referents in sentence-final position usually receive the nuclear accent of the utterance, commonly defined as the last and information-structurally crucial pitch accent in an intonation unit, sentence topics in German often carry a prenuclear accent. However, the status of prenuclear accents is still unclear: are they just “ornamental” or do they express meaning differences? We expected to find a direct relationship between the informativeness of a sentence topic and its prosodic prominence but the hypothesis could only be confirmed to a very limited extent. Results show that informativeness does not affect the accent type of sentence-initial referents, as they are consistently marked by rising prenuclear accents, even on given items. Only the parameter duration shows a main effect of informativeness in the expected direction, since contrastive referents proved to be longer than given ones. In general, and surprisingly, however, contrastive topics are mostly produced as prosodically less prominent than non-contrastive items that are either given, accessible or new. An explanation that holds for our data set may be that the contrast is already expressed by a parallel syntactic structure, which speakers often realize prosodically by a flat hat pattern. We conclude that prenuclear accents on sentence- initial referents are consistently placed for rhythmic reasons in German and that their prosodic form is only slightly influenced by a referent’s level of informativeness.

Challenges in path planning of high energy density beams for additive manufacturing

As there are no cutting forces in High Energy Density (HED) beams like lasers and Electron Beam (EB), their speeds are limited only by their positioning systems. On the other hand, as the entire matrix of the 3D printed part has to be addressed by the thin beam in multiple passes in multiple layers, they have to travel several kilometers in tiny motions. Therefore, the acceleration of the motion system becomes the limiting factor than velocity or precision. The authors have proposed an area-filling strategy for EB to fill the layer with optimal squares to exploit analog and hardware computing. 3D printing requires uniform intensity slanged as flat hat shape whereas the default is Gaussian. The authors have proposed an optimal algorithm that takes into account the maximum velocity and acceleration for achieving a flat hat without any compromise on productivity.

C&EN talks with James B. Comey, chemistry major turned US FBI director

James B. Comey, author of thebest-selling book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, directed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 to 2017. Comey spoke with C&EN senior correspondent Cheryl Hogue. They both graduated from the College of William and Mary, and their stints on the student newspaper, The Flat Hat, overlapped. This interview was edited for length and clarity. What sparked your interest in chemistry? In high school, I was interested in becoming a physician and took the hard sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, and Advanced Placement chemistry. I wouldn’t say I was so much interested in chemistry as opposed to bio, but I was interested in the sciences as a path to becoming a doctor. You started out as a chemistry major in college. Why? I saw all the really aggressive premed nerds were flowing to bio—and those people made me extremely nervous. So I thought, to

Dynamic Shear Deformation and Failure of Ti-6Al-4V and Ti-5Al-5Mo-5V-1Cr-1Fe Alloys.

To study the dynamic shear deformation and failure properties of Ti-6Al-4V (Ti-64) alloy and Ti-5Al-5Mo-5V-1Cr-1Fe (Ti-55511) alloy, a series of forced shear tests on flat hat shaped (FHS) specimens for the two investigated materials was performed using a split Hopkinson pressure bar setup. The evolution of shear deformation was monitored by an ultra-high-speed camera (Kirana-05M). Localized shear band is induced in the two investigated materials under forced shear tests. Our results indicate that severe strain localization (adiabatic shear) is accompanied by a loss in the load carrying capacity, i.e., by a sudden drop in loading. Three distinct stages can be identified using a digital image correlation technique for accurate shear strain measurement. The microstructural analysis reveals that the dynamic failure mechanisms for Ti-64 and Ti-55511 alloys within the shear band are of a cohesive and adhesive nature, respectively.

Disambiguating the scope of negation by prosodic cues in three varieties of German

Two perception experiments were conducted with subjects from Kiel, Düsseldorf and Vienna to investigate the role prosody plays (a) in resolving scope of negation ambiguities and (b) in judging the strength of phrasal breaks in German. The prosodic means tested were pause, intonation contour and peak alignment. Results reveal that the relevance of the cues varies depending on the task: for the (semantic) scope disambiguation task, intonation contour proves to be the most decisive factor, whereas presence of pause turns out to be most influential for the (metalinguistic) phrasing task. This result implies that the question of how German listeners resolve scope ambiguities cannot simply be attributed to the presence or absence of a phrasal break between a main and a subordinate clause. It rather seems to depend on a more general perception of ‘cohesion’ between the two clauses as indicated by prosodic means. Flat hat contours and late peak alignment patterns lead to a higher level of cohesion and an increase in wide scope interpretations, whereas pointed hats with early peak accents are typical of narrow scope readings. The results further reveal a significant difference between the varieties due to an increased number of narrow scope readings in Viennese listeners. Since Viennese German displays later peaks than Northern varieties, this outcome suggests that Viennese subjects interpret (late) peaks as earlier than listeners from Kiel and Düsseldorf.

Four Moons, and: The Potato Eaters

Four Moons And what a rare gift it was, this morning's Dream – there I stood: on the shore's edge As a mist began to fall, and a child came running Pointing to the sky, and there they were – [End Page 54] And did I say four? I should have said eight: For behind each luminous orb was a paler Version shadowing it with light – as if Orpheus was leading Eurydice back, And did I say eight? Well, I should have said, Sixteen, for the heavenly moons reflected Like a resurrection from deep – surfacing In a mirror of melt: waveless As mercury, an endless, shallow slate Waiting for me to wade – and I, I was ready – eager to bathe in that glow, Ready to return, eyes focused – till he turned. The Potato Eaters Her back is to us, but her head tilts toward the plate filled with creamy light, and jacketed potatoes: the aureate center, the corolla of this domestic tableau. A touch of Hansa yellow tempts us to smell butter, but it could be merely the amber glow of the ambergris flame, focusing our eyes with the child's to the fat spuds. The earth scent of potato permeates, merging whale oil with salt-sweat as it mingles into shades of viridian and even cadmium. Look – at the woman: how it rouges her face, how casually she wears a flush of tulip on one cheek. [End Page 55] She wears a flush of tulip on one cheek, but no one notices, or how her fork is poised to land on the central dish, but instead hovers like her eyes – waiting, anxious, poised and luminous – with what? Love? Fear? Her two-dimensions expand to three, as her life is framed and frozen. It's a trick, and yet she was real – never expected to travel to Paris, Rome, Tokyo, New York. Never expected to be scrutinized, idolized and hung in Amsterdam. Never expected she would outlast so many root crops, her burnt umber eyes pinned on the man who stares at another woman. The man who stares at the other woman looks concerned – or is he merely tired? Impatient? The girl's father? The rouged woman's mate? Is he displeased, or merely waiting for tea as his fork rests lazily on the main course? Is the older woman his mother? Seems likely as they wear the same nose, the same leathered skin: rough and tan as a mature spud's jacket. Yes, he resembles the humble root he hoes: flat hat tinged with an absinthe glaze that poisons his hand as well – the family Solanacae has deadly relations: what of the old woman, back bent to her task? The old woman, back bent to her task, pours a steady stream of tea into cups. Attentive to her chore as the child to her meal, neither hat nor cheek have time for crimson blushes. She is past that. Her gown is heavy and she moves slowly, [End Page 56] resembling an old brindle cat, past prime. Arthritic, domestic – her brow furrowed with tabby markings, she looks content with familiar smells, familiar scars: the familial group. A smile curls slightly in the corners of her mouth as she slyly takes notice of something said by the old man who presents her with sugar. The old man who presents her with sugar has just spoken. Here, he has just said, or has he called her name, or a soubriquet? Perhaps he is speaking still – his face is merry, is he making a jest? Is this why she smiles? Patiently, he proffers the copper bowl and waits, jacketed in a brown blanket like a mature potato: that commodity always on the edge of thought, that center around which their lives turn, that root and future of all their days. The artist watches, sketches, savors the young girl as she leans toward the plate filled...

The discrimination of pitch movement alignment in Dutch

This paper reports three experiments on the discrimination of positional variation of pitch movements in Dutch pitch contours. The results of a pilot experiment showed that positional differences in falling pitch movements are better discriminated than those of rising pitch movements in the Dutch flat hat contour. This differential sensitivity was also found in a follow-up experiment, the results of which do not support the pitch height and the boundary hypothesis which were formulated to account for this differential sensitivity. The former explains the differential sensitivity by the fact that subjects perceive variation in pitch movement alignment in terms overall syllable pitch. The latter assumes that there is a temporal boundary in the syllable nucleus which is crucial to the perception of alignment differences. As an alternative to the boundary hypothesis, certain features of the data are found to be consistent with the spectral contraints hypothesis of House (1990). In the third experiment, the discrimination of isolated rises and falls was investigated. The results showed that both types of pitch movements are discriminated equally well. This indicates that the observed differences in discrimination between falls and rises in experiments 1 and 2 do not represent a uniform differential perceptual response to the type of pitch movements, but may be related to linguistic structure.

Flat core properties associated to the 𝑝-Laplace operator

We study the formation of a flat hat pattern in the profile of the positive solution of an equation of the type: ε Δ p u − u p − 1 ( 1 − u ) θ = 0 ( 0 > θ > p − 1 ) \varepsilon {\Delta _p}u - {u^{p - 1}}{(1 - u)^\theta } = 0\;(0 > \theta > p - 1) in a bounded domain Ω \Omega . When ε \varepsilon tends to 0 + {0^ + } , the growth of the zone where u = u ε u = {u_\varepsilon } takes the value 1 1 in Ω \Omega is studied.

Perceived speech rate and intonation

A listening experiment was carried out to test the hypothesis that four phonologically less complex intonation contours are perceived as faster than four related more complex contours. In the main, the hypothesis is confirmed. In the case of one of the four less complex contours, the increase in perceived speech rate was considerably greater than in the case of the other three. A follow-up experiment showed that this greater effect is to be attributed to the particular shape of the contour (the “flat hat” contour of ’t Hart & Collier, 1975), which contains a high, fairly monotonous contour section. There are indications that the general explanation for the difference in perceived speech rate between the two sets of contours is to be found in the implied presence of an “intonational phrase” boundary in the contours that were perceived as slower, rather than in the greater complexity of the contours.