Generic Interpretation Research Articles

Can a Group of Musicians be Composed of Women? Generic Interpretation of French Masculine Role Names in the Absence and Presence of Feminine Forms

The malleability of the generic interpretation of masculine role names in French was investigated by manipulating readers’ exposure to feminine forms. In two experiments, participants were to decide whether a person introduced by a kinship term (e.g., sister) could be part of a group represented by a role name (e.g., nurse, musicians). In Experiment 1, role names were presented in the masculine form in the first part and in either the masculine or the feminine form in the second part. Independent of role name stereotypicality, participants were less likely to relate female kinship terms to role names in the masculine form and even less likely when they were also exposed to feminine forms. These results were replicated in a second experiment, in which the communication source was varied: Before performing the experimental task, participants read job advertisements that either used only the masculine or both the masculine and the feminine form. When feminine forms were added, the generic interpretation of the masculine form decreased, even when the feminine forms were provided by a different source.

Symbolic and Abstract Interpretation for C/C++ Programs

We present a construction technique for abstract interpretations which is generic in the choice of data abstractions. The technique is specialised on C/C++ code, internally represented by the GIMPLE control flow graph as generated by the gcc compiler. The generic interpreter handles program transitions in a symbolic way, while recording a history of symbolic memory valuations. An abstract interpreter is instantiated by selecting appropriate lattices for the data types under consideration. This selection induces an instance of the generic transition relation. All resulting abstract interpretations can handle pointer arithmetic, type casts, unions and the aliasing problems involved. It is illustrated how switching between abstractions can improve the efficiency of the verification process. The concepts described in this paper are implemented in the test automation and static analysis tool RT-Tester which is used for the verification of embedded systems in the fields of avionics, railways and automotive control.

Making the links: towards a global taxonomy for the red algal genus Porphyra (Bangiales, Rhodophyta)

Species assigned to Porphyra sensu lato (Bangiales) make up one of the largest groups of red algae in the world. While the Bangiales are monophyletic, Porphyra is not, but the number of genera remains unresolved and a consensus needs to be reached on how to proceed. Here, it is proposed that a global taxonomy for the group would enable resolution and consensus. Using examples from our work on Porphyra in both the northern and southern hemispheres, including the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific, notably Chile, we have addressed the following questions: i) how many species are there, ii) how many species are there in different parts of the world, and iii) how do these species relate to those in different parts of the world? A cumulative total of species described in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean since 1800 indicates that there are still species to be added to the flora for these regions. Determination of intraspecific diversity or diversity within species complexes was examined using the mitochondrial cox1. The results split the species into two distinct groups, revealed differences between the British and Faroese floras and indicated a new species in the Faroes. Detection of species diversity in different geographical areas of the world and their relationship with the North Atlantic and southeast Pacific (Chile) was studied using the plastid Rubisco spacer and partial rDNA SSU data. While the Rubisco spacer was limited for global comparisons, it was useful for species identification adding five more species to the Atlantic flora. The partial rDNA SSU data, while its shortness made it unsuitable for generic interpretation, revealed the spread of taxa from different geographical areas throughout the tree. We have concluded that to achieve a global taxonomy standard molecular markers should be used and we propose that the rbcL and complete rDNA SSU would be suitable. We have also concluded that while a few regions of the world have been well studied, before a consensus on generic boundaries can be achieved detailed taxonomic studies are needed in many other parts of the world including circumpolar Arctic, mid and southwest Atlantic and southeast Asia.

A pragmatic approach to the interpretations of Mandarin bare nouns

Bare nouns are nouns that occur without demonstratives, numerals or articles. Mandarin bare nouns, like English bare plurals, can have a generic or existential interpretation. But unlike English bare plurals, they can also have definite reference. There have been proposals to account for the interpretations of Mandarin bare nouns in terms of syntactic structure ( Audrey Li, 1997; Cheng and Sybesma, 1999) and predicate types ( Jie Li, 1997). This paper attempts to simplify Jie Li's (1997) generalizations by relating the kind referring vs. object referring interpretations to the semantic distinction between individual-level and stage-level predicates ( Kratzer, 1989). I show that Mandarin bare nouns have a generic interpretation with individual-level predicates. With stage-level predicates, they have a definite interpretation when they are in topic position and an existential interpretation when they are not in topic position. However, bare nouns often do not appear as arguments of any predicates in natural discourse. This paper attempts to reconstruct sentence fragments based on contexts. I show that the Givenness Hierarchy ( Gundel et al., 1993) restricts possible interpretations of Chinese bare nouns and that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) is needed to explain how people choose the intended interpretation from the possible ones.

Processes in the Interpretation of Generics and Cp-Laws

Ceteris Paribus (cp-)laws may be said to hold only 'other things equal', signaling that their truth is compatible with a range of exceptions. Several theorists have taken this feature to introduce the presumption that cp-laws are trivial, one that needs to be countered if we are to appeal to cp-laws in the course of scientific investigation or our philosophical theorizing about it. I argue that the triviality worry is misplaced by pointing out that cp-laws are just a subset of uncontroversially meaningful and contingent expressions of natural language, the generics. I then present an account of these generics that elucidates some of their most puzzling features, especially the ones that suggested the triviality worry in the first place.

Introducing a cross-layer interpreter for multimedia streams

In the context of multimedia and real-time systems, this article introduces a generic interpreter of QoS properties (xQoS-Interpreter) for the Application Data Units (ADUs) composing standard and proprietary multimedia streams. This approach is intended to make the QoS properties of ADUs publicly available to any mechanism of the underlying communication system. The use of this information allows for cross-layer QoS optimization of the communication services taking the actual per-packet requirements of the applications into account. A case study showing how the xQoS-Interpreter is used at transport layer to seamlessly optimize the perceived QoS of an end-to-end video transmission is presented. In this scenario, the xQoS-Interpreter is used to optimize a TCP-friendly Rate Control mechanism (TFRC) over congested wireless network services in order to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of our approach.

Language Policies and In-group Favoritism

This study investigates the influence of sex of respondent, context valence, and type of generic on the naming of female personalities in Norway where the feminine suffixing has dropped away in reaction to the problem of linguistic sexism. A total of 162 participants were asked to name either their most- or least-liked personalities. The survey employed either the generic form only or the generic form together with the obsolete feminine forms. Adding the feminine forms led to a significant increase in the number of female personalities named, suggesting that the Norwegian policy of gender neutralization has not (yet) been successful. Furthermore, the sex of respondent was positively related to the naming of same-sex personalities in the positive but not in the negative valence condition, thus documenting malleability in the interpretation of generics.

Generic command interpretation algorithms for conversational agents

This paper focuses on human-machine communication with intelligent agents, it proposes a generic architecture with an algorithm for natural language (NL) command interpretation which makes it easy to define different applications using the description and domains of the different agents, since all that is required is their respective codes and domain ontologies. There are two classical approaches for NL command interpretation: the top-down approach, which relies on the syntactical constraints of the agent's model, and the bottom-up approach which relies on the set of the agent's possible actions. The present work combines the two in a new bottom-up based algorithm that makes use of agent's constraints. The three algorithms are then compared, and results show that the combined approach gives best results.

Norwegian Anaphors without Visible Binders

A standard assumption in work on binding in Norwegian is that a reflexive must have an antecedent that is “visible,” that is, either phonologically realized or PRO. The purpose of this article is to show that this restriction is not observed by many speakers. There are two cases of reflexives with invisible binders. First, an implicit argument can be a binder in a nominalization (Første fase bestod av analyse av seg selv. ‘The first phase consisted of analysis of oneself’). Second, a “semantic subject” can be a binder in an indefinite noun phrase with a propositional interpretation (Et helt hus for seg selv er et slit. ‘A whole house for oneself is hard work’). Some younger speakers also allow a reflexive form with a generic interpretation to occur with no binder (En motorsag kan skade seg selv og andre. ‘A chain saw can hurt oneself and others’).I would like to thank colleagues and students for discussion and intuitions, especially Kjell Johan Sæbø, Eirik Welo, Atle Grønn, Dag Haug, Anneliese Pitz, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Mads Haga, and Trine Egebakken. Thanks also to Thorstein Fretheim, Marit Julien, Stephen Wechsler, Annie Zaenen, and to the three anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to my daughters Julie and Therese for their intuitions.

A Generic Pulsar Radio Emission Mechanism

A generic interpretation of pulsar radio emission that does not rely on the identification of a specific emission mechanism is explored. Coherence is quantified in terms of a coherence factor, which implies a maximum brightness temperature; the possible significance of Poincare invariants is pointed out, and the potential use of higher order moments of the intensity to measure the coherence is discussed. The effect of the Lorentz boost between the plasma rest frame and the pulsar frame, the suppression of emission at low frequencies due to curvature of the field lines, and a natural frequency of the pulsar plasma are incorporated into a generic model for pulsar emission, and three illustrative examples of its possible use are given.

The effect of literacy, text type, and modality on the use of grammatical means for agency alternation in Spanish

Abstract The paper explores developmental patterns in a set of grammatical constructions that Spanish speaker-writers can use for agency alternation. Although all these constructions downgrade agency, they differ in the way they do so, and in the formal devices they use for this purpose. Some promote a patient perspective ( ser -marked passives and se -passives), others promote a generic interpretation of agents ( se -impersonals and 2nd person singular), while still others impute a degree of autonomy to the situation denoted by the predicate ( se -middles). All these constructions appear more frequently in expository texts than in narrative texts and, except for 2nd person singular pronouns, more appear in the written modality than in the spoken modality. However, only passives showed a clear developmental pattern. The study shows that, given the options of a particular language, the distribution of grammatical constructions is an outcome of communicative purposes – that is, a function of the type of text as perceived by the speaker-writer – in relation to thematic content and perceptions of written language as a discourse style.

Interpreting DNA Evidence: A Review

Summary The paper provides a review of current issues relating to the use of DNA profiling in forensic science. A short historical section gives the main statistical milestones that occurred during a rapid development of DNA technology and operational uses. Greater detail is then provided for interpretation issues involving STR DNA profiles, including: – methods that take account of population substructure in DNA calculations; – parallel work carried out by the US National Research Council; – the move away from multiple independence testing in favour of experiments that demonstrate the robustness of casework procedures; – the questionable practice of source attribution ‘with reasonable scientific certainty’; – the effect on the interpretation of profiles obtained under increasingly sensitive techniques, the LCN technique in particular; – the use of DNA profiles as an intelligence tool; – the interpretation of DNA mixtures. Experience of presenting DNA evidence within UK courts is also discussed. The paper then summarises a generic interpretation framework based on the concept of likelihood ratio within a hierarchy of propositions. Finally the use of Bayesian networks to interpret DNA evidence is reviewed.

Review and synthesis of research on comprehension of the masculine as a generic form in English

In this article we survey studies providing empirical tests of questions related to the comprehension of masculine generics; these are categorized by experimental paradigm. Findings are aggregated and weighted Stouffer combined tests are performed to assess the probabilities of the findings across studies. The evidence indicates that not only are masculine forms more likely to lead to male-oriented than to other responses, but also that this tendency is strongly evidenced in both children and adults, and that females are more likely than males to interpret masculine forms generically (p .00001 for each combined test). The evidence is mixed on whether sex-neutral or sex-inclusive forms provoke more generic interpretation, but may favor the inclusive forms. Many children, and 10% or more of adults tested, were unable to explain the masculine generic rule satisfactorily. Processing time studies indicate that a male-related response is more cognitively available than other responses following a masculine generic antecedent. Finally, there is a residual tendency to make male-oriented responses regardless of the stimulus.

A generic e-learning multiparadigm programming language system

We describe the main features of an Internet based distance learning environment that we are developing to teach a course on logic and functional programming for computer science students. The main goal of the system is to provide a minimal set of capabilities for a generic interpreter that will be instantiated for different programming languages and paradigms. The architecture of the system is based on the use of XML and web services to facilitate the integration and independence between the different development platforms and systems.

Non-restrictive computational reflection

Adaptable software systems and architectures give the programmer the ability to create applications that might customize themselves to runtime-emerging requirements. Computational reflection is a programming language technique that is commonly used to achieve the development of this kind of systems. Most runtime reflective systems use Meta-Object Protocols (MOPs). However, MOPs restrict the amount of features an application can customize, and the way they can express its own adaptation. Furthermore, this kind of systems uses a fixed programming language: they develop an interpreter, not a whole language-independent platform. What we present in this paper a non-restrictive reflective platform, called nitrO, that achieves a real computational-environment jump, making every application and language feature adaptable at runtime—without any previously defined restriction. Moreover, the platform has been built using a generic interpreter, in which the reflection mechanism is independent of the language selected by the programmer. Different applications may dynamically adapt each other, regardless of the programming language they use.

Genericity and the denotation of common nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper investigates what the semantics of generic sentences in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) says about the denotation of Noun Phrases in that language. More specifically, it addresses the syntactic and semantic differences among the indefinite nominals that get a generic interpretation in BP. The paper may also be taken to test well-known hypotheses about the functioning of genericity in natural languages.

Information structure and the referential status of bare plurals

The goal of this paper is to study the influence of information structure in the referential status of linguistic expressions such as bare plurals and indefinite NPs in Spanish. In particular, we will argue for the following claims: (a) Spanish bare plurals can receive a generic interpretation in object position and (b) Spanish bare plurals in object position can be topics in siru. We will focus on object position because of the well known semantic and syntactic constraints that affect preverbal subject bare plurals in Spanish.

Combinations of abstract domains for logic programming: open product and generic pattern construction

Abstract interpretation is a systematic methodology to design static program analysis which has been studied extensively in the logic programming community, because of the potential for optimizations in logic programming compilers and the sophistication of the analyses which require conceptual support. With the emergence of efficient generic abstract interpretation algorithms for logic programming, the main burden in building an analysis is the abstract domain which gives a safe approximation of the concrete domain of computation. However, accurate abstract domains for logic programming are often complex not only because of the relational nature of logic programming languages and of their typical interprocedural control-flow, but also because of the variety of analyses to perform, their interdependence, and the need to maintain structural information. The purpose of this paper is to propose conceptual and software support for the design of abstract domains. It contains two main contributions: the notion of open product and a generic pattern domain. The open product is a new, language independent, way of combining abstract domains allowing each combined domain to benefit from information from the other components through the notions of queries and open operations. It provides a framework to approximate Cousots’ reduced product, while reusing existing implementations and providing methodological guidance on how to build domains for interaction and composition. It is orthogonal and complementary to Granger's product which improves the direct product by a decreasing iteration sequence based on refinements but lets the domains interact only after the individual operations. The generic pattern domain Pat( R ) automatically upgrades a domain D with structural information yielding a more accurate domain Pat(D) without additional design or implementation cost. The two contributions are orthogonal and can be combined in various ways to obtain sophisticated domains while imposing minimal requirements on the designer. Both contributions are characterized theoretically and experimentally and were used to design very complex abstract domains such as PAT(OPos⊗OMode⊗OPS) which would be very difficult to design otherwise. On this last domain, designers need only contribute about 20% (about 3400 lines) of the complete system (about 17,700 lines).

Incremental analysis of constraint logic programs

Global analyzers traditionally read and analyze the entire program at once, in a nonincremental way. However, there are many situations which are not well suited to this simple model and which instead require reanalysis of certain parts of a program which has already been analyzed. In these cases, it appears inefficient to perform the analysis of the program again from scratch, as needs to be done with current systems. We describe how the fixed-point algorithms used in current generic analysis engines for (constraint) logic programming languages can be extended to support incremental analysis. The possible changes to a program are classified into three types: addition, deletion, and arbitrary change. For each one of these, we provide one or more algorithms for identifying the parts of the analysis that must be recomputed and for performing the actual recomputation. The potential benefits and drawbacks of these algorithms are discussed. Finally, we present some experimental results obtained with an implementation of the algorithms in the PLAI generic abstract interpretation framework. The results show significant benefits when using the proposed incremental analysis algorithms.

Ruling Norms and the Politics of Difference: A Comment on Seyla Benhabib

Ruling Norms and the Politics of Difference: A Comment on Seyla Benhabib Iris Marion Young (bio) Seyla Benhabib develops a complex analysis and measured evaluation of group-based political claims for social and economic benefits and the recognition of their specificity. She reminds us that the essentialization of group definitions has met with irrefutable critique, but nevertheless cautiously endorses group-based policies such as affirmative action that aim to redress past and present discrimination and disadvantage. She rightly reveals conceptual and political tensions attending any departure from strict individualism or form equality, and in the end calls for a renewed liberalism robust enough to include the group differences that have claimed public voice in many democratic societies in the last thirty years. I agree with many of the points that Benhabib makes about the wide range of issues she takes up in this essay. Like many others who in recent years have worried about the dangers of group-based political claims, however, Benhabib wrongly reduces the differences that motivate such claims to culture. 1 In these remarks I want to reinstate a more generic interpretation of a politics of difference in which culturally based claims are only one species. In this more generic understanding, the problems that motivate social movements around group difference have to do with dominant norms and expectations in the society. Dominant institutions support norms and expectations that privilege some groups and render others deviant. Some of these are cultural norms, but others are norms of capability, social role, sexual desire, or location in the division of labor. Most group-based political claims of justice are responses to these structures of privilege and disadvantage. Even on this shifted and broader interpretation, a politics of difference often produces the tensions that Benhabib finds besetting mobilization around what she calls corporate identities. As I believe Benhabib’s own analysis shows, such tensions often arise less from wrongly essentializing cultural identity than from the categorization necessary to resist being positioned as deviant. I shall illustrate these problems by briefly discussing the politics of people with disabilities. I conclude by arguing that Benhabib’s call for a robust liberalism of flexibility and tolerance coincides with that of some of the political theorists of culture she criticizes. Attention to the issues of justice many group-based claims raise, however, goes beyond principles of tolerance and openness to the criticism and transformation of social structures that marginalize and normalize. [End Page 415] Deviation from Ruling Norms Benhabib characterizes the distinctiveness of our current post-socialist condition as consisting in specifically cultural claims for recognition. Claims “raised by various groups in the name of this or that aspect of cultural identity contest within the welfare state for redistribution and recognition.” Distinctive about the current period is the fact that groups plead for special recognition from the state and its agencies in the name of their cultural specificity. Especially when such group-based claims influence the distribution of welfare benefits and other bureaucratically mandated benefits, Benhabib argues, these group claims for recognition endanger public life by legitimating fragmented and essentialized enclaves which can only see their own interests and distrust appeals to principles universal in form. Now I think that it is true that social movements of the last thirty years in many places have asserted a new set of political claims for equality and justice, which are indeed in tension with earlier claims that interpret equality as treating all persons according to the same standards and principles. I call this distinctive politics a politics of difference rather than a politics of identity. 2 A politics of difference is broader than a politics of cultural recognition; it is primarily critical, moreover, as opposed to self-assertive. A politics of difference claims that hegemonic discourses, relations of power, role assignments, and the distribution of benefits assume a particular and restricted set of ruling norms, even though they usually present themselves as neutral and universal. The given economic, social, and political arrangements assume that social members and rights bearers either have or ought to have certain capabilities, desires, forms of reasoning, language, values and priorities, or plans of life. They have certain expectations of what is a...