Semantic View Research Articles

La red teórica de la dinámica de poblaciones

The general aim of this article is to carry out a reconstruction of the theory of Population Dynamics (DP) in Ecology, according to Castle’s (2001) general stance with regard to the semantic view of theories, but doing it within the framework of metatheoretical structuralism. Thus, we will first identify Population Dynamics’ basic theory-element: its core K(DP) – with the class of potential models, the class of models (through the identification of its fundamental law) and the class of partial potential models (though leaving aside the identification of its constraints and its intertheoretical links) –, and its domain of intended applications I(DP). Then, we will establish the general guiding lines of its theory-net, developing in some detail one of its main lines of specialization – namely, that related to the so-called “continuous growing” of the considered populations –, with DP’s principal “models”, and leave developing of the other of its main lines of specialization – namely, that related to the so-called “discrete growing” of the considered populations – for a further publication.

On the complementary distribution of plurals and classifiers in East Asian classifier languages

AbstractIt is widely recognized that plural morphemes and classifiers are in complementary distribution, being unable to co‐occur. Recent literature suggests a syntactic account for complementary distribution: A plural morpheme and a classifier realize the same functional head, and thus, they cannot co‐occur. The goal of this article is to examine whether this syntactic approach to the alleged complementary distribution is applicable to certain classifier languages. We review analyses for each of 3 classifier languages, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, where a plural and a classifier co‐occur. The reviewed analyses suggest that plural markers in these classifier languages do not realize the same head with classifiers (e.g., a plural instantiates Num/D in Chinese differently from a classifier), which accounts for its co‐occurrence with a classifier. This paper also discusses other approaches to the complementary distribution of plural morphemes and classifiers, for example, a typological view and a semantic view, and concludes that they may not account for the data in the languages under discussion.

Зоолексика в семантическом аспекте (на примере отзоонимных существительных)

The article is devoted to semantic analysis zoonymic vocabulary of the Russian language. The paper presents definitions of terms zoonym and zoolexis . The characteristic of Russian nouns derived from zoonyms is given from the point of view of grammatical semantics. In accordance with the nature of grammatical semantics of nouns derived from zoonyms their semantic classes are distinguished. The focus is on the description of the whole semantic groups of nouns derived from zoonyms with a particular meaning. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that nouns derived from zoonyms with the meaning of a particular item represent a considerable variety among all nouns derived from zoonyms (383 of 489 recorded in derivational dictionary) and are an important part of zoonymic vocabulary in nominative and communicative aspect. On the basis of definition and contextual analysis of lexical units the authors divided them into groups. It is shown that the semantic grouping of nouns derived from zoonyms with the specific meaning depend on belonging to a lexico-grammatical category of animate or inanimate nouns, as lexical representatives of each category form different semantic groups that have certain characteristics. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that for the first time the Russian nouns derived from zoonyms and naming animals fully analysed from the point of view of semantics.

Expressivism, meaning, and all that

AbstractIt has recently been suggested that meta-normative expressivism is best seen as a meta-semantic, rather than a semantic view. One strong motivation for this is that expressivism becomes, thereby, compatible with truth-conditional semantics. While this approach is promising, however, many of its details are still unexplored. One issue that still needs to be explored in particular, is what accounts of propositional contents are open to meta-semantic expressivists. This paper makes progress on this issue by developing an expressivist-friendly deflationary account of such contents.

Relatywizm wyrażeń „autorytet niepodważalny” i „autorytet podważalny”

I will present my considerations in the context of classic bivalent modal logics, and on the direct basis I made two expressions “authority to challenge" and "authority of indisputable". From the point of view of semantics, they are least understood. The reason is that every external authority, regardless of how it will be called (eg tradition, person, institution, charismatic etc., etc.) a priori is a contestable or irrefutable authority. It results from time relativism, relativism of the place, relativism of language competence and relativism of knowledge. Therefore, I argue that all evaluation should be formulated in problematic sentences about the possibility of bilateral.

The Role of Inferencing in Semantic/ Pragmatic Cyclicity: the Case of Latin nunc and French or/maintenant

Abstract In this paper, I analyze the evolution of the Latin adverb/discourse marker NUNC and its Old and Modern French equivalents, or and maintenant, markers whose content-level source meanings are in all cases equivalent to English now. The analysis pays particular attention to the role of metonymic inference, and to bridging contexts. Showing that the three etymologically unrelated markers have remarkably similar (but crucially not identical) uses, both as temporal adjuncts and as pragmatic markers of various types, I argue that the diachronic changes undergone by these three items constitute a semantic/pragmatic cycle of a type that I call “onomasiological” (cf. Hansen 2015, fc). I suggest that cyclic developments at the level of semantics and pragmatics take place because source items that are semantically similar will favor similar types of contextual inferences. Furthermore, the fact that the range of uses of the items under consideration is not necessarily exactly identical from one cycle to the next supports an instructional view of semantics, which affords a central role in the process of meaning construction precisely to inferencing.

Водители и пешеходы мегаполиса в представлениях друг друга

The article presents the results of the research of mutual perceptions of the main road users in the traffic environment in Moscow. The study involved drivers with different driving experience and pedestrians who had neither driving license nor any practice in driving. Each group in the study included 50 participants. The respondents assessed each other using various diagnostic methods (“Individual Semantic Differential”, associative and drawing techniques). The goal of the study was to define the structural and substantive characteristics of the emotional and semantic views of drivers and pedestrians about each other, as well as to identify the specificity of the views of each group. The research revealed a high level of tension in the interaction between the two groups of road users in the metropolis. It shows that the driver and the pedestrian have a low degree of significance for each other. The emotional-semantic content of ideas about each other has a predominantly negative orientation. The general tendency is that drivers and pedestrians view each other as unattractive, weak and passive with an extremely low level of acceptance of one another. The article describes the specificity of the views of each group of respondents.

Cross-Platform Embedded-System Dynamic Information Acquisition Method

With the widespread application of embedded devices, embedded software vulnerabilities and oriented attacks to embedded system are also rising. As being wellknown, the hardware architecture of the embedded devices is heterogeneous, and the software stacks on them are customizable and flexible as well. Although dynamic information extraction and analysis technologies have been successfully used for general platform in vulnerability mining, malicious code detection and so on, its usage on embedded system lags behind significantly. The paper provides (1) a Cross- Platform - Dynamic Instrumentation Framework, which, by leveraging an extensible intermediate code module and a semantic constraint database, decouples the instrumentation plugins from underlying hardware and OS; (2) a set of instrumentation interfaces which may be implemented by plugins to extract runtime state of various code granularity; (3) ability of system semantic introspection to extract processes and modules information (system semantic views), by using system attribute description files and abstract state extraction functions. Compared with TEMU and DECAF, our method shows more advantages in performance of abstract state extraction, and reducing the time and memory overhead.

The semantic view of theories and higher-order languages

Several philosophers of science construe models of scientific theories as set-theoretic structures. Some of them moreover claim that models should not be construed as structures in the sense of model theory because the latter are language-dependent. I argue that if we are ready to construe models as set-theoretic structures (strict semantic view), we could equally well construe them as model-theoretic structures of higher-order logic (liberal semantic view). I show that every family of set-theoretic structures has an associated language of higher-order logic and an up to signature isomorphism unique model-theoretic counterpart, which is able to serve the same purposes. This allows to carry over every syntactic criterion of equivalence for theories in the sense of the liberal semantic view to theories in the sense of the strict semantic view. Taken together, these results suggest that the recent dispute about the semantic view and its relation to the syntactic view can be resolved.

Presupposition: A Semantic or Pragmatic Phenomenon?

There has been debate among linguists with regards to the semantic view and the pragmatic view of presupposition. Some scholars believe that presupposition is purely semantic and others believe that it is purely pragmatic. The present paper contributes to the ongoing debate and exposes the different ways presupposition was approached by linguists. The paper also tries to attend to (i) what semantics is and what pragmatics is in a unified theory of meaning and (ii) the possibility to outline a semantic account of presupposition without having recourse to pragmatics and vice versa. The paper advocates Gazdar’s analysis, a pragmatic analysis, as the safest grounds on which a working grammar of presupposition could be outlined. It shows how semantic accounts are inadequate to deal with the projection problem. Finally, the paper states explicitly that the increasingly puzzling theoretical status of presupposition seems to confirm the philosophical contention that not any fact can be translated into words.

Leveraging virtual machine introspection with memory forensics to detect and characterize unknown malware using machine learning techniques at hypervisor

The Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) has emerged as a fine-grained, out-of-VM security solution that detects malware by introspecting and reconstructing the volatile memory state of the live guest Operating System (OS). Specifically, it functions by the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), or hypervisor. The reconstructed semantic details obtained by the VMI are available in a combination of benign and malicious states at the hypervisor. In order to distinguish between these two states, the existing out-of-VM security solutions require extensive manual analysis. In this paper, we propose an advanced VMM-based, guest-assisted Automated Internal-and-External (A-IntExt) introspection system by leveraging VMI, Memory Forensics Analysis (MFA), and machine learning techniques at the hypervisor. Further, we use the VMI-based technique to introspect digital artifacts of the live guest OS to obtain a semantic view of the processes details. We implemented an Intelligent Cross View Analyzer (ICVA) and implanted it into our proposed A-IntExt system, which examines the data supplied by the VMI to detect hidden, dead, and dubious processes, while also predicting early symptoms of malware execution on the introspected guest OS in a timely manner. Machine learning techniques are used to analyze the executables that are mined and extracted using MFA-based techniques and ascertain the malicious executables. The practicality of the A-IntExt system is evaluated by executing large real-world malware and benign executables onto the live guest OSs. The evaluation results achieved 99.55% accuracy and 0.004 False Positive Rate (FPR) on the 10-fold cross-validation to detect unknown malware on the generated dataset. Additionally, the proposed system was validated against other benchmarked malware datasets and the A-IntExt system outperforms the detection of real-world malware at the VMM with performance exceeding 6.3%.

The Inference Rule of Addition and the Semantic View of Scientific Progress: Reply to Mizrahi

ABSTRACTThis discussion note aims to show that Moti Mizrahi does not make clear whether the proponents of the semantic view of scientific progress reject or accept the inference rule of Addition. If they reject the rule, then it does not make sense that Mizrahi contrives different types of disjuncts ‘on behalf of’ proponents of the semantic view. If they accept the rule, then the characterisation of the semantic view that Mizrahi discusses has nothing to do with the supposedly arbitrariness of scientific progress, as Mizrahi contends.

Scientific Progress: Why Getting Closer to Truth Is Not Enough

ABSTRACTThis discussion note aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over the nature of scientific progress. I argue against the semantic view of scientific progress, according to which scientific progress consists in approximation to truth or increasing verisimilitude. If the semantic view of scientific progress were correct, then scientists would make scientific progress simply by arbitrarily adding true disjuncts to their hypotheses or theories. Given that it is not the case that scientists could make scientific progress simply by arbitrarily adding true disjuncts to their hypotheses or theories, it follows that the semantic view of scientific progress is incorrect.

Presupposition: A Semantic or Pragmatic Phenomenon?

There has been debate among linguists with regards to the semantic view and the pragmatic view of presupposition. Some scholars believe that presupposition is purely semantic and others believe that it is purely pragmatic. The present paper contributes to the ongoing debate and exposes the different ways presupposition was approached by linguists. The paper also tries to attend to (i) what semantics is and what pragmatics is in a unified theory of meaning and (ii) the possibility to outline a semantic account of presupposition without having recourse to pragmatics and vice versa. The paper advocates Gazdar’s analysis, a pragmatic analysis, as the safest grounds on which a working grammar of presupposition could be outlined. It shows how semantic accounts are inadequate to deal with the projection problem. Finally, the paper states explicitly that the increasingly puzzling theoretical status of presupposition seems to confirm the philosophical contention that not any fact can be translated into words.

Syntactic Priming As a Test of Argument Structure: A Self-paced Reading Experiment

Using data from a behavioral structural priming experiment, we test two competing theoretical approaches to argument structure, which attribute different configurations to (in)transitive structures. These approaches make different claims about the relationship between unergatives and transitive structures selecting either a DP complement or a small clause complement in structurally unambiguous sentences, thus making different predictions about priming relations between them. Using statistical tools that combine a factorial 6 × 6 within subjects ANOVA, a mixed effects ANCOVA and a linear mixed effects regression model, we report syntactic priming effects in comprehension, which suggest a stronger predictive contribution of a model that supports an interpretive semantics view of syntax, whereby syntactic structures do not necessarily reflect argument/event structure in semantically unambiguous configurations. They also contribute novel experimental evidence that correlate representational complexity with language processing in the mind and brain. Our study further upholds the validity of combining quantitative methods and theoretical approaches to linguistics for advancing our knowledge of syntactic phenomena.

Automated multi-level malware detection system based on reconstructed semantic view of executables using machine learning techniques at VMM

In order to fulfill the requirements like stringent timing restraints and demand on resources, Cyber–Physical System (CPS) must deploy on the virtualized environment such as cloud computing. To protect Virtual Machines (VMs) in which CPSs are functioning against malware-based attacks, malware detection and mitigation technique is emerging as a highly crucial concern. The traditional VM-based anti-malware software themselves a potential target for malware-based attack since they are easily subverted by sophisticated malware. Thus, a reliable and robust malware monitoring and detection systems are needed to detect and mitigate rapidly the malware based cyber-attacks in real time particularly for virtualized environment. The Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) has emerged as a fine-grained out-of-VM security solution to detect malware by introspecting and reconstructing the volatile memory state of the live guest Operating System (OS) by functioning at the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) or hypervisor. However, the reconstructed semantic details by the VMI are available in a combination of benign and malicious states at the hypervisor. In order to distinguish between these two states, extensive manual analysis is required by the existing out-of-VM security solutions. To address the foremost issue, in this paper, we propose an advanced VMM-based guest-assisted Automated Multilevel Malware Detection System (AMMDS) that leverages both VMI and Memory Forensic Analysis (MFA) techniques to predict early symptoms of malware execution by detecting stealthy hidden processes on a live guest OS. More specifically, the AMMDS system detects and classifies the actual running malicious executables from the semantically reconstructed process view of the guest OS. The two sub-components of the AMMDS are: Online Malware Detector (OMD) and Offline Malware Classifier (OFMC). The OMD recognizes whether the running processes are benign or malicious using its Local Malware Signature Database (LMSD) and online malware scanner and the OFMC classify unknown malware by adopting machine learning techniques at the hypervisor. The AMMDS has been evaluated by executing large real-world malware and benign executables on to the live guest OSs. The evaluation results achieved 100% of accuracy and zero False Positive Rate (FPR) on the 10-fold cross-validation in classifying unknown malware with maximum performance overhead of 5.8%.

The copredication argument

The standard view of truth-conditional semantics is that it is world-involving in the sense that a theory that specifies truth conditions eo ipso is a theory that specifies the way the world must be if the target sentences are to be true. It would appear to follow that the semantic properties of expressions, such as nominals, specify the very worldly objects that make true or false the sentences that host the nominals. Chomsky and others have raised a fundamental complaint against this thought: perfectly quotidian nominals, such as London or book, may occur copredicatively as a single argument of categorically mismatched predicates, which prima facie preclude a coherent uniform construal of the nominal argument. The argument has hitherto been presented via examples that challenge the standard view. My aim here is to present the argument explicitly, defend it against some likely counterclaims, and resolve what might appear to be a decisive consideration against the conclusion of the argument, viz., if nominals as copredicatively occurring do not contribute uniform worldly entities, then how can the copredicative constructions be counted as true?

Ontology and semantics: An anti-realistic reading of the Tractatus

According to the received view, the Tractatus would present a realistic conception of the meaning of a declarative sentence: that meaning would be explained in terms of evidence-transcending, not epistemically-constrained, truth-conditions. In this paper, I make a case against such a contention. If states of affairs are identified with possible combinations of phenomenal objects, the truth-conditions of an elementary proposition inevitably collapse onto its assertability-conditions: the existence of the state of affairs depicted by the proposition would be both the condition for its being true and, at the same time, the condition for our recognition of its being true. Moreover, the finiteness of logical space (the set of all phenomenal states of affairs) would ensure the decidability, in principle, of all meaningful propositions, and hence would preserve the general validity of the laws of classical logic. Lastly, the problem of the relationship between the overt verificationism of Wittgenstein's 1929-1933 writings and the Tractatus's ontological and semantic views, is dealt with.

New personal names from the point of view of derivation and semantics

The paper discusses the results of a pilot study into derivational patterns and semantics of some neologisms referring to persons given in the Database of Lithuanian Neologisms (further also DLN). The research focused on nouns ending in -tojas, -a, -ėjas, -a, -ikas, -ė, ‑ininkas, ‑ė, ‑ėlis, -ė, -ūnas, -ė and -uolis, -ė. Most of these words are suffixal derivatives usually attributed to the categories of nomina agentis, nomina attributiva and nomina professonalia. The analysed suffixes are very different in their productivity. The suffixes -ininkas, -ė, -tojas, -a, -uolis, -ė are very productive, whereas the suffix -ėjas, ‑a, in Lithuanian grammars treated as one of the most typical and productive agentive suffixes, in the DLN have only been attested in a couple of words. The paper also discusses when a new phenomenon should be treated as a neologism and when it is merely a new sense of the existing word, included in some key publications based on the DLN. The investigation draws a conclusion that when analysing current situation and tendencies of word-building the formal principle of classifying neologisms is not operational. According to it, a compositional neologism coinciding with the already existing word is treated as a word with a new sense rather than a neologism. However, in cases when a new lexeme of an already existing word emerges as a result of a new derivational opposition, by building a word from a new or already existing lexeme of the base word, the new lexeme should be treated as a neologism rather than a new sense of the existing word. New senses (semantic neologisms) emerge in cases of semantic development of the word as a result of meaning transfer, lexicalisation and other processes. Another aspect of the present investigation focuses on the relationship between lexical senses and senses of individual derivation. An attempt was made to identify if lexical and derivational senses were the same or whether the former was narrower or broader than the latter. If they were not the same, causes of their divergence were identified. The latter issue might be relevant when analysing further processes of neologism lexicalisation. The paper also attempts to clarify the derivational patterns (origin) of some concrete neologisms and their semantic structure. Such interpretations are appreciated and very welcome by lexicographers, who are responsible for appropriately presenting neologisms in lexicographic publications. Alongside derivatives, analogous, mixed, contaminative formations as well as translations have been discussed. These derivative and formal aspects of neologisms might turn out to be very important in further investigation of larger and more varied groups of affixal derivatives and identifying general features of contemporary word-building. In pursuing the main goal of the investigation, an attempt was also made to discuss in more detail the DLN as a source of new Lithuanian lexis. It has been noticed that the DLN lacks a number of neologisms which are base words for the ones given in the database. They have all been attested on the internet. Such base words in the DLN would help define their derivatives without repeating the information which is inevitably given in the definition of the base word. Seeking precision, some definitions of the neologisms should be revised; for example, definition patterns of nouns should not be used to define adjectives. In some cases, a neologism given in the DLN as a single lexeme should be presented as two different lexemes, for example, the word pilstukininkas, –ė ‘someone who sells or drinks low quality home-brewed alcohol’ should be given as two lexemes representing two derivational categories: nomina professonalia and nomina attributiva. One of the goals of the investigation was concerned with exploring further prospects of researching the derivation of neologisms, posing the key questions and verifying their relevance. Presumably, the results of the investigation could be used in researching the tendencies of deriving neologisms in contemporary Lithuanian and comparing them with the tendencies described in the grammars of Lithuanian of the 2nd half of the 20th century. It would be interesting to ascertain how derivational patterns of neologisms are changing, when the lexicon is inevitably changing due to an enormous flow of information, more intensive communication in smaller communities and in the world, due to new emerging mass media and under the influence of other languages, especially English, which is structurally much more distant than Russian, a language having influenced Lithuanian several decades ago. (Translated by Inesa Šeškauskienė).

Progressive framework for deep neural networks: from linear to non-linear

We propose a novel progressive framework to optimize deep neural networks. The idea is to try to combine the stability of linear methods and the ability of learning complex and abstract internal representations of deep learning methods. We insert a linear loss layer between the input layer and the first hidden non-linear layer of a traditional deep model. The loss objective for optimization is a weighted sum of linear loss of the added new layer and non-linear loss of the last output layer. We modify the model structure of deep canonical correlation analysis (DCCA), i.e., adding a third semantic view to regularize text and image pairs and embedding the structure into our framework, for cross-modal retrieval tasks such as text-to-image search and image-to-text search. The experimental results show the performance of the modified model is better than similar state-of-art approaches on a dataset of National University of Singapore (NUS-WIDE). To validate the generalization ability of our framework, we apply our framework to RankNet, a ranking model optimized by stochastic gradient descent. Our method outperforms RankNet and converges more quickly, which indicates our progressive framework could provide a better and faster solution for deep neural networks.