Universal Tendency Research Articles

Causatives in Uyghur

The present study is intended to provide a descriptive analysis of canonical causative constructions in modern Uyghur. Lexical, morphological and analytic causative constructions are employed in modern Uyghur. Lexical causative is less productive, and its use seems to be restricted to very specific domains without a morphological marker. By contrast, morphological causatives are undoubtedly the most frequent means of expressing causatives,nand they are highly productive with both transitive and intransitive verbs. These productive single causatives are mostly regular; the choice of the suffixes is phonologically determined. Double causatives derived from intransitive and transitive bases in Uyghur result in different surface realizations. No more than two different causative morphemes can be iterated in the causative construction. Therefore, Uyghur does not permit any iteration of the triple causative. In this sense, the double causative in Uyghur is different from that of genetically related languages (for example Turkish) with respect to the nature and amount of causative morpheme reduplication. This study shows that the morphological causatives in Uyghur share universal tendencies in terms of causative devices and valence increasing operations in the argument structure of causative verbs in canonical situations. Although the scope of this paper is limited to one individual language, its findings would be relevant for studying causative constructions in other languages.

Non-quantifyinglíγoconstructions in Modern Greek

In this paper I focus on MGrlίγo‘(a) little’ in non-quantifying constructions codifying affect and argue that it has grammaticalized from a quantifier to an (inter)subjective metalinguistic hedging device: i.e., a positive politeness marker in thehedged directive constructionand a marker of attitude to one’s own utterance in thehedged statement construction. Motivation for this development is provided by MGr interactional ethos and the importance attached to the friendly, informal “politeness of involvement”, a factor discussed in the context of universal tendencies in the semantics of diminutives and affective language. I argue that non-quantifyinglίγois a case of semantic change motivated by sociopragmatic considerations which are anchored to specific constructions.

Testing explicitation in translation: Triangulating corpus and experimental studies

During recent years, scholars have stressed the need to combine corpus-based translation studies (CBTS) and cognitive translatology to gain insights into the cognitive foundation for the general features of translated language (Halverson 2010; Alves and Vale 2011). This paper responds to previous calls to test explicitation phenomena on different translation modalities and types (Chesterman 2004a:47), and their cognitive basis (Halverson 2010, 2003). The paper presents a triangulation model on the basis of which hypotheses from descriptive corpus-based studies are generated, testing instruments are developed using previous corpora and the results of experimental studies are triangulated using these same corpora. The empirical study departs from two previous comparable corpus studies that focus on corporate (Jiménez-Crespo 2011a) and social networking sites (Jiménez-Crespo 2013). It uses their results and corpora to develop an experimental design to test the explicitation hypothesis. The study tests and compares explicitation on two production processes (1) translating segments directly or (2) selecting the translation from a range of valid non-translated lexical units identified in the previous study to accomplish the same communicative function. If explicitation is a general or even a universal tendency, it should be similarly present regardless of the genre, translation modality or specifics of the translation process. Although the explicitation hypothesis was confirmed in Jiménez-Crespo (2011a), the results of the present study show that the levels of explicitation vary between different production conditions, with the selection condition producing higher levels of explicitation than the regular translation condition. The results suggest procedural aspects are at play during the production stage.

Chemical contamination and transformation of soils in hydrocarbon production regions

The current concepts of soil pollution and transformation in the regions of hydrocarbon production have been reviewed. The development of an oil field creates extreme conditions for pedogenesis. Tendencies in the radial migration, spatial distribution, metabolism, and accumulation of pollutants (oil, oil products, and attendant heavy metals) in soils of different bioclimatic zones have been analyzed. The radial and lateral mobility of pollution halos is a universal tendency in the technogenic transformation of soils and soil cover in the regions of hydrocarbon production. The biodegradation time of different hydrocarbon compounds strongly varies under different landscape conditions, from several months to several tens of years. The transformation of original (mineral and organic) soils to their technogenic modifications (mechanically disturbed, chemically contaminated, and chemo soils and chemozems) occurs in the impact zone of technogenic hydrocarbon fluxes under any physiographical conditions. The integrated use of the existing methods for the determination of the total content and qualitative composition of bituminous substances and polyaromatic hydrocarbons in combination with the chromatographic determination of normal alkanes and hydrocarbon gases, as well as innovative methods of studies, allows revealing new processes and genetic relationships in soils and studying the functioning of soils and soil cover. The study of the hydrocarbon contamination of soils is important for development of restoration measures and lays the groundwork for the ecological and hygienic regulation based on the zonation of soil and landscape resistance to different pollutants.

Numerical investigation on aerodynamic performance of a novel vertical axis wind turbine with adaptive blades

In this paper, a novel Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine was designed whose blade can be deformed automatically into a desired geometry and thus achieve a better aerodynamic performance. A series of numerical simulations were conducted by utilizing the United Computational Fluid Dynamics code. Firstly, analysis and comparison of the performance of undeformed and deformed blades for the rotors having different blades were conducted. Then, the power characteristics of each simulated turbine were summarized and a universal tendency was found. Secondly, investigation on the effect of blade number and solidity on the power performance of Darrieus vertical axis wind turbine with deformable and undeformable blades was carried out. The results indicated that compared to conventional turbines with same solidity, the maximum percentage increase in power coefficient that the low solidity turbine with three deformable blades can achieve is about 14.56%. When solidity is high and also turbine operates at low tip speed ratio of less than the optimum value, the maximum power coefficient increase for the turbines with two and four deformable blades are 7.51% and 8.07%, respectively. However, beyond the optimal tip speed ratio, the power improvement of the turbine using the deformable blades seems not significant and even slightly worse than the conventional turbines. The last section studied the transient behavior of vortex and turbulent flow structures around the deformable rotor blade to explore the physical mechanism of improving aerodynamic performance. The adaptive blades could obviously suppress the separation of flow from the blade surfaces.

Substrate Sources and Internal Evolution of Prescriptively Unwarranted Comitative Complements in Modern Hebrew

Modern Hebrew usage of the preposition עִם ʿim ‘with’ displays syntactic and semantic features which are either non-existent or extremely rare in Classical Hebrew, among which are the instrumental and the possessive. These new features correspond to universal tendencies in language evolution and seem to have prevailed in several substrate languages of Modern Hebrew, including Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish. Until recently, they had characterized mostly colloquial Hebrew, whereas written Hebrew had conformed to Classical Hebrew. In recent years, however, social change has brought about the integration of colloquial Hebrew and written Hebrew, which has led to a decrease in the latter’s resemblance to Classical Hebrew. Normative linguists have been speaking out against the phenomenon of “misplaced ʿim.” This article is a brief account of some Hebrew ‘with’ structures, considered typologically through diachronic analysis and synchronic description of the socially-stirred interplay between colloquial and standard written Hebrew.

The motivation for contrastive feature hierarchies in phonology

The notion that phonological features are organized into contrastive hierarchies has been entertained at different times in the history of linguistics. My main focus will be on the motivation for such hierarchies: what principles govern the ordering of the features? I will show that they have been motivated by three different principles: a) Activity: to identify the contrastive features that are relevant to the phonological computation, b) Minimality: to minimize redundancy in phonological representations and to maximize the amount of information conveyed by each feature, and c) Universality: to express universal tendencies in the nature of phonological inventories and the order of acquisition of feature contrasts. These principles do not necessarily conflict in every case, but in practice situations arise where they lead in different directions. To some extent Jakobson and Halle (Jakobson & Halle 1956; Halle 1959) and Clements (2001; 2003; 2009) appeal to all these principles, though they do so with differing emphases: Jakobson began by appealing to Activity, Halle came to stress Minimality, and Clements focused on Universality. I will argue on behalf of the centrality of Activity, which I understand to be the original and most compelling motivation for feature hierarchies.

Acquisition of the Korean Imperfective Aspect Markers –ko iss– and –a iss– by Japanese Learners: A Multiple‐Factor Account

Although cross‐linguistic research on second language tense‐aspect acquisition has uncovered universal tendencies concerning the association between verbal semantics and tense‐aspect markers, it is still unclear what mechanisms underlie this link. This study investigates the acquisition of two imperfective aspect markers (–ko iss– and –a iss–) in Korean by Japanese learners to determine how cognitive universals, first language (L1) transfer, and input frequency interact. The current findings are compared with the results of Lee and Kim (2007), who studied the acquisition of the same aspect markers by L1 English learners. Both groups of learners acquired the progressive –ko iss– earlier than the resultative –a iss–/–ko iss–, while L1 Japanese learners acquired the resultative use of –ko iss– earlier than L1 English learners. Japanese learners’ early acquisition of the resultative –ko iss– is likely due to L1 transfer, because Japanese has a similar imperfective marker (–te i–). We argue that cognitive universals (one‐to‐one principle), L1 transfer, and input frequency all contribute to the acquisition patterns of temporal morphology.

Rethinking Conventional Wisdom: Ecological Effects on Potential Danger Preoccupation Salience

Despite frequent reliance on conventional wisdom (CW) about potential threats in political, policy, intelligence, and other domains, until now there have been few empirical studies addressing the spread, common features, or differences of precautionary preoccupations across ecologies. We describe some of our initial investigations of any significant variation or subordination of dominant potential danger themes within and between populations and ecologies. We hypothesized that ecological triggers and specific cognitive capacities constrain the dominance of particular precautionary themes generally, as well as their variability between distinct populations. Our initial results support these claims by indicating that females, cross-culturally, worried more about predation/assault threats than males (a universal tendency) and that South Africans were more worried about predation/assault and depletion of resources than their counterparts in the United Kingdom (a variation). Furthermore, non-white South Africans were more worried in all domains when compared to white South Africans.

Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music

Music has been called "the universal language of mankind." Although contemporary theories of music evolution often invoke various musical universals, the existence of such universals has been disputed for decades and has never been empirically demonstrated. Here we combine a music-classification scheme with statistical analyses, including phylogenetic comparative methods, to examine a well-sampled global set of 304 music recordings. Our analyses reveal no absolute universals but strong support for many statistical universals that are consistent across all nine geographic regions sampled. These universals include 18 musical features that are common individually as well as a network of 10 features that are commonly associated with one another. They span not only features related to pitch and rhythm that are often cited as putative universals but also rarely cited domains including performance style and social context. These cross-cultural structural regularities of human music may relate to roles in facilitating group coordination and cohesion, as exemplified by the universal tendency to sing, play percussion instruments, and dance to simple, repetitive music in groups. Our findings highlight the need for scientists studying music evolution to expand the range of musical cultures and musical features under consideration. The statistical universals we identified represent important candidates for future investigation.

Whither Regulationism: Reflections on the Regulation Approach

Against the background of ongoing global crisis of capitalism, the article reflects on the most important and intriguing contributions of the French Regulation School within the Marxist tradition to critical international political economy. In particular, it examines and critiques the respective theses of principal regulationists—Aglietta, Lipietz, and Boyer—about capitalist stability, contradictions, dynamics, and relations. Aglietta’s limited conception of crises and contradictions is scrutinised by proposing a framework of agential-structural interrelations—specifically, the interactions between class struggle and market-dependence—in understanding capitalist relations and processes. Lipietz’s level of analysis on ‘national’ capitalism is questioned with a comprehension of the global character and universalising tendencies of capitalism. And Boyer’s reading of finance-led growth as the new regime of accumulation is explored with an argument to put more significance on reproduction than regulation and to bring back production and its interaction with the system of exchange in the analysis of capitalist development. The conclusion proposes a synthesis of regulation approach and the concepts from classical Marxism to better capture the specificities of contemporary capitalist development.

Investigation Of The Influence On Additional Mounted On Barrel Edge Concentrated Mass Over The Grouping Of Gunshot Hits In Single Shooting

Abstract One part of universal tendencies that are connected with armament building now is orientated to creating new models of small arms, that have increased battle effectiveness. The grouping is one of the most important technical characterizations that increase battle effectiveness of small arms. In many cases, adding muzzle devices increases bullet dispersing. In order to avoid this, it is necessary that the grouping in these cases should be investigated. This article presents an experimental investigation on the influence of an additional mounted on barrel edge concentrated mass over the grouping of gunshot hits in single shooting.

Universals of Split Argument Coding and Morphological Neutralization: Why Kala Lagaw Ya Is Not as Bizarre as We Thought

Kala Lagaw Ya is the language of the western and central islands of the Torres Strait. It exhibits an extremely complex pattern of ‘split argument coding’ (‘split ergativity’), which has previously been considered typologically exceptional and problematic for widely discussed universals of argument coding dating back to work by Silverstein, Comrie and Dixon in the 1970s, and framed in terms of an ‘animacy’ or ‘nominal’ hierarchy. Furthermore, the two main dialects of the language, which centre around Saibai Island and Mabuiag Island, differ in the detail of their argument coding in interesting ways. In this paper we argue that once we take into account other typologically well-attested principles concerning the effect of markedness on neutralization in the morphological coding of grammatical categories, and in particular recent proposals about the typology of number marking systems, the Kala Lagaw Ya system falls into place as resulting from the unexceptional interaction of a number of universal tendencies. On this view, the case systems of the two dialects of Kala Lagaw Ya, while complex, appear not to be typologically exceptional. This account can be taken as a case study contributing to our understanding of universals of argument coding and how they relate to forces affecting the neutralization of morphological marking. The reframing of the Kala Lagaw Ya facts then has broader implications: it reinforces the value of viewing complex patterns as the result of the interaction of simpler, more regular forces, and in so doing it also lends further empirical weight to the universals of argument coding which Kala Lagaw Ya was previously thought to violate.

Neuroscience and human nature: Review of The Altruistic Brain

Neuroscience and human nature: Review of The Altruistic Brain

Give-Constructions in Heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands

The domains where languages show variable syntax are often vulnerable in language contact situations. This paper investigates one such domain in Ambon Malay: the variable encoding of give-events. We study give-expressions in the Ambon Malay variety spoken by heritage speakers in the Netherlands, and compare the responses of heritage speakers with those of homeland speakers in Ambon, Indonesia. We report that heritage Ambon Malay shows an innovative higher incidence of do constructions compared to the homeland variety, and a significant decrease in the frequency of ‘two predicate’ constructions. The change that heritage Ambon Malay is undergoing is thus not categorical, but rather involves a change in frequency of certain constructions. We argue that this ‘restructuring by changing frequency’ is due to a combination of factors: influence from Dutch, universal tendencies in language acquisition, and the language history of individual speakers. Apart from a quantitative difference, we also observe a qualitative difference between the give-constructions of heritage and homeland speakers of Ambon Malay: both groups use different prepositions in the prepositional object construction, a reflection of their different social histories.

Industry Needs Re-Education in Uncertainty Assessment

Management It is clear the oil and gas industry recognizes the large uncertainty in which it operates. A search in the OnePetro technical paper database using the keywords “uncertainty” or “risk” returns more than 53,000 conference and journal papers. Yet, it is also clear that the industry does not know how to reliably assess uncertainty and that this inability negatively affects industry performance. Capen (1976) described the difficulty of assessing uncertainty. He pointed to massive capital overruns and low industry returns due to an almost universal tendency to underestimate uncertainty. Brashear et al. (2001) and Rose (2004) later documented the dismal performance of the industry in the last 10 to 20 years of the 20th century due to chronic bias and evaluation methods that do not account for the full uncertainty. Although industry profitability may have improved in the past decade because of high oil prices, Neeraj Nandurdikar in an October 2014 JPT article, “Wanted: A New Type of Business Leader to Fix E&P Asset Developments,” showed that the oil and gas industry continues to perform significantly below estimations and expectations. He cited three ways that assets erode value, all of which relate to unreliable assessments of uncertainty: (1) production and reserves estimates are overestimated, (2) capital costs are underestimated, and (3) development times are underestimated. And these do not include price estimations; the surprising oil price slide at the time of this writing has the potential to move industry performance from below expectations to below profitability. While project evaluations can be affected by many different types of biases, these can be reduced fundamentally to two primary biases: overconfidence and directional bias. Overconfidence is underestimation of uncertainty; i.e., our estimated distributions of uncertain quantities, such as reserves, are too narrow. They are too narrow because we do not consider all the possible outcomes. There is considerable evidence in the literature, both inside and outside the petroleum industry, of our general human tendency for overconfidence. Directional bias results when the subset of possible outcomes considered is shifted in either the optimistic or pessimistic direction. There is also evidence that we are usually optimistic in our overconfidence; i.e., we fail to consider some possible negative outcomes, or we give greater weight to possible positive outcomes than possible negative outcomes. As a result of the two primary biases, we make decisions with incorrect estimated distributions rather than true distributions (Fig. 1).

The two-Mover hypothesis and the significance of “direction of motion” in temporal metaphors

It is claimed that expressions that instantiate sequence is relative position on a path (e.g. Spring follows winter) are the only type of temporal expression in English in which two distinct entities metaphorically move. A possible motivation for why we do not find two Times-as-Movers going the opposite “direction” may be that people are not disposed to tracking two “nows”. It is further hypothesized that this could be a crosslinguistically common or universal tendency, and data relevant to the constraint are discussed for Japanese and Wolof (West Africa). This exercise documents and categorizes certain semantic relations (such as ahead/behind) that are relevant to the study of direction of motion in metaphors of time.

The multifunctionality offiiin Gulf Pidgin Arabic

The paper is a descriptive account of the various grammatical functions of the particlefiiin the grammar of Gulf Pidgin Arabic, the contact system that has developed in the Arab countries of the Arabian Gulf for use between the Arabic-speaking native citizens and the expatriate workforce in these countries. It aims at discussing the grammatical multifunctionality of this element and the factors behind the expansion of its grammatical functions, when it was adopted from the lexifier Gulf Arabic.In Gulf Arabic,fiiis used as a preposition and as an existential predicate. When it was adopted into GPA,fiialso assumed the role of a possession marker and predication marker in non-verbal subject-predicate sentences and sentences with verbal predicates. A similar expansion in grammatical roles has affected its negative counterpartmaafii, which is used as a negative offiiin its role as an existential predicate in Gulf Arabic. In GPA the use ofmaafiihas also been expanded so that it is now used as a universal negator in the language, regardless of the predicate or sentence type. The paper investigates the factors that motivated this extension in the uses offii/maafiiand argues that it is not transfer-induced. Rather, language-internal motivation and universal tendencies are more legitimate candidates for the forces lying behind this process.

CHRONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF ACUTE CORONARY SYNDROME / ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION (MATERIALS TO REGISTER)

Purpose: studying influence chronobiological factors on frequency of occurrence ACS/ AMI Material and methods: Epidemiological features of AMI and ACS were studied among the constant population of one of districts of Tashkent. The research was carried during one year (from 1.07.2009 to 30.06.2010). Results: the register were included 683 patients with AMI/ACS., of them men - 67,9 % and women - 32,1 %. According to our data January and December appeared to be the less favourable months, and Mаy and June were the most favourable. The analysis of the incidence rate of ACS/AMI with regards to seasons of year showed, that the greatest quantity of patients as well as of lethal outcomes (23,0 % and 33,9 %, respectively) at the prehospital stage was noted on the autumn-winter period. Lethal outcomes at a pre-hospital stage on time of days were registered in night (0.00 till 5.59 o'clock) and morning (6.00 till 11.59 o'clock) hours (29,6 % and 27,1 % accordingly) is slightly more often. Conclusion. Thus, our researches have confirmed a universal tendency that episodes ACS/AMI on time of days meet in the morning is more often, and night time of days is interfaced to higher probability lethality at a pre-hospital stage.

Intralimb Coordination in Children With and Without Developmental Coordination Disorder in One-Handed Catching

ABSTRACTThere is a gap in the literature in regard to analysis of intralimb coordination exhibited by children with (n = 10) and without developmental coordination disorder (DCD; n = 9) in 1-handed catching. The functional data showed that children without DCD (M age = 10.6 years, SD = 1.08 years) were nearly perfect. Children with DCD (M age = 11.0 years, SD = 1.16 years) caught significantly fewer balls, and this was despite the fact that not all of them had difficulties organizing their actions at intralimb level of coordination. The analysis of the coinciding actions revealed differences at the distal (elbow-wrist relations), but not at the proximal joints where both groups exhibited decoupling between the shoulder and elbow joints. Large variability within the groups also suggested that the notion of universal coordinative tendencies at intralimb level of coordination has to be treated with caution. This is particularly true for children with DCD as different subgroups emerged in the present sample.